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I’m expecting ReMI to not only fail to concretely clarify anything about the deeper lore of MI1&2, but actually make it even more ambiguous, driving fans mad for another 30 years. 😀 The mystery and feeling of there being something else there that you can’t quite grasp is such a fundamental part of the original two games’ atmosphere that I think a spiritual sequel to them would be robbing both those and itself if it gave everything up and tried to play the explain game. I will thoroughly enjoy a ReMI that continues to play with those themes in a non-commital manner, rather than trying to make literal sense of them like Curse. Creating ambiguity around what has and hasn’t happened canonically in the series will only enhance this wonderful effect.

Here we go!

Yeah small self contained bubble communities of early internet had a lot going for them. They were only really interrelated by people consciously making an effort to do so, they had many soft bumps to entry (even something as simple as making a new account, or in the case of places like IRC channels, finding the webpage associated with them to begin with), and because of that I think people ended up getting to know each other more. Social media, for all its positives seems to mostly be predicated on introducing like-minded people to each other with no filters or speed bumps in the way. Those connections provoke unchecked radicalization of opinions, echo chambers, and drive bys. It's really easy for one to have a degenerate thought, type it into a social network search bar or post bar, and be introduced to anyone else who has typed that thought straight from their brain into a computer with nothing in between. Obviously pre-internet that was sorted by usually having to look someone in the face before saying the thought aloud and seeing what their reaction was. If you "try out" that thought on a good friend and they say "dude no, what the hell is that?" it's a hugely valuable data point for you, coming with context and trust built over the entire time you've known the person. In smaller early internet communities that was still somewhat possible to facilitate by the community memberships being relatively static where everyone knows each other, slow to grow, and hand-moderated - the personal connections, trust, context were still there. On social media there is literally no filter. Again, some positives to this exist, but the way social media short circuits all accumulated cultural checks, and thoughts go straight from your interiority to another's interiority unfiltered, is wild and makes bad things happen. You think something, and instead of getting to "test it out," your thought is immediately confirmed, you are told not only is it correct but also we have identified others who agree with you, maybe you want to form a community and even an identity around that thought. I think people who argue this is inherently good are often only arguing that because they like the high of a system that tells them they're right all the time. Again sorry for the long jag. That said, writing this all out further makes me believe Ron was correct to mostly leave social media for his own blog, and was right to close his blog when the world started intruding on it past his boundaries (if this is in fact what happened).

Changing the subject, slightly... Something I always used to think was really cool was how the theme to MI2 was really done in a different style to the first game. The sound of the original theme was really 'classic' of course, and it feels like since MI2 all the versions of the theme have really followed that template, albeit with some tweaks to the arrangement, but it always disappointed me that we never really heard a version of the theme that really had a very different feel to it. It was even more disappointing that EMI's theme was basically just CMI's and that (mainly because of technical constraints), the Tales version ended up sounding so limp compared with the previous versions. So my question is, are you hoping for a theme in a new style? A couple of weeks ago I made a version imagining how I might do a MI theme in a different feel to 1 and 2, and came up with this. Yeah, I know, shameless self promotion but this question has genuinely been on my mind so much that I made a Monkey Island Theme Remix for the first time in 30 years.

I don’t think this is an adventure gaming alone problem. It’s a pattern that can be seen in people all over the world. I think a lot of people are unhappy and get ‘lost’ in something (it can be media, but it can also be personal beliefs) so much that it starts to be a point of their identity. (This is a subconsious process.) Once they identify with something, they themselves are attacked when this something (or their vision of it) gets attacked, because to them this something ís them. This is why there’s so little ‘agree to disagree’ anymore. People just won’t listen and keep going until a discussion is ‘won’. I think that’s where a lot of the name calling and death threats you hear about online come from. People feel offended by a different vision, which they bring back to themselves, and with the feeling of powerlessness comes a feeling of agression. In my opinion threatening someone with death is never okay, same as personal violence. There are now writers/creators who face this every day. Do you have any idea what that does to someone’s psyche? It’s really sad to see something beautiful like the internet being abused for this kind of malicious practice. I think it’s a good thing that there is more moderation and there are more laws about internet use being made. The internet isn’t what it was in the 2000’s and it’s become a sort of Wild West populated by childish butthurt people shooting their death threat revolvers around. At the same time I’m grateful for Mixnmojo, (the last social media I have btw,) where the commenters are civil and respectful to each other. Thank you all! I’m sorry for my long rant, it’s a pattern that has me worrying for a long time, and it hurts me to see this happen to Ron.

