KestrelPi

Incidentally I stumbled upon a speedrunner's guide to getting through Monkey Kombat and it's wild in there

I guess my hopes for the game (which mostly seem to be in the right direction given what we've read) is that it's driven by so much more than nostalgia. I don't mind going back to old locations, revisiting old characters. Of course it's gonna have a bit of that. But the thing I was really frightened of with a new Monkey Island is what if it doesn't actually have anything new to say. And they seem to be self consciously making sure it does have new things to say. Interesting things. I think Ron is right to be frustrated that Thimbleweed Park is so heavily seen as a throwback when it does some interesting stuff, but also it was a very self inflicted label. It absolutely went out of its way to connect itself with the past and to make references only people familiar with the old stuff would get and to make jokes about how old school adventure games worked. But here, we're coming in with new art style, an interface approach that is gonna at least be interesting enough that they're not yet ready to discuss how it works, a story that they claim is gonna be a wild ride and are clearly very excited for people to get into. On the other hand, it's been a while since I've played a Ron Gilbert game that truly felt like it took its world building seriously. Not that MI ever took itself over-seriously, but it always felt like it was really GOING for something. Thimbleweed had elements of it but with tongue so firmly lodged in its cheek I don't think its atmosphere always held together. The Cave might've been that game for me but whether for budget or other reasons that always seemed just a little shallow to me, as a world. I liked the idea more than I liked the execution, I guess. I guess what I'm getting at is that I want this to be a game that really trusts itself not to be a relic of the past. That lets me lose myself in its world in the same way I did the first two games. That doesn't feel the need to constantly remind me that I'm playing an adventure game, or that I'm revisiting an old franchise, but actually trusts itself to tell a good story in an atmospheric world that I am invested in for its own sake. When I fell in love with MI it didn't have the weight of 30 years behind it. It's gonna be difficult not to acknowledge all that baggage in some ways, but while I'm playing, I want to be able to forget I ever left.

On balance I think I'd still prefer a story that is kind of a bit smaller and self-contained across its timeline, than something that hops around a lot. After an episodic monkey island game I think I'd like one which felt a little less segmented between its parts. But I certainly wouldn't hate something along these lines, especially if it came together really well in the end.

I don't particularly remember the swamp as a 'maze' puzzle, so much as I remember the neat mechanic of having to make things happen the same way when encountering your past/future self. It must have made an impression on me because the only things I can say I actually remember about EMI since I played it (3 times, when it came out) are: * That puzzle * Monkey Kombat * Murray is in it, but not particularly funny in it * Scumm Bar, which is later Lua Bar * Charles L Charles ... good times and free grog? * I guess you go back to Monkey Island * HT Marley * A diving competition? * Ending with giant monkey robot * Something about Planet Threepwood and Starbuccaneers And the only one of those things I remember in an unequivocally positive way is that swamp puzzle. Everything else I remember about the game is at best a mixed bag. Heh (Okay, I remember some other stuff, too, but my point is that my memories of the game are... scattered)

Actually that's another thing I sort of liked. I liked that next time I played the game I'd have to figure it out again, so it wasn't just a 'dead' puzzle for replays. EMI did this in a few places. I can't remember them all but one of them was that time swamp, where different things happen, so you have to pay attention every time you play. I sort of appreciated the design choice there. But I do understand why it would be annoying for people who already disliked it the first time around.

But that's the thing, it COULD be figured out, it just didn't do a very good job of explaining how. It's been a while since I played EMI but from what I remember about it in principle it could be figured out in a similar way that those grid based logic problems could be worked out, you know, these lookin' ones? It's been... like 20 years so I'm really stretching the limit of my memory here, but I remember that if you kept careful track of the information you'd gathered so far about what loses to what and what wins against what you could logic your way to the solution faster than you could just by trial and error, so I remember being sort of okay with it because I had a system for figuring it out efficiently. I do agree though that the fundamental problem with it though is that it was still a segment of the game where which... basically lacked any interesting dialogue or jokes. You just needed to deal with these nonsense monkey noises for a bit. It was insult sword fighting abstracted into what was potentially quite a nice logic puzzle, but in doing so taking out any of the stuff that made insult sword fighting fun in the first place. So in the end for me it's sort of a wash. I appreciate the effort, but I don't think it was really a success. And lets face it, I like Monkey Kombat more than MOST people, and I STILL think it's not very good.

