Quote:
Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83
Really?
He is a wonderful artist: after providing artistic support on Full Throttle, he painted awesome backgrounds (and animations) for The Dig and CMI (these ones were really amazing), although I think that his work on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was pretty much forgettable.
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Heaven forbid that that a
2d illustrator's work on a primitive real-time 3D action game isn't mindblowing. Seen his concept art for the game? Also, there's probably a big difference between enthusiasm for a game you were simply assigned to versus a game that's your brainchild, and which you've been nursing along for ten years to make a reality (AVS). Sometimes you have to work on a game because you have to. There's a reason there's only one Tim Schafer, and it's not just because he's awesome, but because he was lucky. Unless you think those other designers wouldn't have wanted to head their own crazy adventure ideas too if not for this really inconvenient factor called reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AndreaDraco83
I wouldn't say that, back in the day, he did too much to make the genre what it was. Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, Noah Falstein and Hal Barwood* did it, but Tiller - at least in my opinion - is a great artist/painter that has yet to prove what is capable of in designing an adventure game.
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Not a one of the guys you mentioned started as the adventure game gods they became, you know. They worked their way up from positions like playtester, co-scripter, and artist. Noah and Hal's contributions to the genre are significant, but pretty isolated. Other than Fate of Atlantis, I'm not sure what amazing thing Hal has gifted to the genre or the gaming industry in general, unless you're the world's only fan of Big Sky Trooper and RTX: Red Rock. Looks like I lost a bet. (Yeah, I think he had limited control on what he could do and had to deal with the mismanaged nonsense that was LEC back in the mid-to-late 90s, and Noah and Hal have done a lot of contract work and there's Mata Hari, etc. I'm just saying let's not hold one person to a standard and not someone else.)
You know that Larry Ahern was a lowly artist, just like Bill Tiller, and that CMI was his first game as a project leader, right? And look at how that turned out. I'm not saying we should expect every case to be like that, but I don't think you can begrudge people faith, especially when there's really nothing but good things to assume of AVS. Yeah, Bill Tiller is most known for his work as an artist, and I think it's safe to say that it's that aspect of AVS that most people are looking forward to from him. What of it? He's a guy who's been working in the industry for over a decade - I think he's as prepped to helm his own project as anyone else. Tiller
has done design work, by the way. You may not be familiar with it and much of it may have been on cancelled games, but he's still had his hand in that aspect of development before. Maybe he hasn't "proved" himself, in your mind, but I'm not sure how he's supposed to do that if you don't give him the chance?
Furthermore, even though AVS is Tiller's baby, he's not the only person making this game. Like is the case with Telltale or Double Fine, Autumn Moon is full of a bunch of ex-LEC names. Legend Bill Eaken supposedly did a lot of design work for the game, and it has a head writer and designer. Bill's fingerprints are probably all over this sucker, but if you think he wrote every line of dialogue or constructed every puzzle (whether that's a negative or positive thing in your mind), you're quite wrong. Monkey Island may have been Ron's idea, but the brilliance of that games was the result of collaboration.
Bottom line: A lot of people consider AVS to be an incredibly promising game, and for damn good reason. Maybe if it turns out to be less than good you'll be able to derived some pleasure out of that, but if you can't see what gets people excited about the game, you're simply not paying attention.
