Ron Gilbert: episodic system is not suitable for classic quests

Commenting on his experience working with Telltale Games on Tales of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert stated that he was not very happy to work with the team.

In an interview with USgamer, the author of games such as Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and DeathSpank admitted that he was not happy working with Telltale Games, because, in his opinion, the episodic system is not suitable for classic quests.

“… I don’t think that adventure games are at least those games that I think of as adventure games, well, you know, classic “pointed and clicked”, so I don’t think they can be stories in an episodic format, or at least not like that how it is done today, because for me these games are about creating ever-expanding worlds.

 

They [adventure games] are about putting the player in a small limited space. The more puzzles you solve, the bigger the world becomes. Puzzles are becoming more and more complicated and confusing along with the expansion of the game universe. And episodic games, like the ones that Telltale makes, they don’t look like that.

 

You had Episode 1 and you played it, and that was a good starting point for me, but then you moved on to Episode 2. And so Episode 2 is not built on Episode 1. It is based on it from the point of view of the story, but not from the point of view of puzzles or the world, since it should be isolated from the first one.”

Source: usgamer.net