Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[Curious_Tongue]

Is that little girl voice in Skyrim?

Pissed me off!

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Jack black again???? Lucas arts old games had great voice acting from a cast of unknown voice actors. How much are they paying him?

 

[suejak]

Unknown actors like... Mark Hamill!

And Les Nessman from WKRP in Cincinnati!

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Unknown actors like... Mark Hamill!

And Les Nessman from WKRP in Cincinnati!

Mark hamilll is famous because of luke, which is from a lucas company franchise, so it is amazing he didn't do more LA games. And by that time, mark was working mostly as a voice actor anyway.

The other famous one is from the dig, robert patrick. But all these actors are less known that jack black. Jack black is an actor that appeared and still appears in more films than these guys, even in leading roles more than once. And he already did the voice in the previous DF game.

 

[tuluse]

Mark Hamill is less known than Jack Black

 

[suejak]

I get where's he's coming from. I live in Japan, where School of Rock has a grip of the culture in a way comparable to Star Wars in the rest of the world. Kids play with little Jack Black action figures while they watch Jack Black anime.

 

[DeepOcean]

Jack Black is a subcelebrity in cheap comedy flics, not the biggest cache and it appears that he is just going to do a character. Still, based in his preformance, the money could be better spent somewhere else.

 

[Stabwound]

still haven't even cracked a smile watching anything coming from this game.
except the pitch video.
ooooooooooh well.

I don't get the feeling it's supposed to be comical at all, at least not in the vein of the classic LA games. Listening to the voice acting thing makes it sound even more like a kid's cartoon.

 

[Sceptic]

Unknown actors like... Mark Hamill!

Well done picking the only one anyone knew.

Now name me the voice actors for Laverne in DOTT, or Sophia in Atlantis. Can't remember? oh that's right, because they were so famous Lucasarts didn't even credit them anywhere. This was pretty much their modus operandi for voices up until Full Throttle. The only credit in Atlantis was the guy who voiced Indy, and the only one for DOTT was the voice of Bernard. I think the only ones for Sam & Max were the titulars. Charles Ardai called them out on this rather harshly in the DOTT CD review.

 

[Pyke]

The amount of people working on this game is insane. I really makes me feel rather small!

 

[commie]

DF has to spend the money on something. It's clear that the actual 2D game with generic cutesy art didn't swallow much of the budget at all. Shafter keeps on shafting.

 

[J_C]

generic cutesy art

Generic art? You can sa many things to DFA, but not generic. It has a unique visual style. Cutesy yes, generic no.

 

[suejak]

Unknown actors like... Mark Hamill!

Well done picking the only one anyone knew.

Now name me the voice actors for Laverne in DOTT, or Sophia in Atlantis. Can't remember? oh that's right, because they were so famous Lucasarts didn't even credit them anywhere. This was pretty much their modus operandi for voices up until Full Throttle. The only credit in Atlantis was the guy who voiced Indy, and the only one for DOTT was the voice of Bernard. I think the only ones for Sam & Max were the titulars. Charles Ardai called them out on this rather harshly in the DOTT CD review.

So? I really don't know what you're trying to say. The guy implied that using Jack Black for one minor character was some kind of unprecedented radical deviation from tradition. Meanwhile, Mark Hamill is epic famous, and the WKRP in Cincinnati guy (Bernard of DOTT) is very famous in the US. At least, he was 10-20 years ago.

So using friend-of-Double-Fine Jack Black is not a big deal. Kind of cool. He did a good voice, imo.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Unknown actors like... Mark Hamill!

Well done picking the only one anyone knew.

Now name me the voice actors for Laverne in DOTT, or Sophia in Atlantis. Can't remember? oh that's right, because they were so famous Lucasarts didn't even credit them anywhere. This was pretty much their modus operandi for voices up until Full Throttle. The only credit in Atlantis was the guy who voiced Indy, and the only one for DOTT was the voice of Bernard. I think the only ones for Sam & Max were the titulars. Charles Ardai called them out on this rather harshly in the DOTT CD review.

In the end credits you normally had the cast and voice, at least in sam and max. Fate of atlantis was first released without voice acting. They added later, and they didn't do anything to the credits, only adding doug lee as indy's voice in the beginning.

 

[almondblight]

Seriously? You're comparing Jack Black to Mark Hamill and "the WKRP in Cincinnati guy"? Jack Black still gets leading roles in major films; this wasn't the case for either of the other two when they were doing voice work. Quick, try to think of how many Mark Hamill movies you can name from the 90's.

 

[ghostdog]

As I understand Jack Black is only there to say a couple of lines for a secondary character. They obviously brought him in just for the buzz. It seems to be working.


