The Next Big Thing (video game)
The Next Big Thing is a 2011 graphic adventure game developed by the Spanish company Pendulo Studios and published by Focus Home Interactive. The spiritual successor to Pendulo's earlier Hollywood Monsters, it takes place in an alternate-history, 1950s Hollywood where movie monster roles are portrayed by real monsters. The game stars Dan Murray and Liz Allaire, two reporters who stumble across a conspiracy as they cover the film industry. Assuming control of Dan and Liz, the player navigates the game world, converses with non-player characters and solves puzzles.
Pendulo began developing The Next Big Thing in the late 2000s. The original Hollywood Monsters had been a success for the studio in Southern Europe, and Pendulo reported that requests for a sequel were consistent in the years after its release. Pendulo at first intended to remake Hollywood Monsters, but decided that the original's flaws—both in design and in what the developers retrospectively called its "male chauvinist" outlook—required a greater reimagining of the license.
The Next Big Thing was a commercial bomb upon its initial release for computers. Its performance hurt Pendulo's business relationships and forced the team to rethink its style, resulting in its first fully dramatic title, Yesterday. However, The Next Big Things later port for iOS saw more success. The game's computer version received generally favorable reviews from critics, according to Metacritic.
Gameplay
The Next Big Thing is a graphic adventure game set in a 2D environment and controlled with a point-and-click interface. Progression through the game is linear; the story is segmented into discrete scenes, each of which begins with a list of the player's goals at that moment. The player advances the plot by exploring the game world, speaking with non-player characters via dialogue trees, collecting items and solving puzzles. Most puzzles require the player to use or combine items, although minigames and conversation-based puzzles appear as well. The Next Big Thing features three difficulty modes: the lowest offers a hint system and allows the player to highlight all interactive hotspots on the screen; the middle difficulty omits the hint system; and the highest omits both.Plot
Concept and characters
The Next Big Thing takes place in Hollywood during an alternate-history 1950s, in which real monsters act in monster movies. MKO Pictures, run by the monster businessman William A. FitzRandolph, dominates this monster-movie industry. The two player characters are reporters Liz Allaire and Dan Murray of the fictional newspaper The Quill. Dan, described by Destructoid as "arrogant and self-destructive", is a veteran sportswriter recently demoted to the society pages. Liz is young, wealthy and eager to prove herself as a journalist, but, according to Marca Player, she suffers from "every psychic pathology you can imagine, from Asperger syndrome to multiple personalities." :fr:Gameblog|Gameblog declared her "borderline schizo". Liz and Dan share a mutually-hostile, frenemy relationship marked by arguments, insults and traces of romantic attraction.The game's story is told by a narrator whose appearance Europa Press compared to that of actor Sean Connery. He breaks down the player's goals in each leg of the plot, and provides puzzle hints on the lowest difficulty setting. The story features a number of monster characters, such as the Poet of Pain, a large creature who injures himself to gather material for new poems; Big Albert, both muscular and implanted with the brain of a Nobel Prize winner; Professor Fly, a mutant blend of human and fly; Krom-Ha, an undead queen from Egypt; and the Immaterial Man. Robot characters, owned by FitzRandolph, appear as well. The game borrows its premise and a number of plot elements from its predecessor Hollywood Monsters, including the Quill news agency and large sections of that game's first chapter. Liz and Dan fill the roles of Hollywood Monsters protagonists Sue Bergman and Ron Ashman, while FitzRandolph replaces the film producer Otto Hannover from the first game.
