Does anyone know if FT 2 is going to be just plain action. I am afraid that LucasArts are going to take the adventure out of it, and it will end up like Tomb Raider.

You'd need an oracle or really good contacts to LucasArts to know that right now. The press release indicates that it'll have a lot of action in it. I don't expect too much from it (and hope to be greatly surprised).

The free wheeling action-adventure will offer a humorous original story, furious bare knuckle fighting, and the thrill of high speed biking.

I'm guessing graphics and contorols will be something similar to Escape from Monkey Island, although probably better graphics.

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In that case, action wouldn't ba a problem and I think they can still incorporate good puzzels and dialogue with a good storyline (if they use the same engine, they don't have to worry too much about it and wont make the same mistake with it that they did with EFMI which was to neglect the story.)

They can't use the exact same engine. Firstly, it wasn't near as good as should have been (i.e. better than Grim Fandango). Secondly they would have to write new code for the bike scenes and fights (see press release). Lastly you can't expect anybody to be satisfied with such outdated low poly graphics. While this may not necessarily require re-writing the engine, the outher two points will.
I would prefer mouse control in the case that it's really supposed to be an adventure.

Hmm points well taken. I personally would prefer mouse control, but we both know that it would take a lot or persuading to make them do that because that isn't appealing to most of today’s gaming audience. Plus to bring it out on different consoles would be hard if it was mouse controlled so it's most definitely going to have the same controls used, ergo, using the same engine as EFMI and Grim wouldn’t have any effect on how good the game is. Or at least they shouldn't go about creating a completely new programming language just to make this game, my guess is, they would take the LUA engine and incorporate other programming languages allowing them to do other things such as bike sequences. We can't think that The Curse of Monkey Island was built primarily on the SCUMM engine, but instead incorporated other such engines, such as INSANE which is still used today for EFMI and Grim for streamlining Video.

In other words, the LUA engine would be perfect as a primary programming language used for this game. So in short, we may be seeing the same types of controls for moving Ben around as we saw in Grim and EFMI. That’s all I was trying to say in my last post. And because we already have the primary engine, we may not spend too much time on the movement of Ben and so we may have a better story than EFMI.

And yes, as I said before, the graphics have nothing to do with the engine and as we've seen in the trailer (although that may not have been in game footage) Ben and others seem to be a lot less block and a lot more smooth than EFMI.

I think you've got your wires crossed a little Neil.

LUA isnt the engine, its the scripting language, GRIME is the engine. With older games SCUMM isnt the engine, thats the scripting language SPUTM is the engine of which SCUMM, INSANE, CYST, IMUSE and FLEM are modules. EMI used the Jedi Knight2 Droid engine for graphics.

They could incorporate mouse control if they wanted to, they just dont want to (ignoring issues of how it would work).

Meh, I’m no expert. Okay, so I’m guessing SPUTM was used in CMI along with the modules for streamlined video, music control and character animation.

but basically, I’m still saying that they could use the same engine for FT2 (Jedi Knight2 Droid) as it would really be just a base for the game itself and then other modules could be used on it, such as for the bike scenes, right? (Correct me if I’m wrong, again, I’m no expert)

Yeah I think so, not sure, they might use the new Indy engine, if they were gonna use sumt from sputm for the bike sequences they'd probably use INSANE

what's used for cutscenes (sorry, i thought it was INSANE, but now i'm getting the idea that it's used for something else.)

SMUSH is used for cutscenes in CMI and the Grim rolling trailer.

INSANE is a bit weird and is used for rolling video and cutscenes in various lec games, its also used for arcade-y sorta bits like the bike riding in FT.

Right, thanks, I sort of find this kinda' interesting so it's nice to know (it's also nice not to come off as an ignorant jerk in some areas that I wish I knew more about)

Thanx again.;)