Jump to content

Home

Full Throttle: Payback (Original FT 2)


JBRAA

Recommended Posts

There is info available on the Mixnmojo Game Database.

 

http://www.mixnmojo.com/php/site/gamedb.php?gameid=116

 

"a true adventure-style sequel to the original Full Throttle", that sounds really good in my ears.

 

If you read the info you can see that "Bill Tiller had intended to post some of the art he did for this game on his website, but the LucasArts legal department forbid his doing so. Apparently they want to keep this cancellation secret."

 

What cause can LEC legal have to "block" those images?

It would be good will of LEC to let us see them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, LEC Legal doesn't know the meaning of the word "goodwill." The people there are heartless b******s.

 

They fear another huge outburst of anger from fans. They're afraid that if we knew that LEC cancelled an adventure-style sequel to Full Throttle in order to create an arcadey beat-'em-up game, that we'd launch some sort of protest on the scale of the ones for Sam and Max 2.

 

I do think that they should let Bill Tiller release the art for it, since there's no hope of revival for the game. Unfortunately, the guys in suits don't agree.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That concept painting was also posted (and quickly "removed") when Bill was featured on gamasutra.com. It's no longer linked from the main article but you can view it right here along with Bill's own comments about the image. Since you have to be logged in to view the contents of gamasutra I'll just post what he had to say about it:

Coyote Spit is a town I designed for an earlier version of Full Throttle 2, while at Lucas Arts.

It is a mining town that gets its power needs from the Coyote Spit -- the

waterfall that pours through the "ears" of Coyote Mountain. I used this

image to get myself up to speed on the whole Full Throttle image style that

was first developed by Peter Chan and Larry Ahern. Surrealist architect

Lebbeus Woods and noir comic book artist Mike Mignola inspired the first

Full Throttle team but the Hildebrandt brothers also inspired me. This was

all painted in Photoshop over a pencil sketch I scanned in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is very interesting. In fact I'm going to e-mail them.

 

Shows how Lucasarts is rapidly declining, if they start development on a true adventure sequel and cancel it to put in its place a dated action game.

 

I would also like to know the date on this cancelled adventure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pity really, it's art, not just that, but Tiller art and that's something I know a lot of us would like to see, but you can't mix art with legal crap, it just doesn't work and unfortunatly that means some art doesn't see the light of day because of those damn dirty lawyers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've just realized something. It's slightly off-topic, but it talks about why Lucasarts is cancelling all their adventure games. Feel free to argue against my point of view if you want to (I'm also going to point this argument of mine to mnelson@lucasarts.com pronto):

 

When Lucasarts said that "this is not the appropriate time to release a graphic adventure on the PC," they couldn't have been more right. But why is not the appropriate time? It's their own dumb faults. This is proved on three points.

 

1) Lucasarts is (or was) clearly the leading adventure developer in the marketing business. In 2001, 2002, 2003, and what looks like is going to be 2004 also, Lucasarts created one number of adventure games: zero. Smaller companies stopped making their own adventure projects, because after all, if the mighty Lucasarts, the gaming giant that other companies look at, wasn't making them anymore, then those smaller companies would falsely believe that the adventure genre was dead. With the smaller companies not releasing their own adventure games anymore, no more adventure games were coming out, which meant that the market would not accept nor embrace a fresh exciting title. Not even Sam and Max.

 

2) While Sam and Max was under production by a dedicated team of the only people who at Lucasarts who actually cared, Mr. Nelson, VP of Finance and Operations, and his evil cohorts, despite the large amount of anticipation for the game, did next to nothing to market or advertise the game, outside of packaging and re-releasing the prequel everywhere possible. In fact, they only released 2 screenshots while it was alive, and instead supported the billionth Star Wars title to pass through their doors. So if there's no advertisements going around, nobody's hearing about the game, or even getting excited about it, ergo if nobody's heard of it, then obviously it would've sold poorly, but that's completely at the fault of Lucasarts.

 

3) Full Throttle: Payback. It speaks for itself. If Lucasarts takes a perfectly good adventure game before it even sees the light of day, throws it out, and replaces it with a dated fighting / action game, well you know what they think of adventures. In fact, I got more excited over that one piece of concept art and information about it than I ever did over 2003's Full Throttle 2.

 

So in short, the reason it's not the appropriate time is completely Lucasarts' own fault. They cancel or hide their own adventure projects, go for years on end without any adventures at all, and then they immediately turn around blame their own abandoned PC adventure game market for being too weak, which is their own doing. Anybody agree with me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you sent this to LA? You should.

 

I think I agree, I just read quick through it, and it seemed quite correct.

 

-Rapp Scallion

 

Bring Sam'n'Max back

 

Edit:

Well, I saw that you were going to send it to Mike Nelson. Too bad he's not the president anymore, so you should send it to more people, I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If G Lucas took care of his intellectual properties, EXCEPT Star Wars, you'd see a superb Full Throttle 2 game. Infact, you'd have already played it and be visiting FT2 fan sites on mixnmojo. I think G Lucas only care about his Star Wars and that is it. He's a jerk!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Brushguy

(I'm also going to point this argument of mine to mnelson@lucasarts.com pronto)

 

Why to Mike Nelson? He's not the acting president anymore. Writing these people harassing emails will do nothing.

