Jake

This sounds goofy but I think that the decision to try and make adventure games seem more cinematic (eg: characters turn beautifully, they reach out with a full animation to open the door, they raise their hand then reach into their pocket and rummage around before pulling up an inventory item) had the effect of making them actually feel significantly less cinematic to play. Monkey Island or Fate of Atlantis moved as quickly and responsively as any other game at that time. It’s true they didn’t have a bunch of detailed embellishments as you clicked around, but the story advanced as quickly as it possibly could at the micro-level in response to your actions.

Im of many minds on this, in that I think I agree with you and with George. The part that I fully agree with is that developers should stop saying “I’m making my own spin on Monkey Island,” which is a sentiment that somehow keeps coming up directly from developers mouths. 1) no you aren’t, and 2) if you’re trying that, you probably shouldn’t be. (are you asking yourself what the actual developers of monkey island thought they were doing that led to the creation of that game? what media they were engaging with? they definitely did not set out to make “a monkey island game” when none existed before.) I think making a genre work that fits in a well-worn groove is a fine and good thing to do. But the reason the LucasArts games hit as hard as they did when they were new was the surprise and variety of them - you never knew what you were going to get next, even with the ones that were sequels. (With the exception of Last Crusade to FoA, but I think they’re the exception that proves the rule.) So is “LucasArts” a genre on any front? I’m not sure. It’s a mostly common user interface, it’s a design philosophy (as written out explicitly in many of their manuals), but I don’t think those are the things devs mean when they say they’re making a LucasArts game. I think they usually mean “has 9 verbs and has jokes in,” and probably has a guy say “look behind you a four headed monkey” in it. I obviously have muddled thoughts on this but I mostly think, taking from a game or developer or genre you like is fine, but I’d hope you are trying to actually examine their work and figure out what in it was successful and unique and spoke to you, and try to figure out how to make your own version of that. Just quoting the references or lifting the art style or name dropping the games won’t get you much, beyond something to pander to lowest hanging fans with.

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I long to update that soundtrack waiting thread. Maybe it’s why I got involved in the remasters to begin with. Who can say.

It was both reasons! The highly detailed textures in the original were very heavily based on photographs, basically textures lifted from the CSI games. It added a really satisfying level of busyness to each screen, but when we tried to actually up the resolution and light it, as you guessed, it didn’t work that well. It ended up looking “old” instead of “a cooler version of what you remembered.” So we opted to simplify textures but add more detail to the scenes themselves, and also looked at how hit the road and Steve’s paintings handled “stylized” dirtiness. We also did want the game to be more of a piece with the other two seasons, while still having its own feel. So the overall density of environments and amount of caked on dirt, graffiti, and gunk is still way higher than in the other games. It also has film grain on by default, heavier vignettes in the corners of shots, and is color graded more aggressively into gunky “old film that’s been left out in the sun” tints, especially in the dark areas of shots. And for what it’s worth, the first two seasons were also not direct uplifts of their original styles. With season one we really looked at hit the road and the covers to the comics for inspiration, and wanted that season to feel closer to those than it previously had. So it’s pretty bright, has lots of high contrast spotlights, and is a little more flat. For season two we wanted things to feel a little more like a monster movie, so there is more underlighting coming up from below. We also decided season two would have a lot of two-tone lighting so many scenes are lit above with one color and below with another. For season 3 the goal was basically, try and make it feel like season 3 but more polished, while keeping it stylistically in line with the other two seasons, so the trilogy as a whole feels cohesive even if each individual season has its own mood and details. It’s definitely a more noticeable change with season 3 since it had more of an overt style to begin with than the previous two. (Or maybe more accurately, all 3 seasons had a style but season 3’s managed to actually punch through and be noticed to a greater degree than the other two.)

Amazing stuff! I hope the clips can eventually go up on archive.org or in the VGHF library or some other place where they can be archived and preserved.

Telltales head of marketing changed mid way through season 3 development and he canceled all merch projects I had just started working on the soundtrack packaging when it happened.

Season one remastered is available on vinyl right now and it won’t be reissued with new tracks (?). There’s just not an audience. Hoping to do physical releases of 2 and 3 as well. Maybe I will print on demand a CD release for you, one of the two people who has ever asked for it 😛

It’s because I did the mix for the menu track, not Jared. Not that he didn’t give it the thumbs up (he said “yeah that’s basically the way I would have edited it, ship it”) but it’s not something that was on either of our minds when considering what the soundtrack should have. And he hasn’t got the source files for it since I bashed out the menu mix in Premiere, so he’d likely have to re-create my edit.

