On Heroes and Villains (though mostly the latter)

Had you asked me when I was a child which I preferred, heroes or villains, my answer would definitely have been in favor of the latter. From Dr. Claw to  The Phantom Blot, Captain Hook (the Dustin Hoffman version), Bowser, Ganon and a wide assortment of Disney-villains, the bad guys in stories almost always seemed cooler, more interesting and more charismatic than their goody-goody counterparts.
These days, however, things are a bit different. Yes, I do still think that there's nothing like a truly great villain and there have been instances when I decided to check out some work of fiction, solely on the basis that the villain seemed interesting. I would most likely never have watched Star vs. the Forces of Evil if it wasn't for Toffee, to name one example.

That said, I can also come up with plenty of stories in which the hero is an engaging, complex character and the villain is simply just there because the story needed a villain. Take Casablanca for example; one of the greatest movies of all time, to be sure and yet, does anyone actually think Major Strasser is more interesting than Rick Blaine?

While we're at it, I must confess that as I grow older I like the concept of the endlessly recurring arch-villain less and less. Olrik from the Blake &  Mortimer comics is a particularly flagrant example of this kind of character. Now, I haven't bought any new Blake & Mortimer in years, but out of the albums I own, there are only two in which Olrik is not present in some capacity. There are twenty-two Blake & Mortimer albums on my shelf. That means that twenty of those feature the same villain. To be fair, some of these albums tells a continuing story over two or three installments, but that's still a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that every villain should perish at the end of their first appearance. If you've managed to create a good villain, than I can certainly understand wanting to bring them back for a re-match or two in order to further flesh out their character. However, after awhile it starts to become forced and trite. Plus, it risks hurting the villain's credibility: After all, he didn't manage to kill the hero and take over the world the other umpteenth times they fought, so why should this time be any different?

Ultimately, I prefer to judge a character based on how interesting they are as a character, regardless of what role they have in the story. If the villain's the most compelling character, than that's great and if that honor goes to the hero...well, that's great too.

Thimbleweed Park

If you, like me, love adventure games, than Ron Gilbert is a name that you no doubt recognize and hold in high esteem and for those of you who have never heard of this Ron Gilbert fellow before, well, pull up a chair, its time for a brief history lesson: 

Ron Gilbert was instrumental in the development of the point & click adventure game genre. Not only did he create SCUMM, the engine used in pretty much every LucasArts adventure game during the company's golden age, but he also created such classics as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. 

Gilbert's (and by extension, LucasArts') design-philosophy stood in sharp contrast to that of Sierra Entertainment, who up until then, had dominated the genre: Gilbert felt that the many deaths presents in games such as the King's Quest series, as well as not allowing players to go back and pick up items that they had no way of knowing would become important later on, thus rendering the player irrevocably stuck, to be deeply unfair and this is reflected in the games he made. Admittedly, the player could die in the early LucasArts adventure games, but nowhere near as much or as often as in those made by Sierra (there's a reason why its called Sierra Sudden Death Syndrome after all).

In 1992, Ron Gilbert left LucasArts to focus on other ventures. He co-founded Humongous Entertainment, which specialized in edutainment titles such as the Putt Putt and Freddy Fish series. He was also the producer of the real-time strategy game Total Annihilation. Now, I should point out that I have not played any of Gilbert's post-LucasArts games and at any rate, they are not what this post is all about. No, this is about Thimbleweed Park, Ron Gilbert's grand return to making a bona fide point & click adventure game of the old-school. In many ways, Thimbleweed Park feels like the closing of a circle, as Gilbert returns to the genre that he helped perfect.

Co-created with Gary Winnick, another old LucasArts employee and close collaborator of Gilbert's, Thimbleweed Park was funded via Kickstarter and was released last year. 

The game takes place in the eponymous town in the year 1987 and features five different protagonists. They are as follows:

Angela Ray and Antonio Reyes - Two FBI agents who have arrived in town to investigate a murder. Or at least, that's the official reason why they are here. Unofficially, they also have more personal motives for being in Thimblweed Park.

Delores Edmund -Niece of Chuck Edmund, owner of the local Pillow Factory and the man who put Thimbleweed Park on the map. Delores was once Chuck's presumed heir, but fell out of favor after pursuing a career as a game designer. With her uncle's recent demise, she has returned to town to hear the reading of his will.

Franklin Edmund - Delores' father and Chuck's put-upon brother. Early on, Franklin is murdered and spends the rest of the game as a ghost. His goal is to escape the confines of the hotel in which he was killed and take farewell of his daughter, before passing on to the afterlife.

Ransome the Insult Clown - Once a popular comedian and the star-act of the local circus. During one of his performances, Ransome insulted the wrong person and was cursed with never being able to remove his make-up. As a result of this, Ransome's career tanked and he is now a bitter has-been, despised by the townspeople.

During the course of the game, the player has to switch between these five characters in order to solve puzzles and come closer to solve the mystery that haunts Thimbleweed Park, a mystery whose solution might lie inside the abandoned Pillow Factory...

If you've played any of LucasArts adventure game, then you'll be right at home playing Thimbelweed Park. The game plays exactly the same as, say Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island. Basically, you have a list of verbs, such as "use", that you click on and then click on whatever item you wish to interact with. Simple and efficient.

Visually, Thimbleweed Park looks great, with its 2-d graphics being very detailed and lovely to look at. The game also has a really nice atmosphere, mixing the lighthearted and quirky with something more menacing. In that regard, the game definitely reminded me of the first two Monkey Island games, which managed to evoke a similar mood.

The voice acting of the game is uniformly of good, though special mention must go to Nicole Oliver and Ian James Corlett, who do the voices of Agent Ray and Ransome respectively. Oliver is perfect as Ray, a cynical opportunist who usually does not even bother to hide her utter contempt for Thimbleweed Park and its quirky inhabitants, while Corlett makes Ransome in turns deliberately obnoxious, repugnant and, most importantly, funny. 

So, having lavished a lot of praise on Thimbleweed Park do I have everything negative to say about this game at all? Surely, there must be something, right? Well, there is one thing actually and that's the ending of the game. While the characters' individual stories are each wrapped up in a satisfying manner, the big plot-twist, regarding the truth of the town did not really do it for me. I get the feeling that Ron Gilbert wanted to pull another Monkey Island 2; a game whose ending is one of the most famous in adventure game history. However, it didn't work as well the second time around. Unfortunately, I can't go into further details regarding how I felt about the game's ending without giving away major spoilers and I do not wish to do that, since it would perhaps risk turning people off from trying the game at all.

And that would be a shame, because no matter how it ends, the rest of Thimbleweed Park is a terrific game, one that every fan of the genre should have in their collection. I hope its not the case, but if this turns out to be the last adventure game Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick ever make, its a high note to go out on.