MI2:SE was definitely an across-the-board improvement, and the concept art gallery alone justifies its existence. However, classic mode has compromises (inaccurate MIDI playback, removed vertical scrolling effect) which I consider more than a nuisance in a world where the SEs are the only versions of the first two games sold. The original games are either represented or they or not. My feelings about the SEs would be a lot less conflicted if Lucasfilm would toss out vintage, as-is builds of the original release(s). It's much easier to accept the SEs as their own thing when they are available alongside what they are effectively replacing.

I really enjoy how you've added reggae and old-time spooky vibes to your cover, they're a really nice reflection of the series and make it feel like a version you might hear in the Voodoo Lady's room. To tie in with Chuckie's DETH shirt at the end of MI2, I'd like a death metal version this time round.

Hey at least this'll all turn into pretty good fodder for a Mojo retrospective in 2047

TSoM12:Le’sR

Somehow I had not noticed the acronym at all on the main site, but I just came back here via the front page and noticed it immediately - it's all over the place! I thought it was just a quirk of Thrik's that was getting picked up on! Okay, I'm onboard, but I think we're going to have to start referring to the others as SeMI, SeMI 2 LeCh, CuMI, EscMI and TaMI for consistency's sake. Back on-topic, though, I wonder if ReMI is going to have any iMuse-y cleverness around its music tech. It'd be great to have high quality music but with really nice SeMI 2 style transitions and stuff.

If ron really did close his site because the comments became too gnarly, I’m glad he did because it’s his right, but it really bums me out that it came to that. That’s not an issue of arguing one’s case well or not, that’s people being purely impolite and dragging a fight about someone’s work right into their house. In real life you are told to “take it outside,” and I think that can and should apply here as well. Unfortunately I think some version of this is a very likely outcome. For many of the loudest upset people right now, it’s not an issue of the marketplace of ideas or some great debate, or even curiosity about what the makers of the game are up to or what their intentions are. It’s disappointment and an inability to walk away or take a break, festering as rage. For an unfortunate some, that inability to walk away will probably continue well after the game ships and for some within that group, will start manifesting as rationalizations and borderline conspiratorial thinking.

I think one thing the early internet - a place filled mostly with academics and engineers - misidentified is that not every expression if thought or declaration of preference is an invitation for a rhetorical debate. There isn’t always a “winner” to just preferring something to be some way. Or if there is, the fact that one comes across someone else expressing that preference online isn’t reason enough to engage them. I will say I’m not disagreeing with much of what you’re saying, but I would argue your lamentation for the death of romantic early internet debate culture is at least slightly misplaced*, because not everyone enjoyed or invited that in their life to begin with, but it was once pervasive and unavoidable, the “cost of doing business” of existing online is that people were out and about trying to debate you at every turn. Not ideal. Sucks, actually. I agree that peoples seemingly uncontrollable and compulsive unwillingness to walk away, or their desire to engage in bad faith debates as trolls, concern trolls, or other deliberate poisonings are all also terrible. But I also wish people had the restraint and wherewithal to just not engage at all, either because it may be unsure if the person posting is intending to engage with them, or just to save themselves some time. (this reply isn’t really a post about grumpygamer at all, apologies) * or: you simply preferred it, it was better for you, and that may not be true for others.

ReMI is the preferred usage in the Mojo Style GuideTM. I'm just following orders.

I was thinking more: Also, what's all this "ReMI" nonsense? It's not CuMI or TaMI, so it shouldn't be ReMI! I'd change to that if the designers had a strong preference, as with COMI (over CMI), but Dave Grossman uses RtMI:

I second this completely! A lot of franchise movies try to explain way to much about the lore that was left ambiguous. Looking at you, Disney, no one really wanted to know what happened to Belle’s mother, they just liked to speculate about it. It’s even more true about Darth Vader, or Hannibal Lecter, or Batman. They were interesting because we couldn’t quite grasp them, but wanted to so much. The mystery is worth more than the solution. Please keep the secret of Monkey Island a mystery. It will be much more valuable that way. In that same sense, I like this speculation, but I would hate it if this was officially revealed.

Oh goodness, I hope not. I was unimaginably disappointed when I heard it again in EMI, hearing what they've done with the theme is one of the highlights of a new Monkey Island to me. The fresher the sound the better, as long as it maintains some of the spirit of the original.

