KestrelPi

I continue to be quietly/loudly confident it's september. Devolver have been releasing 1 game every 3-6 weeks (about a month on average) all year, and they start ramping up publicity for the games in the month or two before the release. Devolver just released Cult of the Lamb, and with very few exceptions that's the only other game it's tweeting about right now except for ... ReMI. There's a couple of other games it could be releasing soon, but they're not talking about those ones on social media at all, while ReMI is getting a twitter series, mainstream magazine articles, a new trailer and show appearance. ReMI is coming out in September, if not earlier (but I doubt earlier), and if I'm wrong I will happily eat crow.

Mm, there's absolutely no point them releasing another trailer at this stage if it doesn't have a date in it. I'm going to say ... 80% we'll know on tuesday.

I don't think anything you've said here is totally unreasonable, but I'd say (in brief-as-i-can because I don't really want to labour the point and I'm totally not taking my own advice at this point): 1) Sure, headcanons aside guybrush appears to be for all intents and purposes a cishet guy. That's fine. But there are more ways to have representation than in the main character. Not saying we're entitled to it, just saying that it's something when I think back on it that was notably almost completely absent from LucasArts games despite all the other ways they were pretty diverse. 2) Sure, in comedy a lot of stuff is played for laughs but I don't think that's a get out of jail free card. A character might be funny for lots of reasons, but just because they're, say, gay doesn't mean that their gayness has to be 'the joke'. In the early 90s that was about par for the course. It's representation, but it's... not great. But for example in Tales you have the flirtatious but androgynous Mer-people where the whole gag is 'guybrush doesn't know how to feel about their flirting' which I think just about passes for a joke in the 2000s but now might be accused of being ... ehh maybe a little lazy. Not heinous, just... of its time. ---- Incidentally I think a trans read of Largo is perfectly plausible, and I definitely like it more than the (at the time no-doubt deliberate) joke of 'ha ha he's a tough guy but likes to wear bras' joke which is.. ehh. And the thought of that annoying the pants off exactly the sort of people you'd expect it to annoy is delicious. But I'm in two minds about whether I would like this game to tackle that.. I think I would welcome it if there were trans folks involved in the writing of that character who could speak to that experience (okay I WILL try to stop now though, it's just that this is a fascinating topic for me)

There's something to be said for low detail. The accidental way that low detail adds detail. Nobody intended for guybrush to be staring blankly at stan as his arms and mouth go wild but the effect is nevertheless there. In ReMI they'd want to have his face react to the things he says, and I've said before I love the animation details this new look brings, but it's... interesting the way that those few pixels allow the mind to read things that were never really put there on purpose.

As much as I had some quibbles with Thimbleweed Park, I think it did location very well.

(not taking my own advice here, I know) I've always thought LucasArts has been ahead of its time with its writing, but that said there is a trap here. Pointing at Elaine and Carla and claiming the slam dunk (which I'm not saying anyone is doing here) isn't ... it, and there's no doubt that regardless of how inclusive they were in some ways, they were all products of their time (struggling to come up with any non-hetero coded character/moment in any LucasArts adventure that isn't played for laughs, even as far as Tales) Being progressive is... well, it progresses. It changes over time. In the early 90s having a token, unusually randy gay character in a sitcom was progressive, now it's the opposite because in the early 90s being represented at all was a big win but now it's happened enough we can afford the 'luxury' of nuance in how that portrayal is done. So that's why it's always welcome to me to know that this is something creators actively think about. I love to hear they're thinking of ways to be inclusive because that is an acknowledgement that their attitude isn't just 'eh, we figured out inclusivity in 1990, solved it, no need to revisit that ever' I know it's tiresome to some, and that it can seem like a constant uphill climb where nothing is ever good enough (again, not saying anyone here has expressed that attitude, just to explain why I personally like genuine nods to inclusivity), but I promise that there are people out there who see the efforts when they are made and appreciate it.

Haha, yes, hopefully some people are going to be stewing over how 'woke' ReMI is going to be, that'd be lovely. Weird nerds not understanding what Star Trek has always been (even if it isn't doesn't always do it great) is one of my favourite genres of social media post and I'd love to see Monkey Island get a piece of that action. Seriously though, I actually appreciate talk about inclusivity when it's actually followed up by tangible action. I always appreciated that Tim Schafer took a stand during the whole gramergrape thing and then followed through by actually committing to diverse hires, actually committing to building accessibility features into the game, actually letting it inform how Psychonauts 2 was written, etc. Otherwise it's all just words. I'm going to draw a soft line under this and say let's not go TOO far down this rabbit hole as these conversations have a tendency to go a Certain Way after a while.

