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No, we don't.

Howdy, fellow Monkey Island fans! I've been lurking this thread since page one and have thoroughly enjoyed all the discussion and speculation. Thanks for the fun. I just want to say that I am so unbelievably happy that we are getting another Monkey Island game. I've grown up with the series and they're my comfort games. I'm preaching to the choir here, but there's something so incredibly enchanting about every single aspect -- the writing, the voice acting, the music, the locations... I plan to retire to Plunder Island. I'm currently working my way back through the games (for the umpteenth time) and they never get old. There's always something new to discover or appreciate. I love them all. Yes, even Escape! And the fact that we're getting another entry in the series? Helmed by some of the original creators? It's honestly a dream come true. My heart was literally racing when I saw the announcement. I never thought this would happen. I cannot wait to play Return. It's a shining light in a maddening world. It makes me so sad to see that Ron isn't going to post about the game anymore and that he and the team are being personally attacked. What an ugly situation. I don't think anything is perfect, and there will be things I like and dislike about Return (hopefully much more to like!), but there's a way to kindly express your opinions. Or to just... not. Some things you can keep to yourself and/or not direct at the people creating the game. It reminds me of the pathetic 'outrage' following the Sam & Max remaster. Anyway, I'm just another internet rando, but if any of the team happen to read this, know that I appreciate all your hard work, I'm so excited to play Return, and thank you for keeping Monkey Island alive. Please don't let the vitriolic vocal minority get to you (easier said than done, I know). My life is greatly enriched because of the series and you are responsible for hours upon hours of joy. And now back to lurking!

Hmm, I think calling us an "echo chamber" is overstating it a bit. This isn't a political forum. We're not all incels. We're not planning the revolution or encouraging each other to commit terrible acts in the real world. We're a community that's come together about a video game series. Every community is made up of people with shared interests. And every community has a personality. And that's normal. The fact that this one is generally light on hostility is a good thing. And, to explore this a little further: Just because the collective personality here is generally good natured doesn't mean there's not differences of opinion, it just means we generally can't be bothered to get too bent out of shape about them. Plus when people do express contrasting opinions they're generally done with maturity and consideration, and the responses generally follow with logic and reason, and rarely personal insults. It seems strange that outsiders look into here, see there's not a lot of hostility or conflict, and deem it a negative thing. Personally I'm glad to have found a community of like minded people. Again, I see it as a good thing.

Well you all agreed with me that EMI was by far the best in the series so they may have a point…. 😂

I don't do social media (I haven't got Twitter etc) and I haven't used a forum in 15 years, but I signed up just now as I'm so angry seeing this (I have been following this forum from afar). Everything seems to get ruined these days, anytime I check comments on articles it's inevitable that some crazy folks are going mad about something. I thought Monkey Island fans would be better than this? Surely, they are of adult age but some of the things I've read are so disrespectful, even a child wouldn't say them. I wonder what goes on in the mind of some people, I can't fathom why anyone would want to sit there under a cloud of pure hatred and go on and on about the same thing. I actually feel quite sorry for them that they must live there lives in this way. I feel bad for Ron and team, I hope Rex doesn't take this to heart. Hopefully they know this is a minority of crazies with too much time and nothing better to do than attack (hell, people are still going nuts over the Last Jedi so it never ends). Ron cutting himself off is a shame as everyone misses out, but this is the way on social media, I guess those trolls will now be "happy" about their achievement. Anyway, add me to the list of "beyond excited", the trailer looked absolutely fantastic. It shows a lot without giving anything concrete away. I still can't believe it's happening, I played most of the Monkey Islands over Christmas. Each year I usually play part 1 & 2 and then wonder what "really" happened. This year I added Curse to my list and although I like the game I always felt it cheated a little bit, so starting in the carnival gives me goosebumps! *Apologies for the long rambling!

I am very appreciative of the Mojo team for putting out this tweet, it’s a great way to promote the positivity and adoration for this game!

I think if we're going to compare artwork then you have do it using the ORIGINAL versions of the games... namely the EGA version of SOMI. The VGA version already started to make moves away from the EGA artwork, which the original team were intimately involved with. Ron famously doesn't like the VGA portraits, for example. So you can't hold those up and say THIS is Monkey Island! It's actually the subsequent team's interpretation. So, if you ask me, anyone who wants to complain about the art style through out the series has to start here. Monkey 1 (1990) Monkey 2 (1991) Curse (1996) Escape (2001) Tales (2009) Return (2022)

My favorite shot has got to be the lookout on Melee. The colors are so gorgeous and the shapes feel so three dimensional while also closely adhering to this game’s style. It looks almost like a Pixar color script or something.