Only the knowledge that Remi is Satan got me through here. 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 💛🖤🖤🖤💛 🖤🖤🖤💚🖤 🖤💛💛💚🖤 🖤💛🖤💚🖤 💛🖤💚💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

There's one other wrinkle to this story.

Tim's line at the time was to the effect that he only considered it appropriate to remaster the LucasArts games he worked on in a project lead capacity. This baffled me, as I felt that Double Fine's tasteful approach qualified them in general and could just as easily have been applied to other games (and I wish they'd been the ones to do MI1 and MI2). Double Fine at that time seemed to have an in with Lucasfilm/Disney through Sony that might not have been easily reproducible at another studio. I wish they would have kept going while the iron was hot and the necessary connections established. Not to mention that they still could have invited the relevant folks (e.g. Hal Barwood if you're remastering Fate of Atlantis, Brian Moriarty if you're remastering Loom) who were willing/able to participate or at least have signoff. It's not like those guys own their own studios and Tim would thus be stealing their lunch. I suspect if the remasters sold like absolute hot cakes, we might have seen more of the catalog get the treatment.

I read it all, so I guess I'm awesome. This is completely subjective, which was elTee's point. You're just saying, "this was important to me, so therefore I should have the option to disable it". You're trying to argue that there's some objective standard that we all could agree and adhere to, but even if use your Star Wars example, that simply isn't true: Things in Empire and Jedi were changed in order to tie those films better into the prequel trilogy. Dialogue was rewritten. Actors were replaced. Objectively the meanings of several scenes were altered. But the biggest complaint by far, the one that led to fans going berserk, was the one you cited: Han not shooting first in the original film. Which arguably had far less impact on meaning than the other changes but which drew far less ire from fans. It's all inconsistent. And despite what you've said about SFX changes being acceptable to most fans because no "meaning" was changed, there are several high profile Star Wars restoration projects and they're ALL focused on removing every single change that has happened since 1977. Not just the infamous Greedo scene. In fact if there is a project that removes that single scene and keeps the other modern changes, I've not heard of it. But could list the others off the top of my head: 4K77 and Harmy's Despecialised Edition. For the fans who care the most, the ones who are prepared to put thousands of man hours into these projects, it's all or nothing: They want the untouched original. So there is no real consistency: There are just different camps of people who believe certain things are important. And because you belong to one particular camp, you think you represent the majority. Which again brings us back around the original point: This is all subjective. What's important to you is not important to me. And vice versa. And even if you find a subreddit somewhere that is a home to a lot of people who all agree on one point, it does not mean that their opinion is more valid, important or objective. It's just one of the dangers of the internet: It can easily make you feel that your opinion is the only sound-minded one out there by putting you in an echo chamber. And what's worse: You put things out about "censorship" and "wokeness" and other people, who actually don't care as much, will parrot back what they've heard. Like people who only read the headlines of news articles. Objectively speaking, changing Bosco's voice doesn't alter the meaning of anything. Nor does removing references to special needs children. But for you it alters the "authenticity" (the meaning of which could be debated in itself) of the experience. For me it doesn't. It's still all subjective. As for your comment about ignoring "imaginary bad actors", this has been addressed several times already. In short, the dev team did not wish to put their name to something they felt uncomfortable releasing. They were prepared to potentially upset some fans in order for them to be happier with what people played. In other words, they put their principles before money. Anyway this conversation has gone on far too long. I can't believe there's a single point that hasn't been covered by now. And I suspect that if people really do care that someone will release a patch that inserts the original dialogue into the remaster anyway.

I'm taking this, posted without context and apropos of nothing, as a sign that Kelly has some secret info on an upcoming Loom sequel: Could Devolver Digital have worked out a RTMI style deal with Lucasfilm Games and Brian Moriarty?!

I find this hilarious and couldn't agree more. The comment section was becoming a freaking den for delusional psychopaths. It's incredible how entitled some "fans" can be. They just won't stop whining about the new style, like it's gonna change anything. And I'm saying this as someone who is still a bit puzzled by the art style. What a bunch of morons, I feel sorry for Ron.

It was always a mini CD, just packaged as a tiny record. Here's the original:

ToMI-C4:TT’n’EoGT

Yeah, not too happy about the SEs effectively replacing the originals. The most revolutionary part of MI2 was the dynamic music, and there's no official version out there with any of that intact. They couldn't even record the loops they did for classic mode correctly.

