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Replaying Grim Fandango in order to do my part in beta-testing DREAMM was an interesting experience. I loved it, and I remain as convinced as ever that the game is such an amazing achievement in the overall that its issues can’t do it fatal damage. But I’ve never appreciated just how major those issues are. The Petrified Forest stood out to me. It’s not a huge segment in the grand scheme of things, but it makes time stop. It’s a fairly uninteresting location in such a cool world, and the puzzles are of a sort you would expect from a more routine adventure game. I have similar complaints about Year 3 – the machinery puzzles that populate it are such a drag. Figuring out anchor controls, reversing conveyer belts, unfurling chains, operating cranes, aligning tumblers…isn’t this the kind of thing we turn to LucasArts in retreat from? If the Petrified Forest is worse, it’s due to its placement. From a pacing standpoint, it’s exactly the wrong time for padding. If there were a Casual Mode, it would be a no-brainer excision. I wonder how many players gave up on this game because they were manipulating a fucking wheelbarrow over hoses in order to reason through some dumb timing puzzle, when the game’s best stuff was right on the other side of it? Not even worth thinking about. I’m actually in the minority on the tank controls. They are undeniably clunkier than point ‘n click, but the “drive the character” conceit is a tradeoff in order for the game to fully exploit the cinematic possibilities of its explicitly film-inspired 3D world. It’s a little creaky, but more or less justifies itself. But it’s one component of a bigger agenda of Grim’s presentation: getting rid of UI altogether to maximize immersion*. Tim’s vision of that is a noble one, but I think an aesthetic choice that comes at the expense of gameplay clarity is a liability. Using Manny’s head as a purely visual substitute for traditional hotspotting is an elegant solution, but it’s imperfect in practice. It’s way too easy to misapprehend what Manny is looking at, which can lead to you thinking you’ve ruled something out when you haven’t. The issue is exacerbated when you have a puzzle that requires you to “use” what Manny is holding by itself (like biting the mouthpiece). He needs to otherwise be looking at nothing, which isn’t always obvious. It’s exactly the sort of ambiguity that I imagine some design dictum would contend must be avoided at all costs. I understand why EMI restored the sentence line even if it made things more “cluttered.” If the player thought they tried to spike Naranja’s drink but were actually interacting with the tattoo book, and Manny’s “I can’t do that” response was too generic to have alerted them to the mistake, and they only found out what the disconnect was after looking up the solution in frustration, that’s an F minus. I’ve never understood the people who would argue that Grim Fandango is a great movie trapped in the structure of an adventure game. It’s a wonderful fit as an adventure game. I just wish it had been a more merciful one. It’s sort of amazing to look back on, because everything about the game’s presentation represents this big, forward-facing gambit to take the genre to a new frontier – we can make graphic adventures competitive in the AAA arena! – and yet it didn’t occur to anybody that, while they were boldly jettisoning so many old standbys in their embrace of their shiny, ILM-abetted new engine, that like, maybe forklift puzzles are just as expendable as a visible cursor? From today’s vantage point especially, it’s so clear where they could have taken it easy without really betraying the essence or scale of the experience. So many more people should have gotten to visit this world and meet these characters. Why we gotta dare them not to with Myst puzzles? Anyway: Happy 25th, Grim! *Ironically, the Remaster kind of destroys this, at least on the Switch. Those gigantic overlays the screen gets slapped with when the game is auto-saving – including during in-engine cinematics – are hilariously disruptive.

Already 6 people interested? 🤩 That should be enough to get started, and late comers can of course always catch up. So I think we can set a starting date, so everyone who doesn't have the book yet and is interested has a chance to get it. Here's my suggestion: * New chapters unlock Thursdays * Treat later chapters as spoilers, in case you already know the book * Reading is not mandatory to participate in the discussion, as long as it's on topic Everone who joins late can just catch up to the current chapter. I'll try to keep track of the current state in the top post. Prologue and first chapter are unlocked next Thursday, Feb. 2. All in favor say aye! 😁

