Retronauts - 564: Grim Fandango

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

In 1998, Tim Schafer decided to leave LucasArts on a high note with Grim Fandango: the Day of the Dead-themed adventure game that leaves pointing-and-clicking in the past—for better or worse. This one-of-a-kind experience mixes the trappings of film noir with Mexican mythology, resulting in one of the greatest gaming backdrops of all time. But after 25 years and despite the endless acclaim, it's hard to ignore the fact that Grim can't help but stumble over itself in its desire to innovate. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Kole Ross, and Everdraed as the crew lights their totally-safe-for-skeletons cigarettes and sinks into the moody, pulpy vibe of Grim Fandango. And if you'd like to order Bob's Day of the Tentacle book, head on over to Boss Fight Books! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, we bone up on Grim Fandango. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, And this week, we're bringing my LucasArts miniseries to a close by covering the one adventure game from their library we've yet to cover. And yes, technically there's one game. We haven't done an episode about yet, but I'll get to why we're not doing that very, very soon.

Before I continue, who is our returning guest on this podcast? Cole Ross. Yeah, I forget, do we do the tags, Slayer of the Mighty Robert Frost? Hey, that works, that works. And, Cole, you've been with us for a few of these episodes. As far as I can remember, full throttle. No, no, sorry, Sam and Max and I believe Indiana Jones on the Last Crusade. And, oh, yeah, fate of Atlantis, too.

Yeah, I've been on three of these before. That's wild. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be back for this one. And Cole, of course, is a season adventure game podcaster. You've covered plenty of them on Watch Up for Fireballs over the past decade plus. Yes, yeah, including many LucasArts games. So this is right at home coming back to this one.

And we also have a new guest on the program. A new guest, please introduce yourself and let us know who exactly you are. Hey, it's me Everdrade. I'm sort of a weird internet kind of guy, just out there. I've helped out with some random things back in the day and always happy to talk about a cool game at length, hopefully. But please go easy on me. This is my first time. Not only on your show, on any show, on really doing anything too significant.

So I can't make any promises. My apologies, if I am. not in the game as hard as both of you but I'm really excited to be here and thanks for having me Hey this is a great first podcast to be on because I think my first podcast was me making jokes with my friends

and about three people heard it so this is a good way to start your podcasting career Everdrade talking about Grim Fandango Before I continue we always like to ground the discussion in context and I really want to know where everybody is coming from

with their history with Grim Fandango let's start with Everdrade Everdrade, where are you coming from? What is your history with this game? Let's see. I remember playing it, I think, in 98. I think it launched. And the biggest thing that I remember about it was getting horribly stuck year two.

Couldn't get any farther. I didn't have a strategy guide. And that was murdersome trying to get through the game. And I just, I know I gave up at that point. I didn't actually play through completely until a few years later. I think I was in college. And I honestly, I got way more out of the game. I was like 10 or 11 at long.

launch in 98. So when I was in college, this game was like, oh, I need to go back and have the time that I didn't ever get to have. And it was such a wonderful time. Then I've, you know, I've played it every so often throughout the years, but it actually been quite a while since I'd played it again. I, I knew of remastered. I knew I needed to play it, but I forgot that it added in mouse controls. And my, like, the classic issue that I always had was the tank controls did me in. Like, I could get deep into it and then I just would eventually stop because of the traversal sort of stuff. So my experience of this game is really, I mean, I mean, I mean, even back the day when I was a kid, I loved the aesthetic, the style, really wanted to play it, but had limitations on how much I could really get into it.

Yes, and we'll talk about it soon, but the tank controls were put in at the insistence of Tim Schaefer, which is why there is an achievement on the remastered version that says, beat the entire game with tank controls. The description is Tim made us put this in or something like that. He admits it was a huge mistake. But, Cole, where are you coming from with your relationship with Grim Fandango? Yeah, with Grim Fandango specifically. I was not really a PC gamer in the late 90s. It wasn't until, you know, the early 2000s when I was getting into like late middle school, early high school that I was kind of catching up on a lot of these games. And I had read about Grim Fandango, knew it from its reputation, was looking into getting, you know, just finding more of these story rich games that were in the vein of the first of these that I played, which was Maniac Mansion.

And so Grim Fandango was not in print anymore, I don't think, at that point in about 2002, 2003. So this was actually the first thing that I bought off of the Internet. And by I bought, I mean, I cajoled my grandparents into ordering it for me off of the LucasArts website to get the jewel case version of it. And I love it. This was kind of a starting point for, you know, really appreciating film noir vibes. my kind of first real exposure to a work that use those in earnest for as comedic as this

is, you know, so like first thing that was not like an animaniac's goof where they were doing a Humphrey Bogart thing for a little bit. And also my, you know, one of my first exposures to this kind of day of the dead mythology,

Azteg afterlife kind of stuff and just yeah, I don't know, it was a start for a lot of things for me. Yeah, I was a slightly an early adopter on this game. I didn't get it this season it came out because we'll talk about it soon but it came out at a very interesting time for games in which the biggest and most influential games of the next i don't know 20 years would be coming out alongside grim fandango so it was a time to be alive i got it later uh that year like in 99 maybe summer of 99 i was uh visiting california a friend was staying

with his dad i had some extra spending money we played through a bit of the first year on his computer i think i brought it back home and basically had to resort to uh using a walk through in order to finish the game. Makes sense. And I've always like half attempted to get through the game several times after that where I'd usually stall out at some point. And then when the remastered version came out, I was reviewing that in 2015 for US Gamer. And that's when I decided to, you know, fully engage with the game as an adult. And it was at that point I walked away thinking, I love everything about this game except playing it. This should be anything except for a video game. But we can explore that more

later, but a huge amount of respect for this game, but it is really constrained by the format in the context in which it was released, that basically made that format necessary. So, yeah, conflicting feelings on Grim Fandango, but there's a lot I love about it. So

I should note that this episode is time to launch us alongside two things. Well, number one, this is Spooky Skellington Month around October, so boo, I guess. And also, my Boss Fight Books volume on Day of Tannicle is now out physically. It's been out digitally for a while.

But if you haven't gotten a copy yet, you can go to the Boss Fight Books website or anywhere else you can find books and you can order a copy there. But that is why there will not be a Day of Tentical episode of Retronauts for this mini series. You've got to pay for it, buddy. I spent five years writing that book. It seems

a little, you know, impractical maybe, but hey, I would like you to buy my book. So please check that out if you would like my treatment on Day of the Tenicle. It's a very in-depth oral history. We talked to, I talk to everybody involved with the game and it is my life's work

and I doubt I'll write another book ever in my life so please please check that out and actually I never covered the first LucasArts Adventure game which is Labyrinth that is a game based on the famous movie from the mid-80s maybe I'll find some way to talk

about it but it's so slight and so primitive that it's hard to justify making an entire episode just about that but maybe I'll find some way to talk about it so before we begin talking about the game and the specifics about the game, I should note that it's very available in many forms

thanks to the 2015 remastered edition, which is on everything and seemingly always on sale. We won't too much talk too much about this edition on the episode, although it's the one I assume we all played for this podcast, but it's worth it for everything involved.

There are no downsides to this edition of the game. You can play with tank controls. You can play with camera relative controls. You can play with a mouse finally. And the soundtrack is better. It sounds better than the initial version. And also the polygonal graphics have been made at a higher resolution. They don't add many polygons or actually they add zero polygons. So everything is a Dorito explosion on the screen. But yeah, there are really no downsides. And a great commentary too. A great commentary. A great commentary is wonderful. Going through this game again

with a commentary on hearing each of the, they had different groups of devs and different specific rooms. Each room generally has at least one commentary track for it. And it's so interesting hearing them go into detail about their experiences and just so many Tim just little asides about his memories. And it's like you can listen, I can listen to that for hours and hours. It's one of those things that adds so much to the experience. And I think you can listen to the commentary tracks, even if you're a first-time player, because I was listening to all of the commentary once again.

And I notice they're very careful about where they place the commentaries and when they update the commentary so they're not spoiling story or puzzles. They may kind of hint at a puzzle solution, but frankly you'll need it. It's helpful. Don't worry about that. Yeah. So yeah, definitely recommend that. You can probably get it for under $5 every couple months. It probably will go on sale for that sheet.

Let's talk about the history of Grim Fandango. So thankfully a lot of the Grim Fandigo fans out there have preserved a lot of the history that was online because this game was being made when the gaming press was online. And Tim Schaefer wrote these designer diaries for GameSpot back in the day. that are very interesting, and it's the fly-on-the-wall perspective of him working on the game, pitching the game, and so on. So I pulled a lot from that, but it's a shame that those were just thrown away decades ago, probably by game spot.

But that's just the state of the internet. Articles don't last more than five years now, if they're lucky. So thanks to these Grand Fendigo fans for putting these online. And I do want to set the context for the release of this game because the release of Grand Fandango comes at an interesting and not great time for adventure games. So contrary to popular belief, and this is something that I've brought up a lot on this series, they weren't getting worse. Adventure games weren't getting worse. Other games were just outselling them by magnitudes.

