Schafer and LucasArts certainly went all in on trying to invigorate the adventure game genre with Grim Fandango. Rather than being the title that killed the genre, it might be fairer to view it as its last stand. WE’RE PATELLAING YOU THIS Fun fact: 'Grim Fandango' was built on tech borrowed from the brilliant Star Wars adventure 'Jed Knight: Dark Forces II' For the era, and in truth, in many respects even now, Grim Fandango was a hugely ambitious undertaking. As were the books of novelists Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
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Schafer has said that the 1944 movie Double Indemnity, in which an insurance salesman becomes unwittingly embroiled in a murder was a key influence. Said story is centered around the protagonist Manuel ‘Manny’ Calavera (calavera being Spanish for skull), a sort of travel-agent-cum-Grim-Reaper trying to work off a debt in order to travel to death’s final stop, The Land of Eternal Rest.Įlsewhere, if you know what you’re looking for, the influence of late cartoon genius and Hot Rod legend Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth can be seen within the game’s vehicle design, as well as in the creation of Manny’s demon sidekick, Glottis. There’s also flourish of art deco in the world design, most significantly within the vast architecture that scrape the clouds above The Land of The Dead wherein the story is set. Film noir like 'Casablanca' was a huge influence on 'Grim Fandango'. There’s a bit of Aztec mythology in there too, thanks to Schafer’s lifelong fascination with folklore, stemming from anthropology classes he took at university. Grim Fandango, see, is a game about skeletons, stylised Mexican calaca, set within a world that is part Day Of The Dead, part classic film-noir, with a smoky jazz soundtrack and nods to movies like T he Maltese Falcon, On The Waterfront and most notably the 1942 romantic drama Casablanca. In the 2008 book Rogue Leaders: The Story Of LucasArts, it’s said that Shafter’s pitch to make the game passed with a ‘breeze’ based on his prior work on hits like Day Of The Tentacle and Monkey Island. That it was made at all is testament to the respect Shafer’s seismic creativity was held in within the era. It would take an extensive elevator ride for the elevator pitch to be understood, let alone successful.
Regardless, Grim Fandango, now twenty-years old, was certainly a difficult sell. TIBIA TOTALLY HONEST… Even 20 years on, Tim Schafer's classic still feels achingly cool. Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill these were classy, smart, dare we say, sexy adventure games. The late nineties saw a seismic shift in gaming, thanks in part to the release of PlayStation, and to Sony positioning said machine as part console, part lifestyle product, with a raft of titles that grown-ups were being told they could play without feeling any shame. Is it fair to say that, as well as signalling the creative peak of the point and click era, Grim Fandango was also responsible for turning the lights out with a bony finger too? It is perhaps more complicated than that. Faced with financial problems, LucasArt’s most significant rival Sierra stopped making their own adventure games, cancelling Space Quest 7 and Leisure Suit Larry 8 (because every cloud…)
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Upon its release, LucasArts quickly saw fit to cancel planned sequels to Sam & Max Hit The Roadand Schafer’s own Full Throttle. The game had a $3 million production budget – pretty big for the time – and designer Dave Grossman, formally of LucasArts, latterly of Telltale, has said “it was pretty ambitious and expensive, and I don’t think it made very much money back.” Though creator Tim Schafer, who left the company shortly after the Dia De Los Muertos themed adventure to form Double Fine Productions, has insisted Grim Fandango was to some degree profitable, it can’t have been significantly so.
This would be 2000’s fourth Monkey Island adventure Escape From Monkey Island. The evidence for the prosecution appears to be damming.Īfter its release in 1998, publisher LucasArts released just one further adventure game of the kind they’d become so lauded for – brilliantly written, cinematic, often obtuse, but rarely infuriatingly so. So beloved were these games for a certain generation of player, that if this is the case, it’s a casefile that needs reopening. Despite being a title that gamers ‘of an age’ get dewey-eyed at the very mention of – and despite being, look away Guybrush, arguably the greatest point and click adventure of all time – it’s been said that Grim Fandango was the game that killed off the point and click adventure game format.
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