Leaderboard

Came across this photo in one of the articles I was reading. 🥲 It still makes me so happy seeing Ron and Dave work together again.

As much as I’d love to go back to Scabb, I’m also kind of glad that it’s never been touched again. It’s my favorite one. Woodtick is so perfectly done with its art, cast of characters, and incredible music, Scabb’s locations are all lonely and a touch creepy, the map music is unique in its lonely backwater mood, and though the island seems small, it’s revealed to be full of little secret spots the more you play. I like to imagine that place is continuing on exactly how it is, maybe a little shabbier and a little more sunk into the swamp but otherwise unchanged by time. Scabb Island Romantic signing off.

Since the subject of expectations has come up in other threads, I feel like I want to say. The way I've trained myself not to worry too much about expectations is that I think it's a good idea not to focus too much energy on 'I hope the game doesn't do x, y and z'. Because it probably will do some of the things you don't want it to, and if you've already prejudiced yourself against the idea then it becomes harder to accept the game on its own terms. Like... on the earlier point, I admit I kinda agree that characters like Murray have worked best in smaller doses. I also suspect we've seen a lot of Murray because he's a very popular but not very important character, and therefore is an easy choice to feature in teasers. But let's say they've decided to use Murray a lot more in this game... Sure, that might not be how I think Murray has worked well in the past but if I've worked myself up thinking 'ahh, no that's a bad idea and they shouldn't do that' I'm going to be in a bad mood before I've even got to think about HOW he's being used, and how funny his lines are, and all that stuff. I guess a better way to say this is... I think there's a trap in inventing a fuzzy, blurry imaginary perfect version of this game in your head and then pitting the game we actually get against it. Our individual ideal ReMI is a mirage. Don't worry. Just play. Don't try and pre-load your feelings about it, they can sort themselves out later on.❤️

I like TIE Fighter.

Damn, almost 11 days left. This is surreal. I actually took that Monday and Tuesday off; I've never done that for a game ever. That is going to be a special, long weekend for me. After my regular weekend plans, my goal is to replay my favorite parts, from my save files, of the previous 5 games on Saturday and Sunday nights. I'm really hoping Return will be available to play at midnight. I plan to replay and re-watch the final part and cutscene of LeChuck's Revenge right before starting Return to Monkey Island. I plan to crack open a bottle of my favorite Victory beer; Golden Monkey (I know it seems too perfect, but it really has been my favorite beer for years now) to commemorate the occasion. 11 days. I can't wait.

A lot has already been written on this topic over the past five-odd years, and so, both to prevent our venturing unnecessarily across well-trodden ground and for the benefit of those joining the conversation without having seen its beginnings in the ReMI thread, I'd like to provide a brief summary of the arguments made thus far, as well as to pre-emptively raise such points as I expect will figure heavily into the discussions to come. Thusly: "Yeah, but"

I predict a strong difference between critics' scores and users' scores.

I am satisfied with returning to Mêlée, but if I had another wish, I‘d love to return to Dinky Island. We saw so little of it, and there was no classic map view. Still, it had such a strong, mysterious vibe. (I know Curse LeChuck says it‘s just an atoll of Monkey Island, but I feel like Ron and Dave might retcon some parts of that speech.)

He's commented a few times on twitter on some of the stuff. Not very much. But he's probably conscious of the fact that talking about it invites questions. He probably doesn't want to make the pre-release of the game be about his lack of involvement in it. Perhaps he just wants to let this be their thing. I get a bit uncomfortable speculating about why things did or didn't happen and all that because y'know. Maybe there IS bad air between Ron and Tim. Maybe they've quietly decided not to work together. Maybe Tim could have worked on ReMI and chose not to. Maybe he was never asked and feels sore about it. All these things are possible, but it's just as possible, probable even that the timing didn't work out and he's just staying back because he doesn't want to make things about him.

Yeah, but alas

I haven't read a single media article yet that shares criticisms regarding the artstyle.

I think they said in the commentary that she's basically more of a "double agent," more interested in her own agenda. Something like that.

Not to add to speculation, but I remember Dave mentioning he really wanted to get Tim involved for Tales, but contract negotiations were nearly impossible. And same thing, Tim, as I remember anyway, was relatively quiet about Tales, but a year later was having fun with both Ron and Dave doing the commentary for MI2SE, so I think all three of these guys still love and respect each other. I would imagine it was something similar in this case. Dave was actually relatively free when Ron approached him since he just finished a recent project and, even then, it took 9 months to get everything in order. I would imagine with Tim running his own company, working on multiple big projects, it just made it impossible.