And people, I don't think they do it anymore because I think this website is now more forgotten than something awful. But the Old Man Murray site, the comedy website, in which the portal writers came from and, you know, the Valve writers came from. They had their classic takedown of adventure games in the late 90s where, to paraphrase, they quoted you know adventure games killed adventure games and uh that is just that became conventional wisdom that kind of stuck around for a while i think until tell tell brought them back and then we realized like hey these can be fun in different ways but uh i interviewed ron gilbert uh many times in one of the interviews he said something i think that was very very uh succinct about the state of adventure games he said doom is what killed adventure games because suddenly games started selling in the millions and

Adventure Games could never do that. So adventure games kept selling reliably, but these new action games just outsold them by magnitude. So it was not worth it for a publisher to make an adventure game. They wanted to make, let's say, Dark Forces or something like that, or Rebel Assault. So that is really where we're at right now. PC gaming is now being adopted by the mainstream. It's not just a thing for nerds because computers are much more available to middle-class people. and Grimm is trying to innovate within the genre

at least in terms of presentation but its release of October 30th 1998 is to quote Jasper on the Simpsons a time to be alive as I said before because this season is crazy just to name a few things this season gave us half-life the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

and Metal Gear Solid these are three games that we can still fill the impact of today in all games that we play currently and other things that came out that season later in the year, Thief and Balder's Gates. This is just a big time for games that would change design forever. For sure. I mean, even like Resident Evil 2,

if you're looking to compare, you know, a similar tank control pre-render background, you know, kind of deal, making that into an action game kind of thing. You know, thinking about, you know, oh, doom-killed adventure games. You know, we're also getting into 1998 when things like Webberts,

play you know by playing games online you're talking about dark forces you're talking about you know half life getting in there obviously quake three coming as well like pc gaming started to be more associated with things like that where there was kind of more of a value proposition to it too so that also could be seen as like a really rough rough environment for uh you know this 12 hour adventure game with a defined beginning middle and end right and you don't forget this is 3D camera systems, 3D cameras really having such a fun time figuring out how you even implement them, how you integrate them into the gameplay and how you, there's so much innovation had to go down during this period that all these projects are foraying, first forays into 3D,

and I know Grim Fandenko is one of these big experiences into 3D for Tim and in the entire company, just seeing what is possible in that space and also really trying to do their best to do the most out of it, that is not an easy task at all. And it's easy to make some, I don't want to say missteps, but errors in judgment overall about maybe the best way to handle things. Yeah, this technology was new, and they were learning it as they were making the game. And they did not have all the feedback that, you know, years of hindsight would give us. Like, so many times in Grim Fandango, you transitioned to a new screen, you're like,

where's Manny? Where is the character I'm playing as? but they were in love with the idea of we're going to make these big 3D environments so when you transition to the next screen you're going to be wow just by how big this environment is but then they're not thinking like is it going to be fun to run through this

a couple thousand times between MPCs? Probably not but you know this is all new to them so we have to be a little kind because they're just learning the tech as well so the story of how this game got greenlit is unfortunately not very interesting because this is Tim Schaefer's

big blank check game because Tim Schaefer, you know, he co-directs Dave Tenticle with Dave Grossman and then he pitches full throttle. Full throttle is the company's biggest selling adventure game. It sells over a million copies unprecedented for LucasArts Adventure game.

So this is why he's able to make Grim Fandango and given a huge period of development time because he is their golden boy. And I feel like he was able to make this because he was explaining in many interviews and I think Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman have agreed with this in that at LucasArts at this time when they wanted you to pitch a game

they're like okay pitch one Maniac Mansion game pitch one Monkey Island game then pitch something you want to do and I think it's because they had just made Curse of Monkey Island that a new idea like this was possible because they weren't going to make another Monkey Island game right afterwards and it's clear

the direction of the company wanted to go because after Grand Fandango it's like let's do another Monkey Island and let's do another Sam and Max and another full throttle well one of those actually made it out a lot regrettably. And yes, unfortunately, if you want to hear me and my wife Nina Matsumoto complain about Escape from Monkey Island, there's a two-hour podcast about it.

We played it during some of the worst times of COVID, not recommended. Not a good game, not a good time to play that game. Sounds like a bit of a downer. Yes, yes. But Grand Fandango, much, much better than Escape from Monkey Island. So Tim Schaefer got this idea before full throttle, basically an idea for a game full of folk art skeletons that It would be very unique and also very easy for computers of the age to handle because he noticed that, you know, in the mid-90s, computers could render these very low-poly things. So you couldn't render individual ribs on a skeleton, but much like the folk art skeletons, you could paint ribs on a flat texture to evoke the look of those folk art skeletons.

So he thought like, okay, this is achievable with the low-end PCs our games normally target. And full throttle, though, was the pitch that seemed the most conventionally successful. and it was. So that's what got picked up before the grim Fandango pitch. So after full throttle, Tim Schaefer goes back

to this day of the dead concept once again. He decided like playing a biker was really cool. It's one of the reasons why full throttle flew off the shelves because like, okay, this is a character I haven't really played

as yet in a game. So he thought, what would be cooler than playing as a biker? And the answer to that is death. What if you were death? And this is way before Death Jr. In all of those games.

So he really, he really nailed down a unique concept with Grim Fandango and then he needed to decide what is this game actually about and Tim had just seen Chinatown and he dug the whole like water supply

real estate scam the villain in the film was cooking up so he blended that with Glenn Gary Glenn Ross and then Casablanca to form the skeleton, no pun intended of Grim Fandango and then tons of other film noir movies would

inform various elements of the game But I later in life, about a decade after Grim Fandango came out, I actually got into classic noir movies and reading crime novels, and I'm still there. And it's fun to go back with that knowledge knowing Grim Fandango isn't parodying those genres. It has a great respect for them. Like you said up front, Cole. And it's not just about like, oh, remember Peter Lorry?

Well, here's our version of him. Although they kind of do that, or like Sidney Green Street. But outside of a few key references, it's really into, pulling from the tropes and stylized dialogue more than just saying, oh, hey, this is from Key Largo and this is from the big sleep. It's more about evoking the feel of that world from someone who has been steeped in the media from that certain genre. The razor's edge that this game walks on in terms of being reverent of its source material and inspiration, but not being like really dry and, you know, kind of like stodgy about it is

actually, I think, really admirable. Like, it still manages to get really fun and clever jokes in, but not at the expense of what they're pulling from. Oh, yeah. It seems like so much, so much faith in the voice actors as well, for achieving what needs to be done within the game

while being able to bring in those elements. It's kind of hilarious, listening to the commentary and how often, oh, yeah, Tim, I remember we just wanted to go and see the film and pull this directly from the film. You know, these little elements of how much them actively watching film noir during the experience of development going through it and just

having it one of the big things they said was that the inspiration of it was often the not a direct references or anything like that but the idea of like characters and how they interact with each other just the experiences of how you see these film noir movies in a time period that we are not used to something authentic to them that can be pulled back in but it seemed like the development that process of pulling in from Nour was so important to Tim and it kind of rubbed off and everybody else within the development company. Yeah, you're right.

On the commentary, he does talk about how he was really drawn to the genre for the same reasons I find myself drawn to it in that nobody talks like this in any other kind of genre and media and at times it's funny but it makes reading dialogue so entertaining and I mean

despite being about crime and murder and adultery and all the fun topics most of these books and movies are just fun conversations between characters and he also said what drew him to this genre was there were these kinds of relationships you don't see anymore that were all tied to like social

rules of the time that he finds fascinating and I like that he both takes the noir setting seriously it's not a send-up or making fun of it and also the fact that the entire game is full of skeletons they're not making like

bone puns and things like that I mean there's a few skeleton jokes but man he's not playing his ribs like a xylophone they're not doing like laughy taffy rapper puns or whatever they're they've bought into the world like yes i'm a skellington there is nothing funny about that this is just what i am right now and i like how it takes both both kinds of things seriously that it's playing with the authenticity and coherence of that world is just second to none yeah talking about putting this in context too you know thinking about noir movies like the mid to late 90s were also a really

like rich time for neoir as well like this is around the time you have Fargo coming out this is around the time you have LA Confidential I believe 1998 the same year as the Big Lebowski like people were kind of ready for like riffs and reinterpretations uh you know

on these particular tropes too yeah I believe that's also he pulled one of the actors from the usual suspects into the game as well to play I think the the tattoo either the tattooed skeleton guy or the um the the tattoo artist i forget which one of those guys was a tattoo artist uh was a hungarian was the yeah oh yeah but yeah a big fan i mean there was a resurgence in noir movies at the time

what also inspired tim was as tech mythology based on the class he took at uc berkeley and then art deco a design sense that was much more present in nearby san francisco before the dot com boom uh knocked down a lot of those beautiful buildings but yeah i mean i lived in the bay area for 13 years and a lot of them are still there. In fact, he name checks which building Mani's office building is based on, and one day I was at a game preview, and I walked by

that building, I ducked my head in, and it was very much the Department of Death when you walk in. Art Deco everywhere. Yeah. And since I played this game, I've gotten really obsessed with Art Deco and especially old movie theaters that borrow from, you know, Mayan or Aztec motifs

or even, you know, Indian motifs. People in the 20s and 30s were just so obsessed. with these different cultures and using their architectural motifs to make interesting design and I love going to like the Castro Theater and seeing that or going to different old-timey

theaters in different cities and seeing just like the fascination with these cultures at the time. About the Ardeco I've got a serious point and a jokey point. The first, the serious one is it was such a smart choice for like the technology that was available at the time too because of the focus on really simple

geometric shapes and curvilinear designs, you know, like you could do that really well and make it come across, you know, with the kind of pre-rendering that they were doing. My jockey point is it was really funny when Bioshock came out and everybody was losing their minds about like, oh my gosh, there's this new thing. It's called Art Deco and everybody loves it. And it's like, where were you fools out when Grim Fandango came out? Yeah, or like Batman the animated series for that matter. A few, like a six or five or six years before this. But, so yeah, all the things that are informing this Tim Schaefer game, you know, film noir, you know, Day of the Dead things. Also, what's in all of his games, the thing I don't really like or connect with it anyway, which is car guy stuff.

So, I mean, this is really present in, oh, I forget the name of the game. Brutal Legend, there we go. Yes, the car guy stuff is really in Brutal Legend the most, but it finds its way into all of his games. And it's in this game as well with Mani. So that's, I mean, and then full throttle had a lot of motorcycle and car stuff as well. So you can't escape that with Tim Schaefer. It's like the one, it's like the most masculine thing about this computer nerd who makes adventure games is that he likes car guy stuff. Yeah, I think Tim actually mentioned that as a great unifier of a lot of different people.