Not on Steam or Bandcamp, because they are done directly through a simple admin interface… but the ones that propagate to iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube Music etc yes they are a horrible pain to update because unless you are a huge record label with direct access to all those different backends, they go through a variety of middleware services, none of which are comprehensive in their tools or feature set. Many of them also have intrinsic hooks to their storefronts which are still hardcoded to assume pricing based on CD-length albums, which is part of why many soundtracks have just given up and release in “volumes,” even though for all intents and purposes it should be one album in the digital era. We tried to avoid that for the Skunkape soundtrack rereleases but eventually just decided to split the albums up on those services. (On Steam and Bandcamp they are single albums without volume distinctions.)

Well that I can do https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/upubfd4dvl30eaog0z2o7/env_office_cs_opening_e1_1.wav?rlkey=uane64i9w2y3kqz18xly59eju&st=q8pq9zry&dl=0 This lyric-free arrangement of World of Max was stuck in my brain for so long that I made it the main menu music of the Save The World remaster. Then we didn't include it in the soundtrack oops.

There is very little new music this time around. Season 3 was well covered. But Jared went through and updated the samples on almost every track, and did a new mix and mastering process on all of it, so things sound way better. We also got the usual session saxophonist to come in and add a little bit of live coverage to some key moments that were previously pure synth.

The game is working its way through console cert as we speak. More info including release date coming soon.

A good list, enjoyed hearing what about them spoke to you personally. I know you limited it to adventures but man there are some winners in the rest of the catalog. Dark Forces, Rebel Assault, are both really iconic compositions that are representative of their eras of gaming in a very fast-moving time. The Outlaws box is a real stylistic outlier in the world of retail covers. Afterlife is one I’ve always respected more than loved, kind of like the game itself. Pipe Dream looks like an arcade game because it basically is - it’s effortlessly iconic in that arcadey way that’s actually hard to achieve. I dont think any of these hold a candle to the adventure greats, but there are a bunch of good ones in the mix.

Wow those are incredible. I mean, they are bad! But in a fun way. It’s rare to see games get the “bizarre off-model international movie poster” treatment, but its here in spades.

Got it! Thanks serge.

I think it was Hit the Road I was thinking of that was made on/for general midi as opposed to a Roland thing. Zaarin, whose name I can never remember on this forum, would know better than me. (@s-island) And my Mac music memories were MI2 and FOA.

I’ll always have a fondness for the scratchy and weird Mac instrument library the early LucasArts games had because that’s what I grew up with, but at this point my favorite is the MT-32 version. It’s the only version of Monkey Island 2 you can actually turn up the volume for and it sounds better and better. (Also, I thought by the DOTT or Hit the Road era they had moved on to composing for SoundBlaster/Adlib cards? My memory was that MT-32 was the baseline in the early days but eventually they moved off it. Maybe not?)

Oh so that’s where I put my styrofoam inlay!

I love how long these interviews are for how much information they contain, and for how much the personality of the interview subject is allowed to come through by spending so much time with them, but I still think I’d prefer to read them than watch them (maybe on this very website?? just saying!). I like reading! I like that the types of multitasking I can do when reading makes reading the focus but I can have music on, or quickly drop in and out of it to talk to someone else in the room. Watching a video interview either demands my full attention or at least demands the use of my ears - it’s fully occupied time that I have to play/pause. I know that I’d personally get more enjoyment out of these if i could read them at my own pace, but I also love that they are conducted as realtime video interviews and will forever be preserved with the subjects own voices as a feature. I know this is a goofy argument to make I think it’s pretty subjective, different types of people like to consume media in different ways.

It sucks that they didn’t do a memoir for the back of the box. Literally all the others did it

That must have been right when BASD was starting out and wanted an example of what they could do under their belts.

Nice looking forward to listening! Clint is one of the greats. His contributions to the Return score were such a delight, truly iconic stuff.

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This time it’s virtual has shipped to most people as I understand it. Hit the Road is held up though as I am designing it and have been record-breaking slow at finalizing deliverables.