A Tale of Two Brothers
Hal on the Sax, Halbert on the drums
After having chosen a theme for the game and taken hundreds of notes of films, it was time to create a main character to write the story around him. I don’t know if that’s the order everyone writes a script, but that’s how I decided to make it.
At this point the background of the story was already decided- would be the one brought from Monsieur Verdoux, that tells the story of some wealthy women who have disappeared just after their marriage. To tell such a story a detective as a main character would be great- and when I think about one always shows up in my mind the Sherlock Holmes stereotype- a clever, calm, thin and tall character - an idea that would later evolve to become Halbert. The point with such a character is: where is the fun in that? I really think Sherlock Holmes is an incredible serie of books, and they truly have some dry humor, but a good part of it is put in the stories through Sherlock’s friend, Watson.
Guybrush Threepwood is an huge inspiration
Since the beginning of the concept of the game, the idea was that it should be as fun as Monkey Island, and one of the reasons this serie is so funny is the not-so-usual personality of Guybrush Threepwood. I needed a character like him!
Having that in mind I slowly gave up the idea of one main character and started to think about having two controllable characters- two distinctive exaggerated personalities in a kind of cartoony style of drawing. That would be fun!
The first character was already chosen, would be a slightly exaggerated version of Sherlock- a clever, quiet, thoughtful, arrogante, very thin and tall character; the exactly opposite of him would be the second character- a kind of silly, impulsive, naive, very gentle, fat and short character. Those were the concepts- now to draw them.
Sherlock Holmes and Noel Rosa were the references for Halbert
There was a famous musician here in Brazil of the beginning of the last century called Noel Rosa- he was not only known for his incredible talent, but also for his disfigured chin- something that resulted in some of the most amazing caricatured faces ever to be draw in Brazil. I always loved it, and thought it would fit perfectly on a Sherlock-style character, just had to add a little closed eye to give the arrogant feeling. The second character would be more of a straightforward thinking- being not so smart he would have a small head, big cheeks to show on the face that he was fat and as he was gentle would be always smiling. And of course: they had to wear suites!
The names Hal and Halbert came to my mind while I was reading the autobiography of Chaplin. There’s a moment in the book that Chaplin talks about Hal Roach (the film and television producer) and Harold Lloyd (the film comedian). Those names stayed in my head for a while, Hal I loved since the first time I read it- Harold not so much, so I changed it to Halbert. I thought those were great names for two brothers, Hal and halbert, they sounded pretty cool for my hears and also would be one more reference from cinema in general to the game.
Hal Roach and Harold Lloyd inspired their names
With all that I had completed the two main characters- Hal and Halbert. Now it was time to write the tale of two brothers.
Luciano Rateke
