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Bill Tiller discovers Ghost Pirates is out 11 Nov, 2009 / Comments: 13

By Jason


Still, like me, eagerly awaiting the English version of Ghost Pirates? Why not kill some time by heading over to the AME Blog and read Bill Tiller weighing in on his company's second release:
I was looking at my new iPhone today, a birthday present from my family, and I saw an email about Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island coming out in Germany today. I am so happy it finally made the shelves. If someone over in Germany could take a picture of it on the shelves I would appreciate it. I want to congratulate my awesome team for all the hard work they put into it.

I also heard there was a new trailer, but that some people didn't like the FMV animation. To meet our deadline I decided that we should focus on the programming and in game animation, and if we had to make cuts we would do it in the FMVs (full motion videos). The FMVs only make up 15 minutes of a ten hour game. I was talking with Ron Gilbert one day and he said “cut scenes are the least important part of an adventure game," and that I should "keep them to a minimum and focus on the game. Players are just going to skip them anyway.” Coming from a background in traditional character animation I was a bit bummed to hear that, but I reluctantly agreed that what he said made sense, so that is what we did. Not to say all the in game animations are perfect but we definitely put more time and effort on those.

Also we learned a lot from making our first game, A Vampyre Story. We improved the in game dialog, voice acting, the puzzles, the programming and scripting. Although not perfect, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is, in my opinion, a much more ambitious and improved product over our first one. I hope you agree.
Kinda lame that he is as in the dark as we are about the game's release and availability details. Hopefully hard news on the English version comes soon, and hopefully we start hearing about A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale again now that Ghost Pirates is (partially) out the door.
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13 Comments

  • Arodin on 11 Nov, 2009, 22:48…
    Strange comments. I haven't seen the acronym "FMV" in a really long time. It's a standard thing to see "full motion video" in almost all games nowadays. Using that term now makes it sound like he's a little out of touch, if you ask me.

    And I like cutscenes in adventure games, I think they're very important. They can convey dramatic story moments better than you can with a dialogue tree.
  • The Tingler on 12 Nov, 2009, 04:57…
    Disagree with both of those comments Arodin, sorry. The first makes little sense, but the second makes me downright angry. Cutscenes are movies, something which games should be avoiding at all costs. I love Grim Fandango's cutscenes I admit, but the game's the important part.

    Dialogue tree's aren't dramatic? It depends on how you do them. Mass Effect for example had some very dramatic moments with them... as did Monkey Island 2.
  • Udvarnoky on 11 Nov, 2009, 23:13…
    So wait, spelling out an acronym makes him "out of touch?"
  • Capn_Nacho on 12 Nov, 2009, 03:11…
    Yeah, Arodin, I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you don't hear the phrase FMV much today because games use FMV less and less frequently. I don't think there's anything wrong with the acronym...
  • Sven_Q45 on 11 Nov, 2009, 21:14…
    Today? It´s released since Friday.
    Or is it a slightly old news?
  • Thriftweed on 11 Nov, 2009, 17:23…
    That doesn't fill me with too much confidence.. I get the impression that Bill has had the wind knocked out of him, he's usually so ultra upbeat.
  • SurplusGamer on 11 Nov, 2009, 12:11…
    I wish he wasn't so apologetic about it all!
  • elTee on 11 Nov, 2009, 11:45…
    I think developers treat cutscenes as a necessary evil: in a perfect world they probably wouldn't exist.
  • Norimaki on 11 Nov, 2009, 11:12…
    To be honest, I prefer to 'play' the story as much as possible, too. And if I have the choice between half-baked cut-scenes that are there just for the sake of having fmv and being able to get more gameplay out of something I bought, I'll definitely go for gameplay!
  • Erwin_Br on 11 Nov, 2009, 10:11…
    I have never ever skipped a good cut scene. Why would anyone do that?
  • Norimaki on 11 Nov, 2009, 08:03…
    I ordered the game through Amazon yesterday - really, really looking forward to playing this! The soundtrack that's streaming on the original site is breathtaking, the presentation looks fantastic and I'm sure it will be a blast to play. I enjoyed A Vampyre Story - sure, it had its flaws, but the overall atmosphere was very convincing. If you compare it to Telltale's first steps with the Bone games, AVS was actually pretty damn good as a debut, considering its scale and all!
  • QueZTone on 11 Nov, 2009, 06:29…
    cutscenes the least important? They can set a great deal of atmosphere..

    Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Gabriel Knight 2, Under a Killing Moon, Broken Sword... they all had amazing cutscenes which without would break down the games' awesomeness.
  • jp-30 on 11 Nov, 2009, 04:56…
    Looking forward to playing this sometime, but this whole story just makes me a little bit:-(