[gavanwoolery]

I have no less respect for Ron than I did back in the 90s, but I think that sometimes the veterans lose sight of what made their old games great (and this of course, is just my opinion). He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the rigid palettization that makes pixel art what it is. He wants to use speech instead of text, which is one of the things that I think ruined Monkey Island 3. There are many ways to improve on the old formula while keeping the superficial aspects that fuel our nostalgia - it seems like most remakes these days jump on the very generic looking engines like Unity (yes you can tweak Unity to look any way, but if you use the default shaders, cameras, etc it will look like any other game).

[lloeki]

> He wants to use speech instead of text

While the no-talkie and partial talkie DotT are great, full-talkie DotT is absolutely awesome.

> He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the rigid palettization that makes pixel art what it is

I'm not sure pixel art and retro looks is the solution. There was something unique yet common to all those great games that made them memorable enough that we long for them even today.

As an example, while I don't quite like the whacky universe and style that evolved since Rayman 2, Rayman Origins engine and graphics were stunning, and captures part of that essence. Sadly the gameplay is largely forgettable, almost a rhythm-based party game — I long for something like the first Rayman gameplay — but the graphics part is a step in the right direction.

I feel like Orioto [0-3](browse his tumblr blog for more) tries to captures this essence, and I long for games looking like his work. Given the incredible horsepower we have at hand as of yet, I just can't believe it's not possible.

[0]: http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8245345-through...

[1]: http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8290902-city-bo...

[2]: http://orioto.tumblr.com/post/15721511369/1200p-1080p-print

[3]: http://orioto.tumblr.com/post/15627728854/1200p-1080p-print

[lobster_johnson]

The voice version of DotT is indeed awesome. My favourite example of voice acting in adventure game that you don't want to click through. Too many games rely on this "ask 23 inquiring questions picked from a list" in a way that becomes really boring, with swathes of dialogue to get through.

(Even worse, in my opinion, are those that require that you delve into a certain part of the dialogue tree in order to get an item or otherwise open up something in the game, which means you have to go through the entire dialogue tree even some of the questions seem uninteresting and you don't want to go through with it. DotT did have a few of those, if I remember correctly.)

I agree about the retro pixel art. A retro style just to capture the essence of a golden age is, in my opinion, philosophically harmful; it quickly becomes annoying. There are some games that sort of redeem themselves: "Superbrothers: Sword + Sorcery", which uses ultra-low-rez graphics blown up to full size combined with fluid animation, is pretty good, although I wound the glib, self-referential tone of the game to be a bit obnoxious. Then there are Wadjet Eye games (like Gemini Rue and Primordia), which use some kind of SCUMM-like, really retro engine, and graphics that are something like 320x200, again blown up to full size, but without any modern animation wizardry. The games are so good that it works, but you do get the sense that the time of this kind of game is, and should be, over.

While I loved the zany style of DotT, I never liked the exaggerated "French" drawing style of Monkey Island 3 [1]. Monkey Island 4 was just awful, and the new Monkey Island episodes are downright creepy in its empty-eyed-doll animated characters, and the "enhanced" remake again does a kind of Disney-style makeover that doesn't quite fit. (Among other things the animation has gone from wonderfully zany to just plain. Watch how they animate talking people [3], it's hilarious.) (Of course, part of the problem with MI3-4 and later was that they turned Guybrush from a likeable, sort of innocent hero into an annoying, clueless, condescending moron somewhere between Chris O'Donnell and Chris Elliot. I don't know if it was the voice, or the hair, or whatever, probably a combination of them. It didn't work for me. It wasn't Guybrush.)

A more recent game that creates a cozy and charming, yet contemporary and technologically up-to-date style is Machinarium. Crisp high-rez graphics, charming animation, fun story, pretty much perfect in every way. That's the way to go, I think.

[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8op_6zSEYQ/UBDrWkuhwiI/AAAAAAAAAG...

[2] http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/100/1008507/tales-...

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9eJHotWoDQ

[Gravityloss]

The voice acting in The Dig was really good. It also didn't have the verbs. The graphics were great as well but the plot was lacking...

[lobster_johnson]

Yes. Actually, I really liked The Dig's plot [spoilers ahead!] until they brought forth the magical alien ghosts. It was basically Rendezvous with Rama reworked with some subpar new-age nonsense.

Another excellent voice acting game: Tim Schafer's Full Throttle.

