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No new postsIt’s time to talk about Guybrush Threepwood Syndrome.
I can no longer sit back and watch beloved staples of gaming history fall prey to this chilling disease that has rocked the very core of a genre we all know and love. I am talking about Guybrush Threepwood Syndrome - the alarming phenomena of gradually adopting the physique and demeanour of LucasArts point-and-click adventure game protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood.
Symptoms
How do you know a loved one has been snared by its trap? The warning signs are clear.
Has your favourite video game protagonist experienced extreme weight loss and grown several inches taller?
Does the character exhibit erratic, jerky movements like that of a hipster-doofus?
Are you currently playing Deponia? If you answered yes to any of these questions - please consult with a medical professional immediately.
Diagnosis
There is no known cure for Guybrush Threepwood Syndrome. Once a character crosses over to Guybrush, it makes lots of money and gets lots of critical acclaim making it nigh impossible to ever recover. The best we can do is encourage game developers and artists to have more confidence in their own creativity so that one day we may all play a comedy adventure game that doesn’t lean on plagiarism as a convention.
Thank you for your time.
First one to go through Guybrush Threepwood Syndrome was of course Guybrush himself in The Curse of The Monkey Island. I would rather say adventure games went through LucasArts syndrome in mid 90’s when all those Bud Tucker-s and Amazon Queen-s were trying to imitate LucasArts with varying results.
I think you have a point there. Only I wouldn’t blame Guybrush for it. It’s a wider phenomenon called Disneyfication.
PC means personal computer
I think you have a point there. Only I wouldn’t blame Guybrush for it. It’s a wider phenomenon called Disneyfication.
Good call. Curse was definitely Disneyified.
I’m probably in the minority here, but personally whenever I get Disney vibes from screenshots it makes me less interested in a game than I was before. It gives off the impression to me that A. It’s targeted at kids, and B. It’s not a story that’s meant to be taken seriously.
Most of my favorite works of fiction combine comedy and drama very well. Stories that are strictly comedic usually just aren’t my thing.
I’m probably in the minority here, but personally whenever I get Disney vibes from screenshots it makes me less interested in a game than I was before. It gives off the impression to me that A. It’s targeted at kids, and B. It’s not a story that’s meant to be taken seriously.
I can sympathise with this - King’s Quest VII really kicked off this issue all those years ago. The new Larry game is legitimately well written despite the art style and definitely something Al Lowe can be proud of if the industry didn’t burn him so much.
However, I do think a lot of adventure devs have this subconscious desire to emulate LucasArts because that’s the frame of reference for a lot of us. The point-and-clicks we loved the most and stayed with us because of their timeless design.
Very good point here! Will take this into account in our development 
Very guilty of this, mainly because Mi3 Guybrush was the first adventure game character I inhabited (that sounds weird) on my PC, and to me he still strikes the perfect balance between hipster doofus, smart ass, and loveable.
I do agree making Larry taller was a bit too out of character. I somehow always associated him with Joe Pesci (don’t know why), and this new iteration is nothing like him 
I don’t much like the Guybrush Threepwood syndrome and how it turned this:
Into whatever this is:
But I don’t see what Deponia (Bestgame) has to do with this:
It’s cartoonish but it’s not disney-like nor COMT-like, nor excessively smug.
there is actually a mod to the remastered version of Monkey 1 that replaces Guybrushes looks into something more bearable. I wholeheartedly recommend it as it changes cutscene graphics as well.
Screenshots in my blog post use the hair mod. They didn’t change his face, but the hair is much better.
https://playernone.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-secret-of-monkey-island-special.html
I do agree making Larry taller was a bit too out of character.
Yes and no.
It was part of the charm that a short, fat, and balding guy tries to score tall, thin, and good-looking women. Changing the character design totally takes something away from that.
But then again, in the first three Larry games he wasn’t much shorter or fatter than other characters, be that a limitation of the graphics at the time or a design choice, so “out of character” is really applicable only when adding a clause “with cartoon style Larry”.
Anyway, I fail to see much connection between Guybrush and Larry design, or Deponia, or other games. Yes, MI3 made cartoon kind of graphics very popular in adventure games. Is it because of that game that other games use cartoon graphics? That’s an assumption that is very hard to prove. You could even argue that MI3 design was what it was because Sam & Max were the inspiration for the change in the graphic style.
It would be interesting if someone with much time and much connections went out to interview all those people and tried to write an article about developments in adventure game graphics. I don’t think we will ever see that article.
I do agree making Larry taller was a bit too out of character.
Yes and no.
It was part of the charm that a short, fat, and balding guy tries to score tall, thin, and good-looking women. Changing the character design totally takes something away from that.
But then again, in the first three Larry games he wasn’t much shorter or fatter than other characters, be that a limitation of the graphics at the time or a design choice, so “out of character” is really applicable only when adding a clause “with cartoon style Larry”.
