As you can see below, it adds a great deal of film noir to the already stylized look of the game.Ĭlick for the full image - the lighting adds quite a bit. One area where the team focused heavily is on the real-time lighting engine. It’s not jarring, but it is clear that there was only minimal work done to the environments. The high-resolution characters do stick out a little bit against the backgrounds, leaving them looking a little sharper than their surroundings. Cutscenes get progressively more desynced from the audio, meaning they will eventually abruptly cut off, often mid-sentence. Unfortunately there are a few graphical hitches that, hopefully, will be ironed out in the inevitable patches after launch. Taking a moment to look at the original gave me an immediate appreciation for the graphical update. Not unlike rebuilds like the recent efforts on Halo, you can switch back and forth between render modes in the options. Selecting this simply stretches the aspect ratio, making Manny and friends simply look a little wider than they should. 16:9 is also an option, but since the team at Double Fine brushed up the backgrounds, but didn’t entirely bring them up to the same level as the principal actors, the scenes don’t expand cleanly. The original 4:3 aspect ratio leaves the side portions black, but you can now select a 4:3 option with beautiful side art. Beyond that they also gave us some new aspect ratio options. To that end, they built a new render engine and rebuilt all of the characters in the game, while still keeping the classic calaca look. The team at Double Fine needed to pretty up Manny and friends, rubbing off the jagged edges of 17 years of age. “This deck of cards is a little frayed around the edges, but then again so am I and I’ve got fewer suits…” While it was state-of-the-art in 1998, it was in need of some love before it’d be ready for a new audience. The game is split into four distinct acts, and each has the same influence.
Even the government building of the Department of Death is embellished with Teotihuacan architecture and mural work. Like the figures presented in the traditional festival, the characters in the game are all Mexican skeletal calaca figures. Grim Fandango’s setting and characters are culled directly from the Spanish tradition of Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Meche deserves better than the Excelsior walking stick. Her file says otherwise, so Manny sets off to make things right. Until he lands a client, Mercedes “Meche” Colomar, who clearly should be riding the luxury Number Nine train all the way to her final destination. The only problem is that Manny’s clients are all deadbeats, barely able to afford a crummy walking stick. Grim Reaper and Travel Agent Manny Calavera works at the Department of Death and makes his bones by selling upgrades to the recently-deceased on their four-year journey to the Land of the Dead. Schafer and team gave us an incredible and very quotable game set in the Mexican underworld. If there is one thing that didn’t need to be retouched it was the fantastic writing in Grim Fandango. And yes…Tim Schafer is once again at the helm. and the hope of an updated version of this classic adventure became a reality. Eventually LucasArts folded into Disney Co. Times changed and Tim went on to form his own band of misfits over at Double Fine. Grim Fandango reaches back to 1998 in a time when LucasArts was cranking out the best point-and-click adventure games ever made, and Tim Schafer was at the helm. It breathes new life into the classic games I grew up with, letting me share them with my loved ones.
The recent spate of game remakes has, in my opinion, been an absolute boon.
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