Quick Look: EX: Broken Age

Mini review: Broken Age is good. At first I was pretty disappointed, but that's because I was expecting Full Throttle or Grim Fandango which are my two favorite adventure games of all time. Broken Age isn't as fantastic as either of those high watermarks, but if I divorce it from that lofty expectation and try as best I can to judge it on it's own, I think it's good.

The biggest issue for me is that neither of the main characters has a standout personality. Vella is way better than Shay, but she's kind of the rational person in a world full of cartoon characters and comes of a little boring as a result. Shay is defined by his passive ennui in the first part of his segment and then is naively led around by the nose in the second - he's a weak character. Neither compares to Ben or Manny, but I'm willing to admit my opinion may just be because neither let's me play out a "cool guy hero" fantasy.

Regardless of the main characters, I am very interested in seeing how the story plays out and it has me hooked for the second half in that respect.

I'm less pleased with the puzzles which are simple to the point of being trivial; there's pretty much no feeling of accomplishment from the gameplay itself. However as Tim says, he's designing a game for everyone and not only people that grew up adapting to 90s adventure game "logic", so on one hand I can understand the easy puzzles in that respect. On the other hand, the way this was billed in the Kickstarter is that it was specifically for fans of 90s adventures and sometimes those silly 90s leaps of logic were as much endearing as they were frustrating.

@hells: They barely talk directly about the game. But the interview aspect is really enjoyable! For 0% spoilers minimize the window and listen to it as a podcast.

"It's leaking Adventure" : (Vinny) ... I love the Bomb Crew!

Fantastic ending to a great QLEX!

This was incredibly interesting! I feel like devs haven't been highlighted enough in videos for a while now and this was refreshing.

Awesome QL EX.

A large part of it is just a great conversation with Tim Schafer. This is why Giant Bomb is the best.

Wow, Tim Schafer grew back his beard!

Double Fine and GB just mix so well, what with their openness and humour.

This was awesome! Love hearing Tim talk

Truly, this is the age of broken.

How about a Nascar NavScarf.

No surprise that Brad is spoiling the game. /s

I love the artstyle and setting. Probably won't buy it just yet as I have a monster of a backlog but once I get through what I want to, consider this purchased.

If you haven't, (the generic) you should check out the steam store page for Broken Age. It's pretty funny.

Best Quick Look EX ever.

I'm not just saying that because I backed this game.

iiiit's tim time!

I like Tim in all that I see/hear from him. I LOVED Broken Age PT1.

However... I do wish Tim (and others) would get off the high horse about cost of games, the appropriation of funds and backers expectations. Both Stoic and Revolution made Banner Saga and Broken Sword 5 for a 3rd of the cost of Broken Age and they're easily of equal quality. It's NOT unreasonable to expect a lot of a game for a 3 million dollar investment. Just because some companies blow crazy sums making a AAA game does not mean a great (and lengthy) game can't be made for much less.

The smelling salts at 20:22 are totally the ones from Psychonauts and I'm upset that I picked up on that

I loved this game. And the ending blew me away. Probably I am too slow but I didn't see that coming one bit! Finish the second half already! Glad I backed it!

I wish Disney was just one person and not a multinational conglomerate made of a million people where there is no one person in charge of IP rights of videogames. Can't even get to the person to ask how much the rights of the old Lucas Arts games would be worth to buy them off.

@ogto: So he responds with Broken Age Quest! Brad quick on the draw.

Oh my God, I would buy the shit out of a Navscarf.

I liked this first part of Broken Age better than Grim Fandango, to be honest.

Maybe that’s because I always liked adventure games but never really loved them. (I especially didn’t like getting stuck for days.)

I think the art is better in this (also compared to Full Throttle which I never liked all that much and any other adventure game I have ever seen, including modern ones, but arguably that’s quite subjective since it’s about taste in art – but I think everyone can agree that it’s very well executed), the writing is on par (though the overall plot is much more intriguing to me so far), the voice acting is better and the music is awesomely nostalgic. Also, the puzzles strike a nice balance and never seemed too obvious or too hard to me. They make for a nice pacing (though I could understand someone who plays a lot more adventure games or who always has to combine everything with everything might feel it’s too easy). It’s such a nice tight package so far.

Also, this is the first game I can comfortably play at retina resolution (2880×900) and that’s really cool.

Best adventure game I've played. So relaxing and fun.

Tim needs to come by more often. So does Brad Muir.

I saw "Quick Look EX" and was disappointed but then I realized it would be Tim Schafer joining the Giant Bomb crew and I realized that Tim and Brad Miur are the only two people that I actually WANT to see "Quick Look EX"s of.

