You are just so good at analysis. It is a pleasure to read you every time, and now you are writing about something I know!
This is one of my favourite ones but I will be completely honest and say that it is because it reached me at the right time, at the right age, and with the right cultural context to find everything fascinating. I guess that today's Great Circle would have hit me the same if I was closer to my 20s than to my 50s, because I felt the same you felt with Indy Atlantis: too much of a deja vu of the same pulpy stories for something that needs to go wild (as the original pulpy stories did). But though I like all the technical and design stuff more than you do, I cannot disagree: graphics are not as good as Monkey 2 or DOTT but the colour cycling is one of the best in the Lucasarts games, the three paths are repetitive but at the time it helped me going through the only adventure game I had in the hard drive (I was going through them almost simultaneously, which I think was the correct way of doing it). Lucas games were never as good with the General Midi or Roland midis as Sierra, and honestly this one is much better on the warm OPL FM synths (those dark ambient tracks are on the level of Mark Seibert). What I really like about this one and most of the Lucas games is the economy of words and how with just a few of them they are able to define entire characters that will not appear later in the story but left a mark (though this time they are clearly recycling sprites and animations from previous games).
You know what I don't like nowadays about this one and most, if not all, world trotting adventure games? The tech limitations that makes everything empty. The folks doing this adventure were smart enough to make it atmospheric, but I still can see that most of the times it is by design - and yet this particular game has one of the busiest and most wonderful parts, the red fez, one of my favourite puzzles in the whole Lucasarts history. But otherwise it's going through touristic places that have no tourists, weirdly. I don't have a clear opinion on the arcadish puzzles as they are annoying but add some spice.
TL;DR: even when I agree with your points, it is one of my favourite games.
Yes, I really hoped to love the game, but ended up kind of slogging through it; maybe it would have been better had I played it in childhood - but then, I also came to Day Of The Tentacle and Grim Fandango at a much later age and instantly fell in love with both.
The "touristic places that have no tourists" is spot on, and while you could say that about any LucasArts game - say, Zak McKracken - those other ones created totally goofy alternative universes defined by their goofiness, while here you have a serious stab at realism and it ends up not-too-believable. (See how much care was invested, for instance, in making the New Orleans of Gabriel Knight come to life just one year later).
One of the most incredible background paintings that you want more of, also one incredible piece of organ-like music and yet it is kind of a standalone. Indy and Sophia are walking through a painting, and I feel the similarities to what Westwood were doing with the Kyrandia games and yet it does not feel as organic or as dynamic.
Y-yeah... I didn't mention it because, honestly, it's rather crappy-looking (and the new voiceovers are extremely bland and amateurish). Like Gabriel Knight, I'd recommend sticking to the original.
You are just so good at analysis. It is a pleasure to read you every time, and now you are writing about something I know!
This is one of my favourite ones but I will be completely honest and say that it is because it reached me at the right time, at the right age, and with the right cultural context to find everything fascinating. I guess that today's Great Circle would have hit me the same if I was closer to my 20s than to my 50s, because I felt the same you felt with Indy Atlantis: too much of a deja vu of the same pulpy stories for something that needs to go wild (as the original pulpy stories did). But though I like all the technical and design stuff more than you do, I cannot disagree: graphics are not as good as Monkey 2 or DOTT but the colour cycling is one of the best in the Lucasarts games, the three paths are repetitive but at the time it helped me going through the only adventure game I had in the hard drive (I was going through them almost simultaneously, which I think was the correct way of doing it). Lucas games were never as good with the General Midi or Roland midis as Sierra, and honestly this one is much better on the warm OPL FM synths (those dark ambient tracks are on the level of Mark Seibert). What I really like about this one and most of the Lucas games is the economy of words and how with just a few of them they are able to define entire characters that will not appear later in the story but left a mark (though this time they are clearly recycling sprites and animations from previous games).
You know what I don't like nowadays about this one and most, if not all, world trotting adventure games? The tech limitations that makes everything empty. The folks doing this adventure were smart enough to make it atmospheric, but I still can see that most of the times it is by design - and yet this particular game has one of the busiest and most wonderful parts, the red fez, one of my favourite puzzles in the whole Lucasarts history. But otherwise it's going through touristic places that have no tourists, weirdly. I don't have a clear opinion on the arcadish puzzles as they are annoying but add some spice.
TL;DR: even when I agree with your points, it is one of my favourite games.
Yes, I really hoped to love the game, but ended up kind of slogging through it; maybe it would have been better had I played it in childhood - but then, I also came to Day Of The Tentacle and Grim Fandango at a much later age and instantly fell in love with both.
The "touristic places that have no tourists" is spot on, and while you could say that about any LucasArts game - say, Zak McKracken - those other ones created totally goofy alternative universes defined by their goofiness, while here you have a serious stab at realism and it ends up not-too-believable. (See how much care was invested, for instance, in making the New Orleans of Gabriel Knight come to life just one year later).
I was thinking now of a very specific aesthetic example of the game that I like and frustrates me: Iceland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qCX-c93XKs
One of the most incredible background paintings that you want more of, also one incredible piece of organ-like music and yet it is kind of a standalone. Indy and Sophia are walking through a painting, and I feel the similarities to what Westwood were doing with the Kyrandia games and yet it does not feel as organic or as dynamic.
Very nicely described! And there is a remastered version from fans. Just update.
Y-yeah... I didn't mention it because, honestly, it's rather crappy-looking (and the new voiceovers are extremely bland and amateurish). Like Gabriel Knight, I'd recommend sticking to the original.