Jennifer Hale who will be voicing the Ship's AI is certainly going to get paid much more.

 

[Bitcher1]

The amount of people working on this game is insane. I really makes me feel rather small!

Well, you know the saying - good things come in small packages.

 

[commie]

generic cutesy art

Generic art? You can sa many things to DFA, but not generic. It has a unique visual style. Cutesy yes, generic no.

I beg to differ. The whole 'weird angle, weird disproportionate characters' thing like in Psychonauts, Broken Age, The Cave has all been done before in Lucasfilm/LucasArts, late Sierra titles among others. Actually making the characters look sort of realistic like say from Sierra games of 1988-1990(LSL2/3, SQ3, HQ) would actually be more unique, seeing as it was really only widely used for such a short period of time. When VGA became all the rage, Lucasfilm and even Sierra(note later LSL games) started to produce ever more of this cartoony style. DF is just churning out more of the same and it's pretty boring.

 

[J_C]

generic cutesy art

Generic art? You can sa many things to DFA, but not generic. It has a unique visual style. Cutesy yes, generic no.

I beg to differ. The whole 'weird angle, weird disproportionate characters' thing like in Psychonauts, Broken Age, The Cave has all been done before in Lucasfilm/LucasArts, late Sierra titles among others. Actually making the characters look sort of realistic like say from Sierra games of 1988-1990(LSL2/3, SQ3, HQ) would actually be more unique, seeing as it was really only widely used for such a short period of time. When VGA became all the rage, Lucasfilm and even Sierra(note later LSL games) started to produce ever more of this cartoony style. DF is just churning out more of the same and it's pretty boring.

Yes, it is cartoony, with disproportionate characters, like their previous games and the LucasArts stuff. But this is their trademark if you will, the whole video game market is about realistic stuff, making one game in Double Fine style per year is considered unique in my book.

 

[Stabwound]

Seriously? You're comparing Jack Black to Mark Hamill and "the WKRP in Cincinnati guy"? Jack Black still gets leading roles in major films; this wasn't the case for either of the other two when they were doing voice work. Quick, try to think of how many Mark Hamill movies you can name from the 90's.

Mark Hamill didn't do much in the way of acting, but he's a pretty successful and prolific voiceover actor these days. I'm sure he doesn't exactly get paid peanuts for his work.

 

[mindx2]

Jack black again???? Lucas arts old games had great voice acting from a cast of unknown voice actors. How much are they paying him?

If I remember correctly (from either an interview or one one the DF episodes) Jack Black is "donating" his voice to the project. He's not getting paid for this.

 

[Stabwound]

If that's true, that's pretty cool of him. I am mostly irritated by the guy, but that's still cool. He seems pretty chummy with Schafer so it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[tuluse]

Some VGA titles released by Lucas Arts:

Loom (VGA version)
The Dig
Full Throttle
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

These went for a more realistic look, y do lie Commie?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Some VGA titles released by Lucas Arts:

Loom (VGA version)
The Dig
Full Throttle
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

These went for a more realistic look, y do lie Commie?

Full throttle is kind of a mix. Sprites were drawn in a animation fashion, with bold lines.

Monkey island 1 and 2 followed the trend of realism in graphics like indy and last crusade and fate of atlantis. Monkey 2 was the one to introduce cartoon antics, like jaw droping to ground literally, hair leaving guybrush's head when he is scared, etc, but the sprites of humans in general were quite "realistic" and not deformed, as they were in monkey 3. Monkey island 1 humor was more in dialogue, and visually it kept a relative distance to the cartoonish style. Sam and max is based on the art and characters of steve purcell.

If you take all scumm games that had cartoon style and techniques, and that includes Full Throttle and the 2nd monkey island, they all shared a visual similarity, maybe because at that time, all the artists from one game eventually worked in the others. You could say only looking by the graphics if the game was being made by Lucasarts or Sierra, and I'm not talking about verb sentences or text parsers.

I think disapointment with the style of broken age comes from people expecting it to be an extension of Lucas Arts overall style, something that I can see present in psychonauts and even in brutal legend. Broken Age doesn't bring the feeling of lucas arts (or sierra or any other 90's games), but that of mobile phone games. But I must admit that sometimes, broken age characters design kind of remind me of the CGA version of Maniac Mansion, which is the only small visual cue from LA adventures I get.

 

[suejak]

I dunno, who gives a shit, really? I think it looks pretty good. If you're going to go high-resolution hand-drawn, you either have to go super-realistic or cartoony. You can't really pull off the pixelated middle-ground of 1991.