To me the worst part of Monkey Kombat is that the sequence just went on a bit too long and they thought it was good enough to go back to it for the finale. One piece of praise I gave to EMI at the time which I stand by is that I appreciate its attempts to have unusual puzzles in the game, something I feel like CMI and even MI2 lacked in comparison to the first game which had a lot of puzzles which didn't have anything to do with 'use x with y' I think for a lot of people Monkey Kombat was -extra- boring because they treated it like insult fighting but you had to collect collections of eeks, oops and chees which were meaningless, and so not even funny. But what I think the puzzle really was (and it doesn't explain this too well) is a logic problem in which eventually once you find out enough you can deduce the correct combos, and I appreciated the ATTEMPT to do a type of puzzle Monkey Island hasn't had before even if it kind of fails on execution.

I enjoyed its appearance in CMI, but there's no getting around it was basically the same puzzle but with rhyming and ship combat. I preferred the way it was done in Tales, where it was just one puzzle, and it was a fresh take on the format by having to find the response to fit two pieces of dialogue at once. If it is revisited in this game I think it would be in some limited way like that.

Oh, I think the stuff they introduce in ReMI could have HUGE 'lore' implications. I am expecting my understanding of what the world of MI is to at least be tested, if not completely upturned, based on the stuff they've hinted at. But I think they're going to do it in such a way that the next people who make a MI game are going to feel less beholden to a particular chronology. I think the most interesting quote in the whole thing is "How would you describe it, Dave? It’s kind of amorphous. It’s undefinable in a lot of ways." - Ron "And possibly not important, ultimately. Trying to assign specific numbers to the stories will become hard at some point." - Dave Not to pick it apart too much, but let's pick it apart too much: How would you describe it, Dave? = Help me out, here, Dave. We're stepping into territory we can't easily talk about without spoiling It’s kind of amorphous. It’s undefinable in a lot of ways. So they're saying the game very definitely starts out at the end of MI2, but nevertheless its timeline is 'amorphous' and 'undefinable'. Not just undefined, mind, but undefinable. Not just vague, but amorphous. And yet they keep on saying that the other games are canon and they were very careful about respecting that, as much as possible. And possibly not important, ultimately. This could be Dave saying 'I wouldn't worry about it too much' but it could also be saying that the concept of the games having a specific, infallible chronology becomes unimportant, because of where they take the plot. Trying to assign specific numbers to the stories will become hard at some point. This is kind of a weird addendum to this. They're trying to say that ReMI doesn't fit neatly between MI2 and 3 without saying it outright, but to me this is also implyng that what they are doing also throws the whole chronology of MI as a whole into question. He doesn't say 'trying to assign a specific number to this story' but 'specific numbers to the stories' - he could be talking just about any future games, but he could be talking about the existing ones too. I think some people would be really uncomfortable with the idea of Monkey Island's whole timeline becoming fuzzy and confused, but depending on what their angle is, and how they approach it, I think it could be really cool and add to the mystery.

It's an interesting thought. If it were to be something like that, then I think what it would possibly be like is that each part would be a moment in his life, at various ages, but it being unclear how they relate to each other until something towards the end links together all the moments in his life, and guides them towards a big denouement that makes sense of them, probably by returning to Monkey Island. But if I were Ron and Dave and going to make a story like that then I would have called it: The Memoirs of Guybrush Threepwood: The Monkey Island Years.

Heh! I don't get the sense from any of this that they want to directly address any of the plot points from CMI/EMI/Tales ... maybe some characters/references but I feel more like they want people to stop worrying about what interpretation of events is correct or incorrect. I joked about Spider Man, but that's kind of what that series did, right? I don't think what MI is going to do is going to be QUITE like that, because I think there's other stuff that is mysterious about the MIverse (and also I just think like others that they're not going to fully explain anything). I don't think it's going to be as 'simple' as 'there are lots of alternate MI universes' - but I think the implications might be similar. And from the other stuff they talk about, I believe that the intro part of the game is going to touch on these themes, a bit, and then for the majority of the game we're going to get a normal, piratey adventure in the vein of the first 3 games and Tales (I don't think EMI really gives us that), and then at the end it's going to get weird, and the MI2 ending is going to be somewhat (but not fully) addressed. Ultimately I think they're going to end it in a place which gives whoever works on MI next a lot of freedom.

