#telltale

I'm not done with clay-effect games, and next on my list was Telltale's 2009 four-episode point-and-click adventure. Before the Walking Dead's huge success led to pivoting the company into the kind of choice-based narrative-focused adventures pioneered with their Jurassic Park game, Telltale was reviving the old-school adventure game, including classic LucasArts series Sam and Max and Monkey Island. Between those two, they put out an excellent Strong Bad season and followed it with this series based on Aardman's nostalgic British stop-motion short films.

Prior to this, W&G had had a handful of games and comics expanding on the world of the shorts, and it was just a few years after their first feature film, Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Grand Adventures doesn't exactly build on these, instead featuring an entirely new supporting cast who haven't been seen before or since. They still have the right kind of small-town Northern English charm, though, and make for great support to the low-stakes hijinx; the script too fits this setting impressively well for an American game. This game also acts as the debut for Ben Whitehead as Wallace, taking over from Peter Sallis whose retirement was imminent, and he does a great job in the role. Overall the casting is excellent, although I wish the character of South Asian descent, Mr. Paneer, was played by an appropriate actor; this is still eight years before The Simpsons' Apu controversy, but surely it's never too early to not have white people doing impressions of other races.

Each episode has some mild peril resulting either from some sinister charlatan, or Wallace's good-natured but buffoonish blundering (or both), and makes good use of his wacky contraptions within the vague mid-century parochial English setting. Episodes are themselves broken into chapters which helps keep puzzles and locations contained, finishing with a more action-y setpiece that ups the stakes. Control often swaps between the man and his dog between segments; as an adventure game protagonist Wallace has plenty of befuddled quips and comments, but Gromit is as silent as ever. When the other townsfolk are around they pick up the slack to remark on what he's doing (or trying to do), but occasionally he'll be isolated and although he has some nice subtle expressions that are well observed from his prior appearances, it hurts his effectiveness as a protagonist in this kind of game; not to mention the hint system, which is supposed to kick in if you bumble around too long.

To briefly touch on the plot of each episode, they generally start with Wallace launching a new scheme. The first has him factory-farming bees to deliver their honey, which backfires when he has to rush a huge order and science-magically creates giant bees. In the second, he converts his house into a simulation seaside resort, but everyone's holiday is interrupted by a kind of murder mystery situation. The third has him creating experimental ice cream while an outside instigator cons the town into donating to his travelling fair to ostensibly rebuild a dog shelter; the antagonist figure here makes for a strong story and the carnival for a fun setting. The final episode centres around a romantic misunderstanding between Wallace (now running a private detection firm) and his neighbour that somehow segues into a golf tournament. Each scenario makes creative use of the limited cast and locations of Wallace's house and the main street of the town, and by the end I was quite fond of this little world.

It helps that the game feels so authentic; there's been an effort to approximate the claymation style, with subtle marks on the characters' textures, a limited set of mouth positions, and I thought the eyes in particular matched the Aardman look very well. The two protagonists' walk cycles also capture their eccentricity spot-on, and clearly a lot of care has gone in to give them fitting mannerisms and animations. Jared Emerson-Johnson's soundtrack too hits the mark at establishing the right tone.

From what little I've played of Telltale's point-and-click games, they seem to do well with puzzle design, with good signposting and establishing connections that will be called back to. I did need to consult outside hints just a few times, and I wish I'd figured out the "cycle inventory items" hotkey earlier than the final segment of the final episode, but generally the puzzling experience was pleasant and satisfying. There were plenty of surprisingly delightful sequences along the way, like constructing insults for Mrs. Gabberley to yell at her uncouth husband in a squabble, or cheering her up by obliviously remarking on unrelated items (this [and her Northern patois] is why she was my Weekly Guy, to borrow the parlance of the Telling the Tale podcast).