I wasn’t clear. I was talking specifically about the LucasFilm/LucasArts meta.
Yes, the in-jokes off option doesn’t completely strip the game and it’s all about balance. To me it looks about right for those who aren’t clued up on adventures, particularly LucasF/A ones. I can’t speak for them though, but can only have a sense or feeling of it. Would need to hear from those who have played it as such who aren’t PnC fanatics. I know that as I was playing it I did question how this would come across to a much less experienced and new audience. The devs don’t like that some people had such thoughts while playing but that’s how it was. I also take the view that despite the alienation that can occur by having all the jokes, they might make a certain group of newer experiencers intrigued to discover more and understand our strange world.
I got the impression that the majority of the reviews (also those that have complained) hadn´t even completed the game, because they all mentioned that they hadn´t. At least those I´ve read.
Oh, okay. Well, this one tricky topic. However I still stand by my precise words that I personally don’t really get the level of outspoken objection to the in-jokes, but (plucking my words here ;)) what I didn’t say was that I had no comprehension whatsoever as to why newer experiencers might be confused and feel “left out” at times. (The term “alienated” seems a little too harsh in my opinion.)
And I do get the reasoning why the devs invested the time and work to “fix” this for the less experienced new audiences. After all, market place realities makes them their target group now that all of “us” have backed or bought the game. Yes, while they don’t like that some people had such thoughts, overall I had the impression that they didn’t seem too happy with the level of this critique either.
I am certainly biased though. When I was playing TWP, I honestly didn’t question at all how the references would come across to a new audience, I got the game I felt was made for “me” (didn’t know I was that possesive and egoistic :D) and finally there was the project I had wished for since the Double Fine adventure… err… kickstarted the whole Kickstarter era. I felt like Thimbleweed Park finally delivered what Broken Age had promised. Or let’s rather say, what I thought it had promised to me before it turned into something else… I have yet to really play through that game, as it just didn’t catch me, most likely because I simply deemed it too different and “modern” from what I was really hoping or waiting for, with the LucasF/A vibes, references and meta missing. Meaning that this works both ways.
From what I have read, I think that it’s a mix of both things.
I think that one important point is that what some reviewers have lamented doesn’t match exactly with the jokes/references that the developers have removed, because the authors decided to react to the criticisms in a sarcastic way, removing more than the jokes/references the critics were lamenting of.
Let’s have a look at what some reviewers actually said about the jokes and the references…
IMPORTANT: almost all of the following excerpts come from reviews that were extremely positive. Overall, critics and reviewers loved the game. I have just picked the parts in which the reviewers stated why they didn’t like the quantity of the references or in-jokes.
Thimbleweed Park is primarily aimed at genre fans so plenty of self-referential jokes were expected, but not quite so many of them were expected to arrive straight out of the gate, and they’re pretty on the nose.
Within the first 15 minutes you can find yourself in a long discussion of the merits of LucasArts’ adventure gaming over competitors at the time, as well as modern games, taking a fairly smug jab at Sierra’s back catalogue in the process. It’s funny but it goes on for way too long and this happens several times throughout the game. It doesn’t exactly feel like arrogance, but it does feel like the actual developers are trying a bit too hard to deliver the fan service, as though earnestly trying to justify the game’s existence. This is totally unnecessary; behind all the self-referential waffle is a cracking mystery in a beautifully realised setting that feels right at home in the ID@Xbox catalogue.
The constantly self-referential jokes are wearisome enough when they’re lampshading the game’s design choices: A corpse is said to be “pixelating” (in a nod to the game’s old-school graphics) and two pigeon-clad kooks deliver a lengthy rant about how LucasArts-style games, like this one, are superior to those by Sierra Games, because you don’t have to worry about dying. And this humor grows even worse once it becomes a major part of the plot. Players can easily shrug off hit-or-miss references to text-based adventure games, but not when they’re forced to play such a game.
That’s part of the restraint issue, but the other part is the Sierra jokes. They’re in the game very early on, but they pummel the point extremely hard. Obviously most of us aren’t aware of what went on between Lucasarts and Sierra, but unless I’m missing the tone, it feels like there are still heavy grudges - at least one way.
