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Wouldn’t be the SCUMM Bar without closeups.

Nice that we’ll have closeups from time to time.

Hi all, has been an extremely busy month at my end and haven't had time to post about the newest developments of ReMI! Will just do a rundown: - September 19th! Amazing! Congrats to all who predicted correctly. Logical deduction wins again! - Jess Harnell as LeChuck... honestly isn't really doing it for me, but I think I can get used to it. Harnell is an fantastic talent and is excellent at comedic acting in particular, but Boen... his deep, gravelly voice just naturally lent itself to LeChuck, and he had the perfect blend of humour and dread that the character needed. As far as perfect casting goes, across any media, he's well up there for me. From the very small amount we've seen so far, this LeChuck just seems so... feeble by comparison. Where Boen felt natural, this feels like a performance, and I don't buy him as a threat yet. Forget the artstyle, I thought *THIS* would be the main reason for backlash if anything, but most people seem to be fine with it. Like I said, I think I'll get used to it over the course of the game, but I just can't help wishing that we could've got Earl back one last time, just to complete the ensemble if anything. - BUT... Jess Harnell being in the game means that we'll almost certainly have him back as the storekeeper too. Same with Rob Paulsen, now that we've seen Bob on LeChuck's ship. - Neil Ross is back as Wally! Excellent! It really looks like they've made an effort to keep the cast consistent from the rest of the series. I think that just leaves Otis now in terms of if the "main" returning characters have their returning actors. (It occurs to me that we haven't seen Meathook yet. Or Smirk. Wonder if they're still around being on Melee and all.) With both Ross and Delk, however, I can definitely hear the age in their voices compared to the older games, but of course, that's unavoidable, and I'd never consider recasting. (Also, does it bother anyone else that Murray doesn't make the "teeth-chattering" noise when he speaks? It was in all of the other games, so it feels strange that it's missing here.) - Glad that we have Gavin Hammond as Stan back. Originally, I was thinking it would be better for consistency to have Pinney from MI1/2, but if the majority of the game does take place after Tales, as we're predicting, then him sounding as he did in Tales may be the best option. He was probably also the best blend of all of the elements of Stan for me, though I do really like Pinney as well. - The interface looks amazing. I *love* what the context sensitive interface ended up being. The inner-thoughts are a fantastic addition, both in terms of the players' connections to the main character, and to provide additional context and background to the story. - As far as canon goes, Ron recently stated (or perhaps tweeted) that the games that you need to play before ReMI are 1 and 2, and if you have time, Curse. Ron also said that those were the only games he played before working on ReMI. I really get the impression that they've made an active effort to keep Curse canon, and if the boot fits for EMI and Tales, great, but they aren't actively pushing to fit them into the mould of ReMI. Already going to predict that they aren't going to acknowledge any of the robot/grandpa stuff here. - Finally... a few observations about a potential timeframe. Wally mentions that he spent "years in therapy" in ReMI, and at the beginning of Curse, Guybrush says to Wally "The last time I saw you, we were prisoners in LeChuck's dungeon" referring to MI2. Both of these add more weight to the idea that the majority of the post-carnival game takes place after Tales. Also, Stan being trapped in the coffin in MI2 and let out in Curse also makes me doubt his ReMI scenes, at least, take place in between those games. That's all I can think of for now, but I am now officially in the process of replaying the original games! Will update the thread when I've finished them all. Two weeks to go!

If we don't get a code, we'll probably just write something based on the screenshots. But really, should we post something, we'll probably do what we've been doing over the last years -- an impression of the first two hours or so with minimal spoilers. (Then something larger a while later -- we're gonna milk this cow dry.)

Ron has said that there will be a physical copy of the game: I'm not a collector, but I've purchased the boxed version of Thimbleweed Park because it felt the Right™ thing to do.

