BTTF like Day of the Tentacle?

[darthvedder81]

Since a lot of the crew that worked on DOT now work at Telltale and since that game involved puzzle solving across a time-space continuum I'm wondering if the BTTF games will be similar?

"Tentacle" is one of my favorite games of all-time so I'd have no problem with some similarities. Does anyone have any insights on that?

i heard of day of the tentacle, but i hated how i can't be used with windows

[Spykes]

Originally Posted by seibert999

i heard of day of the tentacle, but i hated how i can't be used with windows

?? I'm pretty sure it can be used with Windows. I seem to remember being able to run it in XP. Even so, there should be a way to get it to run using DOSbox or something. It's a must-play game imo.

[doggans]

When in doubt, there is always ScummVM.

[Teeth]

ScummVM.

EDIT: Beaten.

[Trenchfoot]

I imagine that it will have a lot of influence, but they'll do less wacky puzzles.

[Rather Dashing]

It's a sad day when two consecutive posters on Telltale's forums are unaware of ScummVM.

As for being like Day of the Tentacle, I HOPE NOT! My own personal feelings about the game aside(I very much dislike it), its ideas about puzzle-solving do NOT fit in a Back to the Future game. The puzzles in Day of the Tennt usetacle require a couple things:

1) Fairly constant use of time travel, and
2) Someone in another time period to receive an item,
3) Time travel being thought of as "the solution" to most problems
4) Fairly wacky and cartoony logic.

This doesn't work. In Back to the Future, only ONCE is an item "sent to someone in the future", and that's a letter that waits for Marty from 100 years prior not to get him to come back in time, not to get him to solve any problem, and not to affect the timeline in any meaningful way, but simply to make sure that a good friend doesn't worry and DOESN'T go back to affect the time stream. Doc Brown wouldn't accept a Laissez-Faire application of time travel as a solution to the minor problems that might come up during an episode, Back to the Future is a film franchise that has a more "realistic" approach than cartoons(time travel and the TV cartoon excluded). Generally, you go back in time, and being STUCK there is the problem or you have to solve a problem IN that timeline once you get there, or you have to UNDO changes made by another time traveler, but time travel ITSELF is almost never a direct solution, and when it's used that way it never works the way it is supposed to.

Essentially, yes, both franchises are TIME TRAVEL stories that feature an OBJECT that is modified to TRAVERSE TIME. But their APPROACHES to time travel and how it is USED narratively couldn't be MORE different.

[The Gneech]

Sounds like "The Tomb of Sammon-Mak" ... which was mighty awesome as a Sam and Max episode, but very much not in the same spirit as BttF.

-The Gneech

[Edward VanHelgen]

^ That's all true but we are speaking about the adventure game here. Everything you said, although true, is related to the movie, and if history something thought us - the games after movies and vice versa don't turn often very well.

I'm sure Telltale is aware of the fact - and it should be important for them that, while still keeping the BttF spirit in all of it's glory, still let themselves the freedom to make something convincing and independent of the movie franchise. Video games are darn hard demanding in that aspect.

So, i for one wouldn't mind if they include more time travel backtracking if that means that the gameplay would benefit, if we'll see interesting puzzles and if the story is good. Asking to be exactly like Day of the Tentacle (while it wouldn't hurt, it's one of the best adventure game of all time) is both unrealistic and unnecessary as they already have general design in mind, but BttF game indeed can benefit from the pure adventure solutions of classic adventure games, more than anything in the movie because it's - an adventure game.

[doodo!]

ScumVm, to be more clear is a program that you download for free off the internet that helps you to run older games that used the ScumVM engine very easily.

Originally Posted by Spykes

?? I'm pretty sure it can be used with Windows. I seem to remember being able to run it in XP. Even so, there should be a way to get it to run using DOSbox or something. It's a must-play game imo.

how do you use DOS

[Elvenmonk]

Originally Posted by seibert999

how do you use DOS

If you use SCUMMVM it's much easier.
Else you'd need to download DOSbox. Like I did to get Duke3D working.

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by Edward VanHelgen

^ That's all true but we are speaking about the adventure game here. Everything you said, although true, is related to the movie, and if history something thought us - the games after movies and vice versa don't turn often very well.

I'm sure Telltale is aware of the fact - and it should be important for them that, while still keeping the BttF spirit in all of it's glory, still let themselves the freedom to make something convincing and independent of the movie franchise. Video games are darn hard demanding in that aspect.

So, i for one wouldn't mind if they include more time travel backtracking if that means that the gameplay would benefit, if we'll see interesting puzzles and if the story is good. Asking to be exactly like Day of the Tentacle (while it wouldn't hurt, it's one of the best adventure game of all time) is both unrealistic and unnecessary as they already have general design in mind, but BttF game indeed can benefit from the pure adventure solutions of classic adventure games, more than anything in the movie because it's - an adventure game.

Adventure games are an almost inherently narrative genre. If you take the narrative part of an Adventure game out....and we have another genre name for it: Puzzle Game. That's how integral narrative is to the adventure genre.