EMI is a night and day difference on my machine with the latest beta. Acknowledged issues with some of the water effects aside, I got through the whole first half without any weirdness [that isn’t inherit to the game]. It took until the LUA Bar for me to hit a problem – for the puzzle where you have to meddle with the boat system to get the chef out of the kitchen, he gets stuck in front of the little bridge, blocking my way. I seem to vaguely recall that the potential for an NPC’s route to get foiled by an obstacle was always a thing in EMI, but in DREAMM this situation happened consistently. It would have blocked me from any further progress, but I was eventually able to brute force my way past the chef, somehow. After finishing the second Melee Island segment, the game crashed on me upon reaching Jambalaya Island on the map. A bunch of reloads confirmed that it happens ten times out of ten, so that was it for EMI. I don’t know if it has any relevance, but this was the disc-switching moment of the game back in the day. I decided to keep things GrimE-y and turned to Grim Fandango next. This was my first time playing the as-shipped-in-1998 version of the game since the Remaster came out, so I had some nostalgic fights with those elevators. DREAMM, though, seems to emulate the game near flawlessly. The one significant issue I encountered was a strange one. The original Grim automatically resumes you when you relaunch the game, and this feature is messed up -- it restores Manny geographically where I left him, but his inventory is wiped (just the scythe) and the game otherwise seems to have no awareness of my progress, complete with dialog trees being reset. It’s as if the only part of the game’s state that got remembered was the location, and in all other respects its awareness reverts back to the start. When I manually reload my actual saved game, all is well. I only picked up on a single visual glitch: Jepito’s lantern not being illuminated during the scene where you meet him underwater. That was all. Got through it start to finish. Any other rickety stuff I observed was all the same stuff I recall it having shipped with, complete with the legendary “can’t talk to Domino in Year 3” bug. This is a very stable beta. I encourage anyone with some free time to check it out with some of the newly supported games.

Let's read On Stranger Tides together, new chapter every week! * New chapters unlock Thursdays * Treat later chapters as spoilers, in case you already know the book * Reading is not mandatory to participate in the discussion, as long as it's on topic Everone who joins late can just catch up to the current chapter. Prologue and first chapter are unlocked Thursday, Feb. 2. Original Post: Mojole recently featured On Stranger Tides, a book that notably influenced Monkey Island. Many here may have read it, some may never have but were interested. I'm in the camp of those who have read it a long time ago and forgot a lot of it again. I thought it might be fun to have some sort of a book club where a few of us come together and enjoy the book chapter by chapter, as if it were an episodic series. For example: every week a new chapter is "unlocked", we can discuss, speculate, draw parallels to MI and try to treat the rest of the book as spoilers within the thread. Basically a new regular activity besides the great Mojole with as little commitment as reading one chapter of a good book per week Would anybody be interested at all, or in a similar concept with another book or game?

