What Just Happened?

Twelve months ago our President was white, Michael Jackson was...probably astride a carousel pony somewhere, and I was working at Disney on a concept for a Jonas Brothers game, Furthermore, I thought the odds of any of that being any different in the year 2009 were about as good as as the release of a new Monkey Island game.

Well fuck ME.

A few months after I started at Telltale, Dave Grossman sat me down and asked me what I thought of working on the following three things:

GROSSMAN: New season of Sam and Max?

ME: Heck ya! That'd be neato mosquito. Sign me up.

GROSSMAN: There are two more.

ME: Oh.

GROSSMAN: [Unintelligible gobbedlygook that sort of sounds like En...Dee...Aye]

ME: Really? That'd be awesome. Wow, I think I could bring a lot to that.

GROSSMAN: Monkey Island.

ME: What the shit?!? Are you fo'real? Humminahumminahumminahummina... THUD.

[Oxygen deprived Sean corpse hits the floor]

GROSSMAN: ...Are you drunk again?

The way it turned out, I was to write the script for the third chapter of the season long saga, Lair of the Leviathan. Spoiler alert: there's a lair. It may or may not contain a Leviathan. Working with Joe Pinney (the designer on the ep) and the rest of the design team, we cooked up a story that I hope you will find has a crispy, seasoned crust and a warm, pink, juicy center. I have no idea if Dan, (Telltale CEO) would kick my teeth in for it, but perhaps after the episode is over, I'll get some portions of the script up here so you can see what writing for a game looks like. Until then, imagine a barrel of blood soaked cocktail napkins with choose-your-own-adventure-esque "turn to page 43" notes at the bottom of each.



It astounds me how much life can change in twelve months. I really feel like I've won the lottery with the opportunity I've been given to work on such a beloved franchise, complete with the knowledge that it's only a matter of time before an uncle I never knew shows up on my doorstop, having heard I won the Powerball, and demands a Lamborghini and a liver transplant.

Right now, I'm having a the time of my life writing Guybrush Threepwood. But don't think for a second that I'm not scared shitless. I don't know how I got here or how any of this happened. I woke up in the trunk of Wallace and Gromit's car, was dragged into a back alley and put into a room lit by a single light bulb. In front of me sits a rickety chair, a table, a typewriter and a one-month calendar with an X through the first day. It is only now that I realize I only know ten jokes, or variations thereof, and will now have to pound them thin, like gold leaf, to stretch them over three hundred pages.

We'll see how it goes.

Where the Flip Have I Been?

Doing this thang.