KestrelPi

I've never heard that one. I like it, as a device, though. The way I see it, we'll open in the carnival, and as they go through the carnival, we'll see a lot of the things in the carnival look familiar, from all of the different games... ...and then maybe there'll be a time jump. We move past a bit of foreground scenery and suddenly it's guybrush taking his own kids there. The carnival has become a bit run down compared to how it used to be. Guybrush starts daydreaming and reminiscing about all the adventures he used to have here with Chuckie, and how much of the little stories they had were left unresolved. Starts to wonder how the story might have ended and as his mind wanders, we find ourself back in the world of Monkey Island, and soon land at a cracked and run down version of Melee, with an older Guybrush, wondering where his life went.

Oooorrrr, they find a way to say that it both happened and didn't happen. When I read between the lines, that's where my mind keeps going. Yeah and I was gonna say, that little bit of light and the snarl expression it creates is very good. I think there's so much detail and atmosphere in what we've seen that I'm honestly confused at what people mean that say the art style feels sterile or simplistic. I think taken as a whole it's some of the most detail we've seen! Maaaaybe MI2 could challenge that, but then I think about the animation details...

Yeah, whenever I rag on EMI it's within the context of... Sean and Mike are experienced. They know what they're doing. And I actually like a lot of what EMI is trying to do as a game. I like when adventure games have unique, set piece puzzles with weird mechanics, and the original MI has a lot of that (grog jailbreak, treasure map, insult swordfighting, following the storekeeper, negotiating with Stan, head of the navigator) and if I had one critique of MI2 it would be that it was a much more standard adventure game puzzle design, with a few minor exceptions that made up a much smaller portion of the game, or at least it felt that way (lechuck maze, gambling club, arguably some of the library book stuff, acid pit, etc ... wow there are actually more of these than I thought but still, it's so much a bigger game over all) I liked that EMI seemed interesting in exploring the possibility space of what adventure puzzles could be, even if not all of its experiments were completely successful. It's one of the parts of my initial review of the game I completely stand behind - aside from having to wrestle with the UI (which thankfully is less of a problem for a remastered Grim Fandango) I really appreciated the playing of it for the most part. Aside from feeling that the plot skewed a bit too 'wacky' and a bit too 'anachronisms as parody rather than as flavour', the main thing for me is that the comic style just didn't work for me and in particular the way Guybrush is written, I just really don't agree with the choices. The Guybrush of MI1 was rather naive and came across wimpy, but he had a little bite to him, and his wit was pithy, snappy. In MI2 this grew into a slightly self-absorbed, callous side which was really interesting, and I think CMI fell somewhere between these. From EMI onwards he seems to have become sillier in how he's written, his 'weakness and ineptitude' is very on the nose now where before it was just one aspect of a more complex character. And I'd include tales in that. I like most of the writing of Tales but I don't really like how Guybrush is written, sometimes. Er, there was probably a point to this... Anyway, as for MM/DOTT my thinking is that MM is simply less popular than Monkey Island was. I don't know, butI suspect if we were to give a show of hands on this forum and find out if people played DOTT or Maniac Mansion first, the majority would say DOTT, and also that they first payed MM on that computer in DOTT. Monkey Island was a lot of people's introduction to adventure games (including mine) But ALSO the mindset was different then. People expected sequels to be different, especially as technology was evolving so fast. I'm sure I noticed when I played MI2 that the backgrounds looked a lot different to MI1, but I don't remember finding it weird. At most I probably thought 'well yeah, it's the sequel'

In many ways I could have been okay with them changing the layout if it had even felt a little bit like the same place. Like, had a similar vibe, or SOMETHING. But going back over it and looking at the scenes it's hard to believe it even IS Melee Island. It captures nothing of the vaguely eerie night-time vibe from MI1, where everything sort of washes into the same colour palette and so the rare exceptions (like the circus tent) really stand out. I feel like even if they'd significantly changed the layout for the new game, it would have been instantly recognisable as Melee. ...but, I'm glad they kept the layout the same too, because the idea of walking along that dock again and going to the SCUMM bar (and having it actually look like the SCUMM bar inside) makes me very pleased. There;s no shame in getting joy out of nostalgia, I suppose - we'd be in trouble as a site if there was. But I am glad it's not all there's going to be to the game.