Yes! So true. It's somewhat ironic because Tim has shared a story about how the producer on the game tried to force him to cut that part. She said there's wasn't any money for it, but Tim got the art team to start producing it without her knowledge and by then it was too late. (Something along those lines.) It's ironic because it just stops the story dead... the puzzles aren't great and personally I hate having to deal with the fire beavers (having to wait for them to trundle into the right position...!). I LOVE Grim Fandango. LOVE LOVE LOVE. For me it's probably the pinnacle of LucasArts's adventure games, but I can't help but feel the game would be better without that section. Rubacava is so much more enjoyable (well, it's the best section of the game to be honest). Again, I 100% agree. Yep, I'm with you on this one, too. The original game used "." to switch Manny's head between objects (a feature that was left out of the Remaster for some weird reason) but although I think you're right, I've never found it too much of an issue because the world isn't too cluttered -- and I just used "." when it was. I've always found it pretty clear what Manny is looking at despite the shortcomings of the system. And really, re: the tank controls, they never bothered me either. They worked fine... that is, until I played the Remaster. The new controls are such a wonderful improvement that it's very hard to go back. They keep the 3D immersion while making them far more intuitive. (Playing through with Tank Controls is the one achievement I'll never get on the Remaster -- sorry, Tim!) They were forging new territory! Some great advances were made, and some mistakes, too. Alas. There's a few things that the Remaster missteps on (to anyone who hasn't played it: they're very minor, don't let them put you off -- the Remaster is great!). As someone who loves the game so much, it's a bit painful at times. I did my best on the forums to get them to fix the niggles, but my comments seemed largely met with bewilderment. (Felt like: "Why would anyone care about the game so much??") Or maybe they were just exhausted. Tim didn't do me any favours by promising that Grim Fandango Remastered would be a "Criterion Edition" of the game. (Aside: For those who don't know, Criterion try to release the "perfect" version of a film for movie lovers. They invented the audio commentary, make loads of unique content and documentaries, but more importantly than all that: They make sure the presentation of the film is absolutely flawless. They re-scan the negatives themselves and bring in the original Director of Photography and Director to work with them ensuring the colour timing is perfect. They really go to the nth degree so you can trust that what they release is absolutely the best presentation of the film possible, and they rarely (if ever) get it wrong.) Tim talked specifically about how tiny details would be addressed by the original team in the Remaster, something only Double Fine could do. He mentioned the tiny symbol on Velaco's cap (I think, it's been a while) as an example of something only his team would know what the original intention was. Obviously as a fan I gobbled all that up, but really it was what Tim had to say to get Sony to trust them with the IP. Of course, there's SO many things they got right: The controls, the updated music, the new lighting, the reduced compression on the videos... The fact that it exists at all. The Remaster IS wonderful. But there's still things that still irk, if you're wanting the "Criterion" edition. Here's a list of tiny quibbles off the top of my head (for anyone who cares -- most of this list won't bother a new player): For a game as big and sprawling as GF, you need a ton of saves if you want to go back and try different things out. (And we adventure fans often like doing that.) Unfortunately there was a limitation with the save space on the PS4, so they had to limit the number of saves on that platform to 8 slots... and Sony (of course) wouldn't allow any other version of the game to be "better" than the PS4 one, so that limit was artificially imposed on the PC version, too. One of the very rare times that the original (which had no limitation) was better. There's still quite a few shadow glitches and bugs in the controls in various places (but especially Year 3). And the animations that loop in the backgrounds of various scenes don't animate properly throughout the entire game. They're missing a few frames, so they don't animate their loop smoothly. Very minor: but some of the game textures weren't improved at all. (Most of the time you can't tell, but there's a few times when the game can still look uglier than it should -- like the ticket printing machine, etc.) Some sound files don't play properly or cut out (eg. the Cat Race announcer in Year 2 stops talking randomly, losing some of the funny dialogue, clues to solves puzzles, and atmosphere). The new scene that animates the poetry recital was very cool. A lovely little treat for fans. But I wish they'd fixed the hole in the base of Olivia's skull that allows you to see the other side of her head as the camera moves past. (Again, very minor.) How about this for a nit pick: The original game manual made it clear you're supposed to use the Num Pad to play the game, and it works really well. They used all the buttons around the that number pad keys to do everything you need... in the Remastered, they dropped this functionality. Possibly the worst thing was how the wonderful transition at the end of the game was altered. It's probably the only other moment where the original is better. A very odd choice. Oh, and they never fixed the "Gold Flakes" typo on the PS4... ....Golo Flakes... Boy, oh boy. The Golo Flakes debacle... Sucks if you're a first time player and a clue like that has been removed due to a typo. That really irritated me. And I can't see how Shafer, Tsacle or Chan could not care about it, either. Manny picks up a bottle of liqueur that contains metal flakes... an important clue for a tricky puzzle later in the game. But instead of letting the player know there's metal in the bottle, the Remaster tells them it's filled with flakes of "golo" instead of "gold". Imagine a Criterion edition of Casablanca... "Play it again... Pam". I knew the team were probably overwhelmed, so I even made them a replacement PNG to drop in, just to make it as easy as possible for them to fix (exact right dimensions and size and everything -- all they had to do was replace a single asset), but the response from the Remaster team on the DF forums was baffling. It was like, "really? who cares about that??". They even took the time to put a bottle of "Golo Flakes" in Day of the Tentacle Remastered as a dig at the fans who complained about it. (And had plans to put one in Full Throttle Remastered, too, but it was nixed by someone before release.) Still, as a I say, these are all minor quibbles from a die hard (how much of a die hard? I had started my own Remaster project before DF announced theirs and they gracious thanked me in the Remaster credits, although I certainly didn't deserve it). Again, anyone who hasn't played GF before: The Remastered is still the best way, don't let these little moans put you off. And I remain grateful to DF for making it happen at all!

Thanks for the testing and great feedback! I'm hot on the trail of the water effects bugs, and have fixed the crasher on disk switch for the next beta. Basically, they were tearing everything down and then restarting it all after the disc switch, and there was a bug lurking on the teardown path. I'm hoping next time you'll be able to finish EMI. I'm pretty stumped on why the cook can't get over the bridge in the restaurant, but have some ideas for how to figure it out. As for the Grim inventory issue, that's very odd, and tops to look at once I get EMI working a bit more solidly.

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