ATMachine

ThunderPeel: Really? Where can I see it? Also, I calculated that the 1UP video goes through the concept art gallery so quickly that at least one image is skipped over without us ever seeing it. Speculation ahoy!

Here follows an analysis of all the MI2 concept art, old and new, that was shown in the 1UP video I linked to earlier. I've also linked to screen captures that I've made of the various concept images, so don't read further if you don't want to see them! First off, apologies for the quality of some of the screen caps; 1UP used a handheld camera to record their video, which isn't ideal. Also the links I've created show up despite the spoiler tag. I've tried to make them as non-spoilery as possible, though. All in all, a very interesting set of images. I'm looking forward to seeing them in greater detail come July 7.

1UP has posted a gameplay video (available also at a bigger size) which details much the same gameplay as in the earlier IGN live demo (not online yet). The 1UP video is shot with a handheld cam, though, so the image isn't as good. But you can clearly see many of the new features on display, including the new frames of animation (which extends to idle animations!). Craig Derrick says they tripled the number of frames in the walk cycle, from 8 to 24. The developer commentary is on display, and looks nice IMO. The music is still too faint to hear properly, though. A couple of arresting concept art images shown during the demo of the art gallery caught my eye--this one and this other one, which are two more unused background paintings by Peter Chan from the original game. But I really ought to avoid spoiling the surprise for you people who want to remain ignorant until you actually play the damn game. So I'll discuss what the paintings look like below, within spoiler tags. Anyways, a very interesting demo, and I'm more excited than ever now. July 7 is too far away, damn it!

Haha, in the original screen LeChuck looks like he has two right hands. Never noticed that animation error before. Maybe that's got something to do with why they changed it. Or not.

So along with the new trailer we have some new screenshots. I know many of you have been complaining about not wanting to see any more of them, but I thought I'd post the link just the same. Do check out this screenshot in particular, though. It shows off the concept art gallery feature we've heard so much about. You can actually see they've included an unused background image by Peter Chan from the original MI2 (plus another one is visible in the tiny image-viewer menu). The two unseen Chan paintings shown here happen to depict close-up shots of the voodoo throne from the office in LeChuck's Fortress. (Those two rooms were actually still in the game at the time the MI2 rolling demo was made; their filenames are present in the demo's text data.) Also, it would seem that LeChuck's enormous throne is actually an oversized armchair with an equally giant desk in front of it! Who knew?

The above schedule is only for IGN, I think. Here's the GameSpot video schedule. Note the "LucasArts Floor Report" at 10 AM PDT Wednesday. I think these are 10-minute segments occurring in sequence throughout the hours listed. Don't quote me on that, though. Tuesday Day 1 9:00 AM Nintendo Press Conference 12:00 PM Sony Press Conference 2:00 PM E3 Breakdown: West Hall Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds E3 Breakdown: South Hall Gears of War 3 Electronic Arts In-depth: Medal of Honor TBA 3:00 PM Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Floor Report Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Microsoft Floor Report Call of Duty: Black Ops Microsoft In-depth: Halo: Reach Killzone 3 4:00 PM Disney Interactive Studios Floor Report Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 Activision Floor Report Dead Space 2 THQ Floor Report Fable III 5:00 PM Ubisoft Floor Report WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 Bethesda Floor Report Socom 4 Sony Booth Tour Rockband 3 Wednesday Day 2 10:00 AM Lucas Arts Floor Report Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Square Enix Booth Tour God of War: Ghosts of Sparta Sega Booth Tour Okamiden 11:00 AM Ubisoft In-depth: Ghost Recon Future Soldier Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 Konami Booth Tour Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley Take 2 Booth Tour EA Sports MMA 12:00 PM Onlive Booth Tour Motorstorm: Apocalypse SOE Booth Tour Crysis 2 Capcom Booth Tour DJ Hero 2 1:00 PM Nintendo Booth Tour Medal of Honor Nintendo Booth In-depth: TBA Bodycount Sony Booth In-depth: TBA Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom 2:00 PM Sony Booth In-depth: TBA Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Capcom Floor Report Dead Rising 2: Case Zero EA Floor Report Dead Rising 2 3:00 PM TBA Sports Champions & Kung-Fu Rider THQ In-depth: Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 Bulletstorm Microsoft In-depth: TBA Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock 4:00 PM Ubisoft In-depth: RUSE TBA Ubisoft In-depth: HAWX 2 Driver Konami Floor Report LittleBigPlanet 2 5:00 PM TBA WWE All Stars TBA Portal 2 TBA Epic Mickey Thursday Day 3 10:00 AM MTV Games In-depth: Rock Band 3 TBA Namco Bandai Booth Tour Gran Turismo 5 Tecmo Koei Booth Tour Enslaved: Odyssey to the West 11:00 AM TBA F.3.A.R. South Peak Games Booth Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Sega In-depth: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings 12:00 PM Sega In-depth: Valkyria Chronicles 2 Test Drive Unlimited 2 Natsume Booth Tour Fallout: New Vegas K2 Booth Tour Hunted: The Demon's Forge 1:00 PM Activision Booth Tour Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Warner Bros. Floor Report Crackdown 2 Disney Interactive Studios In-depth: Tron Evolution Halo: Reach 2:00 PM TBA Rage Dreamcatcher Booth Tour Splatterhouse Ignition Booth Tour Red Faction: Armageddon 3:00 PM GameSpot Booth Tour Homefront TBA Kung-Fu Live Yoostar 2 In-depth TBA

Considering the newest press release and new front page item on Telltale's website, I think you can say that the rumors are pretty much dead-on.