Agreed with that, it was exciting to think about returning to Melee but then the island had very little of the look or even feel of Melee Island to it, so in my mind, it still doesn't feel like we've gone back to melee since MI1 even though we have.

I seem to be a bit more relaxed about both the spoilers and the potential direction of the game in that... Well, first, I don't think they're spoiling too much, and in fact I think it's less spoilery to show off locations we already have seen in previous games than new ones. Since we already knew the scumm bar and melee island was in the game, it's not really surprising that the docks are also there... and though our eagle eyes might have revealed a couple of more tidbits about carla and the ghost pirates, I'm sure plenty of thought must have gone into what to show and what not to show. There's no doubt in my mind the game is going to be full of surprises when we get to play it. In fact, there's at least one member of this forum that could confirm that for us Secondly I think that yes, they are absolutely showing us familiar stuff to tug some nostalgia strings, but in the early interviews they were also falling over themselves to say that they wanted this to be a modern monkey island game, not a throwback, so I really don't think that they're just going to do a retread. Remember the stuff Ronzo and Dave said as well, about how they only wanted to do the game if they thought they had a good story to tell? There's a reason they're going back to Melee, and part of it might be that it's probably the most possible nostalgia location to return to but it must also be because it serves the story. In fact, I have a little hunch based on some of these things that one of the things that the game might touch on thematically is a little bit of a meta commentary on nostalgia and the things that are good and bad about that (we also saw this in the recent new version of the Stanley Parable, for example, done much more directly). I mean, look at what we have, an older Guybrush, being controlled by older fans, being developed by older developers, returning to the place of his youth where all the adventures started. What could be a more perfect set up for a commentary about nostalgia than that? So I think there's a bit more to this choice than we currently understand. So nah, I'm not really concerned that it's going to be a retread, and I'm not really worried we're seeing too much. They know what they're doing. Maybe I'll feel differently after 10 weeks of this.

Maybe so, but I'm not sure it's so deep. I just hear some similar rhythmic and melodic qualities: first two bars, map theme, second two bars, the beginning of the little snippet we hear (approximately; I've not used tuplets or swing rhythms as I think they make it less clear, though to me it sounds like it's perhaps swung or a tuplet feel): both C major, and where the map music goes eventually is melodically very similar to where the snippet is when it comes in, so if I had to guess, what's going on here is that they've taken the map music which in the original game was the the main music to represent the island as a whole, and made some variations of that melodic idea and used that to ground the walking around music, in areas that were previously silent. Very small snippet to say for sure, but that's what I'm hearing here. And it's a lot similar to the MI2 approach where you'd hear a few little motifs around each island which were kind of common to the whole island, and linked the whole thing together.

The more I listen to that little snippet of music, the more that I think it might be subtly playing on the Melee Island map theme. listen to the shape of the melody and the rhythm of the steel drums at the start of the clip, and compare:

Yeah, I've seen a COUPLE of comments but way more positive ones about how it looks, and I think it's really starting to click with people. I'd love this just not to be controversial when the game comes out because it's such a distraction from NEW MI GAME

Does feel like a missed opportunity to write "GOV CARL"

Ah! Yet more evidence most of this one happens after all the others.

I think I probably said it before but I quite enjoyed EMI's soundtrack, but also think it was the least 'integrated' of the games in that I think you could kind of see the seams of each composer's involvement quite clearly, moreso than MI2. So the thing that excites me are having them back but with the same sort of singularity of vision that we got from the CMI soundtrack, and IMO the MI2 soundtrack, diverse as that was.

It's a very small snippet of new music but what I'm starting to hear is something that reminds me very much of CMI but with added Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian, which is basically all I could ask for from a new MI soundtrack.