It is definitely warmer than yesterday. Some rain is expected in the afternoon and I'm really hoping the temperatures will drop, even if it means accepting more humidity. Last year, in the same period, it was a sight: hot but not too hot, clear skies...

I like it too. I made this when I was 11.

I really don't think any great piece of storytelling can truly be "spoiled". Sure, some stories can lose the impact of the revelation when you come up upon it the first time, but if plot twists is all a story has going for it, it's not much of a story. And story is always more important (and less "spoilable") than plot. On another point, I hope Steam will have some sort of achievement for completing the game without using the hint book. That's an extra bit of motivation to keep me from resorting to it. I want to get stuck eventually. It's definitely not a game I want o breeze through. I hope it lives with me for quite a bit

If this was just MI3a, exactly as it was described back in 2013, I think I would be expecting to be disappointed. With Return shaping up to be something very different, I'm much more excited and hopeful. I think it's going to be something special, even if the plot goes in directions that are controversial. I don't have any expectations as far as what the game SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do though. I'm only expecting to have a lot of fun, as much as I have with the previous games. I said I was expecting nothing less than MI1 and 2 greatness, but with the idea that it's as good as Curse, because that's my #1 MI game, with LeChuck's Revenge being a close second. I can see it being in my top 3 at the very least, those 2 are tough to beat; I reckon it can easily beat Secret, it's a great game but it's definitely a lot more straightforward story-wise and has a much smaller scope than the others. I also think Tales has the best story so far, so Return's competing with that, but it also has a richer vein to draw from with MI2's ending, the Secret, etc. Reviews will probably do fine, though I fear there will be a number of critics who can't look past their negative bias against the artstyle...I hope that doesn't happen. I reckon we're looking at 70-80. I don't think we can kid ourselves that this will be the best-selling game of the year, or even win GOTY, it's too niche. Best selling adventure game? Probably. Maybe even Ron's best selling game, I hope that for him. It won't be Devolver's best seller, they have too many other games out that aren't as niche as a point and click.

>: I took three days off. Judge if you like, but that Quantum Leap admission will forever hang over you. ;-*

I wasn't going to indulge but I suppose I will because I should be going to sleep and I'm putting it off. To go back to the original question. I don't even think the original Star Was films DO give a good sense of how big the empire is. It's sort of implied they're the dominant force in the galaxy, but we really don't know anything about how many planets that really covers (if this is covered in dialogue then it must be a very throwaway line because I can't remember it), and how many exist outside of the empire, whether they are one of many large controlling forces, or whether they're the only game in town. We assume they are the latter (and I'm sure the expanded universe goes into it a lot more), but in the films themselves we're actually given very little about how big the empire is and how it is run. Anyway, the implication is that the empire is 'big' but I'd struggle to tease out more detail than that. And that's fine, because the story isn't really about that. The empire is just there so that the rebels have something to be rebels against, and to make the conflict bigger than the interpersonal stuff between Luke and Vader. You ARE given the impression that the empire is still struggling to obtain absolute power, because it's only just managed to get rid of the senate, and they clearly have a problem with the rebels. Does this mean they're a fledgeling but growing empire or a well established force? Probably closer to the former, given that the empire only gets going less than 20 years before the start of A New Hope. But I always felt that the empire was a bit vaguely defined, and didn't really care because all these questions are interesting but really not that important. The First Order, I always saw as a remnant of the empire trying to re-establish control. Where they get the sort of resources they have I don't know (or really care - again, it's just not that sort of film), and to what extent they've been able to establish control isn't well defined, but they're clearly a large threat, but one living in the shadow of the former empire. Its leaders are less formidable than the empires, and are often shown to stuggle to impose authority, making up for it instead with sheer might. They have resources, but they're clearly not experts at weilding it in the same way as the original empire is portrayed. I think that's a comparable level of worldbuilding detail, to be honest, but I'll go back to my original thing that to me the interesting things about the original films weren't the mechanics of the empire but Luke's growth, his relationship to Vader, Vader's arc, and the adventure of the small group of rebels. And the interesting thing about the sequel trilogy (at least until RoS decided to chuck it away) was about navigating a new relationship with the force, making a break with the past, re-examining tradition, all of course again through the hi-jinks of the core cast of characters (in this way, come to think of it, this made the First Order ideal antagonists - trying to re-play the past, make the same mistakes over again, but even in their attempts never succeeding in recapturing what was lost) So that's what I mean when I say I don't really care about the First Order. It's the same way I don't care about the Empire. They're just there to make the story have big stakes. In the original trilogy, they didn't even properly use the emperor of the Empire until the 3rd film, and later went back and changed ESB. Clearly they only decided he was really important to the story in RotJ, by which time Star Wars was a big enough deal that they almost had no choice but to pay a bit more attention to their worldbuilding. I do mean it though when I say I probably won't hang out much in this thread because... I really have had all these conversations before. I like The Last Jedi a whole bunch and it's tiring to be told I need to justify it whenever I bring it up. I don't think it's perfect. My main problem with it is that because of its structure they keep characters apart who I think have great chemistry in VII, and severely underuse Finn (though RoS is way more guilty of that one) But I think it's the only genuinely surprising Star Wars film in the main series, apart from ESB, and it manages to be surprising in completely different ways to ESB. I think it's a huge shame that the thematic breadcrumbs clearly left by TLJ were either walked back by RoS or just completely ignored. RoS is one of the most cowardly films ever made. Heck, even the prequels that I'm no big fan of were thematically consistent. Anyway, bed time.