It's my fondest hope that this won't be the case, but based on past trends I feel like it probably will be. The adventure game genre has spent so much time looking backward to the "golden era" and referencing, reflecting on and relitigating its own history that I don't think there's a fresh thought, insight or observation still out there to be made. I'm really sick of the tendency within the medium to focus on stories *about* the medium at the expense of telling the kind of stories that earned its reputation in the first place. It's the main reason I didn't care much for Thimbleweed Park, and I really, really hope that Ron Gilbert got all the knowing winks and meta-commentary out of his system there.

Are you talking about me? Ron said that the game will be autobiographical in a way. He also recently admit, in an interview, that the game is about Guybrush going after something from his past he never resolved, and that it was a metaphor of him and Dave going back to Monkey Island. Dominic Armato also talked about deep currents within the story. I therefore don't think it's that far-fetched to see the characters as symbolic. I think the game will at least talk about adventure games, like Thimbleweed Park did in its own way.

Noah Falstein said we were allowed to write essays! 😛

At this point, I’m pretty sure the young leaders represent the video game industry, that don’t care much about adventure games. They never heard of Guybrush and they don’t want to give him money for his adventure. That’s interesting…

Oh my goodness. That's what hat monkey is for. Don't you get it? Don't you see? Hat monkey is there for Monkey Kombat training at Smirk's gym. Hat monkey is a Monkey Kombat expert that makes The Machine more than a match for the giant monkey from Escape.

Just for fun, since I've already replayed all 5 previous games over the summer, I'm re-watching old interviews with Ron. There's one from 2009 PAX after he gave the keynote about how he would love to do another Monkey Island game. 13 years later, here we are.

Bill Tiller has always been very...proactive about establishing his position as a Monkey Island insider, and it's always struck me as a little disingenuous. He was obviously instrumental in establishing the aesthetic from Curse onward, and he deserves all the appreciation he gets for that, but there was a period there where he seemed to be trying very hard to fix his name in people's minds as "the Monkey Island guy" with stuff like this, and that always rubbed me the wrong way. (I think I've talked about this before, so apologies if I'm repeating myself.)

I'm hoping so too. Fingers crossed that style of dialogue will make a return. Some good points, I do agree its too early to say what the dialogue trees will be like. Sorry didn't mean to be a downer. I guess maybe I'm trying to manage my expectations as this might be the most hyped i've ever been for a game ever 🤣 Sorry 😅

How I felt about Chuckie's flashing eyes, the first time I finished MI2, is exactly how Ron Gilbert has described the ending: "a huge cliffhanger". (Source) I'm aware that many players didn't perceive it as such, but I've always considered it not just "a" cliffhanger, but a very big one.

Gonna make a wild guess and say someone is overthinking something about the new #MonkeyIslandMonday video. Someone else has a nitpick. Vague, hypothetical reassurances from someone else? I'm avoiding these videos now, but thought it worth commemorating that next week's is probably the last.

So This is what I'm thinking about now. 1) Ron has replayed MI1 and MI2 very recently, before he worked on this game. 2) After playing through MI1 and MI2, it is difficult for me to imagine anyone assuming that Stan would still own that shipyard and the old Pirate Leaders would still be at that Scumm Bar table after MI2 is over (or after MI5 either, of course). This was the status quo at the BEGINNING of MI1, and it had changed by the END of MI1. 3) Ron has said this game isn't a straight chronological Part 3 or Part 6. My current suspicion is that these Mêlée Island scenes could be some alternative version of Guybrush's first appearance in MI1. Possibly related to the Big Whoop amusement park.

We’ve seen, what, two dialogue trees? I’m sure there is plenty of silliness in the game — see the burp teaser — but looking at the dialogue with the pirate leaders specifically, it seems like a natural progression from MI2. There wasn’t a lot of “I want to be a fireman” in that game, either. Nor should there have been — Guybrush had shed a bit of his naïveté at that point.

It's true that I haven't seen a lot of the 'here's 4 jokes, pick one' style of dialogue in evidence yet. I adore MI1 + 2's dialogue trees. I think the only game that has matched them is Grim Fandango. They're a perfect blend of well-written, silly, subversive and I'm really hoping we see a bit of that here. I think we will. We've only been shown a little.

