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the_gneechLast night I finished replaying Curse of Monkey Island (which is the last of the 2D MI games) and fired up Escape From Monkey Island (which is 3D rendered) to replay, and I found myself thinking, "Geeze, this looks like crap."
Now this is an odd thing, isn't it? Escape came out something like three years after Curse, has much heftier hardware requirements, and should theoretically be the more visually appealing game ... but it isn't. The traditional-animation style of Curse at 800x600 (I think) was far more appealing than Escape at 1024x768.
That led me to think about the fact that the upcoming Sam and Max and Full Throttle sequels are also going to be 3D rendered and to wonder, today, just why everything is 3D now. I can understand it for first-person shooters and the like ... it gives you more freedom of movement within the game, allows you to play with camera angles and so forth. But for LucasArts-style adventure games particularly, I see no advantage -- and in the case of Escape From Monkey Island, the 3D actually hurts the game rather than enhancing it. I'd much rather have all that video processing power playing high-res traditional animations that actually looked good.
So if anybody out there reading this is familiar with the computer gaming industry, can you tell me what the deal is? My current theory is that, among other things, it means you don't have to pack a CD-ROM with a ton of pre-rendered animations at a handful of different resolutions, but that by itself hardly seems to justify it. Either that, or maybe everybody does it because, well, "everybody does it."
-The Gneech
Now this is an odd thing, isn't it? Escape came out something like three years after Curse, has much heftier hardware requirements, and should theoretically be the more visually appealing game ... but it isn't. The traditional-animation style of Curse at 800x600 (I think) was far more appealing than Escape at 1024x768.
That led me to think about the fact that the upcoming Sam and Max and Full Throttle sequels are also going to be 3D rendered and to wonder, today, just why everything is 3D now. I can understand it for first-person shooters and the like ... it gives you more freedom of movement within the game, allows you to play with camera angles and so forth. But for LucasArts-style adventure games particularly, I see no advantage -- and in the case of Escape From Monkey Island, the 3D actually hurts the game rather than enhancing it. I'd much rather have all that video processing power playing high-res traditional animations that actually looked good.
So if anybody out there reading this is familiar with the computer gaming industry, can you tell me what the deal is? My current theory is that, among other things, it means you don't have to pack a CD-ROM with a ton of pre-rendered animations at a handful of different resolutions, but that by itself hardly seems to justify it. Either that, or maybe everybody does it because, well, "everybody does it."
-The Gneech
