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I think perhaps just to emphasise some boundaries here, I don't think it's wrong to express opinions about aesthetics. I don't even think it's wrong to release mods which 'fix' aesthetic stuff you don't like. Here's some of my own opinions: I think MI1's original backgrounds are merely okay. I think Guybrush's hair and face in the SE is extremely silly looking. I don't think the game has ever really looked good in 3D. I like CMI's art style a lot, but I think a few things were lost in the translation. Where it becomes toxic is when one becomes so convinced of their take that they start second guessing everything anyone has to say to the contrary, ascribing some sort of sinister external motive. Or trying to justify why only their opinion can be the right one with a bunch of art theory mumbo jumbo. I'm completely happy for people to dislike the art they've seen so far (I quite like it, but I'm not yet COMPLETELY sold), all I ask is that they accept that Ron and the team want this look for the game, and all I suggest -for their own happiness more than anything else- is that they wait until they've had a chance to see the whole thing come to life before making sweeping pronouncements about it.

Yep, agreed. I think it’s fine to straight up hate something and wish it was something else, and to have strong opinions about what it should be. Its an opinion, a reaction one has, so it goes. But it’s just so rude to do that to Ron’s face while he’s still making the game. And its insufferably, delusionally entitled to take it farther and start rationalizing why Ron’s decisions don’t align with one’s own through basically conspiratorial thinking (“Disney made him do it” etc). I’m glad Ron turned off comments and came out with a response like this, but am sad he had to. I’m actually glad for almost the whole post - I think him clearing the air to this degree would have probably been necessary or healthy regardless of any fan reaction. And, him finally saying what his original starting point for MI3 was going to be, shows that he was truly in control of this new game to the point that he was able to move past that idea like one naturally does when making something; he’s not still clinging to it like it’s the uncompromised version he didn’t get to make or something. But I wish it hadn’t had to have the part about the fan comments at the very end, that bit is sad.

That Purcell quote is great and really interesting. To me, especially coupled with todays Grumpy Gamer blog post, it’s one more reminder that these things aren’t made from some grand master plan, but are really the result of the people making them at the time they are made.

So grumpygamer.com is back up but with comments removed...good idea. Ron has also written a new post titled "When I Made Another Monkey Island" which has basically confirmed that he really didn't have much of an idea of where the game was going to go until he made it. He also made it abundantly clear that when he made that post in 2013, it was not, as he put it, "commandments handed down and etched in stone on a giant tablet". I hope that now people can put their complaints to rest, wait for the game and just enjoy the ride. This is going to be something special and unpredictable, and that's exciting.

Sure. I think CMI's art style is great and for me feels like a natural progression of some of the things they were already exploring in MI2. I also really enjoy the character designs, but I do think perhaps some of the characters lost a bit of what they had before. I always thought of Elaine as a quite tall, formidable figure but in CMI she tends a bit towards petite and 'cute'. And LeChuck's design suits how he was portrayed and voiced in the game, but I did miss the rather scarier version we saw in MI2, and I worry it has permanently changed how I see him as a villain. I used to feel nervous whenever LeChuck was on screen, but I don't think that's true any more. Small things, really, and not enough to ruin it, but enough to make me think perhaps something was lost along the way.

Just read Ron's new article. It's an interesting read and i just feel bad for Ron, Dave and his team. Its pretty obvious this is a game they are all passionate about. Its a miracle that Ron has been given 100% freedom to make the Monkey Island game he wants. That's insane and so exciting!!! Although I had expectations for a pixel game, i now realise the thing i really wanted most was Ron Gilbert's vision. I don't want Ron feeling he has to compromise the game to fit what we have in our heads. He is right about letting him make the game he wants to make. I'm excited to see a unfiltered Ronzo 3rd Monkey Island game that isn't afraid to be its a own thing.