Synopsis
The Next Big Thing begins as Liz Allaire and Dan Murray arrive in Hollywood to cover the Horror Movie Awards, which recognize the achievements of monster actors. She interviews celebrities at the theater while he drinks alone in the car. When Liz returns, she sees Big Albert sneaking into the office of William A. FitzRandolph's nearby mansion and decides to investigate; Dan remains behind. Exploring the mansion and meeting with FitzRandolph, Liz comes across two tickets to a boxing match of interest to Dan, which she promises him in exchange for his distracting FitzRandolph and clearing her path to the office. She breaks in to find Big Albert rummaging through FitzRandolph's desk, but he escapes out the window. Deducing that he plans to meet with the Immaterial Man in FitzRandolph's warehouse, Liz activates her tape recorder and walks inside, only to find Big Albert unconscious. The Immaterial Man asks for her help, and she agrees.The next day, Liz has vanished and Dan—still hoping to get the boxing match tickets, and under threat of losing his job at The Quill—looks for clues. He comes across Liz's tape recorder, which reveals that she and the Immaterial Man had hidden Big Albert inside a sarcophagus before being kidnapped by an evil scientist. With Big Albert as his only lead, Dan tracks the sarcophagus to Krom-Ha's temple. By losing his job, using the Poet of Pain's unhinged poetry to answer a Rorschach test and pretending to have only 19 days left to live, he convinces Professor Fly to use him as a test subject for an experimental teleportation device that will take him to Krom-Ha. Once there, he impersonates Amenhotep III and becomes Krom-Ha's lover until he finds a way to access the sarcophagus. He brings Big Albert back to Professor Fly, but discovers that Albert's brain is missing.
Meanwhile, FitzRandolph is shown to be in possession of the brain. Liz is now his dinner guest on his private zeppelin: she and the Immaterial Man had been imprisoned by the scientist Dr. Zelssius, FitzRandolph's employee. While Liz plans to escape with the brain, FitzRandolph repeatedly tells her that her mind will change within the hour. She begins to experience headaches, but manages to knock FitzRandolph out and steal the brain, returning to Dan and Professor Fly on a motorcycle. The revived Big Albert explains that FitzRandolph and Dr. Zelssius are using brain implants to control people, moments before FitzRandolph and his robots enter and Liz, revealed to be implanted, comes under his control. Back in his laboratory, Dr. Zelssius straps Dan into a chair and prepares to implant him.
With the help of Professor Fly, Dan breaks free, subdues Dr. Zelssius and captures Liz. Her implant snaps when they try to remove it, trapping Liz in her own subconscious mind. She overcomes a series of psychological problems while Dan pumps her for the tickets' location. He then, pretending to be implanted, visits FitzRandolph's headquarters to help Professor Fly free the others subjected to mind control. Dan finds the tickets in Liz's purse, and Liz escapes from Dr. Zelssius's control. It is revealed that FitzRandolph is using those implanted to help his own political campaign, in an effort to combat societal bias against monsters. Bribing the two most infamous monster actors with the tickets, Dan helps Liz shoot a negative political ad that exposes FitzRandolph, who unwittingly airs it and ruins himself. Dan and Liz's scoop gets Dan rehired at The Quill, and a flashforward shows the two as an old married couple: Dan was the unnamed narrator throughout the game.
Development
began planning what would become The Next Big Thing in the late 2000s, during the last stages of 's development. The company's initial idea was to create a high-definition remake of its 1997 title Hollywood Monsters, which had been a major hit in Pendulo's home country of Spain. Fan requests for another Hollywood Monsters game had been ongoing for years, and Pendulo had considered the option as early as 1998, only for the project to evolve into '. The company dropped further hints of a sequel during Runaways development. Pendulo art director Rafael Latiegui summarized, "To each new game that we have been making, the reaction of the Spanish public has been the same: 'When is the next Hollywood Monsters?' " This pressure from fans was a key incentive to make The Next Big Thing. Other factors included Pendulo's desire to break away from the Runaway series, and to shorten pre-production and development by combining a proven concept with the studio's new engine technology.Because the Hollywood Monsters source code and design document were unavailable, Pendulo writer Josué Monchan revisited the game and attempted to "reverse-engineer... the design" over the course of two months in 2008. He came to the conclusion that the puzzles, inventory, characters and overall quality were below par by current standards. Monchan also believed that the first game was "a bit male chauvinist" in its use of female characters, particularly Sue Bergman, whom he considered an ornamental, submissive woman whose agency in the plot was vastly overshadowed by that of the male lead. The team later stated that she "left a lot to be desired" as a character. Even before conceiving a new story for the game, Pendulo decided to replace the protagonists, one of its first major changes to the Hollywood Monsters formula.