The 'original' fans in their 40s who in fact experienced The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990 as teens, those who want the "promised" pixel art back, may even be a minority. I think that a larger part of the vitriolic critics got their lasting bam-bam to the head with Curse of Monkey Island. They want CMI in HD (which wouldn't work, but that is an altogether different topic). And then there's yet another part of the critics who would "allow" any style, "JUST NOT THAT ONE". Most of those people, I guess, would ask from Return to Monkey Island exactly what you suggest. They want to return to the comforting warmth of their childhoods, and they seem to have the ultimate idea what stylistic choice Ron Gilbert should have made for them to find the path. Funny thing though: Rex' style, in my opinion, makes exactly that possible, for me at least. These tiny, puny games thrown together by a handful of people back then, they felt vast and grand. The secrets felt so plentiful and I was always the first person on earth to discover them (even when using a walkthrough). Every new scene could be any size, Guybrush could face any peril and challenge, and I would guide him out. No game today could render the same joy, that's the problem with adulthood. The latest Uncharted entries come close at tens and hundreds of millions of dollar budgets a pop. How are you doing that at a so much smaller budget, to an audience so used to big budget pizzaz? The ReMI art team approaches the impossible task from a multitude of directions: the color schemes are very similar to the original monkey island games, the backgrounds take a lot of almost forgotten keys from the earliest games, the contrasts are so strong, we have more expressive facial animation than ever before, and a lot of abstraction is reducing characters and backgrounds to their most recognizable, iconic forms. The alien and warped background compositions allow any scene, perspective, or exaggeration. This style does not limit RonDave in telling the story they want. Swordfight in a crow's nest? Spitting contest in a full to the brim amphitheatre? Labyrinth of doom in a fiery lava underworld? A monstrosity of a LeChuck ship that could easily house thousands? You try that in CMI's style, in Tales' style, in LeChuck's Revenge's style. It wouldn't look nearly as good as it would in ReMI's chosen style. This is the form that best serves the function.

In the negative reactions, I think there’s a lot of curdled nostalgia — folks who have wanted a ‘Ron Gilbert’s Money Island 3’ since they were eleven years old. That’s a lot of time to dream and ruminate, and the fact that while sections of the fandom didn’t regard one or more of the sequels as legitimate probably just fed into that utopian dream of a game that would fill the childhood void. The new game doesn’t look like the 1990s, though, and it’s not designed to hit other nostalgia buttons either (for example, a lush and romantic period piece, or a hand-drawn Disney cartoon). I think for those of us who moved on, and who want Monkey Island to move on, the new style is exciting, but for fans who want the game to return them to the comforting warmth of their childhoods, the style is a stark reminder that it’s not coming back. I do think there is an aspect of the style which is a little disarming initially — it’s fun, but it’s not cute, and Guybrush’s face in particular has a distancing effect that doesn’t immediately pull you in like the Purcell portraits do. So I think some fans will need to warm up to it, after they get over the shock of seeing something that doesn’t match their expectations. The more vitriolic voices are probably coming from people who are howling at the inability to regain their childhoods. I have a hard time not imagining deeply hurt, damaged people behind those keyboards. It’s sad, but they will eventually move in from spamming the comments and find other things to vent their existential disappointment in. Don’t let them get you down! There’s lots of other stuff to talk about There was a Monkey Island game I never played because I “the graphics” didn’t appeal to me, and I ended up ok.

I hope there will be, but I doubt it'll be through regular channels. LimitedRun will be the most likely party to release one! I'd really like a T-shirt that says: I ranted about the RtMI art style and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt.

I am hopeful that the negativity will fade after people recalibrate their expectations. I think this was a sharp blast of emotion because the art is very different to what some longtime fans expected. I think the best thing to do is ignore the haters and just continue to discuss what is interesting about the game. Can you imagine the backlash about the MI2 ending if there had been social media in 1991??

