KestrelPi

It's interesting isn't it. Definitely saying something. Up until now I don't think I would have read very much into guybrush's default expression at all. I guess that's another reason why I think it was a good decision to make his head quite large in proportion with his body, because the face can do so much, even at a distance. There's a sadness here, or perhaps at least a weariness. But in the little scene we just saw, he still seems cheerful enough to joke around a little. Really makes you wonder about where his mind is at for this game...

Apart from more platforms, I wonder what else this could possibly mean that isn't a release date. I feel like the implication is that it's not coming out next month, but I think that's not too surprising. Oh! release date announced

Huh. Remember also Guybrush in the new game looks like he's a speedy boy. If they do want island hopping in this game I think they'll have tried to address it by making navigation between locations easy and quick. (I definitely felt the pain of having to do a lot of hopping and backtracking between locations recently in Tales in the final chapter with all the portals, but for some reason it just never bothered me with MI2*. I see the point, though.) *OR DID IT? I first played it on an Amiga, with its 11 disks I had to swap regularly. I wonder if I cared back then. I don't remember being bothered by it, but if disk swapping slowed things down so much back then, maybe by the time I got to play the PC version it seemed positively fast paced in comparison.

Yeah, I always thought that was a bit of a stretch, especially in Tales. She was obviously capable and adventurey, but her attitude towards pirates in MI1 seems at best neutral. She's attracted to guybrush enough to let him get a way with some stealing, I suppose? Although that leads me on a tangent to thinking about the Idol of Many Hands, and why it's called that. It doesn't seem to be because it looks like many hands, and so I'm guessing the idea is that it's called the Idol of Many Hands because it exchanges many hands because it's always getting stolen by pirates doing the trials. It wouldn't have surprised me, if things had gone the way they were meant to, if Guybrush had been expected to turn the Idol back in in exchange for another t-shirt at the end. More of that theme parky stuff...

I still don't quite buy this - he flat out denied it on his blog, which might be so that it's still a surprise when it happens (but if he wanted it to be a surprise, why wouldn't he have just removed that line from his tiny dev diary before posting it??) I guess a few trailer scenes where the camera is focused on Elaine isn't quite enough to persuade me it's happening. I'd LOVE to be wrong on this though.

Fair enough! I don't know how much stock I put in the strong feeling in MI1 though as an establishment of a relationship, though hear me out: In MI1, Guybrush and Elaine develop feelings for each other very quickly. After a single conversation there's romantic tension and another conversation (that doesn't even occur if you do the idol trial last) that develops into full on pet-name calling. It's not like they actually have any real basis for a relationship by the end, aside from Guybrush's somewhat botched and unnecessary attempt at a rescue. By the end of MI1 they were heavily attracted to each other, and had had a maximum of 2 proper conversations. There was no 'relationship', to speak of. So to me, it seems that most of Elaine and Guybrush's relationship, such as it was, happens off-screen, and on screen what we see is an initial attraction, in MI1, and then a faint and fleeting echo of that initial attraction in MI2, manifesting as a single moment of weakness in Elaine, which she shuts down instantly as soon as she gets the slightest inkling it's all a play to get the map. I just don't see that as a mishandling at all, in MI2. Hope that makes sense. By the way, I really like CMI as a game, I will defend it as getting SO much impressively 'right' as far as I'm concerned about the writing and tone of Monkey Island. And I often actually find myself disagreeing with Ron Gilbert's takes on things in interviews and such, so I'm not automatically trying to side with him here - but this just happens to be one area where I fully understand why he found CMI's treatment of the relationship weird. That and I thought that MI2 not being a story about winning the day and getting the girl was one of the coolest things about it.

That seems like a wild intepretation of that scene in MI2 to me. After Guybrush tries to bring her round with honeyed words, she has a moment of weakness, and one that is immediately and completely dispelled as soon as she realises that Guybrush still cares more about his little adventure. When they catch up again, on Dinky Island, before she'll agree to help him out he has to tell her the whole story of how he got into the mess, and seems only vaguely concerned when he falls into the pit. On the other hand in Curse she instantly professes her love for him, which she seems to have re-developed by him... not being around, and then after he nearly gets killed by LeChuck instantly agrees to marry him and not even being turned into a gold statue and delivered back into LeChuck's clutches does anything to give her pause on that, a single punch aside. I agree that the creators of CMI might have been expected to do the Guybrush-Elaine romance, but I think the main failing of it wasn't that that romance happened, but that it seemed to make very little effort to take us on a journey of understanding of how Elaine has arrived in this place emotionally and mentally (and by turning her into a statue for most of the game, robs itself of any opportunity to do so). Now, a game where Guybrush and Elaine start about where they left off in MI2, but over the course of it re-discover a way to be happy together, where there's character growth on Elaine's part to realise she can't fight Guybrush's adventurous spirit, and Guybrush's part to realise that he can't let his thirst for adventures get in the way of the people he loves... now that would be nice to see.