I think it was statements like "we can say with a reasonable security that if Ahern and Chan had worked on Monkey 3 in 93/94, following their research and the trend of those years, they would have chosen the same, deformed and expressionist style" and the argument that therefore a 1993 Monkey Island 3 would have looked just like RtMI does, that muddied the waters a little. But yeah I think we're all in agreement that a 1993 MI3 would have moved the style on somehow, quite possibly in a more stylised direction, and that not having the exact same art style as MI2 is not some betrayal on Ron's part. Re. Ron and Tim, not that I know them or anything, but I'd be surprised if they'd fallen out over the Microsoft purchase. Surely Ron knows this is the nature of the business and that unless he had a contract with Double Fine saying he owned the IP then something like this was always a possibility. It feels more like a general grumpiness on the state of the industry and how, much like in the comics biz, creators generally don't get to retain rights or even get residuals etc. It didn't stop him making another MI with Lucasfilm Games.

I have just read Ron's latest post on grumpygamer.com. I have to say, I find it very sad, that we now live in a world where an artist feels that he needs to vindicate his artistic decisions. Being a fan is great and everybody is entitled to have an opinion but being toxic isn't.

Nah, the distance based lighting isn't something that was disregarded - it was never there in the original version. That all comes from LogicDeLuxe's mind. 🙂 The "palette intensity" verb was added in the first VGA SCUMM game and is used for lots of other things - including many of the fade-ins/fade-outs (e.g., as mentioned, at the end of MI2, and probably the FOA feature elTee mentioned) - it wasn't specifically intended for adjusting light, although it's also used for that in MI1 in lots of places - although just as an immediate change in costume intensity from one room to another - not a gradual thing. It's also used a lot for gradual changes in e.g. CMI - along with its (later added) cousin, "palette saturation" (used e.g. for muting Guybrush's colors when he walks from the Plunder Island Fort beach towards the Voodoo Lady's swamp). elTee showed me extracted costumes from the two versions, and Guybrush's costume is definitely different between the two - much whiter shirt in the CD version than in the original VGA. It may have been an artistic decision, or the CD version was made from a different build of the VGA version. I haven't compared the actual scripts to see if there are any differences there (other than the things needed to make the icon based inventory work, CD playback etc.) - but just the fact that the shirt is whiter means that even if the commands to adjust the intensity from room to room are still there, they have limited (bordering on unnoticeable) range to work within, because the shirt starts out close to completely white in the first place.

Just to demonstrate what SCUMM was capable of without any changes to the engine - here's the simplest of LogicDeLuxe's scripts - the one from the alley - reconstructed by me for a glimpse into Actual SCUMM™ Syntax (variable names and script name are obviously lost on compilation, so those are my inventions). I hope Logic will forgive me for giving his secrets away 😋 LucasArts/Disney may not for giving away a bit of theirs. script distance-based-lighting min-intensity, max-intensity, multiplier, target-x, target-actor { do { distance = ((actor-x target-actor) - target-x) value = distance * multiplier if (value < min-intensity) { value = min-intensity } if (value > max-intensity) { value = max-intensity } palette intensity value in-slot 208 to 255 break-here } } The lookout scene is made in a similar way - although that one is written to specifically target Guybrush - and reused in the circus and this alley - while this one is more general (hence target-actor), because in this case it's actually targeting Fester Shinetop (i.e., it's called like start-script bak distance-based-lighting 192 255 -1 376 fester ) Lots of this kind of stuff is possible with SCUMM, although it's rare to see a fan actually do it so cleverly and subtly. As other examples, the dialogue system that appeared first in Indy 3 was pretty much written in SCUMM, making use of its capability to define the verbs in script - in other words, dialogue choices were just verbs. Little was added to the engine to actually support it, other than a way to save the default verb setup and restore it when the dialogue was done. elTee also told me something I've never noticed - that the brightness of dark rooms in Fate of Atlantis is slowly increased, as Indy's eyes adjust to it. Also handled by SCUMM, not hardcoded into the engine itself.