Console durability is also something with plenty of points of failure, across time. For example: your NES games might still work if you still had them, but any with battery backup are likely long dead and the saves erased, or worse the battery corroded and damaged the cartridge. Any physical media and the hardware to play it on requires vigilance and, past an inevitable point, upkeep. I hope with time, hardware virtualization and software emulation gets better and better to the point that some of this is moot. DREAMM in particular has given me a lot of hope. It really is the ideal: it emulates the original hardware and operating system so the games original data can run in a way it perceived as “natively,” and DREAMM can run a loose directory of game data, a disk image, or the original physical media if you have it along with the hardware to read it. I hope solutions like that become more and more common over time.

Honestly, I always viewed the Voodoo Lady's actions and words in Tales as more of a conclusion for her character than any of the previous games. Simply not knowing anything about her after an entire series would've made her character feel a bit empty, which I felt about the character in Curse and Escape. Finally learning a bit more of her past with De Cava and knowing that she's not simply giving Guybrush advice, but does have a goal of her own, adds a lot of layers to her character and made past actions actually make more sense. Yes, one could make the argument that not knowing the specifics of that agenda could be seen as a sequel hook, but I always thought the game's writing did a good enough job to leave you with just enough clues to come up with your own conclusion. As Jake said, it's nice to have a plot point like that where everyone has a unique perspective on it. She's neither good nor evil, but is working to keep things a certain way. It's a nice culmination of her character and, again, I saw it as a nice conclusion for her character is many ways.

Not that my take matters on someone else’s read of the text of the game - your own read is your own read, which is part of the fun and the point of fiction imo - but the end of Tales was not lining up any specific plan. It was, in my eyes at least, far closer to “the adventure continues,” where the basic cycle of the status quo was allowed to roll on and on, even as the arcs of the characters reached something close to a resolution. I find it a little too much of a cliffhanger at this point, because of how much is hung on the Voodoo Lady in particular, but at the time didn’t see it as much more than Chuckie’s eyes flashing, or LeChuck being buried beneath the ice of the monkey coaster. (To clarify a tiny bit: the voodoo lady being a third party with separate ends, who is willing to push guybrush and lechuck around for whatever those ends are, is something I was very proud of surfacing in Tales, and liked how well it ties into the sudden turn to LeChuck‘s fortress at the end of 2. I think the cliffhanger is a little too specific, and that probably came from us being so inside the world of our own game at the time we were ending it. I don’t mind it, and I love the idea of that voodoo lady storyline, but I think it could have been rolled a tiny bit farther back into ambiguity than it is!)

This is quite an interesting point, actually. I've had Steam for 14 years... None of the physical PC games I bought 14 years ago can even by played on any modern machine I own 😕 (Interestingly, just went down a Steam rabbit hole: The first game I ever purchased was Portal in 2008. And I've spent £1,100 with Steam in all that time... which isn't as bad as I'd have feared.)