Like it's something that connects with a lot of different folks. You might not expect them to be into certain hobbies, certain spaces. So the car stuff definitely makes its presence known with Glottis, right? All right to the end. And I mean, I think it's just being a different kind of nerd Because how is building a carburetor different than building a gaming PC? It's not really. In fact, building a carburetor sounds a lot harder than just slotting cards into slots, you know, and then putting a case around it.

So Tim has all these ideas. There's an initial premise in the fall of 95 where Manny is more of a real estate agent in the afterlife. And after the game had the initial title of Deeds of the Dead, Tim came up with the name Grim Fandango himself. So Deeds of the Dead is a nice pun, but it's more really. related to real estate, which is not the premise the game went with. So Tim's like, oh, grim Fandango, it sounds so evocative

and it's so unique. And then immediately after pitching that, someone at the company is like, nobody's going to buy a game that's called that. But I think he definitely proved them wrong. This was not a flop by any means, but I like this very evocative title. Nothing else sounds like it. It's not

trying to be cute like Deeds of the Dead would be. It's very nice for a title. Yeah, it definitely sticks out. And the company's previous game, which was Curse of Monkey Island was a gorgeous 2D adventure game, and their only 2D adventure game in a resolution higher than 320 by 200. But because of the direction things were moving, we immediately throw away the nice 2D graphics in exchange for low polygons and pre-rendered graphics, which was the style at the time. And along with that, the SCUM engine is thrown away, which was the

classic engine that was everything was built on. It was improved over time, of course, but We've talked about it. It's been a while, but this lets non-programmer types actually build adventure games. It was a very simple language to use in which people could come in and be trained very easily, and good writers could become great adventure game designers very quickly, and it allowed people to improvise and change things on the fly because the puzzles were not baked into all of the programming quite as hardcore as they would be if the system was not in place. But that's taken away, and Grimm is really built on a mishmash of two things. is the Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2 engine

you're playing this game in, weirdly enough, and also the Rebel Assault 2 engine for integrating the full motion video. And one designer on the team wanted to keep the scum spirit alive, so he started referring to the scripting language as the Grime Engine, and that kind of stuck around enough

where Tim Schaefer said, that just became the engine that we said this game runs on. It's the same for Monkey Island, sorry, Escape for Monkey Island, and that's also Grime Engine, but it's not real, but it's nice to think that, you know, there was an evolution of Scum in some way.

And then the Grime Engine emulator that I replayed this on in college was called Residue, which I thought was clever as well. That is nice. And yeah, I guess this didn't always work with Scum VM. Yeah, that might have been a more recent change with Scum VM. Yeah, I've never played this on Scum VM,

but then again, since the remaster came out, I have never tried. Yes, there's no need at all. So, yeah, the skeleton characters, they really work with this lo-fi approach in terms of, you know, when it was released. And coincidentally, this game also takes place on four different days of the dead in which everyone is mostly back in the land of the living visiting their families,

which means all of these streets are empty. There are very few people to talk to. The premise helps make this more achievable with the technology at the time just based on when this game is happening. So very clever, but also it makes it oftentimes a lonely game where you're just running through city streets and big empty environments. Certainly appropriate. I looked at him commenting.

You're like, oh, you ever notice there's not many crowds. Yeah, there's a good reason for that. Mani won't go into the one crowd you see in the entire game. Well, the clown won't let him go into the one crowd you see. Oh, that's true, yes. But yeah, pointing and clicking, that is totally 1992. So this is the first LucasArts adventure game in which you are taking direct control over Mani. And we could talk about how this affects gameplay later.

But on the commentary, Tim Schaefer talks about his mistake for going for tank control. because a lot of people on the team Mario 64 had come out and they're like let's make it like Mario where it's camera relative but he's like no you're playing as manny we want you in his shoes and steering him around this is not you're not going to have the distance you have when you're pointing and clicking on a screen

but he he said something really clever and insightful in that he realized later you can have a good argument for a bad thing for a bad idea and he he said that made him watch out for that in the future so I thought that was very insightful of him yeah that's really well put and a good

explanation of what happened here. Being able to recognize that is so important. Absolutely. And this is I would say probably the biggest adventure game LucasArts made. I don't remember if Escape from Monkey Island is bigger. It just felt bigger because of all of the annoying puzzles.

But he wanted to make this much bigger than full throttle because the biggest complaint about full throttle is it was incredibly short. It's like a three or four hour game. Even if you don't know what you're doing. This is three to four times larger and it had an unprecedented amount of development in time of three years. And they even

wanted more because this is not their full concept of the game fully imagined. Lots of things had to be cut which is why the final confrontation with the big bad in this game is just basically like a two or three step puzzle. They wanted it to be much more involved. And

it sounds like I said up front, this is a blank check game for Tim Schaefer. No crazy deadlines. He does say that this was just constant crunch because that's just the environment they were used to and he realized now that that's wrong. People's internal clocks are being reset to where they were coming in at 2 a.m., and that was the start of a normal day for them. So this was 90s game development, and it was just

part of the culture. And I think now that's finally being broken down. Now people are resisting, but this is just part of the spirit of what game design was like at the time. Part of this being a larger, you know, them intending for this to be a larger experience, I think it was like in 2009, 2010, they released a big PDF of the, I don't know that it was the design document, but it was like the puzzle, the puzzle doc, kind of like laying out, you know, the, just on paper, the various steps of things would have to go through. And you can even see like the hooks for the extra stuff, you know, put in there as well when they were still like the pen and paper phase. It seems like so much did end up having to be cut out. That's something they refer back to

constantly in the commentary is that, oh, the experience of, you know, there used to be more to this or this had to be simplified or somethings they regrettably didn't simplify looking back on it you can really feel it in chapter three and beyond uh that's where you start seeing these big holes yeah oh for sure yeah yeah two does feel fully realized but once you get the three and four your uh the puzzles are are slight uh but still annoying and you don't meet a lot of new characters and uh yeah there there there are signs that there were some development issues along the way and uh one more thing to note about the game's production are the voice actors. So, you know, as recently as 2020,

you know, production companies are now much more mindful about culturally and racially appropriate casting, where it's like if there's a black character, we're going to hire a black actor for several good reasons. People were not on that page, obviously, 25 years ago. And this is, I mean, this is why this game seems so progressive because they hired mostly, I believe the term is Latinex, or I'm not sure what the appropriate term, but Hispanic, Mexican American, Cuban American. They're hiring

culturally and racially appropriate folks for the role, and the main character is played by Tony Plana, who is a Cuban American actor, and there was a discussion early on in this development, like should this game, the main character, should he have an accent?

And it's interesting to see they went with that, and it's not a joke. It's not a broad, speedy Gonzalo style character just like this is the way this man talks and they don't play it up for fun they they respect the actor and they respect the the heritage of the character i guess we can say it's it's very great to see in 98 when they're casting for the role they actually mentioned that along with tony there was another series contender for acting for manny and they were more of a comedic voice actor a comedic actor in general and the the sound director actually mentioned that they

they really pulled everything they could to really go for Tony, they put in, like, attractive headshots of Tony and things that kind of make him look cool, just because in comparison, they realize that the authenticity of having a serious sort of presentation of Mani was such a big deal for this. Yeah, honestly, and I think that the white adventure game playing audience, they were trained to think, okay, Latin American accents, Cheech Marin, hilarious guy. I feel like that is the direction that anyone with that sort of accent was asked to play for. at this point in time but he just sounds like a natural speaking human being and it does play into his character and the the environments of the game and he actually made a lot of suggestions to Tim Schaefer in terms of here's the slang we should use here's how he should refer to people here is you know appropriate exclamations in like if you're in Cuba or if you're in Mexico

things like that so by casting an appropriate actor he was actually able to be more authentic in terms of even the script writing. Yeah. Tony Plano, I mean, carries this game on his shoulders and does so seemingly without breaking a sweat, hitting a whole bunch of tones. And I think that, you know, for everything that he brought to it, if there was worse direction, if they were not willing to listen to his input on how to shape this character and how to, you know, make the dialogue feel a bit more genuine, you know, a lesser creative team would have boxed him out for that. But you can kind of feel that collaboration with the way that he comes through they also described him as like

a workaholic he was apparently doing acting jobs at the same time and coming in like you know tired and you know just willing to just do more and more so it must have been a wonderful experience working with a guy who was just so eager and just really laying it out so well it's almost like video game voice actors uh you know deserve better uh the working conditions and wages and stuff absolutely and i mean one one thing i noticed about this game is uh i love day of the 10 of and it is much more cartoony. It wants you to not take it too seriously, but they rely a lot on, you know, impressions in that game.

And in this, not so much, I noticed, they could have easily done imitations of a lot of classic film noir actors. Really, it's just Peter Lorry, Chowchilla Charlie, and Sidney Green Street as the main villain who we rarely hear or see in this game. So they're not relying too much on, you know,

caricature, vocal caricature, for shorthand to inform characters which I like, because, you know, Manny could have been a lot broader. Metsche could have been a lot broader. And I just like that, again, this is just the world taking itself seriously and the character is taking the world seriously. And as far as release information, so this game was not a flop, like I said earlier. It was a modest hit, but the landscape was changing drastically.

And in six months, about six months, it was already really happening right now. Star Wars enthusiasm was cooking. We didn't understand how bad the movies would truly be. But by the spring of nine, LucasArts was like, well, there's a lot of money in making Star Wars games. We're going to make a lot of them. What are adventure games? Get to work on designing this lightsaber.