Thimbleweed Park follows the tradition of treating the fourth wall as an optional extra, so characters frequently make reference to adventure games — perhaps more than will be to everyone’s tastes.
As you might expect from a game funded by Kickstarter it’s full to bursting with in-jokes and references, and some of them can get quite obnoxious – and even start to filter into the puzzle solutions.
[…]
Cons: The use of verb icons does seem self-indulgent. And the script itself can get a bit tied up with in-jokes and references. Some weak voiceovers.
I’ll start with a rant, so bear with me a moment. Thimbleweed Park has elements of both noir and parody, and an air of self-awareness to it, with the last being a little too prevalent for my taste. It’s not uncommon for characters to reference pixels or game mechanics and repeatedly break the fourth wall. This sort of tongue-in-cheek humor is great as the occasional wink and nudge to the ribs, but Thimbleweed hammers this in so hard it leaves bruises. It’s not completely unjustified, as a reason for this becomes more and more apparent as the game progresses, but even though I get it, I still didn’t care for how frequently it happened.
Terrible Toybox really bend over backwards to make the game as chock-full of fan-friendly moments as possible, mostly to the 1987-1991 period of LucasFilm Games (nee LucasArts) adventures that the team are best known for but also with numerous references to the likes of The Simpsons and Star Trek. It never gets out of hand like it did in Randal’s Monday, but there were moments when I felt “wow, seriously, another one?”.
None of that is to say that these jokes are bad: they’re not. But the fact that Gilbert and Winnick (together with the rest of the development team at Terrible Toybox) have packed out the game with brilliant opportunities for backers to get recognition (most noticeably in several places you’ll need to visit for puzzle solutions, like the phone book and library) makes the inclusion of a million in-jokes even more lazy and even less forgivable.
You’ll also find old-school references on every corner, which is fun at first (oh look, it’s Chuck the Plant!) but can get a little grating by the 20th or 30th LucasArts callback.
At their worst, the many adventure game references feel almost apologetic, as if the game isn’t entirely confident in its own skin, but as it moves toward an ending, it embraces its own oddities and past in a way that left me entirely satisfied.
I had an overall positive impression of the game. Sure there are times where I thought the game was overdoing things a little. Like, breaking the fourth wall for the sake of it. Or the gratuitous jokes at Sierra adventure games (famous in the 80s-90s), as if LucasFilm games were exempt of defects.
Here is what I take from this short press review:
Almost nobody complained about harmless references that people who didn’t play the classic games will never notice, like the poster of a meteor in the sheriff Office or the characters of past adventure games in the circus audience. Still, these features were removed, probably because their removal was part of the sarcastic response.
More than one reviewer didn’t like the way Sierra was cited
One reviewer highlighted the fact that the first self-referential joke appeared within the first 15 minutes of the game
Several reviewers complained about the continuous fourth-wall break (even after they realized why it was logical to happen)
Almost all reviewers have complained about an excessive quantity of references about adventure games
So, from what I can understand from this unscientific analysis of some complaints, it seems to me that constantly talking about (the world of) adventure games (which includes the times in which they were cited for fourth-wall breaking purposes) has not been appreciated.
That’s odd… I read all the reviews I could find on launch day and the week thereafter (and there were quite a lot!) and I don’t recall any of them commenting on not having finished the game. In fact, I recall most of them distinctly talking about the “meta” ending, for better or worse (some loved it, some found it intriguing, some didn’t care for it, etc.).
Personally, I thought the problem with the in-jokes was that there were just too many at the very beginning of the game, and it felt a bit distracting, especially if (like me), you’re not “in” on most of those jokes because you’re not a hard-core adventure gamer of yore.
In my opinion, they weren’t bad jokes, and even the fact that there were there was not bad in itself either. (Notice I said a bit distracting, not annoying.) To me it felt as if the game didn’t trust it was entertaining or funny or interesting enough and had to ramp up the jokes to ensure you laughed and winked with it. I thought this was unfortunate because it was not necessary – I was already in for the ride, laughing out loud, and winking along with it; it didn’t have to try that hard.
This is the sort of comment I saw in some of the most fair reviews. Of course, there were those who crapped all over the game for this and any other number of their own personal sins, which I thought was unwarranted. However, the majority I read were a bit more direct, if not as eloquent, with comments like “what’s with all the in-jokes? So many of them!!!”
