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Old Man Murray Vets To Make Portal Funny
Via Joystiq, an article at the GameInformer site generally about Valve's upcoming plans for Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Portal. In that article, they mention that some of the writing for Portal is being handled by veterans from the Old Man Murray site. From the article: "When you have that style of game it could just be very stale and very dry. It's just puzzle solving and you could put in a little techno music in the background and leave it at that. But we thought it would be much more interesting if we introduced this idea of the narrator. The original idea came from the training room in Half-Life 1 where you had that voice that was talking to you and whatnot. She was a little bit cynical, but not nearly as so as the voice in Portal. The writing for that is being done by Chet [Faliszek] and Erik [Wolpaw] who used to be Old Man Murray. They're at Valve now and one of their first projects they've been tasked with is to do the writing for Portal. So if you were a fan of Old Man Murray you're going to be a fan of that voice in Portal because it's the same wry cynicism."
Who is Old Man Murray? Please, I want a human answer, not Google.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
[A rant about how everything sucks.]
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Allow me to present Exhibit A: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html
Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Could be interesting. But there better be an option to turn that voice off. I can see it getting really irritating, really fast.
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion...
I wonder how Portal will do on the Time To Crate game ranking system?
Wow. This game just keeps getting gooder and gooderer. I'm excited.
Somewhere all the disembodied narrators of Infocom games of the past just heaved a collective sigh. It's also been done recently. The narrator/character banter in the most recent Bard's Tale was also pretty good. Not sure if I'm all that jazzed about this.
Somewhere all the disembodied narrators of Infocom games of the past just heaved a collective sigh. It's also been done recently. The narrator/character banter in the most recent Bard's Tale was also pretty good. Not sure if I'm all that jazzed about this.
We're excited because we're big fans of Old Man Murrary, and we're happy to see Chet and Erik putting their writing talents behind a game. We don't care whether sarcastic narration is ground breaking for not, but thanks for your "this isn't new, this is nothing special" comment, Cranky McKilljoy.
of including sarcastic narration, 3D Realms will be announcing that Duke Nukem Forever will include narration by the crew from MST3K!
CRATE-O-WUSS!
I wasted 30 minutes of my life on the new Bard's Tale. It thought it was *far* more funny than it actually was, and the cutscenes took far too much time to go through (and didn't have an obivous way to skip forward while acquiring the content through textual subtitles). I have very little time to spend on gaming, so I *really* don't appreciate it when those games I do play waste my time. (Well, waste my time without providing the expected level of entertainment in return).
That said -- if I'm looking for good writing in a game, I tend to play modern IF. (Varicella, Blue Chairs, Spider and Web, etc)
Now, from the people who brought you the Long Cut Scene - the Sarcastic Narrator.
This could get old really fast. Especially if you have to listen to the same narration every time.
If at first you don't succeed, you fail.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Erik Wolpaw also co-wrote Double Fine's Psychonauts, and won a Game Developers Choice Award for that effort.