KestrelPi

An official album version I think is pretty unlikely, this whole gig came together very quickly and I think getting sign off on anything more than the video would be really difficult. I think if they were to do a live GF album, the gig to go for would be the one from poland a while back, which had more tracks and a bigger band involved I'm not sure if a recording of that exists, but I hope so.

Yeah, definitely that was what I was getting at. ReMI really sort of freed this from having to worry about exactly where and how this fits, so if you like this can be the absolute accurate account of what Guybrush and Elaine got up to on their honeymoon, or otherwise you can just think of it as a fanciful story Guybrush tells, and one that neatly ties into that era of him becoming (slightly) less self-centred. Or if you like you can imagine it as a Monkey Island story created through the lens of the imaginations of Monkey Island fans who also like Sea of Thieves. The more I think about it the more I don't care if there's an answer of what they did on their honeymoon. I'd rather 10 distinct honeymoon stories if it means I get to enjoy the world and its characters for a bit longer, (even if some of those are duds). This little tale makes me realise how at peace I am with ReMI's ending. I think whatever itch I've had to understand what is canon has ebbed away in the last 10 years, and now I just want talented folk to spin me yarns with characters whose antics I am invested in.

I'm not CERTAIN but it sounds a lot to me like the same person who does the Baldur's Gate 3 narrator, Amelia Tyler. That was my first impression, and when I looked her up she has done a voice for Sea of Thieves before so it tracks. She's great, check out her Baldur's Gate 3 outtake videos if you get the chance.

I really enjoyed all of it. The checkpointing thing is a little annoying but once you know it exists then you just need to remember to stop or carry on when you get to one. I completely understand it being this way, it's primarily a game that takes place on multiplayer servers and it's not set up to save the entire world state the whole time, and implementing a completely different save system just instanced stories would be so much work, but I get why it's frustrating. But I just loved the exploration and attention to detail. Something that may be a little lost on those who haven't played Sea of Thieves much is just how big these islands feel in comparison to everything else in the game. They're maybe a little downsized from how they felt in the game, but not a LOT. When you're standing on that rock platform in Monkey Island looking out across the view you realise 'oh, they really did try to go for scale here' in a way they haven't before. I thought they got the feel of the islands down great, I thought the puzzles we pleasantly Monkey Islandy for the most part without being too complex to keep track of in Sea of Thieves. The only bit I thought was overly tedious was the coin collecting in the first part. The music implementation was great including what sounded like completely through-composed custscene pieces, and lots of fun variations of themes we're familiar with. The implementation of insult fighting was .... a little awkward but I'm honestly impressed they managed it at all. The voice delivery was mostly on point and .... dare I say it, I rather liked the choice they made for Elaine. New LeChuck seems to be settling into the role a bit, too. I really liked the little touches like how every screen had a place to sit and look at it. It seems very obvious to me that this was made by people who are real fans of the game and wanted to balance fan service kinds of references and doing its own thing. In fact, I daresay that as a kind of mixture of epilogue to CMI and re-telling of the major events of MI1, this is the first project that meets the promise of the end of ReMI... that is to say, the idea of the MI universe as a metaphorical and sometimes literal fairground of ideas which we can play with, and that it matters a bit less what the 'correct' version of the story is. For all that Ron wasn't involved in this, this sure feels to me like a Ron-centric idea of what Monkey Island means, to me.

I suppose this is where I am these days

Eh, nothing 'needs' to exist. Honestly if you offered me a world where no new Monkey Island things were created, or a world where 100 new Monkey Island things were created and 95 of them were terrible and 5 were great, I'd take the world where I get 5 great Monkey Island things and happily moan about the rest. At least it would be something to talk about.

Only just noticed this. It's not happening. Double Fine have been super clear in a lot of interviews in the months and years up to and post release that whatever they work on next, they're excited on exploring new ideas before returning to old ones again. Every time Psychonauts 3 comes up in conversation on the Double Fine Discord, we make a point of saying that this is not a thing that is likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future. This is not because they're hiding something, but because they're working on other things and Tim probably would like to know what it's like to do one of his ideas without worrying where the money is coming from.