Anyway, I fail to see much connection between Guybrush and Larry design, or Deponia, or other games. Yes, MI3 made cartoon kind of graphics very popular in adventure games. Is it because of that game that other games use cartoon graphics? That’s an assumption that is very hard to prove. You could even argue that MI3 design was what it was because Sam & Max were the inspiration for the change in the graphic style.It would be interesting if someone with much time and much connections went out to interview all those people and tried to write an article about developments in adventure game graphics. I don’t think we will ever see that article.
I don’t think Sam & Max inspired MI3 much.
I think the reason Curse was so influential was that Larry and Bill went through a very intensive creative process.
This interview outlines that process in detail.
https://scummbar.com/resources/articles/BillTillerInterview/tillerconferance.html
More games would benefit from putting so much thought into graphical style. It seems many developers just say “it should look like Disney” or “let’s make it look like MI3”.
It’s interesting that they specifically did NOT want the game to look Disney. Here’s a quote from Bill:
As I mentioned earlier, I was very influenced by many of Disney’s animated movies. I even went to an animation school where many Disney’s top artists taught. So the Disney style was ingrained deeply into my artistic psyche. Although this would have been great if I were working at Disney, it was actually a bit of a liability for me on Curse of Monkey Island. The first two Monkey Island games started off as a spoof of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So their art followed this theme and had very beautiful Disney-like backgrounds. Larry Ahern didn’t want to have any of it. His mantra on the backgrounds was “If people look at it and say it looks like a Disney film, we have failed.” This sort of put me in a panic. I mean, I was all about the Disney style. What was I going to do?
Luckily for me, we were ahead of schedule and I had about five months of pre-production time. My first ideas were nice but not right for the style of the game. Larry didn’t have an exact idea of what he wanted. He wanted me to develop it and then he would let me know when I got there.
Member of the NAALCB - (North American Anti- Lobster Cop Brigade) since 2019.
I guess it depends on what is understood by “Guybrush syndrome”. If it’s MI3 Guybrush, hell yes, I am all for it (I guess it helps that it was the first game I’ve played in the series, I understand others having a hard time warming up to new, lanky Guybrush).
If it’s MI Special edition graphics Guybrush, well, that’s just crappy art no matter how you spin it. What was done to that was a travesty. I don’t even want to blame the artists, maybe it was just a matter of being forced to do everything on unrealistic time and budget (the rushed EVERYTHING sure seems to point in that direction).
I seem to recall reading, that MI1 SE was done in a relatively short time to see if there was a demand for such a thing. After they noticed there was, they spend a bit more time and care in MI2 SE. The quality of the redone art is quite noticeably higher in the sequel as are the overall mechanics.
It’s interesting that they specifically did NOT want the game to look Disney. Here’s a quote from Bill
Disneyfication doesn’t only mean art direction (although to me COMI looks totally Disney), but also the general shift from pirate or whatever settings to a more standardized, kids-friendly, modern American era-like world ruled my marketing - the kid who sold ships, hotel turned into a tourist attraction, the theme park, plants with signs attached, even Stan who was originally intended as a parody on modern salesmen was eventually turned into a modern salesman selling life insurances. The COMI version of Guybrush was designed to fit the world and he always seemed inspired by those Disney quirky heroes-wanna-be such as Alladin or Arthur from The Sword in the Stone to me.
PC means personal computer
I do agree making Larry taller was a bit too out of character.
Yes and no.
It was part of the charm that a short, fat, and balding guy tries to score tall, thin, and good-looking women. Changing the character design totally takes something away from that.
But then again, in the first three Larry games he wasn’t much shorter or fatter than other characters, be that a limitation of the graphics at the time or a design choice, so “out of character” is really applicable only when adding a clause “with cartoon style Larry”.
Anyway, I fail to see much connection between Guybrush and Larry design, or Deponia, or other games. Yes, MI3 made cartoon kind of graphics very popular in adventure games. Is it because of that game that other games use cartoon graphics? That’s an assumption that is very hard to prove. You could even argue that MI3 design was what it was because Sam & Max were the inspiration for the change in the graphic style.It would be interesting if someone with much time and much connections went out to interview all those people and tried to write an article about developments in adventure game graphics. I don’t think we will ever see that article.
LSL 1 Larry was neither fat nor balding. He actually presented rather well
It’s interesting that they specifically did NOT want the game to look Disney. Here’s a quote from Bill
Disneyfication doesn’t only mean art direction (although to me COMI looks totally Disney), but also the general shift from pirate or whatever settings to a more standardized, kids-friendly, modern American era-like world ruled my marketing - the kid who sold ships, hotel turned into a tourist attraction, the theme park, plants with signs attached, even Stan who was originally intended as a parody on modern salesmen was eventually turned into a modern salesman selling life insurances. The COMI version of Guybrush was designed to fit the world and he always seemed inspired by those Disney quirky heroes-wanna-be such as Alladin or Arthur from The Sword in the Stone to me.
I’ve heard this before. Can’t help but wonder if you have even played the first Monkey Island. It’s full of stuff like a guy in a troll costume, a vending machine, neon signs, a staple remover, printed t-shirts, etc.
NP: A Link Between Worlds, Beneath a Steel Sky and Vampyr
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