• Interview with Telltale’s Mark Darin

    09/11/2009

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    Posted in: Interview, PC

    Big thanks to Mark Darin and the guys at the Telltale Booth for chatting with me – in the midst of a massive autograph session! If you haven’t begun the Monkey Island episodes yet, or haven’t finished Episode 2, be warned that there are some mild spoilers.

    Cat: It’s fair to say there’s a bit of Monkey Island fever going on, how do you maintain that level of enthusiasm?

    Mark: Lots of caffeine, I think? A lot. (laughs) I mean, I dunno, just being at PAX, it kind of lifts your spirits all the copslayers going around in costume, all the games, it’s total sensory overload. (laughs) It’s not really hard to keep up your enthusiasm in a place like this.

    Cat: What elements of the original games were most important for you to preserve?

    Mark: Definitely the more button click gameplay, even though it’s not one hundred percent point and click. The humor, and one of the things we definitely wanted to make sure we got back to were the pirate roots. It kind of got lost along the way and stopped being a little bit pirate-y so that’s the first thing we did, and with the humor that comes with it – it’s kind of a serious story underneath it and that’s something that was very much Monkey Island that we wanted to keep.

    Cat: So in the pirates vs. ninjas battle, you’re on team pirate?

    Mark: I side with the pirates, mostly. They get more gold, and they do more pillaging. The ninjas are kind of unsung, they don’t get a whole lot of attention, they don’t get the reputation that a pirate can get. Yeah, pirates are awesome!

    talesofmi_ch2_swordpoint

    Cat: What are the challenges of episodic content?

    Mark: The biggest challenge is the development schedule, actually. Trying to put out a game a month is really tough. Keeping the quality of the game high and keeping every game from getting stale from episode to episode is a tough design challenge. Probably the hardest thing is doing it once a month and keeping it fresh – and doing it on time (laughs) is really hard.

    Cat: Is it stressful making time for something like PAX?

    Mark: Right now it’s more of a relief. I mean, it’ll be extra stressful when I get back and realize that I only have two weeks left to finish up the script, but right now it’s a welcome break from sitting in the office staring at my monitor blankly for an hour at a time, not being able to think of anything funny.

    Cat: What do you guys have planned for future episodes?

    Mark: I can’t give away too much of the fun! The episodes, we make them so there’s a cliffhanger every episode, to try to keep you on board. We’re going to be having more encounters with LeChuck and see what LeChuck is up to. We’re going to be revealing some new cast members. Morgan Le Flay, she was introduced in episode two as kind of the pirate hunter that is after Guybrush, we’re definitely going to be seeing a lot more development with her. It’s really hard to say what’s coming up without – well I don’t want to spoil it for anybody! Just pay attention to the relationships, I think the relationships between the characters are something that were really trying to develop more than we’ve done in any other Telltale game before, and it’s going to make a big impact on this game.

    Cat: And you were a fan of the original games?

    Mark: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve been playing Monkey Island since they first came out, I was playing it in 16 colors on a little monitor with no voices. My friends would gather around, stay up late, usually getting drunk (laughs) playing Monkey Island and making voices. I’ve played every one as they came out, I’ve been a big fan so when they came to me and asked if I wanted to make a Monkey Island game it was kind of a no-brainer, “Yeah, I think I can handle that.”

    Cat: Monkey Island was a part of a lot of gamers’ childhoods or early gaming experiences. I know a friend of ours – and is by no means a gamer – was thrilled to see new Monkey Island games. Do you see that happening a lot, bringing people back into the fold?

    Mark: Yeah there’s a lot of old fans who are coming by, there’s a lot of people who knew about the remake of the original game in HD graphics and a lot of people knew about that and didn’t quite know about this yet but are starting to hear that we’ve got new episodes that are beyond the original series that are continuing the story. There’s a lot of people coming by to say “I used to play these when I was a kid and I didn’t know there were new ones”, and we let them know that there’s a free demo they try it out and they’re like, “This is awesome, this brought back all those memories I had of Monkey Island”. It’s really nice to hear that we actually, hopefully, got it right and it actually feels like Monkey Island. People love this game, the Monkey Island games are really important to a lot of people so they have a strong attachment to them. We really want to give that feeling that you first got with Monkey Island. It’s a challenge for us to capture that in short episodes, but I’ve already spent many, many hours playing all the Monkey games so I feel like I’ve got a real understanding of what the important things are that people stick with. Then with our fans on the forums, since we’re putting them out in episodes, we can really get that direct feedback and they say “Well we want more of this, it’s not quite what I want”, and if a lot of people are saying that we can put it right into the game, say this is something we can address and really make it feel like the way the fans want it, so that helps a lot.

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    Cat: Is there anything you loved in the old games that you found just didn’t work when you tried to bring it to the episodic content?

    Mark: I don’t know that there was anything that didn’t work especially. A lot of people ask about insult sword fighting which is something that was in the original game in Monkey Island 1, and then it was brought back in 3, and revisited again in 4, and it’s a really iconic part of Monkey Island that people were really attached to, but at the same time if you go back and play it it’s a little bit of a crawl. It’s very fun the first time, little bit less the second, the third time it was even a little bit less so we really didn’t want to have to make you do it again especially when The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition had just come out. So if you were going to experience it again, for a lot of people that really like this game, they are going to be playing Special Edition so they will have already crawled through it again. So we want to reference it a lot but we didn’t want to make it the gameplay in the game, we thought it was going to be too much, so we just kind of want to give a nod to it.

    Cat: What franchise is next?

    Mark: Oh, goodness! You know I don’t really know what we’re doing next. The next game that they’re working on is bringing out a Season 3 of Sam and Max. That’s all I know that’s in the pipeline right now.

    Cat: And if there’s any game you could revive?

    Mark: I would actually like to do something original. The franchise are great, and there’s a whole bunch of them I’d still love to do, but I would be really interested in doing something more original.

    Cat: Like…

    Mark: Hard to say, it’s up in the air!

    Thanks again Mark for taking the time to talk to me while signing autographs for everyone!

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      [...] If you haven’t begun the Monkey Island episodes yet, or haven’t finished Episode 2, be warned that there are some mild spoilers . Cat: It’s fair to say there’s a bit of Monkey Island fever going on, how do you maintain that level of …. The franchise are great, and there’s a whole bunch of them I’d still love to do, but I would be really interested in doing something more original. Cat: Like… Mark: Hard to say, it’s up in the air! Thanks again Mark for taking the time to …More [...]

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