I guess... a couple of things. Firstly I do really get the sense that the Rare folks are genuinely trying something different with Sea of Thieves and this is probably something they had to fight quite hard to make as big as it is, especially with the lukewarm initial reception. If it felt to me like Monkey Island was going to be absorbed by a real undisputed big hitter I might feel weirder about it, but honestly Sea of Thieves feels like it has succeeded against the odds, and from that perspective this more feels like it is paying respect to one of its inspirations than just eating the smaller fish. And, well, my relationship to copyright is a bit complicated as someone who has worked in the field of IP rights for some time, my ideas about it have evolved over time. It's a sad fact of not just this industry but a lot of creative industries that a lot of creative work needs financial backing to happen and so a lot of ideas end up just being owned by companies who then control what to do with them. That's been true for a long time, but yeah, it is true. On the other hand, I do feel like my ideal version of copyright is the one that existed at the start of copyright. It was originally intended as a way that a creator could protect how their work was used, and protect their ability to make an income for it, for a limited time, before it was released into the public domain for the betterment of the arts and culture as a whole. And that initial copyright term was short. None of this life plus x years nonsense. None of this zombie copyright stuff we get now where if something big is about to expire then whoops the term of copyright magically gets extended. The whole point is 'you can make money from it for a bit then it belongs to the world'. I think I like that idea. What it would mean is that right now Rare could just do Monkey Island in Sea of Thieves if they wanted, and Disney doesn't make money from that, but... neither does Ron. Nor would he need to give permission. But also, as a counterbalancing thing, since Disney would no longer own it, Ron could just choose to make and sell a new Monkey Island if he wanted. But so would anyone else. And yes, a lot of that stuff would be horrible, but that's how it goes for stuff in the Public Domain, right? Okay, sure. I don't know why you wouldn't want some cool Monkey Island stuff every couple of years, but fair enough. What I find weirder though is why you're spending any time worrying about it. It isn't happening. Won't happen. Monkey Island is tiny. It's not even as big as it was in 1997, which was... big enough to support a sequel after 6 years (which was an age at the time), which had some nice animated cutscenes but didn't even have the budget to do the ending cutscene they wanted and didn't produce another sequel in the same decade. Even if they release 5 well-received spinoffs in the next 5 years (which they won't) that won't even worry the needle of a Disney Exec's 'thing-i-need-to-pay-attention-to' meter. So there's no need to invent these scenarios.

I do admit that through my life I've seen both sides when it comes to canon. I do think there's a nerd in me that wants to know 'okay what actually happened, though?' but over the years that voice seems to be increasingly drowned out by one that's more excited by 'what if...?' What if the monkey head was the top of a giant robot (hey, not all the what ifs have to be winners). What if a weird monkey island pocket universe appeared in Sea of Thieves? What if the voodoo lady had a hidden agenda throughout the series? What if Guybrush and Stan dated? What if... The part of me that likes the certainty of canon can't seem to quite find a truly satisfactory answer to the question: what does canon actually provide us? "A solid foundation with which to build other stories in this world" Sure, but is limiting ourselves to one version of the story always a good thing. And does that solid foundation HAVE to be a timeline? Couldn't it just be well-defined characters and locations? "A sense that this is a real place and not just a jumble of ideas." Ehh. Are we all really suspending our disbelief that hard? If I can suspend my disbelief hard enough to accept some of the more outlandish world building and characters in the series, surely I can suspend it enough to accept some ambiguity in the timeline. "A sense that I understand the world I'm a fan of and what's in it." Well, yeah, I suppose that is a thing, but we were fine with living with the end of MI2 not properly explained for 30 years, so does it really matter that much?

Actually I think I'd go further than what I said before and say that even if Monkey Island somehow impossibly did become a Star Wars, is this a nightmare proposition? Sure, that brand has produced some real stinkers in the past 30 years. But it's also produced some gems, even recently, and will continue to do so for as long as there are people that care about Star Wars and want to create Star Wars. As cynical and greedy as your hollywood execs can get, in the end, for now at least, they still have to work with people who are passionate about what they create, and have dreams and visions for what it could be. Are we really sat here worried about a future where we'd see endless cereal box tie ins and bad TV spinnoffs and mixed-bag movies, but then every couple of years we'd get an awesome comedy series about Stan's latest ventures, or an amazing RPG which explores the weirder parts of MI lore with real style and understanding?