So I can finally post my wall of text on why the best Star Wars movie is actually the second Ewok movie!

Has anyone read this book by Ken Williams about the rise and fall of Sierra? https://kensbook.com/ Would love to hear your thoughts if you have! I know, it's not LucasArts, but there's enough nostalgia in me for hours of fighting with my PC to play GK1-3, Laura Bow 1-2 and the Leisure Suit Larry series to think about this. Prefer print for books, but didn't want to commit to it if others have done so and found it to be a slog/boring/etc.

Having some scattered thoughts. With what is being teased as being finally going to be revealed in this game, there are are only a few others things that I think would be the icing on the cake. Largo; he doesn't necessarily need to be in it that much or even at all, but I would love some closure with his character's fate. The Voodoo Priest: based off the developer commentary for MI2SE, it doesn't seem like he was meant to be a character of any particular importance, but it would be cool if they found a way to reintegrate him, especially with Ron replaying that game before really working on Return. Tim was inquisitive about the character in the commentary, so perhaps the character is something that drew Ron's eyes as well upon a fresh replay. From Tales' story arc: the voodoo's lady's agenda and perhaps some inclusion of Morgan. I'm really holding my breath on that last one, but you never know. I'm assuming/hoping midnight EST on the 19th. That's typically when Switch games get released in my experience, but this could be a unique circumstance. I think we'll have a better idea when/if the game is available for pre-download. Once it's pre-downloaded, than it's literally just a countdown. For what it's worth, I preordered on Switch and Steam and got an email earlier this week, informing me that my payment for the Switch version is expected to be posted to my account around September 12th, so perhaps pre-download will be available then.

Guybrush: "Sorry I never got that Love Bomb to you." Wally: "Love Bomb?" Guybrush: "Yeah, the one you ordered from the Voodoo Lady." Wally: "I never ordered a love bomb! I ordered a PLUMB BOB!" Guybrush: "Oh. You should probably cancel that." Wally: "No kidding! I never consented to this."

I’ve just long liked the observation that the voodoo lady is a third party and not just “someone who helps guybrush on his quest.” I think many players see her that way, but she’s very enigmatic especially in 1 and 2, and goes as far as doing business with “both sides” of the Guybrush/LeChuck conflict in 2 (and the love bomb for Wally as you said. Related: should Wally be canceled for ordering a love bomb?)

I really want to clarify I didn't answer your question in order to have another debate about TLJ, it's just that I think TLJ is very relevant to why I find RoS to be a cowardly piece of fiction.

That's one of the tweets. Like I said, there were a couple but nothing like the MI2SE deluge.

