I agree… the navigator head is not an annoying in-joke.
I think they removed it for another reason… because it misled people into believing they had done all there is to do in the woods.
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[quote=“seguso, post:82, topic:137”]
I agree… the navigator head is not an annoying in-joke.
[/quote]Obviously, Ron agrees too. The navigator head itself is still there, and it is an in-joke.
Merely the ability to navigate through the woods with it was disabled, thus rendering the buried treasure room, which is another in-joke in itself, inaccessible.
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I mean: those who did not know monkey island would not have perceived the navigator head as in in-joke. And they would not have perceived using the head in the woods as an in-joke. So, why remove the possibility to navigate? There must be another reason. Probably that it would confuse people into believing they had done all there was to do in the woods.
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I totally agree.
If I did not know about the navigator’s head and I were to enter the woods and see the head is moving, I’d think I’d be solving the puzzle. I would get to the “treasure”, find nothing, and get more confused.
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Hey, look at what I’ve found,
it seems that also the great classic, The Secret of Monkey Island, had some in-jokes that were removed, and back then there wasn’t an option to display them or not.
“The developers left a lot of commented code (code that does not run, only remain as documentation)” you can read in the description of the video.
P. S. Thanks to Nor that posted a video with a similar name in the other thread:
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This is great! Thanks!
There’s the achievement that goes with it. It might be the main reason to keep it.
I find in jokes very fitting when I think about the ending of the game.
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The navigator head brings you to an even bigger in-joke, ie. the buried treasure. I guess, they removed that first, and then there was simply nothing left the navigator would lead you to, so disabling him because of that makes sense.
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I have no idea how they exactly handled this task but from a programming point of view it should be way quicker and easier to keep the treasure room in the game and just disabling the “key” (the navigator head) to access it.
I can see a few drawbacks in this method, because keeping the room could create some little issues, but the end result would be pretty the same.
If this is all so confusing why not remove the head itself?
I wouldn’t be so drastic. After all, there are a few more useless objects.
But appearently the navigator head is more confusing than other objects. Objects have been removed before, like the bottle in casual mode.
The head is a backer object. We can’t remove those in any mode.
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Isn´t the hot sauce that doesn´t appear in casual mode also a backer object? What about that then? Or is it there and just not needed, I forgot.
Correct. The hot sauce is still in Casual mode, but not needed.
I see, well then just disabling the head was the best possible solution.
I get why the team and you have made the decision to keep the option off by default from now on, what I still don’t really get is why there was so much outspoken objection to the in-jokes, especially from the reviewers.
Sure, people unfamiliar with the “classics”, those who don’t have playing Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island among their treasured memories (…what a horrible thought ;)) may feel like outsiders at times. But isn’t it always like that whenever you get into something new - even if you start watching some TV series, but not right from season 1?
I’m wondering, if a reviewer has never watched the earlier seasons and the movie, but now looks into the new Twin Peaks series, is it actually really a “valid” negative critique to point out how frustrating it is that this show continues telling a story started in 1990 and how much enjoyment it takes away that newbies don’t know and won’t understand it, when that should be quite obvious? I’ve never seen Twin Peaks either but have become interested, however I’m going to get hold of season one and start from there. Yeah, sometimes even something as passive as watching TV can take some effort from the consumer…
And this is not even the case with TWP as it actually stands on its own and is not a sequel to anything, at least story-wise. I don’t think that the in-jokes take any of the experience away either. In my opinion, complaining about them is annoying nitpicking. If I played and enjoyed TWP, but had no idea where to place the unclear references, or those blue characters, weird looking tall Texan and green undefined creature in the circus, but eventually figured out they are from past games, it would actually motivate me even more to look into them as well if I am interested. Otherwise, I would simply silently ignore it, which is apparently something that has gotten lost to some extent in the times of social media.
Why have I blubbered on so much about this? Well, it makes me a little concerned if the Thimbleweed team, when they do hopefully make another game at some point in the future, will approach it differently in this regard right from the beginning… 
Which would be sad, because it was obvious that they had fun (but also work!) putting the in-jokes into the game, and I really, really hope that this experience won’t restrain them in any way in the future.
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I liked Thimbleweed Park but I understand why other people considered the continue references to adventure games annoying.
In my opinion, a first cause is that the realization that Thimbleweed Park is in part a game about adventure games and adventure game design comes to the player only in the later stages of the game. With that information, the player is finally able to realize that the numerous references to adventure games were justified and made sense.
But before the player has realized that, the presence of all those references is difficult to understand or justify, because the player is still interpreting the story in a literal way and within this literal interpretation the continue presence of this kind of jokes seems odd and out of place.
A second cause could be that these references were not evenly distributed in the game but were concentrated more in the first chapter(s). They start immediately, during the first interaction between the agent and the Pigeon Brothers and, depending on what the player decides to do, their frequency can be quite high, until they more or less disappear, in the later chapters.
Personally I wasn’t bothered by them, but I see why other people were.
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You don’t? It alienates those who are not well versed in the appropriate meta (this does not mean that 100% of those who were alienated had a problem with the alienation). Those well versed in the meta are not excluded and are in on the jokes (obviously) and, of course, that was rewarding and entertaining for most of us who do understand enough to get many of the references. This game is heavy on in-jokes and heavy on its echo chamber, so I think it’s very obvious why it was such a big talking point even though I personally have no issue with it regarding my own experience.
Well, according to the list of things gone and still in with the option turned off posted in this thread as well as several comments I have read, a high number of complaints were not about the adventure game or meta references but rather the references and jokes connected to other classic Lucasfilm/LucasArts games. That is what I was mainly addressing and commenting on in my post.
But as for one of the meta instances, the conversation with the Pigeon Brothers in the beginning about dying in adventure games, this didn’t even strike me so much as an “annoying in-joke”, more like some subtle info to the players new to this particular game style to feel safe walking around and trying stuff without worrying to die. So far I have only found one way to die in the game, after the character at first refused to do something and then advised me to save the game first. But then in my case this may very likely be some “blindness” that comes from playing the Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventures, the majority of which contain some kind of meta references. (Like even before the finale in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade graphic adventure (which was pretty much following the movie plot and tone), there was this inscripted stone, with your character reading that you would no longer be able to save your game beyond this point. I mean this is meta to some extent and this breaking of the fourth wall did feel untypical, but I found that more helpful than alienating from the game experience.)
Anyhow, as becomes evident by the previously mentioned list of differences, the in-jokes off option doesn’t really remove much of these general adventure game or meta references both of you have commented on. And I think , particularly given the game’s ending, if too many of these references were gone, it would make it actually more frustrating and alienating in the end as the resolution and “twist” in the final chapters might then come off as too random and with not enough substance to them.