Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is a video game that consists of 3 releases
Reviewed on July 7, 2009
Telltale delivers a breezy pirate adventure with its first episode, easing into the fiction while still honoring the Monkey Island name.
Read Ryan Davis's full review
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Telltale resurrects the much-loved pirate adventure franchise with Tales of Monkey Island, a five-part episodic series continuing the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, this being the first.
Tales of Monkey Island is an adventure game that is being developed by Telltale Games which was announced at E3 2009. Following Telltale's other franchise structures, the game will be episodic and will consist of five episodes, or chapters as they are known for this series. The first adventure, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, was released on July 7th 2009, with the rest following on a monthly basis.Plot
The tale begins with Guybrush Threepwood Mighty Pirate™ sailing the seas to rescue his wife, Elaine Marley who has been captured by the Zombie Pirate LeChuck. Arriving at LeChucks Ship equipped with instructions to create The Cursed Cutlass of Kafflu, to kill LeChuck forever. Unfortunately, Guybrush drops the bottle of Root Beer required and is forced to improvise using roots from a plant, and Grog. His improvisation fails to kill LeChuck, but turns him human, and infects Guybrush's left hand with LeChucks evil energy, The Pox of LeChuck, which gives his hand a mind of its own. An explosion then hurls Guybrush from the ship.We next find our hero on an unknown beach where he is greeted by Davey Nipperkin, a local reporter, who informs Guybrush that he is now stranded on Flotsam Island, a mysterious island which the winds are always pointing inwards, making leaving impossible. He is informed about "Deep Gut" who is the only person who may know how to escape the island, but Davey insists on Guybrush helping him by creating some pirate news for Davey's newspaper before revealing Deep Gut's location. After seizing the local ship, The Screaming Narwhal, finding buried treasure, and starting a bar fight, Guybrush is told to go to a shack to the north of the island, and use a codeword to gain entry.
Upon entering Deep Gut's shack, Guybrush discovers that Deep Gut is in fact the Voodoo Lady, who Guybrush has met before. The Voodoo Lady is unfamiliar with the causes of the in-blowing winds, but informs him that to remove the Pox of LeChuck infecting his hand he must find La Esponje Grande (or The Big Sponge). Guybrush also obtains a map, in a glass bottle, which may reveal the secrets of the islands winds.
Guybrush's infected hand prevents him from accessing the map within the bottle, and he seeks advice from the local doctor, Marquis De Singe. Upon arriving, Guybrush discovers that Marquis De Singe was the first inhabitant of the island, after being condemned there by the King of France. After being tied to an operating table, Guybrush's hand is injected with a numbing agent, and the Marquis plans to remove the hand to study it. After escaping from the table, Guybrush gains access to the map due to his newly numbed hand.
Following the map, Guybrush discovers a large wind controlling machine, which the Marquis is using to strand pirates on the island, giving him patients. Despite the Marquis best efforts to prevent him, Gubrush manages to deactivate the wind machine using several controls hidden across the island. This allows Guybrush to set sail in his seized ship, The Screaming Narwhal. An unfortunate side effect of deactivating the wind machine is that The Pox of LeChuck begins to spread outwards from the island, possibly leading to the infection of other locations in the Tri-island area.
After setting sail to The Rock of Gelato to find Elaine, Guybrush discovers Elaine and LeChuck on his ship he used during his first rescue attempt of Elaine. He sees Elaine being wooed by LeChuck, before suddenly being attacked at sword point by an unknown attacker.
Gameplay
Guybrush brandishes his sword and Grog.
The gameplay mostly revolves around puzzle solving. This often involves using items in new and creative ways. For the first time in a Telltale game, items in the inventory can be combined to create new objects. The developers felt that this was a vital Monkey Island experience, and so they built the structure especially for the game. One of the more unique and creative puzzles in the game involves following sounds of animals indicated on a map.
There is a hint system with varying levels which can be changed in the options menu (or can be turned off altogether) which will guide the player through should they become stuck.
Treasure Hunt
Throughout the season players could take part in a treasure hunting feature. Players would launch the game, select the menu option and then follow map directions in-game. If completed successfully, each map would unlock special goodies on the Telltale website such as wallpapers or discount codes.Development and History
In a May press release celebrating Telltale's five year mark, it was hinted that a new series was going to be announced at E3 2009. On June 1st, the company revealed that they had acquired the rights to produce episodic content based around the Monkey Island series, which was greeted with an amazing fan response. The announcement coincided with LucasArt's unveiling of a remake of The Secret of Monkey Island. A pre-order offer allowed customers to get a limited Steve Purcell slip case for the game, a free episode from Telltale's catalogue and access to a secret board on the forum with exclusive question and answer sessions with the team and Dominic Armato.The team working on the game is full of ex-LucasArts and Monkey Island employees. Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island, although not involved in development, provided his input and gave vital advice on the direction of the game in the brainstorm stage. Dave Grossman is the design director, and he was one of the main forces behind the first two games in the series, along with co-designing Day of the Tentacle and working at Humongous Entertainment on titles such as Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish. Mike Stemmle is lending his hand to the writing and designing, who is most well known for being the lead designer on Escape for Monkey Island. Michael Land is making a return as the composer, and he has worked on every single Monkey Island game, as well as Grim Fandango and Full Throttle to name a few. Dominic Armato reprises his role as the voice of Guybrush, who said that his initial reaction to the series coming back was "Giddiness. Just couldn't stop bouncing off the walls. I'd long given up hope". Alexendra Boyd returns to voice Elaine Marley. The full list of the talented team can be found here.
On Saturday, September 19th, 2009 (the date of the unofficial annual holiday International Talk like a Pirate Day), Telltale made the PC version of Launch of the Screaming Narwhal available to download for free from their main website for 24 hours.
| Game Name | Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal |
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| Original US Release |
July 7, 2009
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| Original US Release |
July
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| Aliases | ToMI 1 |
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