Another one I suppose from GF would be trying to persuade Celso and his wife to buy a number 9 ticket. Pretty minor puzzle, though

I'm just glad these finds are giving us more shots of right-way-round-facing bob, with a right pegleg

I mean I alluded to something similar earlier in the thread, but I'm trying not to dwell on it because of what I also said recently, that I think it's risky to play 'I hope the game doesn't do this or that' games. But yeah, if there's one thing I allow myself to hope this game doesn't try to pull it's a bunch of old-man-yells-at-cloud 'pirating was better in the old days when I was young and let's get back to that' kind of meta-commentary of guybrush v.s. the youths. Young people are, and forever have been targets of blame for society's ill. Millenials were such huge targets that everyone sort of just forgot that they grew up and have jobs and kids and stuff now and assumed they were perpetually in their early 20s for about 15 years. I saw a great twitter thread of the history of older people calling young people lazy and workshy, and of course it goes back to ancient times. Anyway, my point is we have enough 'things were better in the old days' material to last us for years, and I could do without ReMI adding to that pile. I'm hoping it tells a bit more of a nuanced story.

Don't forget: Full Throttle: getting Maureen aaaand this is dubious but I'd argue that the final puzzle in Full Throttle is basically just a dialog puzzle with a fancy interface. At least, it has the same sort of structure

I wonder how unpopular this opinion actually is. I have sort of 'messed' with Maniac Mansion via DOTT, but I've never played it with a serious intention of seeing it through to completion. If I did, I'd use a walkthrough, because I have no intention of playing an adventure game which doesn't basically follow the design rules Ron developed ahead of Monkey Island. Whenever I've tried, I've not had a good time. Even if the game is not hard, if I'm worried that I'm going to be fighting the game's design constantly to make progress, and it might even become unwinnable, I'm not going to be able to relax and play them. I love adventure games, but it would be more accurate to say that I love post 1990 LucasArts adventure games. Everything else? Very hit and miss, for me.

It's only really after seeing this in the trailer that I noticed that in the original Monkey Island the Monkey Head is also a dusky scene in contrast with the rest of the island. Why was this done at the time? Just for atmospherics? It looked cooler? Probably. Why did they seem to decide to replicate this for ReMI? Same reason? Maybe. But it's an interesting detail isn't it? I can't help but look at that, and think about the Melee Island and wonder if some of this day/night stuff might now have a bit of a deeper significance.

Fair argument, and as I said above, I might have made a case for that for the same reason, but given the up down walk cycles exist I guess they are probably used somewhere (back in the day they often would have been cut for space if not needed I thiiink?), and they're the only way round where it's unambiguously on the right leg, I'm going to have to give it to the right leg still. The shocking truth that has been revealed to us here is that most of the time, Bob is the wrong way round Well, to me at least that's a far more fun thing to learn, after 30 years.

Hah, if it weren't for the up-down walk animations putting it unambiguously on the right leg I might have argued for it being on the left leg because: * That's where we first see it * That's where we see it most for the duration of the game (bob is also facing that way when you meet him inside the monkey head) Or possibly argued that there is no correct answer, and that the pegleg is in a constant state of quantum superposition. But alas it's on the right leg, and it's just that for most of the game we're looking at mirror-bob

welll.. actually here's the sprite sheet. It's on the right leg. Except that they only drew one side-walk cycle, so when he's facing left like on the picture you chose, it's flipped.

Yeah, I agree with this too. There's a lot of understandable demand for happy endings and uncomplicated relationships now, and if anything you see it more in the stuff aimed at adults. The last thing I'd accuse media aimed at younger people of doing in the last 15 years or so is being overly simplistic. I feel like sometimes I see lessons in today's children's media that it took me years to properly learn as an adult. You can see it in stuff in Psychonauts vs Psychonauts 2, for example, as well. Psychonauts is great but Psychonauts 2 pays attention to little relationship details, issues of ethics and consent and trauma in ways that Psychonauts never even dreamed of, but manages to do so in a way that still feels completely in keeping with the Psychonauts universe, and would be perfectly accessible to a kid playing the game. Yeah, this is fair and I agree broadly with what you say here, this topic of infantilising media has just been unusually on my mind for a while so I used the opportunity to soapbox about it for a bit.😉