I also remember him posting more at least about Tales episode 5, but it looks like it was only these two: Tim of Legend confirmed actual legend with this Monkey 2 take, though

My first experience with Star Wars was when I was like eleven. I remember wandering into the living room on a Saturday afternoon, and my dad had been channel surfing and landed on a cable-adjacent channel showing the first part of Return of the Jedi. There were the pig guard things, and Chewbacca, and it all looked old and weird and unlike anything I had seen before. My dad wandered off to mow the lawn and I guess I watched the rest of the movie. When I went to school the next week I was amazed that anyone else in my class had heard of it. I guess this was the sweet spot in the early/mid '90s when merchandising for the original films had finished up like a decade ago, and Lucas hadn't started gearing up to reinvigorate the IP. You could get the movies on VHS, and some kids who had older siblings had seen Star Wars toys in a box, or the attic or whatever, but that was about it. Lots of adults remembered the films fondly, but no one seemed to care deeply about them. I was like they were this fairy tale from the 1970s that kids from the '90s were discovering second-hand. That was fun! Then they re-released the films, and as I became a teenager, the novels, comics, merch, computer games, and finally the prequels became HUGE. I was the right age to main-line all of that for a couple of years, and enjoyed it a lot. Now there are several exhaustive universes of Star Wars stuff and it has become inescapable, and I feel grumpy about it. I've probably just out-grown it. But I also feel like Star Wars gets treated like some historical era to be studied now -- there are kids books about the event of the film which read like non-fiction, and I miss it feeling like a weird old fairy tale that grown-ups didn't take seriously.

You keep saying that, but he truly 100% didn't and I'm saying that as someone who took your word for it -- ¬ -- and spent hours trying to find them. He did maybe three tweets, the death of the seagull being the central part of it. I did salvage his MI2 tweets, though.

I think we'll probably get the islands that have been named so far. I don't really want any more but if I had to choose an island from the series to revisit, I suppose it'd be nice to see how Scabb's doing.

I have a good friend who plays a lot of video games but no real adventures (she also never played Monkey Island). But I told her a bit about ReMI and she’ll play it on the Switch, because she likes the look, the pirate setting and everything else so far. So it’ll be interesting if she’ll have fun with it, how she’ll receive it in general and if she’ll maybe even play one of the old ones after that. So yeah, I think the MI community will gain more fans. I mean it was part of the Nintendo Direct, so some people must have heard of it. 😊

I like Star Wars, too. More than I like Star Trek. I’ve never actually watched Star Trek, so maybe that’s an unfair comparison?

Well, the weather for the whole area will continue much the same as the past few days. Temperatures 17 centigrade, that's 49 fahrenheit. Winds will freshen tonight to South West, force 6 or 7, and there will be showers, sometimes heavy in many-... OH, SOD IT! I didn't wanna do this, I don't wanna be a weather forecaster! I don't wanna rabid on all day about sunny periods and patches of rain spreading from the west! I wanted to be... A PIRATE!!

-I expect to have a good time. To me, Tales was not an as magical experience as the first three, but I was definitely not disappointed in it - and if Return is on that level or above I will be happy. I do think it has potential to exceed that, though. -As much as the developers try to make Return approachable to new players, this is still a niche game genre, which makes it hard to estimate how the reviews will end up - I see this all the time where reviewers familiar with certain genres tend to give very different scores compared to those new to them (both viewpoints are of course valuable to different readers). -No chance of it outselling Devolver-published Cult of the Lamb. Might be the highest-selling point-and-click adventure game - I don't know of any particularly high-profile ones from this year other than Return, AI:TSF Nirvana Initative, and the Sam & Max S2 remaster (feel free to inform me of any I might have missed).

A two-headed monkey logo, for Doublefine Monkey Island? But no. If it had been Ron, Dave, and Tim again, the monkey would have been three-headed.

Weather forecast for September 19th: Hotter than a Monkey Hellmouth already on a warm, tropical island. So... wear shorts.

I have always loved the atmosphere in Scabb Island 😍 and it would be probably the only island that I would like to visit again in the future but... not in Return to Monkey Island. The developers were clear that characters and locations already visited in past games will be in the game because that was necessary for the story and not to simply satisfy the nostalgia of old fans like me. I'm glad that they decided to approach the writing in this way, I wouldn't like the game to feel too much like a throwback game. To me, discovering new places is more interesting and I would like to get a game that feels like a new Monkey Island. So I'm more than happy that I'll visit Melee Island and Monkey Island again, but that's more than enough to satisfy my nostalgia. 🙂

I was very close to mentioning that the sofa feels a little empty. I kinda hope we get some more comments of support from Tim Schafer. Maybe at least a shoutout for the game on release day on twitter.

