The International House of Mojo

Interesting. Maybe I should pick up Witcher 3. I've always said the mechanics of adventure games could lend themselves to any genre -- even something like GTA.

I see what you mean and partially agree, it all depends on whether the aim is bringing adventure games to mainstream (hard, almost impossible, but feasible only through huge investments, AAA budgets and a lot of creativity) or keep'em a niche product.

Being a huge adventure game fan myself, I for one can tell you I'm kinda sick of endless quotes and references to other games in recent classic adventure games (with the exception of Thimbleweed Park for obvious reasons). It became a stale and predetermined formula that is only killing the genre even more.

I want to invite you reflecting on how LucasArts always INNOVATED while creating adventure games:
1. Maniac Mansion: nothing to say, it spawned the point and click genre
2. Zak McKracken: same core formula, added travels to an incredible amount of locations (even to Mars!), mazes, use of crystals to possess other creatures, verb interface that could change while losing your mind
3. Indy3: added Talk To (sporadic) and Examine instead of Read, which gave a whole new depth to the whole adventure. Examine is king. Graphic style moved towards a realistic style (it may seem cartoony now, it wasn't back when I played it, it seemed to me to be playing a movie). Nazi guards can be fought or persuaded with dialog puzzles and even offered bribes. The amount of skippable section of the games with different solutions to the puzzles skyrockets.
4. Monkey Island: THE one. Whole new level of immersion, insults swordfighting mechanics, Talk To whenever you want, stellar humor. All of this at a price: increased linearity and suppression of multiple solutions with puzzles (with one or two tiny exceptions).
5. Loom...
6. Monkey Island 2...
7. Indy4...

And so on. My point is it was a path of discover and constant defying/change of the previous formula to create different experiences.
Play a recent point and click adventure game and you will not have any of this, it's pure nostalgia but there's nothing else. Stories can be great, but immersion and suspension of disbelief got completely lost.
When playing The Witcher 3 I felt that sense of immersion that LucasArts used to give me, it was amazing after so many years.

Good point with Cuphead, amazing stuff, but please consider that underneath all the obvious nostalgia of the product, it was actually something that we had never played before and ironically was innovative for the art style it had, only game that has it.

I really like Kentucky Route Zero though. That's innovative.

also: i forgot to mention the semi comeback of cassette tapes and cassette decks, even pre-recorded cassettes.

and in gaming industry: it is safe to mention cuphead as a hit, tho it is not an open world or rpg or GTA, it is a 2d platformer, but creativity was real, with that superior level of attention to details and animation, with a touch of nostalgic theme, it had enough attention. the game uniqely succeeded and sold very well.
creativity & nostalgia it is boys!

i don't disagree with you, reviving a classic isn't restricted to a 320x200 res or point & click or any kind of this stuff, you just need extra creativity, to make it faithful and acceptable and be focused! unlike lucasarts in its latest living years (2000-2003)they claimed to release 2 sequels (hell on wheels, freelance police) but their mind was distracted with star wars or some shady project. they ended up losing everything. now i don't claim that making an adventure was gonna save them (which is more likely tho) but the point is about how bad they were in making decisions.
you see blizzard cancelled warcraft adventure, they assumed that it became outdated!
but look at the hype for this game when it got leaked 2-3 years ago.

now maybe hell on wheels was kinda bad, but that wasn't the case for freelance police, it even looked better than telltale's series (graphically too!).

so i assume that classics can make a great comeback, because it has a huge fanbase, even if it seemed sleepy. but is it gonna satisfy the developers? that's very relative.
as an example too, you can see nowadays the hype of many people to obtain a crt monitor, because some believe it to be better tech in general than LCDs especially for gaming (like me, and i own one)and some acquires them just for the nostalgia, and some is just curious because he saw some youtube video talking about it.
so media is the real result maker in the end, and one might not be aware of the awareness about his fanbase.
i even saw some kids getting hooked to classic stuff (games, TVs, monitors, magazines, etc)
tho, even with this hype for CRTs and them getting crazy prices on ebay, CRTs won't make a comeback, not a chance, even if its gonna sell well. and you will find hundreds of reasoning for that...but does it mean some shouldn't try? ofc not, because if we think there is reasons to fail, we also know there is reasons to success. and as long as your determination is high, and you had the attention in media, you will get a better result.

and aside from shenmue 3's success and how yu suzuki was shocked by the huge support: tim himself was surprised of himeself too when he made his first fan funded project on kickstarter then fig.
so with the respect of others reasoning, i personally think tim is not quite interested in making a sequel, even back in the day when he knew about lucasarts working on full throttle 2 (payback), he didn't like the idea.

Not really, I think what made adventures games great back in the day was they were cutting edge, it was the best and most interactive experience you could have.
Some precursor of open worlds, with leaving and breathing believable worlds.

Keeping it the same now is kinda disappointing, I remember when LucasArts used to AMAZE me with each new adventure game, always making me think "wow, is it really possible to do that?!".
Not talking about graphics only, mind ya, I'm talking about immersion.

I honestly agree with Tim Schafer's vision: image a Triple-A GTA V / The Witcher 3 environment, replace weapons with objects and give adventure games new life.

Or keep it as it was 30 years ago, but it's getting stale and sad.

experimenting is fine, but you see nowadays a good adventure game with a classic feeling in it, is a really rare thing to come across. and its been 25 years for full throttle, so it is a priority thing for me.
and i assume everybody here agrees that as a fan if you were asked to choose between a sequel of a classic and some other project, you will surely choose and support the classic thingy.
and we all saw the glorious success of shenmue 3 kickstart (before getting deep silver invovled atleast)because everybody loves to see a classic revival.

Me too. I know everyone loved Bill Tiller's take, and I loved lots about it, too, but the curved walls on the buildings bugged me. Made it seemed cartoony. Steve Purcell's/Peter Chan's take was more realistic in that sense. If someone kept all of Tiller's artwork the same, but added more straight lines, I'd be in heaven.

RAD is great and anyway, with this mindset, we wouldn't have Grim Fandango or Psychonauts 1 because "nobody cared about those".
Doing new stuff and experimenting is key.

On another note, I would love to see a re-imagining of Monkey Island like this here! Imagine the box cover of Monkey Island 2 take like in ultra-realistic fashion, with Guybrush actually being the dude depicted there and LeChuck being this rotting undead zombie.

I always thought of Monkey Island's environment as semi-realistic instead of CMI-ish.

Yeah I loved RAD. Also I don't think Tim was that involved with that one.

That video is really neat! Probably not what I would want an actual game to look like, but very well done all the same.

RAD was great!

darn!
this is amazing. this game REALLY NEEDS A SEQUEL!
tim should wake up and do it, instead of working on boring projects such as RAD and other things no one actually cares about. (psychonauts 2 is an exception for sure) :)

In other news did anyone see this? https://www.facebook.com/SecretOfGuybrushThreepwood
The same guys behind that attempt at a Fate of Atlantis remake are trying to do the same with MI 1-3. If you ask me, these guys are begging to be hit with a pile of cease and desist notices and they don't seem to care. In the meantime, an official release of a Curse of Monkey Island remaster seems less likely as each day passes, but a guy can dream.