I do agree with this and I suppose what I mean when I talk about the stuff I think ReMI might play with is that I think these are the sorts of things that we might be talking about in 6 months or whatever. I don't really think, and in fact hope that it isn't the case that everything will be 'explained.' Subtext, around which fans can speculate and build a narrative is what I like, and I think expect.

Okay, that’s kindof a relief then. I don’t really want 3-5 to be undone after all the great things that came from them. If it were up to me, I’d set the first third/half of the game directly after MI2, explaining how Guybrush escaped the carnival/became an adult again, etc. Then have a “20 years later” or whatever time jump, where Curse-Tales could theoretically have happened in that timeframe, but we don’t go too into the details of those games and it’s ultimately up to the player to decide if they’re still canon or not. I guess a big question mark in terms of the plot would be “are Guybrush and LeChuck actually brothers?” Which I always assumed they are since the LeChuck voodoo doll works with the skull of Guybrush’s parents, but it’s a pretty huge thing for the rest of the games to completely ignore! So I’d imagine we’ll finally get an answer on that now! Also I don’t know if/how Ron would U-turn on Guybrush/Elaine being married since that apparently wasn’t his original plan. If we do have a time jump to post-Tales, I personally think he’ll keep them together and maybe introduce some complications, but that’s all speculation! And finally, Ron did hint at one point that the Voodoo Lady being evil was an idea that he had that Tales ended up hinting towards. I feel that after Tales, that should be explored more here. (Also would love to know if they got Leilani Jones Wilmore back too! Looking over her filmography, she’s mostly been providing audio description tracks for movies lately, the latest being 2019. Hopefully she can be convinced to return!)

I think in interviews they’ve since clarified this to include all the games. From the Adventure Gamers interview: Like Murray, can we expect to see nods to Escape from Monkey Island and Tales of Monkey Island in this game? Ron: We very purposefully don’t do anything to invalidate any of the canon that’s happened in those games. We’re not saying any of those things didn’t happen, we don’t talk down to them at all. We embrace a lot of the things we liked in those games. So we were very, very careful about that. I remember some of those conversations Dave and I had, there was this kind of tendency to just throw everything out, let’s just start over. But the thing we finally came around to is, these are very beloved games. We didn’t make them, but there are still a lot of good things in those games, and we wanted to embrace those, not whisk them away. Dave: We talked all about canon and these other games, and the fact that we liked them, and the audience liked them, and so we made it our point of philosophy to adhere to canon wherever possible, but with two caveats. One of which is, it’s actually kind of hard to keep track of everything that’s canon, and some of these other games don’t even agree with each other. So a little bit of paradox is necessary and probably healthy for us as creators and as human beings. And the other caveat is that too much canon can get in the way of the story you’re trying to tell, so we decided that we would adhere to canon unless it was going to get in the way, and we would ignore some minor details if we needed to. Ron: Which I think the other games did as well. You have to be a little flexible in that stuff. You keep it where it’s convenient, and you ignore it where it’s convenient. Ron: Yeah, you don’t want to create paradoxes, you don’t want to do things that are so bad that people are like, “What the heck?” But I think the little things, you just have to let the story be what the story is. Dave: Canon’s kind of a modern idea, isn’t it? If you think about the old myths and things, nothing ever made sense from one story to the next in those. I blame comic books for our slavish adherence to canon.

This may be as close as we'll get...

Exactly. Curse’s opening is definitely the best version of the main theme, but a new version every game is always something to look forward to. To be honest, those Escape opening credits are so p**s poor all around, from the recycling of the main theme, to the camera angles, to the PowerPoint transitions to the zooming in on the bottom left corner of the letter “M” on “Mike Stemmle” at the end. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had 1 day to go before launch and realised they’d forgotten to make an intro! The soundtrack is definitely one of the main reasons to be excited for the game. It’s the first time since Escape that the trio of Land, McConnell and Bajakian will be together, and we’re more than likely going to be getting a soundtrack comparable to the production values and quality of Curse/Escape. Even if you dislike Escape (which I personally never have) the soundtrack is still top tier. It also hit me recently that this is the first new Herman dialogue we’ll have gotten since Escape (not counting the SE’s since that dialogue was written for the original games) and he didn’t appear in Tales. Very curious how they’re going to navigate Escape/Tales in this story. CMI is still canon according to Ron, but the other two games weren’t specified.

