I loved Thimbleweed Park’s twist when I first played it. However, on my second playthrough I felt more like the game was missing a part of the endgame.
My question to Rob Gilbert™ is, has he found a way to merge a traditional narrative ending with a meta-twist without making the player feel cheated?
Total speculation here, but here’s my take: Maniac Mansion revolutionized video game UIs. I feel like since then, finding the next interface that sets a new standard has been some sort of personal holy grail for him.
If you are right, he won’t find him: In an adventure game you can …
… enter commands
… select a command from some kind of a menu
… just click on an object (or drag and drop objects)
If you try to chose another approach, you won’t get an adventure game. For example the first 3D version of Broken Sword (can’t remember which part of the series) was some kind of a puzzle platformer or Sokoban clone.
The only thing you can do as a designer is to vary one of the three interfaces above. RtMI for example was a single-click-interface with two choices.
So IMHO the more interesting question is: How much control will Ron give the players? In Infocom adventures I can do weird things, just because I am able to enter every possible command. A one-click-interface limits my actions, such games are more like an interactive movie.
I just went back to play some of Delores, because of Ron saying:
“I wasn’t happy with Thimbleweed Park 1, Delores or Return to Monkey Island and wanted to try something new, kind of a hybrid between the best of the three.”
I wanted to check what the difference was in the UI of Delores and RtMI…
They both have left-click for the main thing and right-click does something extra, but in Delores there is a little drop-down menu with right-click that sometimes adds things like open, close, pick-up, etc. for certain things.
With items, RtMI has them in the bag you open up, while Delores has them all along the bottom.
Delores you drag and drop items onto other items/characters/hotspots (holding down left-click), while RtMI you “grab” an item with left-click so it’s stuck to the cursor and then use it on something else.
In both, if you can’t use an item on something, you aren’t given the option - in RtMI it’s a circle-with-slash, while in Delores no sentence appears.
…
That last point is probably my biggest issue - it means you already know what items can be used with other items, whether an item can be used on a hotspot, and whether you can try giving an item to a character.
That UI decision basically removes about 90% of the things you could normally try, including all the potential jokes and all the “I wonder if I can combine/use/give this item in that way” puzzle-deducing you’d normally think about.
Also, to me, dragging and having to hold left-click in Delores seems clunkier than the normal method.
The drop-down right-click menu in Delores also feels odd… I’d rather have the full verb list than a reduced menu.
In theory, this would still allow implementing funny combinations that do not solve any puzzle, if the devs take the time to do so, and if they want to allow for these failure modes in the first place.
And at the very least you still have to try the combination to figure out its not valid, you’re just not “rewarded” with a standard “I don’t know what to do” response, which in my book could be a blessing.
I’d prefer a funny response over nothing any time, though.
That was my biggest issue in RtMI. Sometimes I had an idea that sort of made sense, but no - 
And that broke the immersion. Many times in my games I had to code extra interactions just because some tester friend said “I tried X with Y because of this reason but I got a generic no can do”, and I’m always eager to adapt to feedback. I think it makes the game more immersive, a player can try random things and get a personalized reply makes them think that the devs really thought of everything.
Just saying “nuh-uh, that ain’t the solution we thought of” felt cheap. I was OK with Delores, it was a free experimental game, but for a Monkey Island installment?
This 
Trying things was an essential part of the fun in Maniac Mansion and Zak McKraken -em- Kracken. As kids we discussed on the schoolyard which (weird) things you can do in these games. For example in Zak you can light up a fire in different ways. And in Maniac Mansion you can solve the whole game in different ways. IMHO this freedom is one of the reasons why these games are so popular.
RtMI has a different audience. It was meant to be played by a lot of different people, not only “hardcore” adventure gamers. So it has to be an easy-to-use-interface that minimize frustration. It’s also available/made for consoles (especially the Switch AFAIR).
That was the BASE since Maniac Mansion. Try something unusual or that makes sense. Like putting a hamster into a microwave oven.
I forgave you, just because you are you! 
I think at the very minimum, the game should let you try things that are at least somewhat logical even though they’re incorrect…
I don’t think there needs to be a unique response for absolutely every random combination in the entire game, but there should be for most reasonable guesses.
At the other extreme, I think a unique response for ever single combination could actually get annoying, as sometimes those can be mistaken for clues that suggest you might be on the right track. Sometimes you do just want the game to quickly and plainly tell you if something can’t be done, so then you don’t waste any more time on that idea.
I feel like he already got this correct in TWP1, MI1, MI2…
That was my main concern with that game. The constant feeling that everything (story, UI, general mood of the game…) was dumbed down for an audience that wasn’t me. Hope TWP2 will be better.
In LucasArts games in general, but perhaps especially in MI2 and TWP1.
It seems overall that folks here tend to prefer the old-style UI rather than the more modern, streamlined, and frustration-free UI. We are probably in the minority, but I can’t help feeling we got to experience a way of playing and experiencing games that is just lost these days—a sign of the times, with instant satisfaction and on to the next thing in no time.
Well, yes and no. I like the “freedom” that such an UI gives to me, but some assistance would be nice. For example I can live without the “what is” verb if the cursor tells me the name of the object.
I don’t think so. Ron said that Thimbleweed Park sold very well on the Switch - a system that is mostly bought by families.
And IMHO RtMI would have worked with a complex UI. It’s the story and the IP that sells the game.
I think adventure games should have UIs based on what kind of experience they want the players to have.
if TWP wants the players to truly feel the absurd comedic and surreal experience it’s promising, its UI must be something that allows for such situations. You have to be able to try weird and absurd things in such a game. you have to be able to try “Talk”-ing with a Plant, and get a response related to that.
Not really. For example, I think verbs are superfluous nowadays. But inventory objects, those need freedom!
I wouldn’t go that far, unless old-style also includes Full Throttle / Curse. 
The opposite of being pleased with an appropriate response is a kind of minor frustration that you may have missed out on a funny one. You win some, you lose some.
TWP had a push / pull puzzle which I think would’ve been nicer to operate Tomb Raider style rather than “select push, select object”. Though I suppose you could say that removes an aspect of the puzzle.
Er, but that’s why they got rid of it in the late '80s, didn’t they? 
That’s true, but it’s also true that showing a generic error message wouldn’t have improved anything. What I’m trying to say is that the real problem is they they didn’t handle that combination you thought of; it’s not a flaw in the interface itself. They could have fixed it while keeping the same interface.
However, could it be that the interface itself made them a bit ‘lazy’ when it came to handling nonsensical combinations, thinking ‘well, they can’t release the mouse there anyway, so why should I handle this’?
Changing the subject, I read the thread below, but I still don’t understand what Ron means by: ‘I want to re-look at the UI and verbs.’ Is it possible he wants to reintroduce verbs in some way? I’d be happy about that 
I don’t think so. It’s just a lot (and I mean a lot) of work to write a response for every possible combination. And the voice actors have to say each of these lines, what makes the development more expensive.
I agree. But I felt like the “no can do” was used too much throughout the game, to the point that you could just drag an object around the screen to see if it was useful or not. If you could release the object on every hotspot, you’d need more time for every response, albeit generic.
The UI made bruteforcing faster.
Also true, especially for those that make absolutely no sense, but some games don’t even take into account combinations that do make sense and receiving the generic response is frustrating. Not talking about TWP here, of course.