Oh man. While we are saddened by the ugly wave of hateful comments, here and there are beautiful, hopeful shines of love that give me so much joy and hope! While haters rant, others create art. They make things. It's wonderful. 🥰

The EGA closeup portraits look really damn close to the box art for Monkey Island 1, and the way the Monkey Head and LeChuck’s ship look are also a close match. Monkey 1 and its box art do look very similar. The box art was drawn by one of the primary background and character artists on the game. It’s closer to a Struzan-style poster for a movie (imagining a heightened moment that doesn’t exist and/or a dreamlike collage), than to Mega Man (wildly and wholly unrelated), to me. I think the aftermarket VGA portraits have forever made the MI1 box and the game feel misaligned, but they aren’t. With Monkey 2 things start to separate more, for sure.

I've talked about this briefly before, but I think it's possible to make a case that when you remove all the technological distinctions, MI2's style has lots of things that are more in common with CMI than MI1. Obviously the biggest difference is in the characters themselves, but when you look at the backgrounds I already feel like MI2 was already halfway or more to getting to where CMI was going. If you take these 3 town shots, for example, and ignore that one of them is at night, and just look at how the buildings are drawn, and how the lines and shapes work: Yeah, I think a case can be made that even though CMI clearly takes it further, MI2 is already starting what it continues. in the way it uses lines and shapes. Funnily enough, while I think RMI is again a departure, I think that in some ways it's a departure back in the direction of MI1 - both styles have a fascination with conveying funky perspectives with straight lines, and although RMI exaggerates this a lot more, I think it's fairly apt given the return to Melee. (edit: or, to put it another way, perhaps one way of looking at RMI's style as far at the backgrounds go is that in terms of the way it uses shapes, it's sort of a combination if MI1's straight lines and wonky perspectives with MI2 and especially CMI's more cartoonish exagerration and foreground/background detail.)

Happy birthday. Welcome to the suck!

Yeah, give people a way to communicate with devs and suddenly everyone's an armchair producer. But it's not the first time I've seen this, I'm used to it by now. I think Tim Schafer probably had the right idea by saying from the start he wanted to make the game using Bagel's style, because then nobody could be shocked when the adventure game he made featured a style he hadn't really worked with before. But yes, quite clearly people have no idea of the effort that it takes to produce something of this quality. Even if they have their subjective opinion of whether the art style works for the game or not, as soon as they start to imply that it's cheap or low effort or easy to make or stuff like that they're just objectively wrong. The people I've seen most excited about this are other game devs and artists, and I think it's because they actually have some understanding of what's been achieved here, and in such a short time, all told.

Damn, that is depressing. I really dislike what fandom has become the last couple of years, and I think it shows just how unhappy a lot of people feel about the world and their place in it. If people were leading rich and fulfilling lives, they wouldn't need to ventilate so much hostility on someone else's product. It makes me sad for Ron, Rex and their team. But it also makes me sad for the people who ventilate such toxicity. They must truly feel unhappy with themselves.

Just dropped the last beta of DREAMM 1.0 for final testing: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ At this point, all the key functionality is in. If there are any remaining issues you'd like to see fixed before 1.0 is final, this is your last chance! Version:1.0b6 • Add increase/decrease video size menu items and key shortcuts (Alt-+/-). • Display selection dialog if multiple games are detected. • Always hide mouse in full screen mode, even outside of game area. • Added support for Curse of Monkey Island demos. • Allow selection of Standard/Practice/Expert modes in Loom FM Towns. • Fix audio looping in FM Towns playback (specifically Indy Crusade water pouring). • FM Towns games now exit cleanly via Ctrl+C. • Reduced target MIPS and RAM size for earlier games; fixed FM Towns at 2MB. • Fix window sizing behavior when target size is larger than the monitor size.

If there's one good thing to be had from all the barrage of nasty stuff we all witnessed in the last few days, is how a great part of the community banded together in defense of a creator's right to fulfill his own creative vision. In a way, all this negative stuff might've ended creating even more goodwill for the game.

Plot twist: It's an illustrated book he made for his and Elaine's child.

My only complaint is that there's no release date

I'd like to now appreciate the trailer's rats, the squirrel, the bunnies, the snail, the parrot, the owl, the peacock (?), that other bird, and of course the bowl of chicks (not the deer head or the frozen eagle, of course).

Let's form a Mix N Mojo crew!!

Hear, hear! And happy birthday! We’re just about the same age. I’m astounded by how much influence my childhood has had over my interests as an adult, but I think the only way to keep that sense of joy and discovery really alive is to keep doing new things, experimenting and growing. I suppose that’s why this new Monkey Island feels exciting to me, while I would probably not want to play a pixelfied version …

Yes we do!