When I take these quotes together it makes me think that there could, possibly be a time skip involved but actually I think it'll be weirder than that. If they just wanted the game to be set in an unspecified time in the chronology they'd just say that. But instead they keep on talking about how the ending of mi2 is important but the relationship to the rest of the timeline is something they're not ready to talk about. Dave's comment of "possibly not important, ultimately" is very interesting because on the one hand it feels like they're saying "don't worry about where this sits, just have fun" but you can't help but feel there's more to it than that, given their comments about how carefully they thought about Canon. I'm leaning more and more to some multiverse interpretation of the MI universe. Basically, I think Guybrush is spider man. Well... No. But I do think that the reason they can't fully address this right now has to do with where they are taking MI as a world, and whether it will make sense to even talk about chronology by the time we reach the end.

It's time to shake the speculation tree with the list of Ron And Dave Interviews Statements Hyping Up Return's Greatly Enigmatic Story, or RADISHURGES RadishUrges about the relation between ReMI and other games: "One of the things that was very important to me about this was that I did want the game to start right at the end of Monkey Island 2, when you walk into that amusement park. I wanted the game to start there. I don’t want to go into all the details of it, but we do start there, and then it takes lots of weird twists and turns that you would expect from us." (on the chronology) "How would you describe it, Dave? It’s kind of amorphous. It’s undefinable in a lot of ways." - Ron "And possibly not important, ultimately. Trying to assign specific numbers to the stories will become hard at some point." - Dave "We very purposefully don’t do anything to invalidate any of the canon that’s happened in those games. We’re not saying any of those things didn’t happen, we don’t talk down to them at all. We embrace a lot of the things we liked in those games. So we were very, very careful about that." - Ron " but with two caveats. One of which is, it’s actually kind of hard to keep track of everything that’s canon, and some of these other games don’t even agree with each other. So a little bit of paradox is necessary and probably healthy for us as creators and as human beings. And the other caveat is that too much canon can get in the way of the story you’re trying to tell, so we decided that we would adhere to canon unless it was going to get in the way, and we would ignore some minor details if we needed to." - Dave "That’s a tricky thing to discuss. As we announced when we announced the game, this game really does pick up where Monkey Island 2 ended. But how it all weaves into the whole world… that’s something that’s been a lot of fun to figure out, and I don’t think we’re ready to really talk about the details yet. Other than that, it’s kind of what you would expect from us." - Ron "While Return to Monkey Island does start right after Monkey 2 ends, it's not a 'sequel' to Monkey 2 either. It's going to be a fun journey. It will be an e-ticket ride." - Ron RadishUrges about the general story tone/themes of ReMI: "It is a game about pirates." - Dave "But we also were very aware that there are probably way more people out there in the world who’ve never played Monkey Island but have heard about it. We also wanted to do something that was accessible to them so that they could be eased into the world of Monkey Island and not feel like outsiders the moment they started the game. Those are really important story and design aspects of what we tackle." - Ron "I think with games in general—and the Monkey Island series in particular—it has always been a bit autobiographical. We always are injecting a little of ourselves—not necessarily our past, but our present—into these games. And the first one we did as fresh designers starting out on a new career is about Guybrush starting out on a new career. It's been interesting to come back to this now, not with things that have been lingering over the last 30 years but as creators returning to something that we haven't touched in a long time. I think we have brought some of that to the material itself." - Dave -- OK I can't be bothered to pull more quotes

See? I told you he called it Return to Monkey Island because it's an anagram of Turn On To Dinky's E-Realm

Hmm, maaaybe, but I find it hard to believe that Dom didn't know exactly how he wanted to deliver these lines. This is the person we know as the huge Monkey Island fan who used to fantasize about voicing these lines long before Curse, I feel like he would have fully understood how those lines felt to him, and how he wanted to deliver them. He's been rehearsing them in his head for years. It's true that a great voice director can help provide the environment in which the actor can do his best work, and maybe that was lacking... but I don't think I can believe that Dom didn't understand (his intepretation of) the intended tone that the lines would be delivered in. Also, like, for example, I never really bought Dom's delivery of 'I'm Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate' in CMI or any other games, only because it's not how that line sounded in my head. To me it always sounded more childlike and naive than Dom delivered it. But the interesting thing about that it that it's one of the few lines used in CMI that was actually in the previous games. I think that isn't a coincidence. I don't doubt that's how the line works to Dom, and I accept his interpretation. I'd just heard it differently in my head for many years. A problem with Dom doing MI1 and MI2 is that we've already heard these lines in our own head so many times before Dom could get to them.