Since we're getting into it a little. Preface all the following by saying: I completely respect anyone's decision to use or not use any game service for whatever reason they see fit. All the below is just where I land on it all, and other people's mileage may vary. Firstly, I think I have similar beef with CD Projekt that @Niemandswasser has talked about. For me the issues I have with them are far more personal to me and far more relevant to me than an ideological opposition to DRM. Secondly, I'm not really particularly ideologically opposed to DRM. I think it's unnecessary, and I think the best data we have shows it does very little to prevent piracy and could in fact contribute to the problem. GOG is right about that. But I largely subscribe to the idea that for almost as long as software has existed, software license agreements have existed. The idea of 'ownership' of commercial software has always been an illusion, for better or worse, and it ought to not be surprising or alarming that some companies would try to find technological solutions to enforcing the software license. Thirdly, over the years I have recieved quite mixed messages about whether Steam actually enforces DRM. As far as I can ascertain, it's the publishers that have to include it, rather than Steam thrusting it on everything. I'm willing to be educated on this, but as far as I know a game can exist on Steam with no DRM at all. It is true that if Steam disappeared your ability to download the game would also disappear but I think that's true of any online platform to download games, and has little to do with the DRM conversation. As I say I'm willing to be educated on this but because of my second point, I haven't been very motivated to look into it myself because I really am totally ambivalent about DRM. Fourthly, I believe that having a Steam library is a fair trade off in convenience. This is coming from a personal perspective, knowing how I play games - 95% I play a game once, and never again, and if I lost access to it I wouldn't even know. The other 5% of the time I might try to get a physical copy if I like the game enough. Or, if not available, I might buy it on multiple platforms. If all else fails, the idea of having to spend £5 re-buying a game I lost access to 20 years from now doesn't really haunt me. I know, I know, for some it's the principle of the thing less than the practicality of the thing... but see point 1. That principle is more important to me than the notion of possibly having to pay for something I used to own again at some undefined point in the future. Given that I lost my MI2 Amiga codewheel years ago, and one of my MI1 disks, and my MI1/2 CD is scratched to bits... I feel like it's just not accurate to say that our access to our own games is being put in jeopardy by DRM. It has never been less in jeopardy (preservation of old editions aside, which is a whole other conversation), even if the whole DRM industry feels like basically snake oil for media businesses. It is so easy for me to access all my games now and I have trouble with the idea that DRM is any sort of threat to that because I've never had that threat materialise, ever.

What I'd like is a game that would work really well as the last one ever released, even if it isn't. MI1: yes MI2: yes if like me you're fond (largely due to MI2 existing for most of my teens without a sequel of mysterious, freakout endings) no if you like things explained/resolved CMI: Yeah, it works EMI: Sure Tales: I think... no? The Voodoo Lady stuff is too intriguing to leave hanging, but if they decided to ignore it for ReMI I guess it doesn't matter any more (if they pull one thread from Tales, I hope it's this) None of these games were called the conclusion, but most of them work as one.

As for NYT vs. Mojo: Mojole changes at midnight server time; NYT at midnight client time (aka your time). I'm glad they're finding inspiration in the frankly superior -le.

Good catch, fixed, thanks!

More on review embargo: it looks like Cult of the Lamb was embargoed until the day before release, and Weird West was on the same day. So Devolver might not have a firm policy on when they embargo until, but it's probably around release day. If I had to call it I would say they'll embargo reviews until the 19th, release day (reviews won't go up over the weekend, friday would be a bit too soon, so might as well let them hit on Monday, with the game) I'm not too worried, I'm not planning on reading any reviews (at least not in any detail) until I've played through the whole thing.

In case you were wondering: Yes, the "other" ReMI thread DOES include things you probably don't want to see. I just popped my head in and saw a sentence from Dave Grossman I didn't want to read about Guybrush, his motivations and what the theme of the game is. Thankfully I managed to stop reading before anything was revealed, but just incase you were wondering... Only 13 days 11 hours to go 😬 https://mixnmojo.com/countdown/

It varies from publisher to publisher and game to game, the best thing to do is see when Devolver have previously done. Commonly, though, review embargoes go until the game's release. Sometimes they're a few days before. Quite often, a website will accidentally break the embargo.

Ah, that eases my OCDed mind 😄

Haha that's what I planned to answer ! sorry @Laserschwert didn't even noticed Title and text modified !

I’m looking forward to the eventual (not to mention literal) secret history!

[spoiler]your text[/spoiler] Confused. The word was

My god this was a weird round for me for some reason 👕 I beat #Mojole #167 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤💚🖤💛🖤 💛💚💚🖤🖤 🖤💚💚🖤💚 🖤💚💚🖤💚 💚💚💚🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Big fan of Monkey Kombat.

Agreed: The Shivah, The Blackwell Series, Unavowed. All wonderful adventure games.

Just thought I'd give a little shout-out to Wadjet Eye/Dave Gilbert. They've put out gems, and the best of them can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with collective favourites. Please play Technobabylon and Primordia if you haven't.

I went to PAX! I got to meet David Fox!* It was great. * (And Ron and Dave and Dom, but I have met them all before.)