I feel like the Elaine and Guybrush not having got married ship has literally sailed, and Ron's just gonna have to take that one on the chin, but who's to say where they are in their lives many years later? On a replay of Tales that whole ring stuff at the end didn't land as well for me as it did when I first played it. I think it is probably a personal thing, in that over time I have become a little bit less attracted to the idea of marriage as an institution, and I feel like the ending of tales kind of reveres the ideals of marriage in a way I find a bit difficult to relate to, personally (not saying that people shouldn't get married by the way, more saying that I don't like its cultural status as the only valid or at least ultimate expression of love and commitment). So ... in that light, I don't mind if they're married in this one or not, but I expect at least that the marriage won't be retconned. But I hope they don't lay it on thick.

I do think despite misgivings there have been some advantages to Disney. I might not like everything they've done with Star Wars, say, but it IS cool that they're doing stuff with Star Wars, and seem open to exploring different kinds of shows with different vibes in that same universe. I don't think Lucas would have taken this approach on its own. I mean, Disney is the last company that needs defending but I can't lie and say I haven't enjoyed watching some of the stuff that's come out over the last few years... similar with some of the Marvel stuff too. And so I have to say I kind of enjoy their approach of scattergun greenlighting a lot of projects and seeing what sticks. Maybe if they start taking a similar approach with games projects, we might actually end up seeing some more stuff down the road, you never know. It sucks that it's all at their mercy. But eh, it was all at LucasArts' mercy before that, which wasn't honestly working out much better. Okay, now you say it, I recognise it.

Ok imma level with you I keep on seeing El Carlo get mentioned and I've no idea where it's from.

Some people cite that study where people enjoyed a film more when they were spoiled on it and... I find a lot of what it claims to be a bit dubious but there is one area where I think there's probably some truth in it... And that's when dealing with the problem sequels have which is the weight of nostalgia and expectations. You can be the most open minded person in the world, the brain is still really good at conjuring up a blurry, ill-defined but somehow absolutely perfect version of the game you want, which it then will pit in a completely unfair contest with the reality that can never match that. When I go into stuff truly unseen, I find I'm always fighting that part of my brain a little bit more, because it's constantly shouting for attention, saying 'hey, this isn't familiar! This thing's out of place. This voice isn't what I expected! This location looks weeiiirrd and that's wrong!' The brain isn't necessarily right here. These might be things I grow to love, but the brain is notoriously suspicious of the unfamiliar. So I think what seeing a bit of the art style, interface, some dialogue and locations out of context, what it does for me is to help my brain dip its little brain-toes in the water, get used to the temperature, so that when it's time to submerge fully, it's less of a shock to the system and I can just enjoy it for what it is. Anyway, carry on. Unpopular opinions.

Sorry for engaging, also. In my defense, I haven't done it MUCH over the last few months, and I'm having a really rough week so I thought I'd indulge. As a little treat. Even though I know it's bad for me.

Oh okay. Guybrushes nose doesn't look like a penis, his body proportions are in keeping with kind of storybook/scrapbook feel the art style is going for, animation similarly, and it's also looking like it's going to be probably the most custom animation we've seen in any of the games including the 3d ones, colours are bright but well-chosen and in keeping with the style, backgrounds are heavily stylised and angular, but have a great sense of life especially while in motion, characters have very expressive faces in a way that we've never seen in a 2D Monkey Island before, even Curse where characters weren't very expressive outside of cutscenes. Look. Anyone can list a bunch of things and call them facts. Don't pretend you're taking the intellectual high road by doing so. Nah. What you're doing is not art criticism (if it were, you'd notice that the approaches between this and the MI1 special edition are EXTREMELY different and that this style is a lot more detailed and took a lot more effort), it's your own feelings about the art, which you've wrapped up in faux-critique in order to that you can act wounded whenever anyone refuses to engage with you on it. You know, I've talked to a lot of different people about this art style, and you know the ones I've talked to who are the MOST excited about it? Often, they're artists. By all means don't like the art. Just stop pretending that you have access to some higher level of critique that makes you 'correct' about it. Since you missed my sarcasm the first time round, let me be absolutely clear: I am not going to engage with this line of argument any more.

Oh yeah, absolutely I mean... I think that general kind of sprite proportion/level of detail lasted LucasArts through several games, MI1, MI2, Indy 3, Indy 4, arguably The Dig, too are definetely 'of a piece' in a lot of ways, I just think in MI2 if they'd been able to create higher detailed sprites to match the more hand-drawn look of the artwork, they probably would have. Ah. I don't think any of those things.