That's what humanity gets for creating a beautiful instrument of communication like the Internet, which not only connects us with the rest of the world but also connects the rest of the world with us (and that's where things go awry).

I foolishly thought that Monkey Island wouldn't attract those kinds of fans but this culture of commentary, ranging from a lack of tact and respect for the creators, to just extreme vitriol and abuse, seems to infect everything. It's depressing. It also irritates me (and it must be even more galling for Ron and the team) how so many seem to consider themselves experts in game dev nowadays, commenting on the budget or whatever in relation to the art style. Twitter and Mojo are both echo chambers of a sort (I know which one I prefer today), but surely the vast majority of people who Ron will want to reach with Return to Monkey Island are frequenting neither? I think this fresh art style will serve him very well in that regard, and I'm sure he won't lose sight of that even with the whining 'fans' clogging up his blog comments. Going to have another click around the new website and watch the trailer again to cheer myself up!

This may be an echo chamber, but it's a big one, and I think the one that is both most representative and most knowledgeable of what they speak. I don't think it's too big headed to say that. The people who built this community are the same people who helped, say, build tools allowing us to play the games easily, still. They're the same people who now work for the people who made those games we love, the same people who have actually now made Monkey Island games. If I trust any echo chamber to have a true sense of what the vibe is around this game, it's this one. And hey, if it is an echo chamber, I don't think it's one to an unhealthy degree - we disagree on stuff all the time, right?

Here's an idea, why don't we follow the artist on twitter to show our support? It's gotta be hard to be facing all this. username in twitter is rexbox

Honestly, I just hope Ron visits this forum. It would be great if he made a profile and shared updates here. I think he would really enjoy the comments here. Even if there are disagreements here, they are civil from what I can see and lend themselves to a good discussion.

Idk, it seems a bit tricky, since I doubt the team wants more notifications flooding their inboxes. But maybe we could all make a collaborative project or something to show our love and support? Idk.

Man, this whole thing is so devastating – to have the joy of sharing art sucked out of you has got to be one worst feelings ever. No one should have to go through the kind of vitriol the team is getting, and I hope Ron shutting down the comments will lessen that at least a little.

I don't want to get too deep into this but I hope they shy away from insult stuff a bit, if they're gonna make a reference. My interpretation of insult swordfighting in MI1 was that it was just swordfighting. It wasn't like a special form of swordfighting, it was just a framing device for making fights work in a format where they didn't want to have actual combat. They never actually call it 'insult swordfighting' in the game. It worked within the logic of the game, but the intent behind it wasn't that 'these are the rules of swordfighting in this world. CMI brought it back and I think it was fun to change it so that they had to rhyme at sea, but I also think it was the start of the games being weird about insult fighting. There's no reason why non-rhyming insults shouldnt be effective at sea, that sort of undermines the whole point of the insult being a way of throwing the opponent off guard. But I accepted it because I guess within the fiction you could have it that at sea the tradition of rhyming insults is so ingrained that even a brilliant insult that doesn't rhyme doesn't sting in the same way it usually would because it would be an embarrassing faux pas. Sure. Then EMI takes it several steps further. First Guybrush can't win against Ozzie because he can't understand the insults (why would you be insulted by an insult that makes no sense to you?) But also they start calling it 'insult arm wrestling' and 'insult swordfighting' and then get all metaphysical about it and introduce the idea of the ultimate insult which in my mind just goes WAY past what insulting was intended to represent in the first game. They calm it down a bit in Tales but it still gets talked about as 'insult swordfighting'. Maybe this is a peeve I and I alone have, but I have no time for making insults and insult swordfighting a 'thing' in the MI universe. It's just swordfighting! Insults are just a game mechanic! ...Ahem

They’ve got the replacement ready to go!

There are some things that excite me a ton, and I would consider them "small details" that we rarely talk about. Please share your favorite things from the games that make you happy. Window Lights In the town of Mêlée Island you can see some window lights turn on and off. Changing location names on the map Some location names change when you visit them the first time.

I thought it was Poppa Peeshew

Guybrush and Elaine's son, Herman. Named after HT Marley! Also, man, poppa Guybrush. Wouldn't that be closure! "There were pirates when I was a boy..."

This seems dubious to me. The box art strikes me as more of an exercise in hypothetical movie poster art than anything else. Ultimately, the only safe interpetation of how the game "should" look is how it actually looks.