So this was at a unfortunate time for adventure games, not just for the changing state of the industry, but for the fact that LucasArts could make Star Wars games and everyone wanted to talk about Star Wars again. It was not just this obscure thing that Dorks remembered. And, you know, like

hey, let's play Dark Forces. Remember Darth Vader? No, there were new movies. Jar Jar was on every Pepsi cup you saw and it was not a time to be alive, I'll say. That was the one aspect of 1999 I didn't enjoy. If people see the name Lucas and it's not on something called Star Wars,

they get real confused like a rat when you don't turn the lights on. They just start walking in circles, they start eating the carpet, it gets really bad. So you got to make sure that the Lucas and the Star Wars are aligned. You know, and I don't think I noticed any I mean, I'm sure there's dialogue

I miss, but I didn't really notice any Star Wars or Indiana Jones references in this game. Maybe Many talks about selling leather jackets at some point But again, they're not breaking the fourth wall As they normally did in these games I feel like that that's pretty rare For a LucasArts game to not acknowledge that it's an adventure game Yeah, I think the one thing that Tim did mention was that

He said, oh, at this time my writing career, you know, puns were you know The idea of if not puns wordplay Whitty wordplay where you have sort of these complex jokes That may be a little heavy-handed there as far as an adventure game aspect But there was not referential humor that brought anything as far as dissonance into what this experience was as a total. Yeah. Going into, it's so weird because film noir and like naturalistic dialogue are normally so diametrically opposed. But the one thing that naturalistic dialogue is closer to is film noir, it's very far away from.

We're going to go for a very long walk to set up this word player, this pun, you know, punchline delivery. And there's nothing particularly 1998 about the writing or whatever they're referencing in. this game. It very much sticks to its own world. Maybe there are a few things I'm forgetting, but I don't really recall them really digging into like, oh, this is this 19908 thing that's happening or this thing

that's moving in culture right now. It just, it does feel like it has not escaped the 40s or the 50s, wherever, whatever time period this is meant to take place in. Yeah, no Monica Lewinsky stuff or whatever, no cheap stuff like that. What was it? Robert Frost was the reference I remember specifically. Yeah, I guess Robert

Frost, so I guess you get one of the characters You get one of their blue garments But Manny does not say Oh I'm glad there's not a stain on this Or something like that You know It could have been much worse

But yeah That is basically the production Of Grim Fandango There's a lot to read about it online There is a great commentary track It sounded like a very fun time To be at LucasArts working on this project That was Golden Boy Tim Schaefer's blank check

And everyone seemed to have a very good time Although they seem to also be very tired having worked on this project. I want to talk about the game. how it plays, the puzzles, the story, and all that stuff. But to be fair, and to keep this discussion organized, I want to break it down into the good and the bad. And the bad is coming last because I don't want to linger too long on the bad,

but I do have issues with this game that I feel, boy, they really make this not fun to play for me. And that's totally valid. It has a lot of artifacts of both the time period, but also just doing something so totally new and really foraying into a space that it's a really hard one. It was a tricky deal across the board. Yeah, and we can see why this did not end up being the default adventure game formats.

This stuck around for a very short period of time. It's really just an evolutionary dead end. And I feel in terms of the gameplay, a failed experiment, everything else succeeds in an amazing way. I don't want to sound like I'm down on the game, but how it executes the game, play, I feel, is not fun. But good things, good times.

Happy dancing skeletons. So the good, here's my first point. So we talked about this up front. This fully captures the spirit of film noir in a way that no other game really has. At least I feel that personally, like L.A. Noir, I think people played L.A. Noir much later thinking

it's going to be like old-timey, black and white melodrama, but no, L.A. Noir was like gritty and realistic, and it was really capturing the James Elroy take on crime instead of the slightly sanitized black and white crime thriller take on crime

and this evokes it the best down to smoking and drinking which I think is very key to making this feel authentic and it actually does feel shocking to me now that we're seeing less depictions of smoking and drinking that this is a game essentially that made for families to play

Mani's idol animation is smoking that plays in the puzzles he can drink there are references to him having gotten drunk, your best friend of the game is an alcoholic. It has like all of those culturally important things to make a crime story seem

apt, inappropriate. This would be forcibly mature rated because of all the gambling references. Like just flatline ESRB now. You cannot avoid that. So there would be no way to get around it. But everything else, it really is quite an adult, mature game in a lot of ways that was not

typical at all for the time. The smoking in particular, that was dissonant enough at the time that the original manual had like a little thing that said, you know, kids take note, every character who smokes in this is dead. Yes.

Yeah, and actually, no, he's smoking on the cover of the of the box, too. It's such a cool image. Yeah, I mean, like, beyond any discussion of noir, this is a very cool game. God, I can really use a cigarette. Yeah, it's, I'm already I'm already there.

I'm getting one right after this podcast, no. Yeah, man, he's not vaping. He's not blowing cotton candy fog. Oh, no. If they had updated it, that would have been amazing. Just instead of doing the double entendre with METJ, he just pulls in a bunch and then blows out like that ship that Gandalf blows in the line. That'll impress her.

We had not invented vaping that to make smoking less cool. But, yeah, to me, and this is someone who has read a lot of these books by a lot of great authors and seen, like, all of the big noir movies. When I play this, it's not like, oh, you rip this off. It's like, oh, no, you got it. You understood the assignment, as they say. And, yeah, and also the violence, I feel like, is, I wouldn't say shocking, but it's appropriate and unexpected in a game like this, where the getting sprouted does seem like a fate worse than death, where there's no answer to what happens when an undead skeleton gets sprouted? That's the version of murder in this world.

and what I found especially interesting is Manny is a very relatable hero but the final thing you do in the game is kill the villain. It's not an accident it's just like okay how do I murder this man because that is the only way to solve this issue and that feels like a non-Lucas arts

comedic adventure game thing to do it's played very seriously yeah I mean and also like the hero killing the villain you know it's it's impossible to talk about film noir without talking about the Hayes Code, too, you know? And like, if you look at specifically a bunch of the movies that were made, you know,

like from the late 30s through to the early 50s, the villain usually didn't die at the end. They had to be carried off by the cops. And usually so did the hero as well because they had to, like, portray all of this crime stuff still somehow in this framework of very conventional, you know, morality, authority-based morality at the time. too. So having him just straight up, I mean, just iced the two main villains in this. It is actually a little bit dissident with the, uh, with, with, with the genre, but it still feels, you know, like a good resolution to this. Because what do you do with somebody in a world where they're already dead and, you know, in a way, death is not necessarily like permanent, right? I thought that was the really interesting aspect of it because it is all intrinsically tied to, you know, what, what exactly? happens to them when they sprout and you know Tim mentions it like you know I'm not really exactly sure I guess maybe they get reincarnated they get pulled back into the you know the world and you know it's it's this sort of rebirths concept that it lessens the violence but it doesn't lessen the actual violence the the the severity of what you're seeing oh but it's it's it's quite menacing and like upsetting especially Lola poor Lola that just done so wrong and

The way that the sprouting connects more to the day of the dead than film noir, I think that's like a really important bridge as far as how the violence can be dissonant for that, but actually extremely cohesive as a whole. Yeah, it's full of, not to linger on this too long, it's full of great body horror, especially when you learn that it's sort of like a zombie attack. You can stop the sprouting if you sever the limb or whatever. And so one character is just a head who basically does a suicide attack to take out a villain. another character is just a head in an arm that, you know, is still, you know, able to bounce around and help you out.

And then later in the game, the villain's hideout is just on a hill full of corpses of people he's disposed of. All the flowers you see are dead bodies, essentially. So, again, it's a very, not to be cute, it's a grim game. Yeah. No, I mean, and also works in the classic beat from one of these movies where the main character is, you know, grievously injured and still has to, you know, pull out some kind of miracle, you know, to stop the terrible thing from happening. It's such a show of confidence, too, when you've been so menaced by sprouting throughout the entire game to see, oh, this guy knows what to do immediately.

And then, Mani, when he later is able to handle it for himself, it's like this is, this is showing that these characters specifically are a little bit head and shoulders as far as how this world has interacted with them, how they can deal with it. And one thing about the game is that Tim Schaefer wrote all the dialogue himself. So it comes from a singular point of view, a single author's voice. I believe 7,000 lines of dialogue He describes it as a basically bigger than a phone book When it was all printed out

And some of the best writing ever found in an adventure game This is just it all sings Nothing comes out as clumsy Some of the interactions that I tried out Surprise me like oh there's dialogue for this cool And it's actually pretty clever Yeah and again no spooky skeleton puns There's nothing weak like that

It takes itself seriously and that's what I like And that helps the player buy into it So one other good fact about this game or a good point about this game is that we love manny manny's great he's so relatable and then we follow him through four years so we're seeing manny in different positions and that is very interesting to explore so he starts off as a deadbeat salesman and then he becomes a pretty swanky casino owner with some you know status and power and then he becomes a fugitive and then he becomes something else so we are not just stuck in this one state of being the character is

moving through his life, encountering ups and downs, and that's affecting his state of mind and the people he's encountering as well. Also his costumes, wonderful costume changes throughout. Yes. Yeah,

and just this kind of character arc and seeing a character's point of view and circumstances change so much, that's not a LucasArts thing. Like, there's not really, like, huge arcs within a particular game itself. This feels more akin to something like a,

you know, like a Gabriel Knight to me. Oh, yeah, Yeah, absolutely. No, and it does feel like a, again, a blank check game for Tim Schaefer because I'm sure in the pitch, he's like, okay, this takes place over four years, and anyone else saying that at any other point in time would get shot down immediately. They'd say, no, it's going to take place overnight in this one location and now make the game in 18 months and get out of my face. But no, he was allowed to make it a three-year production for four years of Mani's life. And yeah, I just love all the circumstances he goes through. And the costume changes are just a nice way to make the game visually more exciting. And I love, there's nothing cooler than Manny's like white tuxedo that's on the cover of the game. I love running around in that and he looks great. And then you end up back in your Grim Reaper costume at the end of the game, no spoilers. Are we avoidant of spoilers for this podcast?

I don't think I've already talked about. I don't really think so, yeah. We talked about a few spoilery things. Sorry, Cole, go ahead. The gravitas of the grim reaper costume is a little bit undercut by the fact that he's on stilts under there. I love that reveal at the beginning. It's so good. I always expect, every time I play through the game again, I just assume there is something that is going to go down mechanically.