I love Star Wars yet I hate talking about Star Wars, because the discourse gets heated very quickly. I've seen all the shows except Resistance and watched all the movies and spinoffs and I like most of it. I only really dislike Rise of Skywalker and Book of Boba Fett slightly less than that. I love The Mandalorian, The Clone Wars and Rebels and my favourite movie is Empire. I have a softspot for the prequels despite their flaws and I enjoy a good meme from them. I'm looking forward to Andor because I dug Rogue One a lot and I think this is a great opportunity to explore Cassian's journey before that film.

"The Empire wasn't a credible threat. They had the plans for their ultimate weapon stolen by a small band of rebels, built it with a glaring weakness, and despite the emperor's right hand man being some sort of all-powerful sorceror, they don't seem all that keen on advertising that fact and using it to their advantage given that nobody seems to be quite sure whether he is or not. Also their superweapon gets blown up by a small squadron of fighters and then the best idea they have to retaliate is to build another one." The thing is, if you phrase it right, you can dismantle any character, any device, any bit of lore ever established for Star Wars. And that's not an indictment of Star Wars. It was always supposed to be this pulpy, fun action flick. That's the whole reason for the opening crawl, this idea of a serial drama writ large. That's the reason they didn't really care who the emperor was or what his deal is until RotJ. That's why half the characters are archetypes from old westerns. The only reason people care about the wider Star Wars universe is that it becomes inevitable people will once a work of fiction reaches a certain level of popularity. People have questions, and there's money to be made in answering them. Nobody watched the first Star Wars in 1977 and really cared about who Darth Vader worked for, how many planets the Empire actually controlled, why there's a tentacle beast living in the Death Star's bin, what a womp rat actually is, what the kessel run is and how its completion time can be measured in parsecs, who Jabba is, all this stuff was just window dressing. It was only later when the films became a Big Deal that any meat at all started to get put on those bones, because it really didn't matter. It's "not that deep", y'know? The empire are bad and scary, the rebels are good and wholesome and things go zippy zappy boom boom and everyone leaves having a good time. Yeah, it tries some interesting things within that framework, and it's cool when it does it (I think the way ESB explores Luke's relationship to the force is good. Heck, even in the prequels I think some of the political intrigue is good fare, especially Palpatine's bits, and I've talked about how I think TLJ is thematically interesting) but it's really mostly the zippy zappy boom boom stuff isn't it? And that's okay. This is another interesting point. Yeah, in the first film it's never once established that the force can be strong in particular people. In fact, the whole motto of 'may the force be with you' kinda implies the opposite, that it can affect anyone who wants it to. Luke's father was a Jedi but that doesn't really mean it has to be hereditary. The idea of force sensitivity isn't really explored until later. It's another way that this stuff didn't actually matter until they decided it should matter. In the first film the force was just space wizards, it didn't matter how it came about. They had laser swords because it looked cool. It was a more elegant weapon from a more civilised time but their lasers bloodlessly kill enemies while the first thing a lightsaber does is dismember someone and leave blood all over the floor. It was rule of cool and nothing more. Not that deep. The more I think of it, the more absurd it seems to suppose that Star Wars original trilogy had a strongly grounded idea of its own setting. They were absolutely making it up as they went along.

I like Star Wars.

Eep ook ack! I failed at #Mojole #170. 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Me and my girlfriend actually did! I wanted to write that, but I thought it would have been too cliche

Yeah yeah, have the thread back. 😛 But please, no more jokes. I can't help laughing at jokes.

That's odd--did a mod change the name of the "Let's expend precious time and energy on relitigating the same Star Wars arguments everyone got bored with years ago so that we'll all have one more thing to regret on our deathbeds" thread to "How are you going to play ReMI?" That's weird, I wonder when that happened.

Just thought I'd share my tattoo🙂

There's never too much Murray

I'm expecting to be somewhat disappointed, or I guess I should say that I'm tempering my expectations. I guess it's kind of like when a rock band reunites after 20+ years and decides to do another album together... it's very exciting and cathartic to get to have another go-round with something that you loved so long ago, but it's very unlikely to reach the highs of the original experience. The indications from the screenshots and marketing so far is that RtMI will mostly be 'playing the hits', and I like the idea of returning to Melee Island after several decades, etc. I'm going to be interested to play it and reflect on how times have changed, but I don't expect that it will be on par with the original games. That's all OK! If it's comparable in quality to Tales I will be happy.

I initially read this thread title as "Tell me why I’m about to get ripped", so my brain immediately went to Temple of Doom muscles - deciding to work out for the sake of effective cosplay.