I do agree that it's a bit to do with how we encounter the game. I think most people would agree that Dom does a great Guybrush Threepwood, but when the game first came out, he wasn't MY Guybrush Threepwood, the one from my head. I played it when I was 10, and although Guybrush speaks a lot of americanisms, I wasn't as submerged in US culture to 'hear' the voice as american, so my Guybrush spoke with an English accent a lot like my own. Over time, this has all been written over in my head by Dominic Armato's version, but it wasn't immediately there. But some people will always have played a version with Dom's voice. And while it's true that the lines were written to be read, I do think that aside from a few questionable casting choices and some weird pieces of voice direction, the job the actors make of it is passable enough that someone coming to the series for the first time wouldn't find anything particularly odd about the voices. And clearly enough people enjoy the voices enough for the Ultimate Talkie Edition patches to exist, and so forth. And some of it is, of course, a matter of taste. The other day I was talking to a friend and I said I just didn't like the casting or direction of Largo at all, in MI2SE -- it's just not the voice I imagined, and the delivery on a lot of the lines, just does not work for me one bit. But my friend likes the voice, so -- different strokes, I guess. I'm not gonna tell my friend he's wrong but I'm also never really going to like that voice, I think. I guess what I'm trying to get at is... in the context of 2 games never designed for speech, weighed down by over 20 years of nostalgia, from a fanbase who have regularly shown themselves to be quite particular about how they like their LucasArts games served, I think they did a passable job. Even if I agree they made a few questionable casting and direction choices.

I certainly didn't mind all of the casting/direction I rather enjoyed the Men of Low Moral Fiber, and the map guy, and Bob the skeleton, and various other characters. I do agree though there are certain pieces of writing in the game where you do lose a little from the move to speech. There are jokes that don't translate, and I feel like they made a mistake in recording ALL text to speech. I don't think the 'Meanwhile...' etc needed a narrator, and I don't think that the 'love written all over your face' joke needed Dom to say 'Love' out loud, and so on. I feel like it needed the hand of someone who had a better handle on the writing.

I think it could have used Khris Brown. I didn't hate the casting choices, but ... well, the voice director they had mostly worked on Star Wars games and I think this needed someone who was more familiar with the script of these games because in both 1 and 2 SE there are more moments than I'd like where the line read doesn't fit with the context, or is odd in some other way!

I should actually think about replaying tales. I think I'll make that happen.

Personally I just think the MI2:SE was just so much better implemented than MI1 (aside from the unfortunate implementation of the MT32 audio) that I feel like the first SE ought to be re-remasted to bring it up to a similar standard - though I think that's unlikely to happen. I'm fine with the high res graphics in principle, but I think we should have just been able to mix and match old and new graphics and audio freely. And I think whatever they were trying with MI1SE visuals should have been closer to the spirit of the original. In the end it's all opinions, I suppose, but I think a remaster should be about preservation and enhancement which means the original game should be there as much as possible (I'm not fussy if they have to change a few lines for whatever reason) and anything added on top of it should be in the same spirit as the original. I think MI2 mostly succeeds at that, but MI1 doesn't, so much.

Ron's decided to close the comments again Some people need to do whatever the Monkey Island fandom equivalent of touch grass is. We're getting a new Monkey Island game! That we never thought we'd get!! By Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman!!! This year!!!! And every little thing we hear about it sounds really cool!!!! But sure. Focus your energy on saying rude things about 4 screenshots. To me the great pity of it is that it might put him off wanting to do something like this again.

Most bugs are extremely minor things most people wouldn't even notice. He even gives an example of one: It's likely that the vast majority of these bugs reported are similar kinds of cosmetic things which all come down to polish. Many of them might be considered so minor that they're not even worth fixing, because hardly anyone is even going to notice, but of course it's a tester's job to point them out so that a call can be made. Others might take 5 seconds to fix because it's a typo or something. Sometimes the bug might not even be theirs to fix - I remember I reported some visual glitch when I tested Psychonauts 2, and then someone said 'try this new Nvidia driver that was released yesterday' and that sorted it out. So 10k isn't as intimidating a number as it initially sounds (and as someone pointed out, a lot of those are likely closed at this point)

Ok I admit, me and Ron are in it together through a sort of cosmic mindlink, that's why I triggered the downfall of this thread with my image posting. That's why Return to Monkey Island is an anagram of Ron and Kestrel Unity ... Om

Yeah, first credited as Chester in MI2 I believe but they later did voice editing on a number of games and then was involved in casting and voice direction since then for many of our beloved games on Mojo including most Double Fine stuff. There is literally no more appropriate person to be casting and voice directing this so if they can't find the right voice with Khris, it just doesn't exist right now

I don't really have any concerns, because they have the person who is IMO the best casting and voice direction person in the business, Khris Brown.