Some sort of puzzle with the stilts. Never does. It's just sort of when they're needed, they're there for Manny. But such a fun reveal at the beginning of the game. And like anyone with a bad job, he's still trying to have fun with it, which is what I like about the intro of this game. But yeah, Manny, great character. I don't know if he would be as great if he wasn't voiced by the voice actor they chose. but yeah one of the strongest adventure game protagonists

and it helped me tolerate a lot of the things I don't like about this game so to move on past Manny let's talk about the world so the rules of the world are very interesting and unique and very well developed you can tell Schaefer thought a lot about how things would function

in this world and that's why I feel like we can have a Grim Fandango movie or a Grim Fandango TV series now this might sound crazy but they made a costume quest cartoon about a decade after that game came out. I say if that can happen, let's make a Grim Fandango series. Not even about Mani, like there are so many more stories that can be told through the lens of the Department

of Death and other things in the world that are happening that are barely touched on in this game. This is a game that I really, I would have loved to see between the years. Nothing too elaborate, but the idea of like a comic book style, a few pages of something that has gone down. It could have really helped get some background detail that I felt ultimately. we're missing. It's so cohesive. Like, it feels, nothing feels like, oh, I don't know how that works and I'm confused by it. There's, like, a few aspects of it that, like, you just want to know more about that world. And that's really the best place to be in when you're kind of creating content in a space where if everything about it is so interesting and feels like it's part of it, you know, the people that

experience it are always going to assume that you know what you're doing, even if you maybe don't to the most extent. And it's such a fun opportunity to see where it could be. It would really lend itself well to an animated series kind of thing just because there's a lot of focus on like the city and civilizational aspects of it. This is a really surreal world too, you know, like the petrified forest, you know, what's going on at the bottom of the ocean, you know, all those particular kind of things. It feels like there's a lot to explore there, even just pulling from, you know, other aspects of the mythology that, you know, were, you know, maybe considered but not ultimately use for this. Yeah, that's probably the issue that I would be worried about trying to create a new

version or new adaptation of it. It's just authenticity and making sure that there isn't stepping on toes of any sort of cultural. It's a really tricky space navigate anymore. And I think Green Vandego is an example of it doing superlatively, but trying to do a new work in that space, that would be a lot of familiar problems going in that space. Yeah, definitely. But I still say that if, hey, Disney owns this. Disney last year spent, I don't know, $80 million, making.

a Willow TV series that they immediately threw in the trash so spend 10 on this I dare you Disney I dare you but yeah like this is such a great world and we only I mean because it's a 12 hour game we can only learn so much about it

and the people in it so I don't know there's more here to explore maybe comic book maybe novel maybe TV series Tim Schaefer get the rights back just like hey Ron Gilbert got the rights back to Monkey Island and that was a great great sequel so who knows I'm now telling game developers what to do, which is the point of

retronyness. We all want the Grimmer Fandango to come out someday. And what Bob says on our podcast is legally binding. Absolutely. Please consult your local lawyer. So the graphics in this game have, they've aged fairly well, I would say. The choice to go with these paper-miche-looking skeleton figures was a good one. I mean, if you're used to what modern games look like, obviously, you can literally see the seams in every character.

Anything that's not a skeleton looks disgusting. I love Glottis, but man, that is a rough 3D. model that eventually will grow on you but he's not ready for polygons glottis all of the demons i think that is just a real missed opportunity and it is the thing that has aged worse these could be cool and could be interesting but every time you're on the screens you have to think is that a toenail fungus goblin is that going to be in a commercial where he lifts it up like a hinge and it scars me for life by stigmatic tube worker is definitely one of the weaker as any particular visual asset.

He definitely lives under a toenail, and I'm glad we don't see him go home and recreate that commercial. But yeah, I mean, so yeah, the polygons, it was such a smart idea. They weren't ready to render people yet. These are such iconic, great designs. I love how all the characters look. Very easy to make your own manny at home, I assume. And, you know, they're from a certain point in time,

but I do have a lot of nostalgia for these pre-rendered graphics. And I think, like you said, Cole, given the Art Deco style, they were given an achievable level of technical achievable level of uh complexity to meet with their technology well the art deco stuff is interesting to think about because all of that you know they're pre-rendered background so they actually had you know quite a you know they could model whatever they really wanted those are going to be you know final finalizes images image data and movie data so they really they made the best of that and that stuff i think that was maybe upscaled or whatever they did for the remastered it definitely felt

very strong and that was very nicely done but the the work that they put into those rendered scenes really really dramatic and then integrating them with the 3D action of the game

overlaid on top there's so much commentary about the experiences of trying to make a particular scene of trying to integrate them and the issues that cause no end of effort and really a talented you know hard work going into

making that all possible. I don't want to move off of the art direction without at least addressing how amazing it is the way that they represent the world of the living in this game yes thank you cool yeah please uh please discuss that that super eerie collage everything is a magazine cut out when you try to interact with the living people like their facial features get mixed up and all you hear is like a scream um that is so chilling It is one of the most horrific things I have seen in a non-horror game and a very good decision. And I want to hear your thoughts on that average rate. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's actually that the vaccine. I've been asked if that's been an inspiration. And it's not like the most forefront one, but absolutely the idea of the wrongness that any sort of photo images, like the collage nature of it. They mentioned that the specific trick is to have facial features flipped upside down. And that's, like, so dis, like, it's such a simple thing, but it's so, oh, it's so unpleasant. I love it. It's definitely, there, I mean, I would love to play an entire game directly in that space. The closest you're going to get, I was going to bring this, like, that style, a series of games that does use that very well is the Cat Lady.

The Cat Lady, Resolution, Lorelei, most recent one, Burnhouse Lane, indie horror games that, uh, throw in like a mixed media kind of approach that would be yeah if you're looking for that that's what that is that's a great recommendation you're going to have to check those out yeah i mean it's only one screen of the game but it's so visually iconic it's so striking it's so eerie that i i wish you had a reason to go back into the land of the living for other puzzles it felt like they were they had some bigger idea but even just that brief glimpse of what it actually looks like to the undead is kind of enough to add a lot more mystery to the game like oh there's a lot more going on here that I they're not showing me it's also a nice way to kind of make it a febrile as well it's not important

the you know it's all the years all the the time that you're playing you're actually on the on the day of the dead and you know the rest of the the the people of the land of the dead are going back in remembrance of manny is not manny does not have a reason to go back and that's the idea that for manny at least that you know the driver of the narrative the land of the living has nothing left for him I think that's a really important point that they they return to repeatedly and they do a great job with that. Just having it as a tiny little vignette that's so impressive. So we're going over the good points.

Is there anything else we want to talk about before you move on to the bad points of Grimpendango? Yes, yes. So something, we talk about it being an early 3D implementation and sort of a lot of its designs and puzzles. So, you know, to some negativity reflect that. But I did want to just bring up as a part, you know, good and bad, the fact that the 3D, way they use the 3D spaces, they might not always be the most intuitive, but they are a very interesting direct interaction between the player, items, and the world space itself. And that's something that physicality of things having a real sense of place inside the scenes, that's

something you really do not get so much in adventure games before that point, before you wanted to 3D spaces. It's, you know, you'd have animation principles and, you know, some might say that stronger, but for actually figuring out a puzzle, if it's really well integrated into the physicality of a scene, that is essentially a signpost. And I think one of the puzzles that I had a good time with, as far as understanding it very quickly what wasn't necessary, maybe not being able to actually pull it off all that well was like the forklift puzzle. The idea of knowing, okay, I know because, you know, the physicality of this immediately makes it obvious what I'm trying to do. I wish it was a little bit easier to pull off. Yes. But it's, it's so

clear, and that, you know, that was them using the 3D spaces really well. Another, like, the burning beaver puzzle, it's like three, that it's only possible if you have these sort of 3D physicality, you can throw a bone and have them chase after it. Another implementation that will quickly go into the next section of this podcast, though. So, yes, I'm glad you brought up, we're going to segue into the controls and what they mean for an adventure game. So, yes, remaster, the tank controls are optional. If you want to get that special achievements to play through the entire game with tank controls

to make Tim Schaefer happy. You can always do that, but I don't recommend it. But my main issue is it's really a one-verb game, and that cuts down on the potential amount of possible puzzles in the game, leaving us with what I feel are some kind of annoying ones. So they're trying to be forward-thinking, but I also think they're shooting themselves in the foot because a lot of these things they're getting rid of, I think,

are essential, like more verbs in a UI. So they're trying to make this more immersive because, you know, you're in a 3D world. How do you be more immersive? We'll get rid of the UI. and when you see interactibles on the screen, Manny will tilt his head towards them instead of the game highlighting them in some artificial way.

And I found that this causes a lot of problems, even when I knew what to do, because the game has a real issue with putting two things too close together, and it's all about moving Manny to the exact right space. And even then, it's not clear if he's not big enough on the screen, like am I looking at the book on the table,

or am I looking at the people sitting at the table? There were so many ways where that element of the interface got in the way with me wanting to do what I wanted to do. I think there's a commentary no that's like,

I don't know if you noticed, but there's no UI in this game. And I think everyone notices that very, very quickly. The big killer for me, the one that always gets me whenever I play through the game again, is definitely the inventory.

The inventory is just, it's very noble what is trying to be done with the inventory, but just not being able to see all your items have to scroll through them having to figure out like do I have to go left or right to be the fast as to get to the next the item I actually want to use and holding that in your head it's like whatever you last picked up will be on the left so it's yeah it's rough and

to their credit they work with it they limit how many items of your inventory but there are instances where you can have multiple of the same where it's like you might want a few as backup with balloons or bread or whatever and it's they let you really fill up your inventory with just those items and then it's like scrolling through five dead worm balloons to get to the where you need to be. Yeah. Yeah, it was, oh, go ahead, cool. My kingdom for a grid, an inventory grid to see everything there.