 

 

 

In unrelated news, I've changed Full Throttle Payback's database listing to now be categorized as PC Win95/98 instead of PC DOS, because this game was definitely in development post-CMI.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I plan to send my long discussion to several people at Lucasarts (Randy Breen, Mary Bihr, and that new president guy), but I like bugging Mike Nelson.

 

I also think that George Lucas doesn't know what's going on at Lucasarts. On the other hand, he could be saying, "You're doing lots of Star Wars? Making lots of money? Keep it up."

 

Either way, we can't blame him for the death of Sam and Max 2 and Full Throttle 2 (the correct one).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also think that George Lucas doesn't know what's going on at Lucasarts. On the other hand, he could be saying, "You're doing lots of Star Wars? Making lots of money? Keep it up."

 

It isn't smart thinking "good income = measure how good our games are". Without their comfortable Star Was license they would be in another situation.

 

Either way, we can't blame him for the death of Sam and Max 2 and Full Throttle 2 (the correct one).

 

Blame doesn't solve anything directly, but it does spotlight where the problem is. The wrong people made the wrong decitions, and G Lucas should have sorted it.

 

Consider this: He is Lucas of LucasArts. It is his company. If he neglects it, it is his fault, indirectly. If you are king and leave your country, aren't you to blame when your country been invaded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brushguy and company, you're taking a way way simplistic approach to this.

 

First, I suspect George Lucas knows a great deal more about what goes on at LucasArts, regarding what projects are cancelled and the like, than you think.

 

Second, as far as I know, Full Throttle Payback never actually entered full on "production." I think they were given some time and money to map out a design and concept art, but as far as I know LucasArts never gave them thousands of dollars and a full team of programmers and artists. There are no screenshots, no engine, no code really for Full Throttle Payback that I've ever heard of.

 

There are COUNTLESS projects which get that far within LucasArts, and everywhere else in the games industry. For every classic LEC title that's had a sequel produced (or gets a sequel announced and cancelled mid-production) there have probably been ten other ideas tossed around. I've heard very reliable rumors that sequels to DOTT, Zak, and a Monkey 5 have all been considered, sort of roughly thought out, and scratched for one reason or another (not to mention the 2nd and 3rd games in the Loom trilogy, as well as the two Indy adventures that got scratched while still on the runway). This sort of thing happens all the time in the games industry. Wagging your finger at LucasArts is probably partially justified, but doing it every time you catch the tiniest word of something getting axed that you know almost nothing about... is foolish. Its seriously overreacting, and damages the effect that a letter writing campaign / fan uprising can have if something actually important happens.

 

When they cancelled Sam & Max I think that was a huge mistake. They had a full team producing that game for over a year, and most everyone in the public who seemed to know about it was pleased about it.

 

But, Full Throttle Payback was basically a proposal - an idea some people came up with within the company - and LucasArts said "no not right now." What happened after that (Ahern, Ackley and Tiller eventually all quitting the company, and Hell on Wheels being given the green light) is extremely sucky, but this is in no way "another Sam & Max 2" or "yet another of the exact same example."

 

And third, none of the current upper management at LucasArts (with the noted exception of Randy Breen) was even around during the Full Throttle Payback days. That was in fact probably even pre-Simon Jeffery, let alone pre-Mike Nelson or pre-Part-Time New Guy (whatever his name is). What sort of response do you expect to get when you write people complaining about something that happened 4-5 years ago involving both a management team AND a game design team that both packed up and left the company years ago? You will probably simply be brushed off as a jerk, frustrating as that may be. :(

 

So, my advice is, don't oversimply just because you like getting riled up at and writing nasty letters to LucasArts' management. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well said, Jake! Sam N Max was the real crime, let's not lose focus of that.

 

I hope whoever the new president is sees how badly this acting prez destroyed the relationship with the Lucasfans that they had tried to build!!

 

What's the point in assigning someone to read to and respond to our emails if the next guy who comes along says, "sod that, we don't need to know what our loyal fans of 20 years think!".

 

Beaurocracy, man! :(

 

The new guy always has to prove he can take action and has a "vision" -- "cancel this, scrap that! I know what I'm doing!". Grrrr :mad:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jake, you're right about me getting hyperactive over one piece of concept art for a game that probably didn't even enter production. You're also right that several games get into a concept stage but never ever enter production. However, I still hold true to the first two points of my argument. I've omitted the third point from my letter to Lucasarts (which I haven't sent yet)

 

If you must know, I really didn't care about Full Throttle: Payback, I just threw that third point in so my argument wouldn't be completely off-topic. :)

 

Btw Jake, are you ever going to upload those "news clippings" to samandmax.net ???

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...