KestrelPi

Hey at least this'll all turn into pretty good fodder for a Mojo retrospective in 2047

I do agree with this and I suppose what I mean when I talk about the stuff I think ReMI might play with is that I think these are the sorts of things that we might be talking about in 6 months or whatever. I don't really think, and in fact hope that it isn't the case that everything will be 'explained.' Subtext, around which fans can speculate and build a narrative is what I like, and I think expect.

Yeah. I mean... I quite enjoyed the film Hook too. Seriously though, considering how cagey they've been about talking about where this fits into the story, I wouldn't be surprised if either it's something like that, OR, it's something way more like... well, if we take the idea of MI as Guybrush's childhood imagination (and I think there's a lot more evidence for that than just the ending of MI2, it's a constant theme through 1 and 2) and run with it, well, then in that case it doesn't MATTER if Guybrush wants to make tweaks and edits to his own canon. Want Murray to exist earlier in the story? No problem! etc etc. Maybe Monkey Island is more like a cluster of ideas rather than a coherent linear narrative. I wouldn't hate that, and it gives the game lots of scope to go into that weird uncanny zone that I like MI to be in. But yeah, it could be as simple as an older Guybrush re-engaging with his childhood imaginings of mighty piracy, and we end with a shot of Guybrush staring at a Mortgage Application from the Big Whoop Building Society.

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Oh goodness, I hope not. I was unimaginably disappointed when I heard it again in EMI, hearing what they've done with the theme is one of the highlights of a new Monkey Island to me. The fresher the sound the better, as long as it maintains some of the spirit of the original.

Changing the subject, slightly... Something I always used to think was really cool was how the theme to MI2 was really done in a different style to the first game. The sound of the original theme was really 'classic' of course, and it feels like since MI2 all the versions of the theme have really followed that template, albeit with some tweaks to the arrangement, but it always disappointed me that we never really heard a version of the theme that really had a very different feel to it. It was even more disappointing that EMI's theme was basically just CMI's and that (mainly because of technical constraints), the Tales version ended up sounding so limp compared with the previous versions. So my question is, are you hoping for a theme in a new style? A couple of weeks ago I made a version imagining how I might do a MI theme in a different feel to 1 and 2, and came up with this. Yeah, I know, shameless self promotion but this question has genuinely been on my mind so much that I made a Monkey Island Theme Remix for the first time in 30 years.

Oh I get it now. I have seen this, but only very recently. Yes, it's very worth a look, there's a lot of really cool stuff in there.

Would you mind dropping a link? I can't seem to find what you're referring to

It wouldn't surprise me considering that Knights and Bikes is quite fascinated with maps, too, if a little of that bled into the ideas behind the art.

Yeah, I was thinking the same, the art does much better larger. You start to see the grain of the brush strokes, and it all starts to have a bit more of a distinctly stylistic feel, to me at least. The sooner they can put out a proper trailer where we get to see some of the characters animated and a little bit of how these scenes work in motion, the better I think. I think they're feeling it a little too, because they've implied a little in some of these interviews that when we see the whole thing working, a lot of people will realise that they actually like it. Of course, it's not going to please everyone. Not everyone liked how CMI looked, and that's valid, even if I think it's very pretty. But what I really hope is that we get away from the idea I've seen in a few places that this art is 'cheap' or 'like the MI1 special editions' which I just think really isn't true and makes no sense. You don't hire someone like Rex if that's what you're going for. This is an artist who is a big fan of Monkey Island, trying to do the best interpretation he can of it in his own distinct style. We're not obliged to like it, but I do think that we need to accept that this is the style Ron and Dave wanted, and they like it, and that it's nonsense to suggest that it's just some cheap-out option that they would have avoided if they had more of a budget. I've seen people tweeting mean things at Rex, as well as Ron and Dave, and I hope that everyone here is going to be better than that.