One thing that's taken away to when you have this, you know, reaching into his pocket kind of inventory thing, there's no item combination, which, you know, reduces the complexity and, you know, the opacity of these puzzles, you know, is a problem. I don't know that, you know, doing item combinations to make things up, mix things up would have helped that. But I think that everybody notices the lack of inventory just because of the compromises that were made. Yeah, there's that one item combination that's putting the hand into the grinder. And they mention on the commentary specifically because it's like, we don't do this ever.

This is the only time we do in the game to kind of simplify things. And it might have been really hard to understand this was a thing to do at all. And yes, when you take that out completely, the notion of trying to implement that, it's hard to go back and try to pull that in. The other aspect was that these games, there's a lot, if you actually go for them, there's a number of like, oh, you have an item out and you interact with somebody. But the slowness of going into your inventory,

pulling out an item, having come out with the animation, like the site, I wanted to have my site out a lot just to see what people would say, but the animation of pulling it out and to interact with anything else, you have to put it back. That's so slow and cumbersome. You lose out trying, when, like, in almost any adventure game,

I'd pick up every item, put it on the character, and see what they say. You lose that, intrinsic sort of exploration space. You have to be very purposeful in Grim Fandango. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is a very naive thinking about 3D graphics, which we can't blame them because they were new. And people were entertained by certain elements of the 3D world where they're like, oh, it's a 3D world.

We're not just going to have a menu with your items. He's going to pull them out of his coat, just sort of like the idea of the future in 98 was like, you're going to put on your VR headset and get in a virtual line at the virtual store and put the virtual thing in your virtual basket. no make it as simple as possible we don't care about immersion that much and it's sort of like why like you said ever dray a lot of these animations takes so long to play out like manny getting into things manny climbing down from things it's like the idea in 98 was like isn't it cool you can see this polygonal character

doing things it's sort of like when you watch an old cartoon from 1929 it's like well this duck is just walking down the street singing a song I'm bored but but people in theaters are like the duck is moving I mean it's rubber hose at that point it's so good I do want to say it was the very last scene of the game literally the last scene I'm noticing oh I can take out the Sprout gun

and put it back while running so like that's actually I don't know how many items are like that but like definitely not the site the site you have to stop get that sucker out there but the gun itself I don't know if they expected

to have more usage of the gun in like an action sequence where like while he's moving that gun needs to pop out but they absolutely had the capability to integrate the animations with other movement animations as well.

And I was just wondering, like, I wonder how deep that goes. I kind of want to go back and kind of see what that space is, what they actually pulled off. No. It's, um, uh, thinking about this again, too. So like one thing that you don't, that you don't fix by adding in the point and click controls on this is the fact that the lack of verbs, you know, really does go bone deep on this one, which is, you know, you've got to figure out basically just adds more steps to everything. more little irritations, and it's less about trying to discern or trying to find an ingenious

solution to what's in front of you, and more about figuring out how to surmount just this seemingly arbitrary friction that is put in front of you. And I think that that just ups the irritation without getting an awful lot in return. There's also, you know, there's three interactions. You can look, you can utilize, and you can pick up. And utilize and pick up often share the same action. They are not perfectly good at making sure there's something distinct and unique for each, every single one, which is kind of, at some point, I, you know, I was trying to do all three for everything. Then I was like, well, if I can use it, then it's probably automatically going to pick it up if I need to, but you don't know what you're missing. And the idea of a player wanting to engage with the world as much as possible, but kind of giving up because they don't feel like the TDM is going to make it worth it.

that's something you've got to be very careful with throughout any game design and there might have been a hint in the bark that you would have gotten by trying to do that that once you pick it up or once you use it you can't go back and get that hint again i wonder so much how many items are like if you had this you know whipped out when you interacted with any number of NPCs oh yeah that's the next step like if you had the ticket stub printer for the cat raises that's a i'll talk about the carry that that one always gets me if you had that whipped out and like every scene and talk to every person like maybe they would string you a little along to the point to like as much as you needed but you're not going to do that you're going to miss it almost certainly yeah i mean we talked about the interface but i feel that the the puzzle design goes even deeper beyond that i mean the puzzles are constrained by the one verb but i feel that uh ron gilbert is not dead so he's rolling in his bed when people play this game because this just violates so many ron gilbert rules i have ingrained in my brain in that the signposting in grim fandango is so bad and i i mean because that's a single thing that's a single thing vision of one person, the dialogue is great. It's all like from one perspective. But I think because

of that, he's too close to the game to understand that players aren't understanding what they need to do and why they need to do it. So if you're an adventure game player when you're in a new area, I'll talk to everybody, expend all the dialogue, and then I'll see what happens next. And if you do that in Grim Fandango, you're going to just absorb all the dialogue. You won't be sure what's flavor text and what is puzzle relevant text. And then that dialogue will be gone from the game forever. But beyond that, there are simple things where I always had the question, like, why does Manny want to do this? What are his reasons for doing this? Because there are never any statements that would have helped, like Manny saying, oh, if only I could blank or, oh, I need

something that can blank. Like, those little nudges would help you stay on track. And Everdrade, we were talking over Discord and you were saying, you know, something as simple as a little notebook Manny had with objectives would help. I mean, he's sort of playing a detective. in a way and I feel like that would keep me on track but for the most part my major gripe is that the the puzzle relevant text does not stay existent in the world it just goes away and you are left wandering and pretty helpless and there's no hint system or anything I absolutely so I think I mentioned a little black book for him to pull out put down shot down details almost doodle whatever that's sort of and another source for you know if there's anything important in dialogue they

that Manny may be picked up on it and then has some sort of thoughts as well. I love the notion. This is a, sometimes you see this concept as a diary, sometimes it's like a scrapbook sort of thing. But the idea that I think in the space, Manny is represented as a very competent. You know, they show him as kind of a failure of the department of the dead, but that's not his fault. He's really trying his best.

And then you see him every year. He's so competent. He rises to, you know, the owner of the casino. He rises to being a captain. He's a competent dude. He could absolutely have this sort of idea of, you know, this is my thoughts. This is, you know, this is what I noted. You can get away with that.

And that's sort of intrinsic, really flavorful, from the character perspective, signposting, so good and so helpful. That's like the best idea of a hint system where you actually, they're, what they say can be incredibly funny, but really to the point. You get a little bit of that with the inventory system. You get a little bit of that rarely, because most items are kind of throw away as far as the kind of commentary. Sometimes they string you along, but the signposting is, it's a ruffy. It's a real problem. And, you know, and I wonder if that idea, if you proposed it at the time, based on them wanting to really put you into Manny's shoes, was there an assumption that you as the player were writing stuff down? And, you know, why would Manny be writing the stuff down at the same time, too?

Yeah. You know, so much of the, you know, signposting, you know, the hints are things that you need to observe in the game that are not tied to a dialogue event, really? And that's a thing that, like, you know, sunk riven, right? Another, you know, just to pull another adventure game roughly from the same time. Just the problem you're talking about with him with him stuff going away, I want to give like an example for anybody who hasn't played this, but wants an idea. you're talking to a clown who is tying balloon animals and there is what you think is a

you know just like a fun little joke about the fact that he's doing it with bony hands that like oh the balloon would pop when he's trying to do this right he's got these sharp little bones and he said he shot bang and it pops the game is expecting you not to focus on how funny it is that you made this clown mess up it's expecting you to notice that when that happens like the balloon popping in particular makes pigeons scatter, right? And then you have to remember that and then think, okay, there are pigeons that need to scatter later. When I get to that, I need to make sure that I

bring up balloon up there in order to try that. You cannot do the bang and make them pop the balloon again. That dialogue goes away. And this gets compounded when you have hints that are given in chapter one. And you have to remember that it is used two or three chapters later. Yeah, something as easy as, you know, looking at the balloon saying, oh, man, pigeons really hate when these pop or something. You know, I'm not an adventure game designer. Tim Shaver can think of something more clever to write. But, yeah, it's relying on the player a lot.

And I mean, I think in 98, they were still thinking, well, you're an adventure game player in 98. What else are you going to do with your life? Start writing things down. And also, buy the hint book or call the 1-900 Star Wars or whatever. Go online if you're stuck. But I feel like much later in life, Ron Gilbert discovered, we want to keep you in the game as much as possible. So here's a hint system in the game because if you leave the game, you could be gone

forever. You could just say, screw this, I'm watching Netflix or whatever. But obviously, there was fewer forms of entertainment 98. But, yeah, the signposting is bad. And I also think, like, some puzzles have no logic. The puzzles were thought of first, but not like how to justify them within the game. One of them I'm thinking of, not to get too specific, is you are trapped in this area and you need to get a gun.

And in order to get a gun, you have to trade a character. a stocking for the gun, but there is never any indication that this is a possible transaction that could be made. The guy's never like, oh, I need something silk and stretchy. There's nothing like that in the dialogue.

There actually is, but you can miss it and it's never, you can never go back to it or try it again. That's probably what happened to me. You talk to him, he's like, hey, would you like to trade anything? The very first time you go through the dialogue,

it's like a list of items that you could trade for where a silk stocking is mentioned. But if you do any other option, it'll pull you out. It was like, no, you know, you did your selection, and it won't go back to it. So, like, you'll just miss it totally, and you'll never get that line again. That is, like, a very tiny hint, but even if you get that, you have to be aware that a character in the game is wearing stockings.

