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I agree with Thunderpeel. I recently re-watched KotCS in preparation for DoD and it pretty much confirms what I said about it earlier, the first half isn't that bad. It kind of starts to waver at the burial ground, and from the Russian camp on, it's just bland. The set-up with Mutt is pretty good, but the characters get no chance to come to terms with each other after they find out that they're father and son. It's set up like Ford and Connory, but there's no real payoff. I agree with the part about Marion too, she argues with Indy in the back of the truck, then he says "They weren't you, honey", and after that they don't really share any emotional scenes together until they get married. No wonder... The first half is pretty well setup. The only flaws I think come from the "tell, don't show" script they're acting from. It's riddled with anecdotes that don't really add anything to the story, "you rode with Pancho Villa?", "Indy served his country during the war", and the worst offender of that is Mac. How are we ever supposed to connect with a character who instantly betrays Indy and then, after the fact, get's a line like "but we we're on so many adventures together". It just doesn't work that way, and the writers, Spielberg, and everybody on set should've known better.

Every actual AI researcher worth their salt says this. 🙂 Rant incoming... Toddler-like understanding: GPT is a language model. All it does is predict the next word in a sentence (or, in ChatGPT's case, a conversation) - based on a model it's built from a ginormous text corpus. The reason this works is that letting the "AI" optimize for predicting words - actually makes it build a structure where "math on words" becomes possible in a multidimensional space - where 'Guybrush' minus 'Monkey Island' plus 'Day of the Tentacle' ends up with a result in the vicinity of Bernard (but also relatively close to Hoagie). This is called "word embedding" and is probably the number one principle of current "AI". The thing is, knowing that the most likely next word in the sentence "The main character of The Secret of Monkey Island is..." is "Guybrush Threepwood" - is not the same as knowing that Guybrush Threepwood is the main character of The Secret of Monkey Island. Another thing is that "AI" in general has a "utility function" - the "scoring mechanism" for whether they do a good job or not. The ideal utility function for an AI is mostly hard or impossible to actually implement, so researchers usually go for something easier. For example, you might think that "speak the truth" is an ideal utility function for ChatGPT. But "truth" is hard to quantify - you could hire a number of experts to train it - scoring it based on whether its output is actually correct. But you'd need a lot of experts to train it sufficiently. So, OpenAI settle (like all AI developers must) for less - in this case, simply a subjective ranking of which of multiple outputs the reviewer likes the most. Of course, the reviewer will not be an expert on all matters - so they'll tend to simply rate on which response is the most pleasing to read, the most convincing, etc. In other words, you're not training the AI to pick its words to be truthful - you're training it to pick words to sound authoritative on the matter. In general, AI studies of recent years have shown, that the larger corpus, the more training, and the more processing power you throw at an "AI", the more it will, indeed, increase its score according to its actual utility function - although we've already reached the point of diminishing returns. However, at the same time, you also reach a point - and we've already reached it for the large AIs - where its score according to its ideal utility function drops steeply - and even goes below 0 - as in, the algorithm will "actively" go directly against its ideal utility function (e.g. "truth") while still scoring high on its actual utility function (e.g. "good answer"). A classic example of this is that ChatGPT 3 would happily give people a random poem sounding "old" if asked to write in the style of a Shakespeare sonnet - why? Because most humans can't tell the difference anyway. This may sound like "lying like a human". But all of this doesn't reflect any kind of understanding on the part of the AI - it just reflects the humans who are training it. Some people will realize all of this, and still claim that "the evolution of AI is going so fast that in just a few years...". Thing is, the evolution isn't going fast. The vast majority of breakthroughs in the field happened between 1960 and 1989. For example, back-propagation - a major component of the learning of any "AI" - was described in 1962 - and implemented before the end of that decade. Word embeddings as described above were first realized and implemented in the mid-1980's. (Almost) all that's happened in the past 10 years is throwing more data and computing power at the problem - both resources which are finally approaching their breaking point. On the computing power side, ChatGPT (pre-4) requires a server with 8 GPU's (and we're not talking gamer GPU's here). That server will be dedicated to just you for the amount of time that it takes for it to send you a full response to a prompt. And in that time it will devour about the same amount of power as a couple of old washing machines. 😉 It's a hugely inefficient way to solve most of the problems people use it for - and in most cases, it's also very ill-suited for those problems. Rant over. Here's a bit of SCUMM... 😂

Accompanying interview https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/07/18/legend-of-monkey-island-exclusive-interview/ puzzles confirmed including insult swordfighting. The plot gets elaborated on and an interesting narrated memory feature added as an in game collectible. This really feels like it’s something more than just silly side content. also potentially the sea cucumber and the dainty lady seen in the vid. Not totally sure though.

New promo video for the first “tall tale.” Some first looks at the characters. In particular, the storekeeper! After the false start we got with his lack of appearing in Return, he seems to be finally featuring in this game. Can only hope Jess Harnell still voices him and gives is some more hilarious reads. In general, every character seems to be faithful to their SMI classic mode designs as opposed to the special edition.

