Oi, well, once again I’m liking Batman, this time “Fractured Mask”.
But as these things go, contemplation about Telltale’s future sets in. So, yeah, it all is what it is. Just read the damn review so I feel like I’m doing my (and Jason’s) job, damnit!
Rock Paper Shotgun published an interesting article yesterday about the artistic merit of remastered video games. Ron, Tim, and Brian Moriarty are all on hand to weigh in on the technical and even ethical pitfalls of "upgrading" a classic:
“We had limitations back then” recalls Gilbert in an email interview, “and the artist worked magic to make the game work within those limitations. They often turned working within those limitations into an art all its own. When classic games get ‘hi-resed’, you lose all of that.”
[...]
“It’s true that you can often switch back to the original graphics,” he says, “but that is also true of colorizing black and white movies.
“You can always watch the original, but that doesn’t make colorizing it any less of an artistic sin. Saying you can switch back to the original art feels like a cop-out.”
Harsh! But Ron has a point. And as we've seen, the "original version" you can switch back to often isn't the perfect recreation it purports to be. After all, the only "classic" version of Monkey Island 2 that anyone can buy has vertical scrolling effects removed and some dialog altered. My grandkids will grow up without the "white slavers" line, so I hope you're proud of yourself, Craig Derrick!
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
Remember fan art? Mojo might not have been all about it back in the days, but The SCUMM Bar sure was. Presently I suppose most Mojo/Monkey Island-based artists are too old mature to make much LEC-based fan art, or, as it turned out, that was what I thought.
Should you follow us on Twitter -- and why the hell aren't you -- you'd know we're all about fan art lately, thanks to our friends at The Art of Videogame. We'll give you three examples:
What the hell, right? Artist, and URL to full-size images are:
@mr_werewolf_art with full image here.
@zacgormania with full image here.
Scorbut Man with full image here.
My numerous attempts to get Dan Lee to make a comeback was met with laughter from the man, but let's all remember what the man did, during the hosted site glory days.
In the midst of the truly soul-sucking Telltale layoff situation, some interesting auxiliary stuff is happening.
DC will release a limited time series named on TTG’s Batman seasons. So far the second season has been good, and one could hope DC would focus on that, though maybe they’ll try to salvage the final pieces from the downright awful first season.
We’ll know in February. Writer Chris Gage has a good rap sheet, so this might be a glass half full situation.
Well, we saw this one coming.
Polygon reports 25% -- twenty-five percent -- of Telltale's workforce is being laid off. The reason, according to CEO Pete Hawley who apparently has no qualms emulating LucasArts at its worst, is "the realities of the environment we face moving forward". That is a somewhat familiar sentiment...
We wish those laid-off the best of luck moving forward themselves, and for those who are left... Run!
Source: Benzo
So here's a bizarre one: The PS4 and Xbox One are getting a collection of The Walking Dead featuring all 19 episodes. That in itself isn't strange, of course, nor is the fact they get enhanced graphics. What is strange is how stylistically different the update is. To wit...
... we don't only get a completely overhauled color palette, but also actually altered details like the ceiling light.
Own yet another version of the games on December 5th, for a mere $50-¢1.