And that is hard to read on these skeleton characters. And then, like with a lot of puzzles in this game, because there's a lack of verbs, they have to get inventive for the kind of puzzles they can make. And a lot of them are timing-based, which should never happen in an adventure game. And Tim Schaefer was really obsessed with those in full. throttle as well. So there's always the question like, am I doing the right thing or am I doing the right thing at the wrong time or am I just doing the wrong thing? The timing puzzles in this one are delayed as well, almost all of them. It's not, you're not doing it when you need to. It's like there's an animation that has to play. You have to know the length of the animation and do it right in time

with the world event. It's also bugged in the port. There's like, it's dependent on B-sync sometimes too. So like you might just like, why in the world is it so hard? What is this? It's a technical issue. Yeah, and again, because of the one verb solution in this game, just to do verb, they have to do what full throttle also did, which is like, well, you don't have a really big inventory, you can't really combine items in this game, and you have one verb. So we're going to give you all of these complex machines with their own controls to play with, and these just frustrated the hell out of me. Any puzzle involving, man, he has to operate something in order to achieve a goal. like the I mean in theory I like the forklift on the elevator but it took me about eight tries to actually jam it in the right spot and again I was like I have to watch a video of this on YouTube to make sure I'm doing this and that should not be the case some more I can think of is like when you have to tangle the ship up and it's two anchors it's never clear like what your goal is and it takes so long because when Manny moves the ship you get basically a cutscene of where the ship currently is and where the anchors currently are and just it takes so long it's irritating and then the pneumatic tube system one of the early puzzles in the game

that is one of a few puzzles in this game where you have to go through the initial steps if you fail so if you fail this you have to go get the balloons from the mime again you have to fill the balloons again you have to put them in the tube again it happened to me because I forgot to turn the dead bolt while the guy

was cleaning I did it again this playthrough too I love Chippito Chippito is the one that actually it sticks out to me every time I know instinctually when I go into the screen that's on the bottom on the ocean floor make a save make a save so like the first time chepito comes through you can talk to him if you miss chepito when he walks through the scene he takes like at least like what like two minutes to walk in a big circle in the background to finally get back and it's so and there's so little on that screen there's maybe like 40 seconds worth of content to kind of like talk to glottis look at the sea like look at the pearl and that's it and if you not only do you have to talk to him if you there's an option to make you walk around with them to waste the

full two minutes, which has a really fun. You know, Glottis sings a bit, which is cool. But it's, it's almost like willfully knowing people are going to waste their time pretty badly here in a lot of ways they'll likely play it. Yeah, with that character, I let him pass by me. And I thought, like, did I screw up? Do I have to do something on the screen? And then, like, I had to read a tent and say, you know, it said, no, just wait for him

to come back. And I thought, like, what am I learning from this interaction? The same thing with having to spray the beavers again. Like, what did this teach me failing? because an adventure game should not be about performance. It should be like if I know how to do the puzzle, I should just be able to do it. There should not be timing involved.

I should not have to run a wheelbarrow over hoses in order to like sync up different pumps on this big machine. I hate all of the machine puzzles. They're so frustrating. The signpost puzzle in the forest, very deceptive. In general, I think a lot of people when they play through this game, they might just stop at the petrified forest because it is a bunch of the worst kind of puzzles in this game and nobody to talk to,

and it is a big, like, hurdle to get over before you get to the cool Rubikava part of this game. It's a bummer because, like, that signpost puzzle, they did it once, and then they did it again at the end of the game just with a different object. Yes, yes. And I told, yeah, I forgot about that, yeah. The Beaver, the burning beaver puzzles, like the classic. I remember that in the end of year two. Those are, like, the big ones that everybody stopped.

It's like what, you know, this is my experience with a game that kind of turns me off. And those are, those are rough ones. And I always think about, like, I love Gladys. I love every time Gladys is on this game, if Gladys was on every screen and just waggled his ears, whenever you're kind of on the right pathway, I would love this game, probably five times more than I do. It's just glottis, even if Gladys is just doing the simplest sort of commentary of signposting, I think, or whatever, you know, any character on the screen, just having a little bit more to it. there's so much that could be done, you know, even if it's just Manny making commentary on it.

And I really wonder if there is an intention for it. Obviously, the head tracking, you know, there's this notion that things need to be pointed out. There needs to be signposting, but the mechanical sort of aspect of timing of like, oh, I just missed it. I was too early or it's too late. There's all these little things that could be implemented with Manny making it easier for the player to understand what they're even engaging with. And I know that Tim Schaefer, these are kind of trends in his game design. And I know Psychonauts too is very good, but I hear that Broken Age has similar

issues with sign posting. I think like he just has a different philosophy from his former boss when it comes to what an adventure game should be. And Tim Schaefer was very nice to write the afterword of my book, so thank you Tim. But your puzzles, sometimes they really pissed me off. In the commentary, he's like, I apologize. I don't know

how you. This worked in my head. He literally says that at least twice that I can remember in the commentary. He's like, this made sense in my head and we put it in and people told me it didn't really. And I I should have listened. And at least, you know, you do it. I think the big one, I remember specifically for the chain, the crane chain that you then have on the conveyor belt.

What always gets to me, I forgot it again, this play through. You have to make the chain go backwards like twice and that'll wrap around the anchor. And then you can use, it's like, why would you ever think to do that? Like, what purpose would you want to do that at all? Why would you try to pull the chain away? you wanted to get there in the first place so you could have this interaction. It's like you're actively going away

from the solving of the puzzle for the solving of another puzzle and that's really dangerous if you do not have signposting. Yeah. Yeah, there are two puzzles in this game that require outside chain knowledge that I simply don't have.

Assuming a lot of knowledge of chain mechanics on this one. Yes. I've never really dull with chains very often in my life, but it's like, well, this is how two chains wrap around each other. This is how a chain wraps around itself.

It just, yeah, These puzzles are a bummer. Were there any particularly bad puzzles that stood out to you? For the most part, when very few puzzles in this game are satisfying to me, if I would stumble across a solution, I would think that's it. And I feel like we were too late in adventure game design

to still be saying that out loud. And then all the very mechanical ones were annoying. And that's why I feel like revisiting this world could be beneficial to make a more playable game. And my own advice is, If you are getting frustrated, don't stop playing, don't try to figure it out yourself. Just use a walkthrough because the most valuable thing in Grim Fandango is the dialogue and the story in the world.

In the music, which we didn't mention yet by Peter McConnell, amazing soundtrack. There's so much music, it's all so great. On the commentary, he talks about, like, here's the specific instrument we used. And just he is, like, he knows so much about the world of jazz, too, that it's very authentic. But my ideal Grim Fandango experience is don't even, like, watch a let's play because it's fun. One, to still have control of Manning and the dialogue and everything. But, like, just absorb the best elements of the game. so any other any other negative qualities let's add on the bad notes any other negative qualities I didn't mention I mean like I said before the pre-enert rendered graphics are very of their time and you know very cool this is a very cool game but also they're in love with this idea so you're running especially in Rubikava let's run under that blimp a thousand times even though they they give you a few shortcuts but nearly not enough and it's like oh my kingdom for fast travel in this game yeah um so related to the uh to the uh to the

pre-render background stuff so much of this feels empty not just from a you know like hey where are the people kind of you know kind of deal um but also just from like a like a like a like a density of density of detail things to observe uh things to pick up things to you know interact with and try you know the pre-rendered cinematic camera angles you know those kind of exist a thwart the previous shot composition that they had where it was very intense that when you're in this location, we are showing you everything that is relevant about it in this one screen that you're going to see. Maybe you go left, right, deeper, or out, but, like, pretty much everything is going to, is going to be there. And the spaces are too cavernous for them to do what they sometimes do, which is the thing that you are looking for is actually off in the corner of this particular place, actually finding new screens within a particular space.

It does end up being like a weird little form of pixel hunting is what I sometimes feel, especially, again, when you get into chapter three where you're dealing with caves, you run into that a little bit with the petrified forest as well. I think it is just this growing pain of them trying to figure out how to make these Resident Evil camera angles work for an interaction model that is still, I think, kind of geared toward their strengths of doing like really good just screen composition for finding an. interacting and playing with things yeah you're totally right outside of the design of the puzzles i was stuck most of the time because i i didn't know room existed and that that is the case for small spaces and big spaces like small spaces i forgot that there's a little alcove in the tattooist area where his bed is and the refrigerator is like it's very easy to miss and then in larger spaces because sometimes you'll like move manny to one corner of the screen and another corner screen's like well i can't go that way so you assume some other dark corner of the screen will lead

you nowhere so you don't try it but it's like no there's a whole other room with people you can talk to and valuable items so i'm thinking of like final fantasy seven does an in elegant thing of you hit the select button it shows you all of the exits on the screen and that's like super superficial not elegant in any way but it was helpful in a time where uh they weren't always thinking of being practical when designing these very beautiful backgrounds yeah i absolutely think some sort of vignette some sort of if they glow slightly something that gives you a heads up on where exactly room entrances are also with like interactive items i know the headtracking was a really pivotal very cool thing to see implemented but having some means if you don't feel

like you you know if you have to be pulled out of the world it's best to be thought about and then you know helped with then maligned by it and that's really preventing the maligning of people and you know bridging that gap is so so important in design i i think the the puzzle design The density. The density, playing the game with commentary helps a lot with the density. The idea that, like, well, you're on these screens, you know, when you actually play the game, there might not be a whole lot going on, but almost every single one has an extended sort of conversation about, oh, the blimp.

You know, the fact that there's something there instead of nothing for the blimp scene. That helps a lot. And I actually, I would say, Grim Fandenko really gets supported by that commentary very well. I was thinking, you know, this is a game that I always classically thought. out, you know, because of the issues, I love the cohesion. I love the tone, the aesthetic. You know, this is maybe like an 8 out of 10 for me. I really enjoy it, but there's, you know, the mechanical aspect of it.

But the commentary included, it really brings it up like a 9 out of 10 for me as far as the hearing, oh, yeah, this scene used to be a little different and we cut a lot out. That makes sense. And you suddenly, like, when you realize and you hear somebody laughing about the experience, like, oh, yeah, this scene, we actually, I deleted that and you had to redo it over two weeks. You know, hearing that, it's like, you have such a more nostalgic, homie feel for playing through the experience that it really adds a lot. It doesn't, you know, it still has a lot of deficiencies. And it's not really like a fair thing to say it changes the game experience, you know, tremendously.