I did laugh a lot about the digs at Sierra, particularly because I’ve played quite a bit of Sierra adventure games, and always hated the insta-death, learn-by-death, and hunt-the-pixel mechanics; so it all seemed so á propos.
In the end, I don’t know what would have been a good balance. I feel like the jokes were heavier in the first act of the game, but that could have been due to many reasons relating to storytelling, and the fact that the bulk of the player’s discovery happens at that point.
For what it’s worth, I found most of those jokes (the ones I could actually “get” and relate to) very funny.
-dZ.
EDIT: I see that @LowLevel posted a better response with actual quotes from reviewers. Thanks for that!
Whoa, after this digest someone might feel as though the negative remarks about the references or in-jokes have just been “hammered in so hard it leaves bruises”. Seriously though @LowLevel, thanks a lot for your efforts retrieving and summarising the quotes here, excellent job!
And okay, point taken, most of those excerpts are indeed not about the references to the classic games. I might have taken it the wrong way when I saw the list of what had actually been made “optional”. Now considering that all the reviews were extremely positive, are the lamentations perhaps just critique for the sake of critique to some extent? I mean, as a reviewer, you can’t just simply praise a game without mentioning some “minuses”, that would make it look like you haven’t done your job properly or took a bribe? So where does this kind of criticism really stand in terms of balance?
Having such a broad selection of excerpts in front of me, I find only some of the remarks the point in a neutrally, informative and eloquently written way, while others strike me as way too attacking and absolutely unwarranted.
I think that’s simply wrong. It was more like three or four “text adventure locations” through which the player navigated by means of dialogue options, even with the codeword ready once you had come across it. Nobody was forced to actually play a text-based adventure as that would have included typing, which would probably have been frustrating indeed.
…and suspected “there are still heavy grudges - at least one way”, which I consider way too much interpreting into plain jokes. “As if LucasFilm games were exempt of defects” - this is a very interesting quote! Other reviewers are considering TWP’s in-jokes as a sign of it not being “confident in it’s own skin” or justifying its existence while this reviewer criticises TWP for being too bold or cocky, which are two explanations that couldn’t be more contradicting.
I simply took the Sierra references as friendly banter and wonder why some reviewers had to make a psycho-analysis out of them.
Just my two cents, but I believe it’s a better way and fits more to the overall tone to have them early on in the game rather than randomly appearing half-way, particularly in TWP’s case. (For example, I always found it more annoying if a TV show had been running for years and then all of a sudden and out of nothing breaks the fourth wall. (House of Cards has been doing it since the very first episode and with that established this meta style of breaking the fourth wall to the highest degree, which remarkably in this case doesn’t alienate the viewers, but makes them feel more involved. It would be quite weird though if this had only been started in the more recent seasons as that would be a drastic and unexpected change.)
Or in order to quite literally and amateurishly translate a rule of design I learned during my studies: “One time is no time, two times is coincidental, only three or more times make it obvious that there is an artist’s intention behind it”. So I think it is okay to discuss about the numbers of in-jokes and meta references, but in my opinion the critique that they appear too early in the game isn’t really justified.
I liked that joke very much, back then, and one of the reasons why I loved it was that it was an elegant and effective example of satire.
The reference to Sierra was indirect (their name is never cited in MI1 and Guybrush never pronounces it) and it was conveyed through a visual element which was immediately perceived as representative of the Sierra games, for those who played them. Also, it was just one single joke.
In comparison, TWP used a very explicit comedy approach in which a main character directly cites Sierra more than one time and makes fun of them in a way that some people could perceive as cheap: “Take that, Sierra On-Line!”, “If this were a Sierra On-Line graphic adventure, I’d be dead now.”.
Maybe a phrase like “Take that, Sierra On-Line!” is exactly what the developers needed to better define the character of Delores, who speaks that line, but I can understand why some people considered the result just a series of cheap jabs that were very distant from the well crafted example of satire used in MI1.
I’m no expert about this topic and I’m not able to do a objective analysis of the criticism that the game has received by some reviewers.
