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Grim Fandango

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Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango Lucas Arts Classics Cover
Grim Fandango Lucas Arts Classics Cover
Developer(s)LucasArts
Publisher(s)LucasArts
Designer(s)Tim Schafer
EngineGrimE
Platform(s)Windows
ReleaseSeptember 30, 1998
Genre(s)Adventure game
Mode(s)Single player

Grim Fandango is a graphical adventure computer game released by LucasArts in 1998, the title derived from a line of a mournful poem read by one of the characters in the game. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use three-dimensional graphics, as it runs in the GrimE engine. Grim Fandango was lauded by critics and adventure game fans as one of the best games in the genre and beyond (see Reactions section), but was not a commercial success.

Gameplay

Grim Fandango was the first game to use the GrimE engine. The control system was somewhat different from a traditional point and click adventure game. Instead of using the mouse to move the character around the screen and interact with objects, the protagonist, Manuel Calavera (Manny for short) is controlled with the arrow keys, or even a joystick.

While walking around the various environments, Manny will turn his head to look at objects which he can interact with; the player can then press the enter key to get Manny to do so. Inventory is accessed by pressing the I key. Objects in inventory can be scrolled through using the arrow keys, and brought out of Manny's pocket by pressing enter.

With an inventory item in hand, Manny can then use that item on his environment by interacting with environmental objects as usual.

This new kind of interactivity set Grim Fandango apart from other adventure games at the time, and offered a unique, innovative way to play.

Story

The game is set in the Aztec afterlife and charts Manny's four year journey through the Land of the Dead towards the final destination of all dead souls — Mictlan, the Aztec underworld.

The story unfolds in four episodes, each set a year apart on the Day of the Dead. It is from this festival that much of the game's imagery is drawn — most of the game's characters are skeletal calaca figures (based on the work of Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada). Various flowers are also used as tools of murder, in the form of a substance known as "Sproutella", which reacts with bone, destroying it by causing flowers to grow in it extremely rapidly. Characters refer to this manner of death as "sprouting". There is also unique fauna scattered throughout the game, such as bone-eating fire beavers and gigantic cats used for racing.

Unusually, the game combines this mythical underworld with 1930s Art Deco design motifs and a dark plot reminiscent of the film noir genre. Manny, whose job combines the roles of Grim Reaper and travel agent, turns detective when he discovers that deserving souls are being denied their rightful post-mortem reward of direct travel to Mictlan, bypassing the four-year trip that all other souls must take. Manny's investigations draw him into a tangled web of corruption, deceit, and murder.

The second part of the game, when Manny is running a nightclub, is inspired by Humphrey Bogart films The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo and Casablanca. In the game, the gambler Chowchilla Charlie is extremely reminiscent of Peter Lorre, and the town's corrupt police chief is based on Claude Rains's Captain Renault. Despite this, Tim Schafer stated that the true inspiration was drawn from films like Double Indemnity, in which a weak and undistinguished man (a insurance salesman, not a detective) is involved in murder and intrigue[1].

Characters

Most of the characters are Hispanic and the occasional Spanish word is interspersed into the English dialog. Most of the characters smoke (largely for cinematic effect). Template:Spoiler

Manuel "Manny" Calavera, voiced by Tony Plana

Main article: Manny Calavera

In atonement for his sins in life, Manny works as a travel agent at the Department of Death in the city of El Marrow, earning his own passage to the underworld by selling travel packages, ranging from a four-minute trainride on the luxurious No.9 train to a crafty walking stick and a four year walk. Manny competes for good clients, whose spotless lives merit a quick passage to the underworld, in turn earning Manny commissions in form of a quicker passage for himself, as well as prestige at the office. Unfortunately for Manny, all the good clients are snapped up by his office rival Domino, and Manny's efforts to find out why embroil him in a dark conspiracy.

Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, voiced by Maria Canals

Main article: Mercedes Colomar

Meche is the damsel in distress who Manny immediately falls in love with. Even though she has led a virtuous life, the Department of Death mysteriously does not grant her a ticket for the No.9 train, and Manny has to let her travel alone on foot to the underworld. After being fired from the Department of Death, Manny tries his best to track her down.

File:Grim fandango screenshot.jpg
Manny Calavera and Glottis in the Café Calavera at the beginning of the second year

Glottis, voiced by Alan Blumenfeld
Serving as comic relief and sidekick, Glottis is an enormous orange demon, who serves as Manny's driver and mechanic at the Department of Death. When Glottis is fired from the Department of Death, he becomes Manny's friend and companion in the search for Meche.

Hector LeMans, voiced by Jim Ward
The antagonist, Hector LeMans is the boss of the criminal underworld of El Marrow, specialized in ticket profiteering. With the help of his henchmen, he steals tickets for the No.9 train from the deserving dead and sells them to rich people, and throughout the game his brutality shows he is not to be trifled with. He is known to have sprouted dozens and dozens of people, as he owns a greenhouse surrounded by a field where he stores his enemies' sprouted remains.