Ooh, here's a good spot that would appear to answer that

blink and you miss it

so beautiful ❤️

I mean, if they did approve them it'd be a bit of a dick move, but as far as I can tell well within LucasFilms' right to do... but perhaps they don't even know the origin of the designs. But either way, Laserschwert wouldn't have any legal recourse as far as I can tell because the copyright in the designs rests with LucasFilm/Disney. If unauthorized could maaaybe kick up a fuss in the form of 'these are based on work that I did' which might embarrass them into taking them down, optimistically 😕

last time it happened at 4PM BST exactly so we should expect it at: London: 4PM Sydney: 1AM Tuesday Berlin: 5PM NYC: 11AM LA: 8AM Anywhere else... you can probably figure it out 😛

It feels like Sure, but then again... I think that if they were going for that date then by now they'd have a pretty good idea if they're going to hit it. Been playable start to finish for months, the voices are done, probably all mastered by now, the credits are in, the bugs are ticking down, feels like we're entering the final phase of the development which is generally... kinda dull, but (mostly) predictable. The worst thing that could happen is them discovering an absolutely game-breaking bit of logic which requires some redesigning around, because that's the kind of fix that is going to potentially hit the whole team but that's fairly unlikely at this stage of development as that kinda thing ought to have been caught early on by testers. I think the main reason you wouldn't slap a date on the teailer is that either you weren't confident in it, or had a better plan for that announcement, and just reading the vibes in the room at the moment I'm thinking it's the latter.

I agree we're unlikely to see a release date until it's very close... but I would say what we're seeing lately is the widening of the mid-tier indie release, and Devolver being very much one of the kings of that kind of still-indie but has-a--bit-of-budget territory, and I think Devolver in general have tended to stick things closer to a traditional release schedule. The only time I didn't think this was going to be late 2022 though is when the date wasn't announced with the trailer. All other signs point to sooner rather than later: They seem confident about 2022. Ron has said something like 'unless something disastrous happens'. And I don't think you need a disaster to slip from November 2022 to, like, January or something These new Monkey Island Mondays. They probably don't plan to keep on pumping those out indefinitely The fact that there are exactly 10 of them before Talk Like a Pirate day, a day that Ron HAS acknowledged in the past. Could be total coincidence, could speak to a release plan. It probably isn't going to be released during that late-september through october heavy release window Devolver aren't releasing any other games in September I think, but they are releasing something Mid-Auguest, so that suggests to me September is a perfect time for them to focus on Monkey Island. They've put the credits in But yeah, I think it's going to be something like... on talk like a pirate day they say 'and we're dropping it this thursday' or the week before that they announce a release for the following Monday. I think by the time we know the date it'll be very nearly out.

I'm only looking forward to one thing on Monday, and that's #MonkeyIslandMonday

Heh, I'd say my guesses have been pretty good aside from the Nintendo direct thing. I actually missed the april fools joke as it went without incident, but I wish I hadn't because I think it would have dredged up some memory of his disdain for April Fools jokes and I might have been tempted to say something.

Okay, also mine: "Music at LeChuck's ship hold.", "Rollercoaster music." (But not "Improved rollercoaster music, wow, rude 😉 .. nah, the other one is better, a 2 person effort I think, and I just wanted to make something quick so I couldn't be bothered to include the full loops) "At Voodoo Lady's swamp." (a weirdly unfinished version of the tune I made, which has some wrong notes in it and just cuts off suddenly. It was never a very good version of it anyway - my transcription ability at the time was really being taxed. You can hear my EMI ones a few years later are much improved) speaking of which... all 3 of the EMI ones are mine, weirdly I remember the Herman one now I listen to it, but have no memory of doing it otherwise.

I would say a few up on there are mine. Some of them have credits in the zip file, although they're very old credits. That one, Palace of Prostheses and Transmogrification school from EMI are mine, but there could be others, I haven't checked. Don't worry, though, I don't feel strongly about being credited for some midi transcriptions I did in my teens over 20 years ago

I think that's tremendously unlikely, but then I also said that about them doing a Nintendo Direct reveal.