The link is redirecting me to the main Steam homepage. I guess it was too soon? EDIT: Haha, just tried it again and it works. Strange.

That only happens in the VGA upgrade. In fact it's a bit of a recycling of unused content. In the earlier EGA version apparently the original intro featured a long shot of the train traveling through the desert, over which the game title was displayed. After this the camera cut to the closeup of the boxcars for the credit sequence. The long shot was ultimately deleted to save disk space (but can still be seen in the original EGA non-playable demo) and so there's no train in the EGA version. But it was put into the logo of the later 256-color upgrade. Wait, weren't we talking about MI2??

Heeee. I punted on that one because I couldn't remember whether he was an animator or something else. Fixed now.

You should know that many of the people working at Telltale are LucasArts veterans from years back. Dave Grossman worked on MI1 and DOTT, Mike Stemmle on Hit the Road and EMI, Joe Pinney worked on a canceled Indiana Jones game, Graham Annable had some minor job was the most important animator ever on The Dig.... I could go on for days. Arguably it's more akin to the golden-age LucasArts of the 1990's than is the current LucasArts company.

I haven't really investigated the situation on WiiWare, but yikes, that does sound bad. Double the price? That IS outrageous, given the inferior graphics etc. I don't think that's reasonable at all. I do think it's pretty clear that Telltale's method of delivering titles to Wii is seriously flawed, and needs to change. WiiWare just isn't working out, and is not only creating titles inferior to PC versions, it's creating PC versions that look inferior to other games. It's a lose-lose situation all around. I am not really a Wii gamer, though, so I don't feel that I'm the best-informed person to complain about the issue. Maybe you should start your own thread?

It may be commonplace but that doesn't stop it from being an objectively bad and undesirable practice. The games industry as a whole is not exactly a model of good customer service, especially when it comes to dealing with PC users. That doesn't mean I as a customer shouldn't complain, though. And I may sound cranky, but I'm sort of tired of the assumption that Telltale can do no wrong at this point. Having said that, they're still my favorite video game company in the world, goddamnit! So when I get frustrated by stuff like this, it stings all the worse. Maybe I just sound too curmudgeonly, I don't know, but however badly I may express it, I genuinely like this company and want it to prosper. I do think that even complaints can be constructive, though, and I'm not afraid to speak my mind. You personally may not care about such things as bonus content. That's your prerogative. But I feel like I should get the exact same gameplay as the PS3 gamers got, since I paid almost exactly the same price. Or they should tell me up front that I won't have that chance. Whatever, at least it's promised for PC now (which is better than before I opened my big fat mouth). For me the issue will be a live one until the day Telltale delivers the content to PC. Which, to get back to the point of this thread, is precisely the problem: the release dates of additional features like that one seem to be slipping. I'm all for nice new shiny games, but if they cut into the delivery of the additional content for older games that Telltale has already promised its users, then clearly something is not right. I don't doubt Telltale wants to get this stuff out the door (that would be silly) but... slow down, guys!

Prophetic. And if anything the problems have worsened since then. However, good luck saying that on Telltale's forums these days; there are some *Champions of Telltale* on there who eat the spleens of people who disagree with them for breakfast. Since the thread you linked seems to be a relatively sane conversation, I'm not surprised to see it hasn't been updated in almost a year.

I'm posting this here instead of at the Telltale forums because that is an eldritch extradimensional plane of drooling fanboy zombies, and this board is (relatively) saner. You may remember that, when Tales of Monkey Island debuted on Mac a few months ago, it featured re-recorded Earl Boen dialogue in Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, available from Day One. A similar upgrade for the PC version was then promised as "forthcoming." It still hasn't shown up. And in The Penal Zone, PS3 users unlock an extra psychic power (the Nutrition Specs) and extra accompanying gameplay on completing the game. I personally felt cheated that this gameplay wasn't available on PC. After all, both versions were sold for basically the same price, and the disparity in content wasn't advertised in advance. I pre-ordered the game, trusting Telltale to be awesome, but got an inferior experience compared to that of other users. It was only when I complained on the forums that Telltale rather belatedly said it was "working on" moving the feature to PC. Now Sam and Max Episode 2 is about to come out and there's still no sign of either of these long-promised features. It appears that delays of content upgrades have become a regular happening around Telltale. My question for you is: Has Telltale tried to do too much, too fast? They are currently working madly to pump out a full season of Sam and Max and the Puzzle Agent pilot and quite possibly other as-yet-unannounced pilot games. It seems to me that this relentless progression of game-making has severely impeded Telltale's ability to add features to its previous software. Is this just growing pains at a relatively new and small company? Or is it an inherent flaw of the episodic model?