Really sad to hear this… It would’ve been a dream to see Double Fine tackle more LucasArts remasters. They were done so respectfully to the source material, and so much better than the Monkey Island special editions.

Yes, exactly. I'd have expected them to pull in the right people to consult on the things. I think this also stoked the fire that they were involved:

Good on Ron for shutting it down, but holy shit I wish it wasn't necessary. There's been a lot of unnecessary hate. We're getting a new Monkey Island game, we should be so grateful for that. May I also point out that it's not like he's gone and turned it into a kart racing game or a first person shooter, it's going to be an honest-to-goodness point and click with a story that has the characters we know and love, and really, that's what counts.

I'd put money on almost 100% of it being entitled older fans stuck in the distant past, convinced that they and they alone know what's right for the series and that any departure from their long-held vision of a "proper" "MI3a" is not only wrong but a grave insult bordering on personal violence. It's an attitude that's been there in communities dedicated to classic adventure games for a long time, and anything Gilbert & co. did was never going to be good enough, short of literally reaching through a rift in space and time to a dimension where a Gilbert-led Monkey Island 3 released in 1994 and bringing a copy back. And half those people would still whine about how they didn't understand the one joke that referenced President Gary Hart's administration.

It came from when the excavating was happening but wasn’t released. This is New Content exclusive to this thread.

What part of Jake's request are you guys struggling with?

I'd be happy with a remaster, let alone a sequel! Please let it be Forge!

Clearly the only way to solve this problem is with a text adventure demake: Now the art style can be whatever you imagine.

Oh, I'm sure we've all taken our turn indulging in that mindset a bit. Hopefully it's gratuitous for me to clarify that there's not the slightest bit of invalidity with preferring the Ron-led games or for feeling that the subsequent ones represented a departure in spirit, or whatever. That's probably a pretty common perspective -- maybe even a majority one for those who played the games in release order? -- but every "take" has its ugliest extreme. It's when people's preferences become tantamount to some sort of purity test that we enter The Dumb (technical term), and I take solace in the fact that it doesn't really show up in these parts anymore. Probably because the median age here is 153 now, but still.

Guilty as charged here. I've been harsh with CMI in the past, and ironically now that RMI is going for that art style, to my eyes it only reinforced the "legitimacy" of the hyper cartoony style chosen for CMI. Not that it needed my approval, but yeah I now realize what I thought about it was wrong, even Ron likes his cartoony Monkey Island. So I kinda fully made peace with CMI now (which I always loved by the way).

It’s clear we’ve been fed very little when very very hungry. People commenting on the lighting choices of one image, or the presence or absence of grit in brush strokes when you zoom in. It’s not bad stuff to talk about, but I’m really really excited for when the full meal arrives. Even if the effect in aggregate isn’t to everyone’s taste, there will be so many more (and much more interesting) things to talk about.

May I humbly ask that this conversation end now? I am reading the same few people swirl around the same points now for many many posts. Anyone reading from the outside can clearly see where everyone recently involved in this thread stands on the broad points and many of the specific nuances of their points, and none of you are going to change each other’s minds.

It's strange. My generation was all about the "Director's Cut". We learned that studios often meddled with a director's vision, and getting that original unfiltered vision became the holy grail for fans. Now it seems it's getting a tailor-made edition that suits your tastes exactly. Creator vision be damned. In a way that's fine if people are prepared to make changes themselves (fan edits, fan mods, etc), but it sounds like the comments must have drifted into flat out abuse for Ron to shut down his website. Although hopefully it wasn't abuse towards the team and maybe just squabbling between fans.

I haven't visited Ron's blog in a while, but I remember the kind of comments he would get there and on Twitter whenever he would touch on his plans for another Monkey Island game. I can only imagine the merry nonsense he brought down upon himself now that there's something tangible to react to. My new joke these days is "Now it's Ron's turn to be the guy who ruined Monkey Island." It's a rite of passage, really. There's always been a contingent of fans who have judged the third, fourth and fifth games not on objective criteria, but against what they knew in their hearts Ron would have done differently. Discussing the sequels became an evaluation of their legitimacy. The "real" Monkey Islands vs. the imitation ones, and all that codswallop. And guess what, now that Ron is in fact making his follow up, those same people are going to turn against that one, too. Because Ron's not going to make the game they decided was the correct one -- either because he "sold out" or "lost it" or got soft or committed that unpardonable sin of growing more philosophical about (and thus accepting of) the other games or had to defer to all those modern ideas Lucasfilm forced upon him. There will be a reason, don't worry. It was a foregone conclusion; it can't be helped. The best thing to do as always is just enjoy the ride.