I think people are massively overestimating how much ReMI was even ... noticed financially by Disney honestly. I do not believe in a world where they looked at what happened with ReMI, and gleefully set about seeing how else they can exploit this. I mean, for a start Sea of Thieves already had its mini-MI tribute long before ReMI. I do believe in a world where they saw that ReMI did fine and decided 'sure, we can afford to throw this name around a little more, it seems low risk' i.e. at best the existence of ReMI vaguely greased some wheels. But let's be honest, Monkey Island is not in the same league as a Star Wars and Indy, and never will be. It's not even in the league below. It's a minor game series which was fairly popular in the early 90s and gained a bit of a cult following, and has had a couple of revivals. Heck, even if Disney sticks a Monkey Island series on Disney+ and casts Chris Pratt as Guybrush Threepwood, I promise you it's because some exec went rogue on some passion project and it somehow passed through all the usual filters. No disney exec with dollar signs in their eyes is looking hungrily at Monkey Island.

I'm not sure I'd have it any other way than this being a lovingly reference laden nostalgia-fest. I mean the alternative would be for it to be a serious attempt at expanding the MI universe and I think Rare would be first to admit that they haven't really earned that. Sure, I think ReMI opens up the possibility of lots of different kinds of stories being told by lots of different people but LOOK, we literally just got a new Monkey Island game last year, one we never expected, so I'm not going to begrudge if Rare don't set their storytelling ambitions any higher than 'a fun romp through some familiar locations and characters'. To me that almost feels like the MORE respectful way to do something like this. edit: possibly the rudest thing they've done is forever taken the name The Legend of Monkey Island out of commission for this.

I expect it will be a loving tribute that won't involve the original writing team. Hey, lots of people think that worked out reasonably well for Curse!

Yes, the whole stuff surrounding Ron Gilbert is annoying. I mean my take away from Return is that it was an acknowledgement from Ron that Monkey Island never was and never will be fully his, and that in that spirit all ways of telling the story are valid. So were they really that afraid of letting him know they were doing a side thing? On the other hand, this is exactly in the spirit of the sort of thing that it should be possible to do with Monkey Island post-return. Could not care less if or how it fits in the timeline since Also fine with how Guybrush looks here, it's completely in keeping with the character style of Sea of Thieves and it looks in some shots of the trailer it's an attempt to be closer to the hair colour depicted in the first two games, which I'm into. Part of me wants to say, look, it's not very deep and we don't need to overanalyse it. People in Rare were clearly into the Monkey Island games having already inserted a homage, someone at LucasFilm said 'hey do you want to make a thing' knowing that Return would make Monkey Island a bit more relevant again and the Rare folks were into it. Sea of Thieves is good, Monkey Island is good, this crossover event will probably be a nice time for people who like both those things. As much disdain as I have for brands and corporate culture... I do think it's possible to just enjoy that a thing exists and someone cared enough to make it happen. Because I find it hard to believe that this was done cynically, and it wasn't just some people's passion project. No matter how well Return did, nobody was looking it and thinking 'right, now time to find new ways to exploit that Monkey Island cash cow.' I think as fans we probably overestimate how much currency Monkey Island really has in this day and age. This exists, and it'll probably be made with love. There are worse fates for a series.

Someone who knows these files might know where to look better than me because I've just spent about an hour looking with no luck... I'm trying to find those sounds that accompany the little TV programs that play on the TV in Psychonauts? Y'know the one with the cowboy on a horse, and an alien one, and a ninja one. Any idea where those might live?

Recently had a little 'Elaine-as-antagonist' pondering I'm like 99% sure this isn't intentional but I was just looking at the last conversation you have with her and thinking... 'What if she's the one putting a spell on Guybrush?' The last conversation you have with her is... weird. First Guybrush says something like 'there you are' and she says 'where else would I be in a bit of a ... strange tone of voice. It's a weird thing to say anyway. Then when he says he's confused where he is she dismisses everything he's saying as time flying when he's having fun, and then when he asks how she got there ahead she just says something vague about keeping one step ahead. Later she shrugs it off by saying 'that ending gets weirder every time you tell it', almost like she's deliberately encouraging him to become more confused about what really happened. And then as soon as he starts to think about it too much... she distracts him with news of a new adventure. It's a bit of a weird interaction, but it makes a lot of sense if you think about it as her putting a spell on him or working things from the background. Also you remember how at the end of MI2 she says 'I hope LeChuck hasn't put a horrible SPELL over him or something.' Again, slightly weird thing to say, makes sense in the context of the ending but also makes sense if you think of it as her saying it sarcastically, because... well, she knows that's what's happened as she's behind it. She has no reason to know LeChuck would even be down there. Same with the 'Oh dear' as he falls in the pit. Might LeChuck be in cahoots with Elaine somehow? Well, maybe there's more to that L+E carving and bridal veil than the game is letting on. Again, I don't really think they're doing this deliberately, but I'm interested in it as an alternate read.

