KestrelPi

Hmm, on a closer look, it seems like these are the same locations: But it seems like the environment hs changed somewhat by the time Elaine/Guybrush gets there. I'd guess this is somewhere in the Monkey Head, given the apparent lava, and that we know that Elaine does go there.

Man, I hope so. Because I'm not expecting it until November at this point. If it is gonna be released on that day then my theory is that they plan on just DROPPING it on that day without warning, or announcing it only very shortly before. Because if they already knew they were making that date, why else would they have left it out of the trailer?

Haha, this is oddly sweet, and I think about this a lot. It's not just that I played Monkey Island as a kid and enjoyed it, but it was formative. It made me want to try my hand at making games. It informed my comic style in some ways. The soundtracks definitely influenced how I write music. Following the careers of the people in the community and who worked on the games has had a noticeable impact on my life, so yeah - I would be a different person if I hadn't played Monkey Island in lots of important ways. You can't take the Monkey Island out of me.

Aside from what I said before, there's also this... So yeah, I don't think this is supposed to be read as 'last ever monkey island game' so much... Maybe there's a sense of finality to how it ends but it still leaves enough dangling that someone can still go in and tell their own monkey island story with that universe and characters, and pull on other threads that this game doesn't address. I like that. Maybe for Ron this is his way of getting closure on what HE wanted to say about Monkey Island, and by getting to make another game in the series, he'll be ready to let go and say 'okay, it belongs to the world, now'. But I dunno. I'm not his psychiatrist.

Me too. *whistles*

It's an interesting one, isn't it? But it might make sense... pair it with Dave's comments about the chronology of the games and how 'at some point' it's going to be difficult to put numbers on them and doesn't matter. I mean, Guybrush finds the Secret - surely that IS an end to the series, as we know it, at least. The trailer certainly does seem to be pitching it as a resolution to all his adventure of the past. But just because it's a conclusion to the series (if indeed it is) doesn't mean there aren't more stories to be told. Maybe because of what happens in this game it wouldn't make sense for there to be more stories set after it, but there's still room for more Monkey Island games in general.

If you think this and this: look only slightly different from each other in visual style then I don't think we're having a serious discussion here.

It's not. They've said it's not. I wish I could find the quote where Ron pretty much exactly says 'this is not a direct sequel to Monkey Island 2' but there's this: You can 'not feed' it all you want, but this is just facts, they have literally said that there's no real answer to how this relates to the other games in the series, and it's not important to them.

Yeah, I did think about that scene, but I don't know how that sort of thing might work on a larger scale. It's interesting to think about though, if they're doing something non standard with dialogue trees. My initial thought on it is that dialog trees are the main thing in adventure games that 'ain't broke'. That conversation we all had a few pages ago abot economy in writing notwithstanding, I've always been fairly satisfied with a 'pick a response from various options' style of dialog, and in particular with MI's style of doing it - which is to occasionally give you a chance to pick from a list of joke responses, and to occasionally subvert the format. Most of the time, I've found attempts to revise this format less successful - so, like, I don't really like Sam and Max and The Dig's approach where you pick from a list of topics represented by icons. And I don't really like the Mass Effect style approach where you kind of pick a sentiment from a list and then sometimes find that that response wasn't exactly what you meant. So I'll be really interested if they find a way to meaningfully make dialogue trees more interesting without losing the directness of the old style trees.

Moving on from art, because I feel like there's SO much more to talk about here... 'reactive dialog trees' what do we think is meant by that? My first thought was something like - can you interrupt characters to respond to whatever they're talking about at the moment and press them on that? That sounds interesting, but potentially a bit counterintuitive as someone who doesn't want to 'miss' dialogue. I think it's more subtle than that, probably but that's the only thing I can think of. In what other sense could the dialog trees be reactive?

A lot of the original Peter Chan scans of the art he made with markers are available, if that's what you mean: https://mixnmojo.com/media/galleries/Monkey-Island-2-LeChucks-Revenge-Concept-Art

So, Lagomorph already addressed the point that this isn't part of a trilogy - and Ron has said as much, but I'd add that even if it was part of a trilogy, then arguably MI2 was already jarring, long ago. What's the similarity between these two jails in the MI1 and MI2 art styles: I would say these are extremely different to each other, and the only reason we associate them as similar is because they have a similar resolution. But one is hand painted, the other is digital. One is noticeably more detailed and has a richer colour palette. One is clearly more interested in straight lines than the other. Which is unsurprising because it's a different background artist and different approach taken to the background. Granted, the sprite design is more similar between them than what's in ReMI, but they're still two different games with very different art styles, and so this is new one. But it's not being pedantic to say this isn't part of an MI trilogy, either. It isn't. Theyve said it isn't, and the faster people accept it isn't the quicker we can get to what the game actually IS.