But it's, it's very interesting. And there's so much good intention in Grim Van deco that you can kind of understand, you can realize what they're going for. But hearing someone actually say, like, we tried and we might have been super successful, but we did try, it was worthwhile. This could have only happened with us working to, you know, this is their. the product of us all working in this time and doing our best, just hearing that from them realized is a huge shifter of the way you perceive the game as a whole. Yeah. It is one of the better documented games. I think that, you know, double fine, you know, just the Tim Schaper in particular is, has been really good about being out of the forefront of, you know, kind of

in these remakes, kind of putting in, you know, a little bit of historical documentation to give that perspective to not make this entirely a negative observation um uh i just want to leave off on like an admonition for the player if you're going to be trying this no don't worry it's not you the uh puzzle sequencing and like the complexity is actually all over the place like there's no real difficulty curve to this it's very jagged so like i like the uh you know mixing the chemicals for the for the letter sorter thing that's a cool puzzle that is not the first major puzzle that you put in for for your game right no you know it is going to be a wall and then you're going to run into a bunch of other stuff that's like much more simple

like expect something to be very uneven in terms of complexity don't feel like that is that that is a shortcoming that you're bringing to this oh it's so funny thing about the the puzzle that the puzzle you know getting glottis's heart and putting it back in that is the most simple you walk to the screen you kind of like you do a bone in the web you know there's really really kind of immediate and obvious and then the surrounding puzzles in the the petrified forest they just kick your ass as far as trying to figure out what the heck they want when that one was so obvious and you're like man I wish the entire game was just a little bit more straightforward intuitive and you know that's you get absolutely right it is not the players fault they you know

Tim the devs they acknowledge the sort of issues I went to it and there's like arguments Les, I love, I do want to mention Leslie, I believe she was like a producer sort of on the game. She was tasked with essentially making sure things were on time, you know, saying, oh, this needs to be caught. This can't possibly, you know, we can't do this. Really tried her past clearly from the guy, you know, trying to rain things in. And like, she's like, well, we had to get rid of the beavers. You know, the beavers, there's no way. No one knew what was going on with it.

We had to take it out. But Tim, Tim would do this thing where he'd get a napkin and he'd draw the little beaver on it. Then he'd hold it up and go. Don't cat me, Leslie. I'm a bee. I just want to be in the game. And it's so hard to cut something like that. And it's just so hard.

This woman was trying. She was also the character of the coat check lady was based on her. And this lady that has tried her best with a lot of very interesting characters. And, you know, doing, has a job to do. Like, you know, many of the characters of Grim Fandego, just a beautiful kind of connector to the entire experience of working on a game with Tim. I have to imagine. And she was right.

The commentary is great It's not just Tim Schaefer's perspective You hear this perspective of like Modellers and the musician and Tim And you hear about experiences with voice actors And executives and things like that So it is very valuable from like every perspective And I also will agree with Cole

And that like the main thing to go into this thinking Is it's not your fault Because every time I got stuck in the game This happens with adventure games Like if I see the solution Sometimes I'll feel bad like oh, I should have plugged away this a little bit longer. You know, I would have figured it out or

I was stupid to not think of this. But with Grim Fandango was always like, I didn't know this character wanted this. I didn't know this is an item I could pick up. I didn't know this room existed. I'm sure I heard this character say that 20 minutes ago, but she won't say it again. So, yeah, it just, they weren't as focused on that

as they were about trying to innovate other aspects of the adventure game. And I think puzzle design was left by the wayside a bit in terms of just this epic experience. with 3D graphics and you know this new world but I guess final thoughts I've said a lot about this game and again it's totally worth playing through nothing is like

this to me and I'm not trying to speak for my guess here playing the game is the worst part of it but it should still be experienced and please steamroll through the puzzles just to experience the world the dialogue the characters the music that is worth the

putting up with the bad puzzles and that's all I'll say about Grand Fendigo to close out here. Everdrade, a new guest. What are your final thoughts on Grim Fandango? Thank goodness for mouse controls. I was actually dreaded. You know, this is a game that I have played through in the past and it was hard for me to come back to. And I, you know, realizing that there is mouse controls and even with the familiarity with the puzzles, even with knowing like kind of what you have to do, it's amazing. In some adventure games, you come back years later and it's like, yeah, okay, I get it. You pretty much know exactly what you plow along

just from that previous experience. Grim Fandango, no. There is some stuff that is intuitive. You instantly calls back, but so many things of like these little, well, this was a double interaction. It's, it does. It's rough. But with the mouse controls, with the commentary, and with the soundtrack, the soundtrack is so good they remastered it. It is a really delightful experience. If you ever had a bad time in the past with Grimofindago, I'd actually recommend trying the remaster. Just giving it one more go.

Maybe it's not going to be very ready to get that walkthrough out there. Be ready to like get those points out for sure. The moment you start feeling like, I'm not kind of stuck. I don't know what to do. You are. You don't know what you don't know what to do. You don't know to send the pigeons, do whatever they have to do. You don't know to throw the dog tags on the guy.

Whatever. It's fine. You'll find the walkthrough, get it done, and just get to the end of the game and see all the character writing. This is a game that the characters just shine, the voice acting. This is a game that has limited numbers of items, limited number of characters overall compared to most adventure games. But the amount of attention to each is really, really stellar. Enjoy, soak it in. But don't let it frustrate you away again.

Do what you got to do. it's um it sucks because i really wish this game was easier to recommend i wish it wasn't and i wish it was uncomplicated to say like hey go go go go and dig into this because when you're saying the worst thing about this game is the game you're kind of arguing from a back foot right you're you're you're you're you're fighting uphill you know it's a great game uh don't play it don't play yeah yeah uh but i agree with bob you know this is not one of those ones where you just want to read a wiki or uh watch a let's play you know there's joy in exploring this world and talking with people, having the expression of picking the dialogue, you know, having the dialogue choices,

having the, you know, the surprise of, you know, just, okay, I already picked that. What is the next thing that is, you know, that is in that line? There's, you know, a lot of excellent craft in there for that. I think that what I would say is if you're approaching this, you know, do not be afraid to go to, like, universal HIN system to help smooth that out. So basically they probably should have put a HIN system in with this. for the remaster would be, it would probably be ideal in order to,

you know, smooth you through, but like, I would say don't let the game get in the way of itself, um, with some of its misguided puzzles, you know, rely on these, on these external supports, you know, to, you know, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, the actual design of the game are actually pretty crucial to the experience of

getting through this. And, you know, if you're a completionist, if you're some kind of, purists, A, leave that at the door. That's weird. But, you know, don't let that deny you the joy of at least seeing the way this story, you know, comes together. Well said. I just want to mention. I never brought it up, but the pigeons and the vultures with human heads.

My God, what a lovely wonderfully creepy additions to this game. I wish they had more flying. Flying spiders, flaming beavers. This game has it all. But that has been another episode of Retronauts. And that is the end of our LucasArts miniseries. And, yeah, it's been a fun four years. We'll cover more adventure games, of course.

It was a loosely defined miniseries. But most importantly, please buy my book, the Boss Fight Books volume about Day of the Tentical available, wherever you buy books. And it's about a Tim Schaefer Adventure Game. I like a lot more than this. But I like the writing a lot more in this game. It's complicated, like we said up front and at the end here.

But yeah, this has been Retronauts. Find us on Twitter at Retronauts. And we are supported by all of the great fans out there at patreon.com slash Retronauts. You want to sign up there for five bucks a month to get all these episodes ahead of time and also access to two full-length bonus episodes every month. And we've been doing those since the very beginning of 2020. So I dare say there's almost 100 full-length episodes that you haven't heard if you're not a patron at patreon.

At patreon.com slash retronauts. And there is also a weekly column and podcast by Diamond Fight included at that $5 tier. It is a great value. And it also helps support everything we do for retronauts. And yeah, thanks to our guests for being on. Let's talk about who they are and where we can find. find them before I mentioned my other things. Everdraed, new guests on the show, where can we find you if you want to be found? I'm generally in reclusive. So I'd say, I guess, I mean, I have a

Twitter and every so often I'll post some extremely stupid edit video sort of thing. Mostly I'm any more, I'm just trying to help people make video. Like the last thing I did was I made a little trailer for the hymn to the Earless God Kickstarter that just finished up the other day successfully, which was great to see, really, really wonderful last minute push for it. But in general, I am I'm not really out there to be found. You'll just see me when you see me. And that's good with me. And Cole, I know you are making a lot of podcasts over at duckfeed.tv.

Far too many. Yeah, I know. Over at the duckfeed. com network, people who like this show would, I think, most enjoy watchoff for fireballs. I've been going for about, we just passed our 12th anniversary, I believe. But doing that, yeah. It's wild But doing deep dives into games

On our premium offering We just finished up our in-depth coverage of Eldon Ring On Bonfire Side Chat is the show That'll be coming back when we do the When the DLC comes out But we're going to be launching a new thing here We're going to be doing in-depth coverage of Balders Gate 3 On a new podcast that we're launching called Real Litch Hours

So that's going to be coming out later on in the um uh later on in the year but yeah uh duck feed dot tv for those shows and then you can find me on twitter and blue sky uh just at my name uh it's spelled weird k o le r o ss s and as for me i am bob macky i've been the host of this one you can find me on twitter or uh x the everything app as bob servo and i'm also on blue sky as bob servo i don't really post there i mostly just lurk but maybe i'll be driven to become a blue skyer at some point and my other podcast uh my other podcast rather all on the Talking Simpsons network. That's at Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

There's Talking Simpsons are chronological exploration of the Simpsons. We have what a cartoon where we go over a different cartoon from a different series every month. And we also have some fun stuff on the Patreon, like a series about Futurama, a series about King of the Hill. We've covered Batman and Mission Hill and The Critic. We've been doing it for over six years. So if you want to hear about cartoons and my thoughts on them and also Henry Gilbert's thoughts, head on over to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But that has been another episode of Retronauts.

We'll see you again next time. Take care. Thank you.