Beard Jeff is best Jeff.

T. Schaf gets along so well with the crew. I love it when he's on.

I could listen to Tim talk with the GB crew for hours, about anything.

So far I've played through Shay's portion of the game (I think?) and I'm super excited to play the rest this weekend.

Exactly what I did... and I think I still spoiled something relatively big for myself about the Shay stuff. Damn.

Still, these games are more about the dialog and characters than the overall plot, so not a big deal. I just couldn't not hear Tim talk to the fellas about this one. Great interview and absolutely the best EX (not that that's a great accomplishment because they're usually unbearable.)

I am almost certain I have a Day of the tentacle box somewhere in mother´s cellar...with a sweet ZX spectrum to boot!

Remember a Skullgirls character cost $150,000? People flipping their ignorant lid over that was embarrassing.

What do you mean by equal quality? Have you compared the number of assets from each game, calculated that they're the same amount, and they're all equally great? Did you factor in living costs for developers from each place? Come on. Videogame fans should stop trying to be pretentious budget analysts, when you and I have only an inkling of how game development works. Tim is not on a high horse, that's not even the correct use of that phrase.

i really wanted this

I am about halfway through and they switched from the guy character to the girl without letting the viewer hear Elijah Wood once. They kept yapping over everything and I have no idea what is going on with this game.

Sure, what they are talking about is interesting but couldn't they just pay attention to the game for a little moment? When they did talk about something in the game it was about the voice of the wolf, which they kept describing over the game so that you never heard the voice yourself.

Perhaps this is a sound mixing mishap but I can't bear seeing another 25 minutes of that.

Also BS5 was well into development when they started the Kickstarter.

Not a good quick look Ex. A great podcast.

Really like how Tim keep probing Jeff about the press and kickstarter.

That was awesome having Tim Schafer on the couch. Giant Bomb always gets the best and most honest conversations out of their guests.

Never the typical bland cardboard interview.....thats why im a premium member...

@assinass: Also, it’s not like anyone actually has to pay $3.3 million to get the game. If you want the game you pay $25 and be done with it. That’s very reasonable for what you get.

Dem Clark's Desert Boots

It is fairly easy to seek out the beginning part of the game on other gaming websites or Youtube. But the commentary Giant Bomb videos provide, can only be found here. That's why I am here anyway.

I want to watch Tim Schafer talk for hours.

I might make more of these..

@synthesis_landale said:

I haven't heard any of these developers say that this expectation is unreasonable -- it just turned out to not come true. Just because a great and lengthy game can be made for much less, doesn't mean everyone does and will. Broken Age in particular kinda screwed up image-wise because they ended up spending even more (of their own) money and time to keep making the game to be as good as it can be, but they're not being pretentious about it or anything. They keep writing and producing the documentary series about most decisions they made for us backers.

(P.S. speaking of game development costs, I bet that's why so many those big game companies have a sizeable branch in China while the ones in Australia always closes down. Living cost can be such a major factor in this too.)

Played part of Vella's story and got stuck (as in can't figure out where to go, but I've been to all the screen I can?). It looks fantastic and the music is great. I think I'm just going to wait for part 2 to be released and play the whole thing at once. I've been waiting this long, why not a little more... right?

Yes but in an ideal world if you're spending 50 minutes with a game it would be nice to hear maybe a minute or so of the actual game, maybe some dialogue... you know anything? I'm glad people like Tim and Double Fine, hell I'm quite a fan myself. However I shouldn't have to go find another video just to see gameplay and hear audio from a game there is a quick look of. That is kind of why I watch quick looks, to hear the guys bullshit around and check out games. This would have been a great podcast but it didn't really do much for me as a QL.

Enjoyable regardless but I wish they'd do an actual QL of the game. Unless they want to do an EX2 with Brad Muir, I'm ok with that. Really just any excuse to have Brad Muir around is good enough for me.

A great from my era!!!

@droop: "Hey Marek, wanna take a hit off this air tank?" "Not now, young cub."

This was a terrific podcast. Far as Quick-Looks go, however, this was very frustrating. At no point did I get to hear the actual game, sample the voice-actors they discussed at length, or see a puzzle be solved. Quite honestly, I don't feel that they were giving the game any attention, which is a weird thing to consider when the developer is in the room.

Really hope they do another quick-look once the game has been released, and that they invite Schafer in for a podcast at some point, man's got some stories to tell.

I love Tim and I love double fine. The quick look sold me. Thank you!

Ladder+Mouth made no damn sense and ruined the climax.