To add some weight to this, in interviews they have said that they don't see this as a sequel to Monkey Island 2, it's just that it opens where Monkey 2 leaves off (and looking at the trailer there's CLEARLY a time skip. Many of the characters including guybrush are visibly older) And in another interview Dave said something 'at some point it's going to be difficult to put a number on these games.' So it's been a bit of a misconception that this is supposed to be a spiritual MI3, probably because of Ron's blog post from 2014 - it's not that, they view it as just another game in the MI series, which happens to use the end of MI2 as a launching off point. (btw if anyone can find these actual interview quotes that'd be great because I'm damned if I can)

Of course I adore MI2's backgrounds, Peter Chan is so good. But I already find that these depictions of Melee hold more character for me than MI1's - unlike EMI, these are unmistakeably the same location, but they've got so much flavour. I don't dislike MI1's backgrounds, and they are in many ways ingenious, especially when you take into account the EGA versions (I've no special attachment to the EGA versions, but I am forced to admit they're exceedingly cleverly done). But as for the style itself, I always found MI1's background art... serviceable? It does the job. But I look at MI1's jail and think 'Yep, that's a jail.' ... I look at THIS one and I'm just bowled over by all the little details and how much life there is in it.

Fair - I would point out though that each Monkey Island game has featured a new art style, including the first two, so it IS in keeping with the Monkey Island tradition to do that again.

Probably! In the end I was glad that they managed to do as much live recording with P2 as they did. (Even as someone who is a big advocate of the validity of sampled instruments, and not having a big pool of performers to draw from - or a budget to pay them - has to use them in my own music most of the time)

In the end (and this isn't to invalidate anyone's opinions about this, I definitely see what you mean) I think when we see the whole thing we could still make a case for this being the best animated Monkey Island game we've ever had MI1: serviceable animations for sure, but not many of them MI2: Definite upgrade in this department, but it still didn't have THAT much to animate. CMI: Great in the pre-animated cutscenes, obviously, but I always thought a little bit 'eh' in the actual gameplay parts. EMI: Tales: Pretty good actually, for what it was - but they clearly had a budget to contend with. Here even if not everything is on point we got these really neat dynamic touches in the backgrounds like those foreground and background rats, Guybrush seems to have a host of facial expressions he's working with, and everything feels really expressive in a way I love.

Oh that's why my notifications have been going off. Ron has retwort me.

It could be that those animations are just not quite finished yet, but it could also be that ... just from what I remember in Knights and Bikes, Rex likes to do these sort of not completely 'well' animated moments for comic effect, like, to add to the silliness of the moment. Like, I know what you mean about that guybrush rope animation, kinda? But also to me it looks really funny. And yeah, I think part of the intention behind the animation is probably to do with something the art style is going for. But yeah, I sort of see what you mean.

Admittedly, I was feeling naively triumphant after the trailer was released. I thought 'see? It's brilliant. Everyone will love it.' which of course wasn't gonna happen. So it was a bummer when I STILL saw some obnoxious comments on his blog. Like that one someone posted earlier where that one guy is gonna not play the game to own the libs or whatever. But whatever. It doesn't matter. It's more distinctive, interesting looking and frankly higher production value than I ever expected a new MI game to be, so they can stew in their distaste for all I care. NEW MONKEY ISLAND!

I wonder if the shorter, stumpier guybrush is supposed to be in some way evocative of carnival-guybrush... *idle thoughts*

I never said they weren't! - and I added one of my own. But it's still a bit of a dumpster fire.

Ugh. Listen, uh. Ron did another blog post too and unless you would like to be sad, don't look at the comments. Apparently people really didn't get the memo last time. Maybe I'm just optimistic but I really thought more people would get it when they saw it properly in motion. And then when I saw the trailer I thought 'yes! This is exactly what I was hoping it would be able to show about the art style'. I'm trying not to pay any attention to these people but it's not even that they have a different opinion it's that they're either extremely rude about it or they say things that are literally nonsense like 'it looks too corporate' what ... does that... even mean... in the context of these visuals?? Sorry. I refuse to engage with this anywhere else, now, so I vent here.

I'm trying hard not to engage with the (large minority) of bad comments. But that doesn't mean I can't type them out then hit cancel.