So it is even MORE important for an adventure game, which is a genre that relies on narrative more than most, to adapt the storytelling conventions of its source material. Furthermore, it's a bad idea to simply IGNORE the inherent qualities of the story of the franchise because you think your way of doing things is "better". It may be, but then you're not making a Back to the Future game, you're making(in this case) Day of the Tentacle but with an old man, and a kid that share the names and voices of movie characters and a car that looks a lot like a familiar prop. To be like Day of the Tentacle, you'd have to have Marty and/or Doc jumping all over the timestream in a very short period of time, and that just isn't the way a Back to the Future story is told.

[Spykes]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

It's a sad day when two consecutive posters on Telltale's forums are unaware of ScummVM.

I wasn't unaware of it, just simply forgot about it when I made my post. I actually have a working version of ScummVM on my Android phone.

[Vainamoinen]

From the heavily-overlooked new interview with Dan Connors, some valuable information about this matter:

We talked a lot about Day Of The Tentacle and, obviously having Dave Grossman on the team gives us a lot of experience with that. We’ve also done it with a few of the Sam & Max episodes where time travel was highly integrated as a mechanic. It won’t be as at the player’s fingers because that’s not so consistent with the license. You know, it’s not like Marty constantly jumps around from time to time, taking items from one time zone to another to solve an issue. So I think the real interesting thing for us is being in a new time zone and setting up that world; that feeling you get in Back To The Future where Marty, with all his 1985 ways of being, is transported into 1955 and has to deal with a completely different experience. So it will be a little while into the series before we start using time travel to solve puzzles, but I’m sure that element will be there.

So we might actually see a little of a DOTT approach in the later episodes - a fair, acceptable measure of it.

[Farlander]

you'd have to have Marty and/or Doc jumping all over the timestream in a very short period of time, and that just isn't the way a Back to the Future story is told.

Back to the Future 2. Let's see...
1985-2015
2015-1955 (Biff's secret jump)
1955-2015 (Biff's secret jump 2)
2015-1985A
1985A-1955
1955-1885 (Doc's jump).

That's six jumps (with three done by Marty, four by Doc and two by Biff). We can safely add Marty's travel to 1885 from BTTF3 to the list as the seventh one (that gives four time travel jumps to both Marty and Doc), because only after this jump Marty finally, for the first time after BTTF1, stays in any given time period for more than twenty-four hours (heck, for more than twelve-fifteen hours I would even say. I mean, what was his longest stay in any of the above mentioned time periods?).

Now, I agree that BttF-jumping all over the timestreams is different than DoTT one, and I too don't want a DoTT-styled game, but Doc and Marty kinda still do jump all over the timestreams. Especially Doc, I guess - we don't know how much he jumped all around when he left Marty in 1985 in BTTF1 and before he returned on a flying train to Marty in 1985 in BTTF3.

Though, I imagine that there won't be more than two time periods in any given BttF-game episode (I'm sure the first one will have at least two, the original one and where we time travel to), and I'm quite fine with that. (BTW, the movies start in 1985 and all their time periods end on five, games take place six months later, that means it's already 1986, so it would be kinda cool to have all their time periods to end in 6, I think).

[Vainamoinen]

AAAAnd let's compare that to BTTF I and III:

BTTF I:
Einstein's jump 1985-1985+1 Minute
Marty 1985 to 1955
Marty 1955 to 1985

BTTF III
Marty 1955 to 1885
Marty 1885 to 1985
(not counting the time train )

That means we have an average of 3.33 time travels per BTTF movie. If we assume one episode to have slightly less "story" than an average movie, we'd be stuck with about 3 time jumps per episode (one there, one back and one for the cliffhanger ).

/edit: We were calculating all wrong. For the BTTF GAME, we can only count the time jumps of the main character (because these would make the actual gameplay). So it's seven jumps for Marty in three movies averaging 2.33 per movie and only two per episode.

[Farlander]

So it's seven jumps for Marty in three movies averaging 2.33 per movie and only two per episode.

My point still stands: Marty travels whole four times until finally staying for more than twenty-four hours in a time period. ... Five times even, if we count his comeback to 1985 in the end of BTTF1 (after all, he doesn't stay too long there too). That's a pretty big number of consecutive time travelling.

[Vainamoinen]

It's a valid point, of course - BTTF II was indeed a LOT about time travelling!

Counting numbers is a rather inappropriate way to approach this question. I just did it for the laughs. The philosophy Connors hints at is of course: If Marty is in a new time period, take your time to explore it and get a good look at the characters in that time. Also, as has been stated before, time travel is less a solution in the movies than it is the problem. Marty messes up the timestream and then has to fix it somehow. That, in contrast, is what DOTT was all about, travelling through time to solve puzzles.

[Farlander]

Counting numbers is a rather inappropriate way to approach this question. I just did it for the laughs.

Well, I did it to argument the fact that a Back to the Future story not only can be told with Doc and Marty jumping all over the timestream, but WAS told as such

Although I fully agree about the difference in styles between DoTT and BttF and the problem/solution thing.

But still, me, personally - I expect at least five different time periods in the BttF game series And I'm pretty confident that TellTale will do everything right what concerns the story.