Eventhough, this in-joke-option is rather silly in itself, imho, it is a valid reason to do another playthrough to find out, what’s different.
Changes I found so far:
Wanted meteor poster is gone.
Skeleton “return to Dr. Fred.” is not mentioned.
Use ketchup bottles: “Take that, Sierra online!” is missing.
“Call Edna for a good time” graffiti is gone. You can still call her, though.
The parcel in the post office is addressed to in-joke dept. instead of Ed.
The comment about the cut room at the bus stop.
The Razor and the Scummettes announcement is gone from the bulletin board.
Pirate comment on the cannon.
Missing from the circus audience: Dr. Fred, Edna, Guybrush, Zak, Annie, the alien from the phone company, and Green Tentacle. A blonde woman in black and a man with gray hair and beard are moved around, probably to distribute the remaining audience more evenly.
“Look at” Graphics BASIC does not mention its authors.
At the radio studio, the playlist hotspot is disabled, so you can’t read it.
The navigator’s head does not work.
I probably still missed things in the dialogs, which are a lot and I can’t remember everything.
Things still there:
The pixelating body.
Mention of the intro gun shot.
Comment on the photo’s angle.
The E.T. game.
“This cut-scenes is starting to get long” during the sheriff’s introduction.
Pigeon Brothers dialog option about adventure game design.
Willie asking for second hand crystals.
The navigator’s head (although non-functional).
Mentioning of the year 2017.
The men eating plant.
The “You Tube” option.
Backer’s book titles.
The 60 Hz hum reference on the radio.
Willies confessions, including Gredo.
When the radio trivia is won, you can name yourself Guybrush Threepwood.
Everything wire-frame, including Edna.
So I’m a bit puzzled what the criteria were. How come some right in your face silly comments aren’t considered by this option while some much more subtle things are?
You really invested some time in it, thanks for the list!
It seems to me that the main criterion (but possibly not the only one) was to cut references to past adventures games and to point-and-click culture, to avoid younger audiences feeling clueless about the meaning of specific sentences and older audiences to get annoyed by the amount of this kind of references.
Said that, I also think that more than a serious move they did this change as a tongue-in-cheek indirect way to reply to those people who complained. Putting the new option near the one for the toilet paper orientation almost attributes to it the same amount of seriousness.
About this entry:
If I remember it correctly, the references to adventure game design were cut only in part. They start talking about it but they don’t talk about this topic as much as when the option is switched off.
What is the purpose of this option? Sounds a bit drastic, like a “beep you!” to people who mentioned something about too many in-jokes (“oh, you think there are too many? here! have none at all. Are you happy???”).
Removing all references to past games and in-jokes is silly, since that wasn’t the problem. I think most of the complaints (and I agree with them, although to me is not so much a complaint but more like a very mild annoyance) was regarding the sheer number of them. It’s like every other line or every wall had some zinger intended to evoke memories – but only for the first couple of hours of the game, then… poof! they’re gone or toned down.
To me it felt as if the game was feeling its way, overcompensating for its insecurity about its own merits, until it got its confidence a bit on and could stand on its own.
That’s not an injoke, since it’s not a Lucas adventure game I thought, anyway, it was just there as a false clue that Delores might be the murderer, like the circus flyer for Ransome
I just updated to the latest version and I see that the option “Annoying in-jokes” is unselected by default. Just to be clear, if I want the game back to the way it was originally, do I tick the box?
[quote=“Guga, post:6, topic:137”]
That’s not an injoke, since it’s not a Lucas adventure game
[/quote]Nor are the cut room, the Graphics BASIC credits and the Sierra death reference.
Other lucas references like the men eating plant or the 60 hz hum are still there.
Well, I can see a tendency that this option affects mainly older adventure games where Ron was involved, but there are exceptions to this, obviously.
Hello, David.
I am a bit sad that the new default setting is the one with changed behavior; meaning that if I install the new version, I will play it it in a different way than before.
Maybe for the next version, you can change the default to “on”?
I think the point was that the in-jokes are for the hardcore fans, so any new person playing the game wouldn’t see them at all. I think it’s a bit over the top, but hey.
We talked about which way we wanted to do this. We decided this was the way we wanted it set up since going forward, the majority of players may not have played our old games.
I think you are right, and the in-jokes should be included as standard.
I have moderated a large forum for a long time, and I have gathered, that the most vocal critics are maybe 1% of users, while the contented 99% are silent. This creates a pressure to change things for the 1%. And if you do, the 1% will not be contented even with the changes. But the 99% are annoyed. So, you just piss everyone off.
But players who are not familiar with the old games wouldn’t notice most of them anyway.
Oh, but you do. You get a constant stream of remarks that make no sense, but suggest they are tied to something you are not familiar with.
It’s been a long time since I played the old LucasFilms adventure games, so much so that other than a rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle, I would miss any other reference – and I did, for the most part, evinced by reading others pointing them out in the blog comments.
Although they went right over my head, I still noticed that they were references to… something.
Just out of curiosity, is it really the case that the majority of players may not have played your old games? That’s very good news! It means that Thimbleweed Park has broken out of the “hardcore/fanboy” domain and dipped its toe into the mainstream.
I was just wondering if you had any signs to point in that direction or if it was just wishful thinking.
I thought, anyway, it was just there as a false clue that Delores might be the murderer, like the circus flyer for Ransome