The Next Big Thing gradually grew into a reimagining of Hollywood Monsters, which Latiegui called neither "a second part, nor a remake".
Monchán co-wrote The Next Big Thing with studio director Ramón Hernáez, the latter of whom doubled as project lead.
Pendulo tried to imbue The Next Big Thing with a feminist outlook. The team also opted to tackle issues of racism with the game's story.
In The Next Big Thing, Pendulo moved away from the nonlinear structure of Hollywood Monsters that had led to "stagnation" for players, the team reported.
Pendulo and publisher Focus Home Interactive announced The Next Big Thing in April 2010. Commentators from Adventure Gamers and Jeux Video noted the project's close similarity to Hollywood Monsters; Roberto García of MeriStation wrote that Spanish players suspected a connection between the games, but that "from Pendulo Studios the answer was always silence". However, in April 2011, the game was retitled Hollywood Monsters 2 in Spain.
Release and distribution
The Next Big Thing launched in Germany on February 4, 2011. Releases followed in France on April 7 and in the United States on April 21. As was common for Pendulo titles at the time, the Spanish version came after the game's international debut. It appeared on June 16, a launch date shared with the Italian edition. The Spanish version, published by FX Interactive, was bundled with the original Hollywood Monsters.In late 2012, it received an iOS release under the name Hollywood Monsters. The iOS release was localised in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
Reception
According to Josué Monchan of Pendulo Studios, The Next Big Thing was financially a "huge failure" upon its initial release for computers. He attributed its underperformance to several issues, including the "horrible" title and the limited cultural relevance of its monster-based story circa 2011. However, Pendulo was unable to fully determine why it had failed, and in part blamed poor timing. The game's low sales hurt the studio's business opportunities, even in its core market of Europe, and Monchan said that Pendulo's publisher lost faith in the team afterward. Pendulo reacted by rethinking its development process and creating its first fully dramatic game, Yesterday.Critically, The Next Big Thing earned "generally favorable reviews", as calculated by Metacritic. HobbyConsolas reported it as one of the highest-rated Spanish-made games on Metacritic by 2017.
Reviewers praised its graphics, characters, story and animations, while some criticized the puzzles, depending on the reviewer they were viewed as too easy or too "far-fetched".
In Spain, The Next Big Thing was nominated in four categories, including Best Game, at the 2011 annual awards held by the :es:Asociación de Desarrolladores de Ocio Interactivo Digital|Asociación de Desarrolladores de Ocio Interactivo Digital. It came away with the prizes for Best Sound, Best Graphics and Best Script. The game's four nominations at Spain's National :es:Gamelab|Gamelab Videogame Industry Awards, meanwhile, resulted in four losses to .
iOS port
Despite the commercial failure of The Next Big Things computer version, Josué Monchan said that Pendulo Studios saw much more success with the game's iOS port, Hollywood Monsters. He called it a "moderate hit" on the platform, and noted that it had out-earned the computer release as of December 2014. Its success was validating to the game's creators, Monchan remarked, because it led them to believe that The Next Big Things initial low sales were caused by business mistakes rather than the game's quality. Metacritic characterized reviews for the iOS port as "mixed or average". In 2013, the port was nominated for the "Excellence in Storytelling" prize at the International Mobile Gaming Awards, but lost to The Walking Dead.David Wolinsky of TouchArcade praised Hollywood Monsters production values and called it a "rock-solid and fun adventure", although he found its comedy "hit-or-miss" and encountered crash issues not present in the computer version. Writing for HobbyConsolas, David Alonso Hernández hailed the new touchscreen interface as a "great fit" and arguably a better match than traditional point-and-click controls. He enjoyed the writing, art and puzzles; his biggest complaint was with the loss of the computer version's Spanish-language dub. Conversely, Harry Slater of Pocket Gamer and Brittany Vincent of Slide to Play both called the new touch controls "fidgety" and imprecise, and dubbed the puzzles illogical. The two reviewers saw Hollywood Monsters as a largely missed opportunity, with an interesting premise bogged down by poor execution.