Given that it's my 40th birthday today it seems an apt time to reflect on things I have learned. And one of the things I've learned, I think, is that you can never go back. .. hmm.. but that's not quite right. You can never go back, except by going forward. When, probably almost exactly 30 years ago, someone showed me Monkey Island for the first time, it set my imagination on fire. In the good way. Whatever I thought games were before, this overwrote any of that and it was the start of a real fascination with storytelling in games, it was an immense influence on my style of composing especially melodies and bass parts, and it influenced me in so many other little different ways. So of course when I look back to those days I'm a mess of nostalgia, and part of me wants nothing more than to recreate it, exactly as it was, to experience it over again. But you'll never get that. It's an impossible dream. There's an uncanny valley associated with nostalgia, I feel. You can try to get back to the old house, and you might convince yourself that it's just how you remember it. But you know in your heart that some of the rooms aren't where you remember them, and that picture you thought looked really cool when you were 7 does nothing for you now, and it feels different when there isn't anyone living in it. Even Thimbleweed Park, a game I have mixed feelings about, I thought was at its most interesting when it was being least like a game from 1990. The closest you can get back to recapturing the feeling is perhaps experiencing it through someone else. Watching someone else experiencing something you love for the first time can be its own special joy. So what can you do instead? Well, for me the answer isn't in trying to recreate the same lightning in the same bottle, but to try to do as much as you can to find different lightning in different bottles. And that can only be found with the same spirit of experimentation and risk that the original games were made in. It might not always work, but it's always worth the try.

The irony is that I've seen some of the most offensive posters claim that we're the ones in an echo-chamber. What a joke.

The sad reality is that in this day and age is much preferable for a creator to work on new properties than tackle an IP with decades of fandom piled up. I doubt Ron Gilbert will ever tackle Monkey Island ever again. And I don't blame him

Can't blame him but good on Ron for always ready to defend his team and friends. It shouldn't be necessary, but having someone lead a project and always have their team's back is still awesome to see. I'm buying every version of this game I can lol

All the negative muttering put me in mind of this classic Adventure Gamers article by Evan Dickens, called "We Already Hate Your Game," which I'll point out is now *20 years old*: https://adventuregamers.com/articles/amp/17539

Yeah, this confused me as I swear Ron said they decided to go for a different design. 🤔 I admit i didn't like the original sketch. But i think the tweaks really fix the stuff i found distracting (long neck, eyes too far apart and the box shaped head) I really love the design now. 😁

What more could you want, man?

Yeah, the hair is really a lot similar, and obviously a lot of the proportions are similar too. I think that the changes in the shapes and the extra contours on the face make a lot of difference to how I experience the character though.

Well now, what have you given me in return? Oh, riiiiight. Voiced one of my favourite video game characters for 25 years. 😉 (also, you were more patient with that 'they're the exact same art style' comment than I would have been, well done!)

I have to say, I'm actually really glad that I like the graphics of "Return" so much! Rex Crowle's style is, in my opinion, much closer to the first two parts than the other games - and I think it's the most coherent of all! Everything fits together so well: From the backgrounds, to the characters, to the animation. It just seems like it's all of one piece (dunno if the expression is right...). You don't have to like it, but it's certainly not cheap or unfinished, as some "haters" claim. I remember being pretty disappointed with the look of Tales when it was first announced with the trailer. It actually seemed kind of cheap and unfinished to me, and I still think the first chapter isn't really "pretty". But when I played the first episode, everything already seemed better while playing and especially the story and mood convinced me. Also, from chapters 2 and 3 on, it was noticeable that Telltale really put in the effort to improve the graphics within the scope of possibilities (thanks, Wii...). The character models became better/different and the lighting more elaborate, so that I was really pleased with the game's visuals in the end. I'm still not convinced by some of the design choices (I don't like LeChuck's look at all in his zombie form, for example), but later, everything looks very coherent, especially in Episode 4 and 5. It's a shame it wasn't like that from the start... (Remaster please?) Either way, though, the game was otherwise really great! 🥰 To make a long story short: I can understand if one finds that the look of "Tales" looks a bit cheap and unfinished (at the beginning), but in "Return" everything, to me, is very elaborated and crafted with a lot of time and love - at least if you go by the trailer. And apart from that, the graphic style is also only one aspect of many ( even if it's the most prominent one). 🙂 I really do hope that people, who hate the art style that much right now, will give it a chance and get used to it. Because: This game just looks like it'll be awesome!

Not even ...