[philsnow]

"Given the incredible horsepower we have at hand as of yet, I just can't believe it's not possible."

I'm reminded of this line from near the beginning of the movie Primer:

"The rest of it is the mercury bath... which you wouId know better than I do, but they're probabIy just showing off. I mean, you have it, you got to use it, right?"

[gavanwoolery]

Thanks for the info! I actually only played DotT with text, so maybe I am missing the potential of voice.

Nonetheless, two things I absolutely love about text: 1) It can't be ruined by bad acting. 2) It leaves more to the imagination.

[jerf]

So, my theory is that Day of the Tentacle had voice so early (as optional add-on packs for those rare systems that could use them rather than part of the base install, that's how early this was; voice packs that could fill up your meager little hard drive) that nobody involved realized that game voice acting was "supposed" to suck. System Shock is another example of the same effect. Both of those games are wonderful and completely stand up to the best of modern voice acting. It wasn't until later that voice acting really started to suck hard.

[nsxwolf]

I think one of the things he said is telling and gives useful perspective - they wanted to do more with the visuals, but were stuck with what was possible in 1990. We shouldn't elevate retro pixel art to some perfect art form. It's unlikely to be what the original artists intended, rather it was what they had to accept.

[gavanwoolery]

I agree. :) Pixel art is not inherently perfect, and there is A LOT of bad pixel art (especially in many mobile games now days). However, there is something about pixel art that I think makes it great: it is timeless, and if created correctly, incapable of many of the flaws other art types are subject to. Polygons are very hard to work with, especially in an FPS, because players can get very close and observe every detail, and the model quickly degrades when it is close to your face - not to mention the texturing, which more often than not is completely flat, sans parallax mapping or displacement mapping. Vector art is much harder than people might give it credit for, and making "good" looking vector art is very, very challenging -- the most common problem I see is messy curves because people did not take the time to tweak the handles on their beziers. More often than not, vector art comes out looking like the kind you find in cheap Flash / mobile games. Raster art (i.e. Photoshop without limitations), often results in art that is in many ways blurry - various blurs and super-sampling tend to get over-used, and the result is very soft looking artwork (take Hearthstone as an example):

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/static/images/media/screens...

It certainly does not look bad, but many icons here lack the same crispness you would find in pixel art.

Assuming you follow all the correct guidelines (1 pixel wide outlines, no pillow shading, good dithering, small palette, cold -> warm shading, clean lines and fills, etc), pixel art can approach perfection -- because of its inherent limitations. A single vector curve can have an infinite variety of permutations, but there are only so many ways you can draw a line of pixels (the same goes for a NURBs surface or set of polygons). It is exactly this limitation that enables artists -- if you are given an infinite canvas with every color of paint in the known universe, you can kill yourself trying to perfect one piece.

[kybernetikos]

What the original artists intended may well not have been as good as what they ended up creating.

As soon as you hear George Lucas say the words 'what I originally intended' you should run a mile.

[chc]

That's because George Lucas is very seldom telling the truth about his intent. If you look at the things George Lucas said and wrote back then and compare them to what he says and writes now, it seems pretty clear that Lucas doesn't readily distinguish between his present ideas and his previous plans. I don't know whether he actually doesn't remember that he used to think differently or if he's consciously trying to reshape history — but at any rate, the George Lucas of today can't be relied upon for insight into the mind of the George Lucas of yesterday.

[Joeri]

I used to think the same way that you do, until I played the special edition ipad remakes of monkey island with the improved graphics. You don't have to go all 8-bit to get that retro vibe. I much prefer the high quality ipad version over the original.

[arrrg]

I think you lost sight of what made those games great. Certainly not how they looked. Getting more skilled artists on the job, with a fresh perspective on the world, would be awesome.

[gavanwoolery]

Yes, bad wording on my part. I used to be in the "looks don't matter at all" camp - and there are very many "ugly" games that I have thoroughly enjoyed. However, if you look at the way our brains are wired, one of the ways that we derive "fun" is on a strictly visual level. I think that traditional pixel art is inherently "fun" because it follows rigorous guidelines that produce something most people think is visually pleasing, yet at the same time challenges the brain to interpret it (vs. something that is completely realistic). Like anything else, fun derived from visual stimulus can wear off when it becomes "ordinary" - which is why seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time is thrilling, but seeing it 100 times is considerably less so.

In other words, yes the game would be great regardless of its looks - but a visually pleasing setting only helps the cause.