Chris P - December 4th, 2009

Tales of Monkey Island Wake of Guybrush Threepwood Event

On December 2nd, 2009 I headed over to Varnish Gallery in San Francisco to attend the Wake of Guybrush Threepwood, protagonist of Telltale Games’ Tales of Monkey Island. Unfortunately in Episode Four of the series, Threepwood lost his life and Telltale was reminiscing about the life and times of their ageless hero.

But more seriously, Telltale Games was showing off the last episode, Rise of the Pirate God, before its December 8th release.

I hadn’t had a chance yet to dive into Telltale Games’ newest series with my last venture being Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures. But even with my lack of knowledge of Tales of Monkey Island, the evolution from Wallace and Gromit to Tales of Monkey Island was staggering. While character design for the games are different, the overall animation and control of both titles showed that Telltale Games is constantly improving and refining how their episodic games play.

There was a short introduction by CEO Dan Conners who thanked everyone for attending Guybrush Threepwood’s wake and then Dave Grossman told a humorous eulogy about his memories of his friend throughout the times.

Telltale Games were showing a slideshow of the series throughout its history with screenshots and Monkey Island truly has improved over the ages, at least graphically. The stories of the Monkey Island series has never lacked in storytelling. They also showed a new trailer for the last episode before allowing people to get a view of the last episode.

Tales of Monkey Island looks like a grand step above Wallace and Gromit. From the demo, Threepwood is a ghost, but the little touches on his character really made for a cool presentation. If you looked closelyThreepwood’s skeleton was visible through his clothes. The environments also looked a lot more crisp and detailed. Voice acting is again top notch with all the voice overs containing a lot of character and the lip and facial animations matching the dialogue. I wasn’t expecting so many great one-liners, but they kept flowing through the different dialogue trees.

It’s a little difficult for me to say anything different about the gameplay since I haven’t gotten the chance to play through any of the episodes yet, though soon I plan on burning through all five episodes. The humor and talent of Telltale Games’ work is easily evident and Tales of Monkey Island is an impressive development step forward for the company.