I personally think very slim for a quick sequel. If we do get one I think he'll be torn between sticking with this art style out of stubbornness in response to the abuse, and going with a fresh one because that's always been the way that MI sequels have worked. We know the backgrounds of MI1 and MI2 are rather different in style, but even the sprite styles of MI1 and 2, while similar, aren't identical. They are similarly proportioned but it looks like effort has been made to make them more detailed around the face, more shaded around the hair, etc. Compare how much depth guybrush's face and head has in MI2 vs MI1, for example: 4 pixels to define the eyes vs 2, it looks like 3 shades of colour for the hair, and so on. It's subtle stuff but they were clearly thinking about how they could add detail while still being restricted by the technological requirements. (Stan seems to be pretty much identical aside from some palette swaps, but I guess that's understandable.) All of which is to say, I think where Ron is at right now his instincts would tell him to keep on tweaking, refining, pushing forward if he did go on to make ANOTHER Monkey Island - and Rex might well want to move onto other projects anyway. I, too, can make declarative statements: The art and animation looks wonderful and detailed. See, isn't this wonderful? What a great and edifying discussion we're having. How the discourse has been enriched by this back-and-forth we're engaged in.

I'd be fine with it if this were the last MI game Ron works on I'd be fine with it if this were just the last MI game, as long as the conclusion is satisfying I'd also be fine with it if the ending left it open for other people to tell their own stories in the same world, and my biggest hope for this installment is it might free creators from having to over-worry about canon.

I don't mind the chemistry and I think you have a point that she vibes well with what Guybrush is doing. It's the writing that bothered me. I could believe that version of Elaine if her main thing wasn't always ordering Guybrush around. Or even at the start, being weirdly expectant of a hero's welcome back to Melee then comically put out when she doesn't get one -- this is supposed to be the same Elaine who seemed to be frustrated by the attention that she got from the pirates of the island, and keen to distance herself from them, the same Elaine who was nervous about even publicly revealing her relationship with Guybrush, the same elaine who in MI2 threw exclusive parties for people she didn't know, and apparently didn't even bother to turn up to them. Why's she gonna care if people are celebrating their arrival or not. If anything she'd be looking to arrive as quietly as possible so that she could resume the business of governing as if nothing happened. But yeah, there's something in the core of your unpopular opinion there, I think. Whatever else you thought of elaine in EMI, her energy does work with Dom's.

Yeah, I think there's been a bit of equilibrium, partially from the people being abusive probably getting bored, or maybe even some of them feeling suitably shamed (it can happen) and everyone else is either feeling actively positive or in more of a 'wait and see' frame of mind. I think all but the very most die hard critics can at least see at this point that it's a game that has had a lot of effort put into its visuals. At this point I just don't think people asserting otherwise have any understanding at all of what it takes to create game assets, or if they do they're not commenting in good faith. And it's hard to be angry about work that somone clearly felt passionate about producing. Anyway, enough of that, what I wanted to say was that yeah, I don't really see them wanting to try to maintain this sort of momentum past september. 7 more of these, and the last one is perhaps a release date for the following week. ---- Completely different topic as the forum will insist on merging my replies 🙄😉 Saw an interesting comment on twitter, "The cold must have hit fast as there is a poor bird on the roof frozen in ice mid-takeoff" -- sort of adds credence to the potential idea that the island isn't naturally cold, but that it happened very suddenly at some point. Still to be called Brrr Muda I guess it would have had to have been some time ago. Maybe as part of the story Guybrush fixes the cold and we get to see the island all thawed out... that'd be pretty interesting. It's not very often you see that drastic a change to a location in an adventure game. I always loved the transition between year 1 and 2 in Grim Fandango's Rubacava, and then seeing El Marrow in years 1 and 4. And of course, this was written into DOTT's whole structure. There's something weirdly magical about revisiting a location and finding it profoundly changed.

It feels like the context sensitive stuff was there but the implementation felt quite clunky, which I suppose was to be expected for a prototype. He released the prototype in I think May of 2020 (or March? It was one of the M months), a couple of months before starting work on ReMI, and in November in the Dev Diary said "Thinking about the ui. I hate the current status-quo." - so I'm guessing he considered what was going on in Delores still not "it" and the UI work went through considerable iterations since then. They sounded pretty excited by what they came up with.

That made me curious actually, and so I searched the game script. How many mighty pirate references? MI1: 4 MI2: 1 (in the end sequence. That sort of surprised me) CMI: 12 Wasn't able to find the others... Perhaps it was CMI that started the trend of overusing this one. As for the new one, I imagine they cherry picked this for the tease, hopefully it's not overdone.

Personally I think it's more likely Brrr Muda is cold because of some freak micro-climate stuff, or even some voodoo interference. If it were just somewhere really remote, then why would they use that pun?

Maybe, but pretty sure that's just a Viking longship, and I doubt the game plans on taking us THAT far away from the Caribbean. But who knows!

Oh yeah, I'm totally ready for it to make sense in context, it's just ostensibly a noticeably goofier name and concept than anything else the game has shown us so far, and I'm just... curious about it is all.

Sure, but I mean what's it doing in this ride of otherwise LeChuck/Monkey Island lore themed scenes?

Delores when you start it up describes itself as a 'prototype' for the new engine they were making, which I assume means that they were making it for ReMI - unclear if it's a completely new engine or just an update of the old one though. Maybe someone who knows more about digging around in files can figure that one out.