The only thing that comes to my mind is that it’s probably better if we distinguish between the ability of the reviewers to notice a feature that could be troublesome to some players (and that, as such, should be reported in the review) and their ability to interpret why that feature exists (which is an activity open to speculations).
Personally, I’m interested only in the fact that several reviewers have noticed an aspect of the game that they thought could have been perceived as excessive by some readers and that they did their job reporting it.
Unfortunately, as you noticed, some of the reviewers also decided to adventure on the slippery ground of conjecturing the causes of some of those aspects and as a consequence some of their conclusions were a bit over-the-top and uncalled for. It happens, because reviews are subjective interpretations, not objective analyses.
Usually I just ignore this kind of “conclusions” and focus on the aggregated data of what the reviewers felt, trying to find a common sentiment or opinion among all the observed articles.
At the end of the day it comes down to expectations; whether you were expecting a standalone adventure with a few throwbacks, or if you were expecting a lot of forced nostalgia interrupting an otherwise compelling storyline.
Yeah, about that… Have to disagree with you there, bud…
I haven’t played Maniac Mansion nor any of the Monkey Island games. Not new to the genre, just missed the early stuff due to not having a PC until the mid 90’s. I didn’t discover this game until last week, completely missed the KickStarter. So yeah, I’m one of the tens of thousands of players who came “after the die-hards already started and most probably finished playing”.
However, I do not mind the “annoying” in-jokes at all. I’m glad I stumbled upon the option while exploring the menus prior to playing, although I had to actually google what this option was supposed to do exactly (the option “Toilet Paper Over” was even more cryptic, although its impact is less severe).
I relish these in-jokes; they pique my curiosity and give me a reason to go out and discover your earlier work. But I find it bloody annoying that I even have to visit the menus to discover these cryptic options, and then require a detour through Google to figure out what the hell they even mean. I would have preferred either a clearer wording, or a tooltip informing me of what the impact on the gameplay was exactly. As they stand now, these tooltips are the UI equivalent of those “dumb illogical jokes” that require external resources such as walkthroughs, which you rail against in some of your blog posts.
And what about the people not on this board, who haven’t followed the discussion, and who don’t bother exploring the options because they assume games these days come with sensible defaults? Don’t they deserve the choice between having these in-jokes or not? Why should the fact that one doesn’t religiously explore the options menu make them unworthy of experiencing the full game?
The solution is simple: instead of hiding this away in the options, give players the choice at the start. Heck, I would even argue that those who choose the hardcore option would want to have this option turned ON by default.
Given that I agree with Ron’s point, this is noticeable.
Maybe it is a good idea to add two lines of explanation for the options appearing as mouse-over…
If the developers have decided that the “default/standard” version is the one without the in-jokes and that the option is now just an easter-egg for those who have the interest and the patience to explore the options and to try them without exactly knowing what they do, I wonder if adding an explanation of what the options do would make sense, in this specific case.
In my opinion a more practical issue with the in-jokes option being turned off by default is that this prevents an achievement to be collected.
The fact that the annoying in joke tickbox in the menus feels like an annoying in joke in and off itself to some people is so needlessly meta I can´t even begin to describe how perfectly it fits to the game as a whole, I love it!
Actually, it feels more like a big f**k you to some who suggested that the game was a bit on the nose and was too heavy with the in-jokes throughout the first half of the game. Instead of toning them down or even a “thanks but we like it this way,” the response was a harsh and over-the-top “you don’t like my jokes? Then how do you like it without the in-jokes at all?”
Mr. Gilbert’s comments on the feature seem to waffle between “yeah, we did it on purpose to shut people up because it was a stupid complaint” and “we thought it would make more sense to default to ‘off’ for newer players that may not be familiar with the in-jokes.”
I agree that at least the “Hard” mode should default to “on” for the in-jokes.
Because that transgression is easily remedied: just tick the box and you’ll never have to even think about toilet paper being treated in any philistine way. LOL!
Or let’s rather say, what I thought it had promised to me before it turned into something else… I have yet to really play through that game, as it just didn’t catch me, most likely because I simply deemed it too different and “modern” from what I was really hoping or waiting for, with the LucasF/A vibes, references and meta missing. Meaning that this works both ways. 
Seriously though 