I don't know. I'm a bit suspicious of the idea that modern media is 'infantalising' Like, I do agree and I've talked about before how I think it was neat that old LucasArts games had a bit of a more interesting take on relationships: MI2, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, even Indy 4 all had relationships on them where, even when they ended well they were messy. You never get the sense in these games that you're dealing with 'meant to be' characters, and I think that's good, and I appreciate that kind of slightly more grown up idea of relationships also bleeds out into the wider story telling. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything amazingly mature these stories are doing in terms of storytelling, but I think it's ... good. Kinda Grown-up stories for what at the time would have been mostly growing-up people. "Young Adult" if you will (and I use that term reluctantly, I think it's usually used as a way to dismiss the value of stories aimed at a younger demographic. *old man voice* In my day there were children's books and books, and that system worked fine) But I've been thinking about this lately. Just what stories have been like lately and... like... the world. And I wonder if I'm not inclined just to cut the human race a little slack on the subject of what stories they want to be told at the moment. Sure, sure, there's value in telling stories that have a lot of emotional nuance, and don't necessarily have perfect fairytale endings. But also I can't really fault someone right now for sitting down in front of their computer/television/whatever and thinking: 'you know what, I'd like to slip into a world where everything turns out fine in a clear and uncomplicated way, just for a bit, please'. It's not a surprise to me that this sort of thing is doing well right now, and I think it has more to do with escapism than it has to do with being infantile. Or, even if it is infantile, I think I'd still say: so what? Being a kid was awesome, I didn't need to worry about interest rates and being able to pay my next gas bill and who was running the country and whatever the geopolitical disaster du jour is (and there have been a lot to pick from lately). If I don't get to be free of that in my life let me have it for a bit in some of my media. I can go for subtler, denser stuff when I choose to. (by the way, none of this is about what I want for ReMI. I've always considered the MI games at their best to be a somewhat multi-layered experience, and I think we will see that in this version too. I just don't like it when that's pitched in opposition to some encroaching, malicious infantilising force.)

I admit that I was always a bit ehhh about the re-use of the MI2 Stan theme after MI2. It made sense in CMI because of the setting, but I never really thought of it as the Stan theme and more as the Stan's Previously Owned Coffins theme before CMI used it.

Like I saw someone say once, I actually don't think for the most part plot matters substantially. You can convey the most fantastic plot in a terrible way, and likewise you can enliven the blandest plot with character work and world building, and just telling it well. Even the plot points I really disliked in, say, EMI (HT Marley, Ozzie Mandrill's whole... deal, etc) I feel like the game COULD have sold me on, the problem to me is less that those were the plot points and more that I don't think it did enough to bring me along for the ride (okay, I admit it would have had a hard time selling me on HT Marley but I still think it could have) We already know that the core of ReMI is going to be a piratey adventure game. If they want to put some time travelly or multiversey implications around the edges of that, I'm totally down for that, all they've got to do is sell it to me. And I don't think it should be too hard to do so because IMO what's in the first two games has already set me up for something being oddly out of place/time in the setting. In any case, I'm trying not to think too much along the lines of 'I hope the plot doesn't do this or that' because then when it does I'm going to be prejudiced against it, rather than just trying to take the story for what it is.

It's going to take a lot for my brain to adjust to the idea it's behind the church. It never even occured to me to think it might not be #1

I respect the EGA sunset, in that it does a lot with that limited palette. But I just don't love it. I find it difficult to get past the fact that it's still limited by a set of 16 colours that I think are pretty ugly in combination: It's not that I have anything particularly against working with limitations. I like chiptune music. I like some kinds of low poly stuff. It's just I really dislike the default EGA palette and when I see it used well half my brain thinks 'gee, this is cleverly done' and the other half of my brain thinks 'I sure wish it was using a different palette, though' and the latter thing tends to win in the end.

I will say, to me Mancomb is the most strikingly different one, the one who most arguably looks like a different character. In the VGA version I always imagined him as a sort of friendly-ish (for a pirate) old sort. Even though he's making fun of you a bit, he is helpful and has quite kind eyes. The EGA version doesn't hit me that way at all, he just seems like Drunken Pirate Bar Patron #1. Which maybe was the intention, but it's not quite how I imagined things (and another reason why the SE's ridiculous Mancomb caricature bugged me. I think all the other portraits are much more similar between versions, in the character they convey.

Well, since you asked, for me it was never about small details, it was about the bigger picture. Yeah, if you stare at these for long enough you can say 'well, that pavement makes no sense' or 'that building looks wrong' but it does nothing to change the overall look and feel of the town. The buildings and style are still melee island, it's not like you go into the alley and suddenly everything's pink and it's daytime or something, there's just some details that I think hardly anyone has legitimately given a lot of thought to until this thread was created 😄. I'm happy to give that 'same leeway' to the artistic differences in EMI - and doing so, I find that the differences are way more huge in EMI than maybe some continuity errors with the pavements and window positions between some screens in SOMI. But yes, yes, we probably shouldn't get into it all again.

I'm honestly surprised at the amount of disagreement there is on this one. To me this was always behind the shop (1). The buildings don't line up exactly but it's plausible enough (we know as someone pointed out there's some inconsistency between interior and exterior already, so I think it's plausible enough to add to Thrik's picture by saying these two circled rooves are the same and maybe the shop building is just a slightly different shape to what we thought. Or maybe it's just a continuity error. But yeah, my assumption has always been that the alley shot is in the same orientation as the wide town shot, and that the pavements inside Thrik's circles are supposed to be the same: I actually think this could be the building with the lift. It doesn't quite match up but it's about the right size and location relative to the roof on the left.