The way i see it is that it's a good cap off to the series no matter what, but there's plenty of room for other stories happening at different times. Revisiting what Dave said about it in interviews, it was something like "At some point it's going to be hard to put numbers on these games and in a way it might not be important" which was really to me the biggest clue that the game was going to do something structurally interesting like this. I think it can be the 'end' of the Monkey Island series, and it makes a lot of sense to be that as it provides the necessary emotional closure for ... what the value of stories told in this world is. But it can be that and also not The Last Game In The Monkey Island Series To Be Made

I'm not sure about... any of this. I don't mind that you don't like the art, you've been fairly polite about it. I don't really totally get it, because I ended up in the same place as Dom described as finding it hard to imagine not liking it, but there's no accounting for matters of taste and sometimes that's all it is, and that's okay. But I think if anything Return re-affirms the well-established precedent of Monkey Island games constantly toying with the art style: "we always knew that MI1 and MI2 had similar/identical character models" okay, but quite different everything-else, and since they were made just a year apart, there was only so much that was technically achievable as far as sprite work went. "that if Tales Season 2 happened it would have looked like Tales Season 1" okay, but we know the main driver of that would have been budget "Return is overwhelmingly well-received to the point of demanding an immediate sequel then its art will look the same." Nobody is going to be able to demand an immediate sequel from Ron and Dave no matter how badly people wanted one, and even if they could, I think that there would be a strong chance that he'd once again want to find a new visual feel for the game, since at this point it is practically a tradition for the series. I mean I say this as someone who really enjoy's Rex's take, and can be said to be biased insofar as I've met him a couple of times in person and shares some mutual friends... I would be way more interested in a MI7 with a new artist than one that does this again. It is The Way. And very in keeping with the themes of RMI too. These stories don't just stay the same. They change, and they look different through the eyes of different people. RMI wants us to know this, so why would they want to make another one that looks exactly the same again?

For 2 a good rule of thumb is that Land composed Scabb, McConnell composed Booty and Bajakian composed Phatt. But there are probably exceptions to this and some level of collaboration on all of it. I think I heard Largo's theme was a group effort which is plausible but it wouldn't surprise me if McConnell was the driving force behind that as it containst a lot of his fingerprints. Compare that theme for example to Swanky Maximino from Grim Fandango (which incidentally was a tune originally written from Monkey 2, which they couldn't find a use for)

I half expected it to happen in the final shot of Guybrush sitting on the bench. Boybrush has to wonder for longer just like we all did, but we get to share in Guybrush's thoughts once Boybrush goes away. I think that would have been a quite sweet way of handling it, but I still think I'm glad they showed restraint.