I must say that while I like V3 quite a bit, I also like V5. I'd even say five is better, because it looks, to me at least, similar to all of Guybrush's other looks, but exactly like none. It's got a quality of "reinterpretation" but, at the same time, is very faithful to the originals. Also, the face suggests to me that Guybrush is still somewhat open and naive, as he was in MI1, yet he's also got a newfound edge that he's acquired as a swashbuckling pirate. It's a perfect balance for who he is in MI2. I must say, I would actually be disappointed if all the LucasArts people could come up with was "CMI Guybrush with a beard." It'd look good, sure, but MI2 was never artistically the same as CMI and shouldn't be made so. Personally, I think the new look is a worthy addition to the previous Guybrushes, especially given its similarity to Steve Purcell's design of GB for MI1-MI2. (we don't mention that MI1SE hair)

Here are the four previous Guybrush concept art pieces, plus a new fifth design. The versions posted on Facebook had some buggy image code for some reason, which caused their colors to look wrong in Firefox and Opera. LucasArts supplied fixed/color-corrected versions of the five images to Kotaku, which I'm reproducing here:

Yeah, you actually don't NEED to visit Wally in his cell; you can just go straight to LeChuck's office and grab the key. (This is even more likely to happen in Easy Mode, where you reach the jail by going down one passageway, but reaching the office is as simple as going down another.)

Don't the DOS and Windows versions have the same credits music? The Windows version does have an awesome title sequence with medieval woodcuts, though.

Considering that in an early version of the campfire scene Guybrush HAD a highly visible beard, when in the final version it's not visible at all, this was possibly a deliberate choice by the team designed to illustrate how wispy his facial hair is. Or not. Actually, all 3 characters in the campfire closeup (Guybrush, Bart, and Fink) got slightly redrawn before the release, and all of their silhouettes (that is, the edges of their sprites) were tweaked. So it may have been accidental after all. Also "hard mode" may well be removed simply by virtue of which code the LEC team is building the SE on top of. Back in the day the CD version of MI2 left out easy mode, for some reason, and that's what I presume the new guys are using as a base. But that's just wild speculation on my part.

Good to hear! I'm very glad the problem is on my antivirus software's end, as I was looking forward to extracting Penal Zone music.

Benny, whenever I extract the files in the new ZIP, I get a message from my antivirus software telling me it's just blocked a serious trojan. Flush out your computer, man.

Amazing work, Bagge! You could definitely have a job cut out for you as a fellow Chronicler of LucasArts Oddities.

As far as I know these two verbs have no use whatsoever. Shocking, I know. Interestingly, Turn On and Turn Off were originally planned to be carried over to MI2, as seen in a very early slideshow demo. Someone must have realized they were absolutely no use though, because they aren't in the final game, or even the non-playable SCUMM demo. Also, early builds of the Macintosh port of MI1 had a derivative of the MI1 floppy disk green interface, but with Turn On and Turn Off removed. Proving the point that these two particular verbs are pretty much useless. (The final Mac release had the same interface as the PC CD version of MI1.) Finally, I might mention Fate of Atlantis, which originally had a text-inventory interface with green verbs, very similar to that of MI1. It, too, lacked Turn On and Turn Off. However, it's noteworthy that this interface design allegedly was rigged up before work on MI2 began (a game which, as noted above, initially did have Turn On/Turn Off). This is why FoA started out with a text inventory and switched to icons in the final release, while MI2 apparently had an icon-based inventory system from the start.

For your information, soon after I wrote the above post I was informed of the "expedient" you describe via another forum. However, I think it in no way diminishes the objective badness of the puzzle in question. A puzzle which must be solved by correctly stringing together an apparently random series of menu options, with no explanation given as to their meaning--whether there be hints provided or not--is objectively poor. But such a puzzle which does not allow you to save, load, quit, or abandon the puzzle is not merely poor. It is fundamentally a kick in the teeth from the developers. In replying to me, you question my level of experience with adventure games. This is condescending, uncivil, and entirely uncalled for. I have played plenty of adventures in my time, and I think I have some idea of what and what does not constitute a "difficult" puzzle. Besides, as I noted above, the reputed difficulty of the puzzle is only one of the factors making it so despicable. On every forum which has threads about this game you will find people complaining about this particular puzzle. Even official reviewers have cited it as one of the game's major failings. Obviously, these people are not unschooled novices who have difficulty with the concept of an adventure game. Nor, for that matter, am I. Please remember in the future that not everyone thinks alike about every puzzle of every game.