If people haven't seen very much of Rex's art before I really do recommend Knights and Bikes. I think some of the stuff going on thematically should appeal to Monkey Island fans and while it looks like it's not exactly the same style as they're going on for Return, there's obvious overlap and I think what you'll see is that when in motion it really comes together and the character work actually becomes really expressive.

Sure, that's fair. I do think that feels like a much smaller leap than the one between 1's purely digital look with straight geometry in a heavily skewed perspective, and 2's marker art with more curvy weird angles going on

Yeah, it's really not much of a stretch to get from this.. to this

I of course meant Plunder

In a lot of ways I've always thought MI2's art style has more in common with CMI than SoMI. Once you look beyond the pixels, they all use cartoonish distortion, but 1's style of distortion is very linear and predictable, lots of straight lines and playing with perspective, but not much else. But MI2, as well as having a painted look like CMI (albeit with markers), really starts to play with the sort of curvy distortion on buildings and so on that you see get taken to much more of an extreme in CMI. If you compare say, Phatt Island's town with Lucre in CMI, for example, they're not a million miles apart, but both are very different to how Melee is drawn, even ignoring the palette.

Weeell, there are levels of hints aren't there? Personally I'm all for giving the player a say in how much hinting they want to engage with. I think it's maybe a little bit patronising to assume as a designer that you know best exactly how much hinting is enough, because there are so many different types of players. When I first played The Secret of Monkey Island I was about 10, and I'd never played an adventure game or even a puzzle game before. I had no concept of adventure game logic, and also I think it's fair to say that while a smart kid, my brain wasn't as developed as it was now. I had a hintbook for Monkey Island, that I used for most of the game. By the time I was playing the later LucasArts games I was fully in the 'hints only as a last resort' mindset. But I don't think younger me was wrong. Younger me loved Monkey Island, even though he solved very few puzzles himself. And I think that's valid. It's valid if someone, for whatever or even no given reason, just doesn't want to solve puzzles, but wants to explore the fun dialogue and world. It's valid if someone wants to do everything themselves no matter how long it takes. So if, as a designer, I want as many types of players of my game to be able to enjoy it as possible, from both ends of the spectrum, then what makes most sense is for me to implement a well thought-out hint system which gives just enough for people who might only want a little nudge, and all they want for anyone who isn't particularly fussed about challenge. This is one of those rare situations where you really can please everyone, except for some weirdos who think that everyone else needs to enjoy the game in the same way they do... so why not?

If they're at the point of getting voices and music in the game, that means there's not all that much left that needs work,yeah. Still I'd be surprised if we get the game before July. If we assume they need a month to finish the VO and music, and about 2 more for testing and polish. August feels about right to me at the moment based on very limited info.

Yeah, nothing to me suggested this would be enforced hinting. More like... it would be integrated into the world in some way. Probably some sort of character, or something like that. Maybe the Voodoo Lady gives hints now. That'd make some sort of sense. Get your hints as a psychic reading? I'm glad for it anyway, insistence on no hint systems was always silly to me because when you, the developer, control the hint system you can control how those hints are meted out. If folks are just going onto walkthroughs they might see more than they need to. On the rest of the article and everything else. Y'know, the more I look at the art the more I appreciate it. I've always like Rex Crowle's work anyway. Knights and Bikes has convinced me that a) he's more than capable of producing a beautiful Monkey Island game and b) his work is WAY more expressive in motion than in the mostly still images we've seen so far. And the more I've been staring at these screenshots the more I've appreciated the little details of them. But that and the other noises from Ron and Dave have convinced me of something way more important than anything else to me which this is not just a throwback. A throwback could only ever be disappointing because the thing we loved about these games back then was how different they felt to anything else, how surprising they could be, and you can't just bottle up that lightning and try to resell it. Just as MI2 was its own fresh take on what MI was with as much that felt different as felt the same (really, the soundtrack, art, atmosphere and even to an extent the writing is different in a lot of ways), Return should be too, and that means that it might make us a little uncomfortable sometimes. But if we go into it with an open mind, I really think we could be in for a ride.