Yikes. I didn't bother to read the comments, but they must have been really terrible if Ron has taken his blog down. I think he's pretty philosophical about things generally, so I can't imagine. It's great that Ron decided to create this whole thing in a vacuum, otherwise it would have been two years of toxicity messing with the creative process. I wonder if Schafer can offer some sanguine words privately to the team, given that DF have been through this themselves. There was a poll on a big LucasArts Facebook group (18K members) and the result was that 80% of people liked the new style. 15% were disappointed but hopeful. Only 2% didn't like it outright. So it seems like a vocal minority anyway.

This is something that happens more and more. It’s really depressing what fandom has become… Toxic fandom is really destroying creative processes. This is why many wise development companies (like Nintendo) never really listen to fans. When they do it becomes a sliding slope.

Absolutely! I mean I also turned up my nose to the art style, I'd definitely have preferred something else, but I'm simply happy this thing exists in the first place. It's pretty much a little miracle imho. People there are behaving like Ron owes them anything, it's unbelievable. Love it or leave it, but why the whining???

Ah, that's sad. I know I've said here that I'm not fully onboard with the art we've seen so far, but even if I weren't withholding final judgement until I actually play the thing (or at least see some proper gameplay), I don't feel that as a fan I'm entitled to receive the exact thing I want. I certainly wouldn't go and harass the creators about it.

I registered an account just to finally respond to you on this, because I'm tired of reading this disingenuous "Why can't everybody just be reasonable and admit I'm right while giving me everything I want" argument over and over again. You know why they made the changes. I know why they made the changes. It wasn't as a proof of concept for a "future iteration." It wasn't "extra content." It wasn't that it used to be okay to cast a white guy as a black character and have him do a broad stereotypical accent, and now it isn't; it's that it was never okay, but it used to be acceptable not to care. In recent years a whole lot more people have decided they're not willing to just sit back and accept a bad decision because it was handed to them, and Skunkape made a conscious choice to update the games in line with that. They're not going to render it back down into an optional patch or a toggle switch or downloadable content, because it's not a cosmetic choice--it's an informed decision that they made for clearly stated reasons. They knew there'd be people who wouldn't like it, and they did it anyway. You can choose to live with that and move on, or you can wring your hands and pretend you're just concerned about the non-existent damage being done to the poor, poor Sam & Max IP. You argue that change is fine, but only if it happens *later*, in a hypothetical product that doesn't and may never exist rather than in one that's in front of you forcing you to think and feel things; it's a wishy-washy attempt to insist that everything you're used to should stay just the way it is--i.e., the world where you didn't have to care--while still trying to cast yourself as being on "the right side." You go to great lengths to insist that you understand the original performance was stereotypical and wrongheaded, but if you keep going "It was *my* stereotypical wrongheaded performance, and I want it to stay the same!" then guess what? You're not on the right side! You keep appealing to what "basically every old fan feels like" to argue with people *who have stuck with a LucasArts fansite since the mid-'90s* about decisions in remasters *that were made in part by one of the founding voices of that fansite.* If you don't like it, I can't make you like it. But stop pretending like you represent some silent, long-suffering majority.

I think this also goes to show how much creative projects can change once you start to sit down and actually make the thing. That's why I always knew Ron was never going to 100% adhere to his 2013 blog post. You have all these thoughts and ideas that feel so rigid when you first come up with them but if you're not open enough to let those things change, sometimes beyond recognition, you end up with something unchallenging and kinda soulless. I know it sounds really cliche and pretentious, but so much of the creative journey is born out of letting the ride take you away into places unknown. Not only that, but when you're working on something as collaborative as a videogame, you have to listen to the input of others. This is I think where conversations with Dave Grossman probably had a lot to do with how Return in its current form took shape. It doesn't mean that he "compromised his vision" or "broke his promises to the fans", it just means that he surrendered to the process. We all love Monkey Island 2 for what it became at its final stage, not for the original design document, and who knows, maybe that one would''ve been good too, but just like a film script, it's just a blueprint, it's not a religious text.