{"id":192,"date":"2015-02-13T11:24:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T09:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=192"},"modified":"2015-02-27T13:27:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T11:27:43","slug":"back-to-the-future-review-then-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/back-to-the-future-review-then-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Back To The Future Review: Then And Back Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

To talk about Back to the Future [in any medium] you really need to talk about the two leads. I am, of course, referring to Thelma and Louise. Oh wait! That\u2019s the wrong time stream! And the wrong movie!<\/p>\n

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Marty and Doc in period attire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But my point still stands. In order to dissect anything Back to the Future, you have to start with Marty and Doc.<\/p>\n

See, there\u2019s really only two general ways to tell a time-travel story: most folks writing science fiction that involves time-travel will generally go for the \u201cbig\u201d approach. They ask questions like: what if world war two never happened? Or what if no one ever worked out that the world was round?<\/p>\n

This particular type of narrative focuses more on the world around the people \u2013 what happens to folks in these alternate time-lines is interesting, but not as important as the event that warranted the jump back [or forward] necessary.<\/p>\n

Contrast this with the other way of telling time-travel stories: here, the focus is on the people. How they experience the new time they\u2019re in. How what they do on a personal level interacts with who they were in the future. What landmarks and features of the world around themselves they might recognize in the past [or future.]<\/p>\n

TellTale absolutely realized that Back to the Future is really a character-driven story and they play to that strength completely. They dig for and find the essence of the movies with a startling clarity of focus and stick to that focus like glue. The McFly family is present and correct in Marty. Doc is absolutely as zany as he ever was. The Tannen family loom large as perennial thugs. These characters are what make or break a Back to the Future \u2013 and TellTale have gotten them right.<\/p>\n

Purists might scoff at the fact that Marty isn\u2019t voiced by Michael J Fox, [who does an interesting cameo near the end of the game] but the voice actor who takes on his role, one A.J. Locascio does such a fine job that until you actually hear<\/em> Mr Fox later on in the game, you might never know the difference.<\/p>\n

Going in, this was one thing that worried me. I wasn\u2019t sure if the voice acting would create a disconnect and if that would make me uninterested, but TellTale are clever and weave a new narrative that uses some of the original characters we\u2019ve come to know from the movies, but they only use them very sparingly. Jennifer, for example, only shows up in episode three and only really sticks around until the beginning of the fourth episode. The actor playing Jennifer, Claudia Wells, reprises her role here, to…interesting effect.<\/p>\n

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Is there any cooler way to time travel?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that\u2019s the crux of the matter: TellTale use what they have to interesting effect. This particular story isn\u2019t exactly like a Back to the Future movie, it is its own beast with its own set of problems and its own unique solutions to those problems. I absolutely have to give TellTale props for writing a plausible story that could<\/em> have worked within the framework of the movies, but is bold enough to chart it\u2019s own particular course.<\/p>\n

As a result, there\u2019s a lot to like about the game.<\/p>\n

While graphics have never been TellTale\u2019s forte, and while the graphics here remind a little of games in the Playstation 2 era, everything fits reasonably neatly together. Sure, it\u2019s a little stylized and certainly the faces and areas don\u2019t exactly look<\/em> perfect, but it\u2019s clear who everything is and it\u2019s possible to see everything that you need to deal with when solving a puzzle.<\/p>\n

The same applies to the sound design: it\u2019s not absolutely perfect \u2013 while Mr Locascio does a wonderful impression of Mr Fox, keen ears will detect the discrepancy. The sounds here are often very workmanlike: serving the narrative focus on the game, from footfalls to car engines starting, it all works reasonable well together, but never blows you away.<\/p>\n

The one exception here is the music. The theme is present and correct, but there are also various other musical strains that run throughout the game and – in a particularly memorable scene, an entertainer plays piano while a certain Trixie Trotter sings songs that could have been written in the 1930\u2019s. But this, of course, is fitting: one of Marty\u2019s passions is music. While you\u2019re not likely to be humming very many of the tunes that come out of the game, the handful that set themselves apart, do so quite admirably.<\/p>\n

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Using things to do things<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is an older TellTale game, back from when they were still making \u201ctrue\u201d adventure games, and as such, there are items to pick up and collect as well as dialogue puzzles to solve. From this particular angle, the game isn\u2019t particularly difficult. There\u2019s still some bad design going on [it\u2019s not always readily apparent that you can use two things on screen at once] and the inventory system itself is somewhat clunky [pull up the inventory screen and you\u2019re faced with a list of items going from left to right. To use an item, you have to either click on it first and then hit \u201cuse\u201d or scroll left and right to get to that item and then press a key to \u201cuse\u201d it] but it all does the job in a reasonable sort of fashion.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the puzzles, there are some rather neat set pieces that drive the plot forward, and I\u2019m quite pleased to say that there aren\u2019t any quick time events at all in this game. Need to make a decision? Take your time. Need to think over which dialogue tree to go down? You\u2019re welcome to do that at your own pace. This is an older TellTale that isn\u2019t so wrapped up in making games about moral dilemmas that require you to have your finger on the trigger at every second.<\/p>\n

This, in fact, is the true strength of the game: it takes it\u2019s time across five episodes to tell a story that has plenty of breathing room. While it\u2019s true that this game is less about Marty and more about Doc, it\u2019s a wonderful testament to both characters. It shows their true friendship across time.<\/p>\n

Would I recommend it?<\/p>\n

Yes, with two caveats. While the plot of the games doesn\u2019t strongly hinge on the plot of the movies, the characters that make up the game do tie back to the movies rather heavily. It is important to understand Marty\u2019s connection to Jennifer, for example. So watching the movies \u2013 while not a pre-requisite \u2013 is very strongly advised.<\/p>\n

The second caveat is about the voices. It might be difficult, but it is necessary to look past \u201chow bad they might sound.\u201d The actors who came on board from the movies did a stellar job [Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as Doc and does a superb job] and the folks who stood in for series regulars gave it their all.<\/p>\n

So, yes. By all means, pick this up. It\u2019ll be worth your time. [Pun completely intended.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To talk about Back to the Future [in any medium] you really need to talk about the two leads. I am, of course, referring to Thelma and Louise. Oh wait! That\u2019s the wrong time stream! And the wrong movie! But my point still stands. In order to dissect anything Back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[6,18,14,3,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}