Well, shit. I was ready to go with your notion that Crystal Skull wasn’t so bad and then you gave me a thousand reasons solidifying my memory of its awfulness. 😅

Ok, well damnit, let's do this: I'm throwing my fedora into the ring and declaring that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull IS NOT THAT BAD. I've just re-watched it for the first time in 15 years, and well, fuck. It didn't bother me nearly half as much as the first time I watched it. And the things that did bother me, weren't the same things as in 2008. Gophers? Didn't give a fuck. Monkeys? Didn't give a fuck. Ants? Didn't give a fuck. Been caught in a test site (and yes, they really did make a model street filled with houses and dummies and blew it up just to see what the US family unit would look like after a nuclear megaton was dropped on them). It was tense! They even telegraphed that aliens were real in this story in the first scene, so I don't know why I was so surprised at the end, the first time around. None of that bothered me at all. Watching Dial of Destiny (which I also enjoyed) the one thing I really missed was this (Spielberg's beautiful direction). And the first half of Skull has a ton of Spielbergian flair. He knows how to let the quiet moments breathe, and still be interesting. He knows how to make the camera be a funny participant in the storytelling. The guy truly is a master (the older I get, the more I appreciate him). The bad parts of Skull this time around? Well the second half of the movie is quite dull. The CGI smothers the world and makes it feel less exciting. Although Dial was riddled with CGI, too, there's something about Skull's world that just feels... dull. It might not even be the CGI. It just feels as though we move from one sound stage to another. And if the world isn't interesting, then the inter-character drama had better be... but it isn't. Despite there being the opportunity for some fantastic Connery/Ford style banter, it falls flat. Harrison Ford is the only person truly in the movie. And, I have to say, Shia LaBouf, too. Whatever you think LaBouf as a person, he easily gave the second best performance in Crystal Skull. He fully commits to every scene, and makes it work... unlike (astonishingly) John Hurt, Ray Winston and Karen Allen. The three of them all look like they're on a film set. It's so weird (although Hurt improves). Ray Winston's character, "Mac", is unbelievably uninteresting. He is such a lazy writing device for why Indy is in Location A and then Location B. "Cor blimey, I'm a traitorous scamp!" then "Just kidding, let me give you a reason to go over here instead" then "Nah, I really was! Tee hee!". Easily the worst character in the film. Karen Allen's Marion is just... off, too. She doesn't seem like the angry, strong-willed woman we all know and love. She should be looking out for her son, and angry with Jones for the fact that he abandoned her. But she looks like Karen Allen, happy to be working on an Indiana Jones movie again. She's having far too much fun. Watch the scene where Mutt finally sees the fractured mental state of Oxley. He can't believe how much his father-figure has lost his mind. Watch Marion... she just looks lost in the background. As if it's the first day on set and Karen Allen hasn't figured out who Marion is yet. Shouldn't she be comforting her son?? (One of the reasons why I loved the final scene in Dial was that Karen Allen knocked it out of the park -- Marion was truly back. Even in that tiny moment, she was there again. It was glorious.) And Cate Blanchett is utterly wasted... no threat, no charm, no sex. Her character an accent in a wig. The secondary characters seem like they're in a cartoon. Ford must have noticed it! Why was it allowed to continue? When Karen Allen was working on Raiders, she talks about how she did her best to ensure Marion was real in every scene. Not just a helpless damsel in the background. She suggested things to Spielberg and he went with them. The best example of this is the fact that, in the original Raiders script there's no scene in the tent with Marion and Belloq. She's just captured. Belloq says a line or two, she puts on a dress, and Toht turns up. Allen didn't think it felt real -- and why did she put on the dress? Her co-star, Paul Freeman, agreed. So they both went off and wrote a scene together. They gave it to Spielberg, he loved it and added it. It's one of my favourite scenes in the film. Everyone (except Ford and LaBouf) on Skull seems like they just turned up to work and expected Lucas and Spielberg to have figured everything out. Like they're not invested and phoning it in. Or maybe there was behind the scenes problems that I don't know about. Either way, the difference is stark. And the ending... sigh. Ok, so the ending isn't shit because there's a UFO in it. The ending is shit because I didn't care about any of it. I didn't care about the MacGuffin. I didn't care about the aliens. I didn't care what happened to Mac or Oxley. I didn't care what happened to Cate Blandchette. I barely cared about what happened to Marion and Mutt. It was boring as fuck. So rant, over. Yes, Skull isn't great, but... it's also not terrible. The first hour is actually pretty good. The major problems only really rear their head in the second half. And it's still fairly enjoyable until the damn ending. Oh, and one final thought: Unlike in 2008, Harrison Ford looks young in Crystal Skull now 😅 For any nerdy Indy scholars, here's the original tent scene from Raiders as scripted -- what a difference Allen and Freeman made! INT. MARION’S TENT Belloq has been talking to the still-bound Marion. He has removed her gag. He is impatient, angry, uncomfortable. Caught between two forces. BELLOQ Believe me, you made a mistake. If you would just give me something to placate them. Some bit of information. MARION I swear to you, I know nothing more. I have no loyalty to Jones. He’s brought me only trouble. He wants to believe her. BELLOQ I cannot control them. Marion’s frightened look shifts suddenly to the entrance of the tent. There are a few new arrivals there -- Shliemann, Govler and Belzig. Belzig carries a black leather case. He steps forward and smiles at Marion. BELZIG We meet again, Fraulein.

At least we know LeChuck isn't telling the story. Dead men tell no tales.

Isn't towering over everything the entire point of a mech?