Btw. what I'm "in love with" is the idea that the game isn't pixel art because Ron was influenced by Disney, Devolver and whoever else is involved. Like some people are already making up theories on how they'll rationalize their eventual dislike for the finished game. I don't know how many times Ron will have to tell these people that he is in charge when it comes to every single creative decision. Anyway my suggestions from the toxicity box: - "If Tim Schafer was involved then RMI wouldn't look bad." - "Ron must be on really bad terms with Tim if he's not involved" - "Ron Gilbert failed to plan out the whole trilogy in advance when he was an infant." - "Disney might not be calling the shots but Kathleen Kennedy is."

Great quote from this post which should put the whole “MI3a would absolutely positively have looked like Day of the Tentacle” thing to rest:

That's exactly what it is. It happens on the screens where the "Look at" command is replaced by the "Touch" verb instead. It's a really cool little thing.

Yeah, but elTee said it around the same time, while we were investigating the Amiga thing... Not sure which of you was first. 😁

This is all quite fascinating. I’d made the observation myself a few weeks ago after someone posted some VGA vs CD screenshots in Dosbox (therefore eliminating ScummVM inconsistencies) but we didn’t really get anywhere with figuring out why. It definitely looks to me like the VGA palettes are right and suit the scene’s lighting, whereas the CD ones indeed look over-brightened.

I made that statement -which probably translated from Italian to English sounds a little too peremptory and absolutist- because it seemed useful draw attention to two important points, to spread some light of past controversies on graphics. Specifically I wanted: 1) Denying and demonstrate that the style of RTMI was "modern" or linked only to the cartoons of the 2000s. We have seen instead that it has roots well planted in the past both of the art history and of the Lucas adventures; 2) Indicate how, paradoxically, was pixel-art "wrong" and not philological for the hypothetical Monkey 3 ( meaning by pixel art a graphic similar to Monkey 2, not only the 320x200 resolution). Thank you for allowing me to clarify my thoughts.

This. And there is also this quote from Steve Purcell, back to 2000, that could be used to push the speculations about "Monkey 3" art style: "When I saw the style Larry Ahern and Bill Tiller set for the game I was impressed. It looked fantastic. They did what we would have wanted to do on One and Two. Ron Gilbert always wanted the games to a have a storybook feel. We got close on the backgrounds of Monkey 2 but we were still had graphics limitations. One thing that's fun about the Monkey Island series is that visually each one is a departure from the last". And is curious that he use the same words "storybook feel" that Dave uses in the last interview. https://web.archive.org/web/20010405020541/http://lucasfans.adventuregamer.com/index2.html

I don’t think anyone argued it would look like Day of the Tentacle, but that DOTT was an example of the sort of thing the art team was interested in doing, as opposed to just repeating themselves. Gilbert says almost exactly that in the blog before the part you quoted. “If I had stayed and done Monkey Island 3 it wouldn't have looked like Monkey Island 2. We would have kept pushing forward, and Day of the Tentacle is a good example of that.”

I think that would have worried me more than anything. I'm playing through Thimbleweed at the moment, and so far it's fine for what it is, but it's also so self-consciously a throwback that it has trouble being anything else. You can't go five minutes before hitting on some joke or reference which is basically 'See? Remember old adventure games?' and that's... fine, but I would hate for a Monkey Island game to be so backward looking. Remember at the time, especially the first two games were on the cutting edge of what adventure games could be. SoMI revolutionised Adventure puzzle design overnight and set a new standard for comedy in games. MI2 only a year later achieved a similar goal but with the scope expanded massively in all directions. Hand drawn art, dynamic music, enough game that it had to be shipped on Amiga on ELEVEN disks. These were forward looking games, and I think they've correctly realised that the same should be true of the new one. I think it would have been a sort of sad return to Monkey Island if it was just a reflection upon past glories. To me, going with a distinctive new art style is a statement, and it says: 'Yes, we're carrying on where MI2 left off, but we're not pretending that nothing has happened in games since then' and I'm hugely encouraged by this shift in thinking.

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.

Since the blog is up again, I decided to scroll down in his Return to Monkey Island post to see why he decided to remove the comments, and... SHEESH! I understand him completely! I'd hate it too if people were using that kind of language against me on my own blog. What an entitled bunch! It's a shame you can't really create anything anymore (especially not a sequel) without people trolling you to death.