I think for me the biggest thing that stops this game from quite reaching the heights of some of the older games is that feeling that the new locations feel a bit empty, a bit like they're just locations for puzzles to occur in rather than having a strong personality. It's just 'ice island', 'scary island', 'lime island'. They feel a bit like video game levels rather than places. I can't imagine ever feeling like I understand Brrr Muda the way I do Scabb, Booty, Phatt, Melee, even Plunder and Blood, or even some of the places in the 3D ones, they're just a bit... thin in comparison, here. I think what makes up for it for me is just how it adds to the framing of the Monkey Island universe. It's almost like the story and locations are backdrop to the main thing that the game wants to convey. And while I can't deny I wish that they'd have fleshed out that backdrop a bit more, I also am still so in love with what it does around it that I'm giving it a pass on a lot of that stuff (also it's not like it's bad, just a bit slight). I learn a lot about the game moments that are really important to me when I think about how I skip through let's plays of a game on youtube. For MI1 I always watch most of Part 1, then I tend to skip to arriving on Monkey Island, then sometimes I'll just skip straight to the final part of the game and outro. For MI2 I will always want to watch parts of part 1, the end of part 1, I find myself seeking out certain parts of part 2 (the password puzzle, governor marley, Stan, the bone dance), I tend to watch the acid pit escape, then skip to the X marks the spot. For CMI I watch the opening, any part with Murray, the pirate song, bits and pieces of blood island and big whoop parts. For EMI I have tried but usually abort watching shortly into part 1 (sorry). Tales I'm most interested in seeing people play through parts 3-5 For RMI I've been watching the intro, a little bit of the first part, and then I tend to skip all the way to the final part. And I think that's because I don't really care that much about the middle of the game. I don't hate it, and I rather like it but there isn't a part of me that's begging to know what so-and-so thought of this bit or that bit. That said, I recently watched someone play through the part with the Chums stories, and that I did rather enjoy. But I might be more interested in seeing their reaction to the start and end of this game more than anything else in the whole series, with the possible exception of MI2's ending (which is of course closely related)

The way I read Elaine in RMI is similar to how Ronzo described it in that recent interview. She used to be more into Guybrush's flights of fancy and more willing to indulge in her own but she's moved on a bit. She has her own agenda and tolerates whatever Guybrush is doing, maybe even finds it a little endearing but is keen to point out to him when he might be getting carried away. She's also not above enabling it, as we see at the end. Maybe she even recognises that it's something Guybrush needs. Maybe a bit of her still enjoys it herself.

I do think it sort of makes different people's accounts of things a little confusing, and you have to wonder how much of it is people's memory versus their memory of their memory of their memory of it, etc. I'm sure at some point Ron or Tim or someone said they don't remember anything about it being the original ending to MI1, but this seems to make it clear that it was actually. And Ron's talked about how the amusement park ending came to him very close to the end of MI2 and they had no idea how to end it before that... which I took to mean that they weren't really thinking about it before, but judging from the new interview it was at least something that was in his head since the start and they were just choosing to surface it.

I mean I obviously completely disagree with almost all of this, but all of it I'd file under 'each to their own' apart from the following which I take complete exception to: That's just false. I love it, and I've seen it recently, and I'm very secure in my loving of it. I know when I'm viewing something through rose tinted glasses or not, and I'm not. Don't try to tell me that it's only possible for me to do if I'm looking at it wrong, that's the sort of thing that makes me grumpy. I think about this film a LOT. I'm even planning on recording a podcast about it soon (we decided to look at 2 rather than 1 because we felt that the first one has been talked about plenty, and 2 has just so much to talk about). So, no. I love it. Unreservedly, and glasses off. OK, grump moment over.

Heck I mean what else is there to talk about RMI without spoilers at this point xD I agree that detail is a little hamfisted but if the first one could be said to have a flaw I would say it's that Marty can essentially do no wrong. The worst that could be said about his character is that he's a little impulsive, he sometimes acts without thinking and gets into trouble sometimes because of it. But even when he does, getting into trouble is usually set up as a way to make him look cool. At the end of BTTF Marty has actually overcome very little on a personal level. Maybe playing the guitar got him over some of his fear of rejection but it's not exactly made very clear in the narrative. At the end, he's the character that stays the same while the rest of his flawed family gets 'fixed' around him (Incidentally this, when you really think about it is a horrifying thing to happen - for your parents to become unrecognisable to you as people, and suddenly your memories of growing up being all wrong). He can't be said to have grown or learned anything in any meaningful way in the first film, and that's okay, a film doesn't have to deliver that... but over the course of a trilogy you probably would start to notice it. So I can understand why they felt that they had to give him something to overcome, and while it's a bit weird to have this bit introduced midway through the trilogy, I give it a pass because without it there really would be very little to tie the 3rd film back to the second (and by extention the first). It allows him to have a moment of personal growth that makes him realise he doesn't actually need to prove himself (even if he's forced to in the end), which comes full circle when he gets to change the moment when he would have been in the car crash. I feel like without that, BTTF3 would have felt less part of the whole than it does. On topic bit: something related I really like about RMI is (spoilertexted for very, very oblique allusions to some stuff that happens in the game)