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Guybrush Threepwood, the quick-witted bumbling pirate from classic point and click adventure series Monkey Island, would be “a great character” for Microsoft’s Project Natal, developer Telltale has said.
Telltale Games, the developer behind the episodic releases of Sam & Max (the first series is out now on XBLA) and Wallace & Gromit, is about to release the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island, a brand new, five-part episodic Monkey Island series.
At E309 Microsoft revealed Project Natal, a motion control sensor device that detects full body movement and vocal commands.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com, CEO Dan Connors said that Natal is a “huge thing for what we’re doing”.
He said: “Obviously with the type of games that we make, the idea of making a person an actor inside of one of our adventures is an idea that’s been theoretical for a long time. It’s nice to see things happening that can get it closer.”
Three technical demos were shown to showcase Natal at E3, including Milo and Kate, a Lionhead-developed game that allows players to interact with lifelike children in an incredibly realistic fashion.
“It’s a huge opportunity to give the user more ways to interact with the world than just the traditional cursor-based and dialogue-based way in which the games work,” Connors said.
“Our focus is about creating really entertaining scenarios and characters, so removing barriers to experiencing that and making it easier and more natural to interact with, is a huge thing for what we’re doing.
“The number of ideas and types of designs that you could do around it are… it’s just the kind of thing that gets your creative teams going. For us, having the user be able to be a character in one of the worlds and solve mysteries and puzzles is a huge deal, a huge leap forward.”
Don’t expect a Monkey Island Natal game any time soon, however. Natal is currently without a release date, although Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer suggested last week at the Executive’s Club of Chicago that a new Xbox 360 will hit store shelves in 2010 with Natal built in.
And Connors confirmed Telltale didn’t know about Natal before Microsoft unveiled it at E3.
“We haven’t talked to them enough about it. It really depends on where they’re at as far as exposing it to developers. We didn’t know about it before they talked about it so we didn’t have a lot of time to think it through, though we’ve just started that process.
“How we could use it in a product all depends on how far along the mechanic is and what’s the right product to build. But as of right now it hasn’t been in our plans until we heard about it at E3, so we’re just in the very early stages of putting together an opinion on what it can be.”
When asked if he was excited by the prospect of a brand new Natal-compatible Monkey Island game, Connors replied: “Yeah, definitely. Or the idea of being a… (laughs) the idea of being Max (from Sam & Max) is probably a little bit less appealing! You’d have to put on bunny ears or something! But Guybrush is a great character for something like that for sure.”
What do you think readers? Would you like to see a Monkey Island game for Project Natal? Let us know in the comments section below.