Salvador "Sal" Limones, voiced by Sal Lopez
Salvador Limones is the head of the LSA (Lost Souls' Alliance), an underground organization that fights against Hector LeMans by all means necessary. Limones recruits Manny in order to have an inside agent at the Department of Death, and he also helps Manny escape from El Marrow in order to look for Meche. Template:Endspoilers

Production

Grim Fandango was released on CD-ROM only and was fully voiced. The game was designed by Tim Schafer, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle and creator of Full Throttle and, more recently, Psychonauts.

Grim Fandango was a bold attempt by LucasArts to rejuvenate the graphical adventure genre, which by 1998 was in a terminal decline, compounded by the rise in fashionability of visually more novel and increasingly impressive games, such as first-person shooters. It was the first LucasArts adventure since Labyrinth not to use the SCUMM engine, instead using the Sith engine, pioneered by Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, as the basis of the new GrimE engine. The 3D characters and control system that the GrimE engine used gave the game a completely different feel and appearance to the SCUMM games, even though it preserved many LucasArts conventions in terms of puzzle and dialogue style (and the trademark inability to be killed or become entirely stuck).

Reactions

Grim Fandango received nearly uniformly positive reviews. GameSpot praised the writing, saying "Grim Fandango thankfully avoids the obvious" and "derives its humor from its situations and characters [...] without making fun of itself, helping to create a believable world"[2]. PCZone emphasized the production as a whole, "with its expert direction, costumes, characters, music and atmosphere [Grim Fandango] would actually make a superb film"[3]. The review at Game-Revolution had Manny himself explaining that "as far as an artistic accomplishment goes, my adventure gets all 5 leg bones"[4], while IGN summed its review up by saying: "the bottom line is that Grim Fandango is hands down the best adventure game we've ever seen"[5].

On the other hand, the WomenGamers review, though enjoying the "creativity of the storyline, the characters, [and] the Mexican feel of the environment", found the interface clumsy, stating that it made the reviewer feel "like I had much less control playing the game due to these restrictions"[6], a criticism also voiced, to a lesser degree, by GameSpot and IGN.

Despite the good reviews, Grim Fandango did not sell as well as many earlier adventures[citation needed], and the game was viewed by many as the final nail in the coffin of adventure games. The pessimism was attributed to the fact that, despite its high quality and prizes won — including Gamespot's PC Game of the Year 1998, beating other classic games such as real-time strategy game StarCraft and the first-person shooter Half-Life — it failed to sell well, thus tarnishing the image of the demand for adventure games for years to come.

Awards

GameSpot

IGN

GameSpy

AdventureGamers

Trivia

  • A reference to Grim Fandango appears in The Curse of Monkey Island, another LucasArts adventure game. A calaca-like corpse in a chicken shop wears a badge saying "Ask me about Grim Fandango". The event is also a throwback to the first game in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, where a man in a bar wears a badge that reads "Ask me about Loom" (another adventure game, released just before Secret) and switches from one-word answers to a sales pitch if asked.
  • Another homage can be found in Escape from Monkey Island, where one of Pegnose Pete's alternate identities is "Manuel J Calavera".
  • Logos from the LucasArts adventures Sam & Max Hit the Road and Full Throttle can be seen in Toto Santos' tattoo parlour.
  • The game was originally going to be named Deeds Of The Dead, but the management at LucasArts didn't want a reference to death in the title.
  • The music playing in the background during Terry the Seabee's arrest is a rendition of "The Internationale", the anthem of the socialist movement.
  • In the room where Glottis is playing piano, run down the stairs while running slightly towards the handrail. Manny will, instead of running, slide down on the rail instead.
  • Toto Santos the tattoo artist is actually cursing in Hungarian.
  • Type "blam" while playing the game for a surprise.

See also

References

  1. ^ Celia Pearce (2003). "Game Noir - A Conversation with Tim Schafer". "Game Studies". Retrieved April 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Ron Dulin (1998). "Grim Fandango for PC Review". GameSpot. Retrieved January 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, |4=, |5=, |6=, |7=, |8=, |9=, and |10= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Steve Hill (2001). "GRIM FANDANGO". PCZone. Retrieved January 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, |4=, |5=, |6=, |7=, |8=, |9=, and |10= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Manny (1998). "Dang! I Left My Heart In The Land Of The Living!". Game-Revolution. Retrieved January 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, |4=, |5=, |6=, |7=, |8=, |9=, and |10= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ Trent C. Ward (1998). "LucasArts flexes their storytelling muscle in this near-perfect adventure game". IGN. Retrieved January 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, |4=, |5=, |6=, |7=, |8=, |9=, and |10= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ Circe (1999). "Grim Fandango". WomenGamers. Retrieved January 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1=, |2=, |3=, |4=, |5=, |6=, |7=, |8=, |9=, and |10= (help); External link in |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

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