KestrelPi

I really want to clarify I didn't answer your question in order to have another debate about TLJ, it's just that I think TLJ is very relevant to why I find RoS to be a cowardly piece of fiction.

I think we'll probably get the islands that have been named so far. I don't really want any more but if I had to choose an island from the series to revisit, I suppose it'd be nice to see how Scabb's doing.

Sure. TLJ removes kylo's mask, and in doing so makes it part of his symbolic rejection of the past, his wanting to move away from the old way of doing things and let go of his silly obsession with his grandfather. By the end of TLJ he's grown from edgy-sith-wannabe to actual credible villain - he's not ALL the way there, but the film was clearly maneuvering him in the direction of being a legitimate threat. It offers this stuff up on a platter and RoS rejects it and just unceremoniously has him put the mask back on and going back to being a Darth Vader stand-in. I think that's cowardly. TLJ offers up the possibility that the Jedi order and skywalkers aren't actually all that important, and that their legend has caused problems, and that the next force hero could come from anywhere. That's the CLEAR message of the final shot where the stable boy uses the force to reach for his broom and look up at the stars. That it doesn't matter who you are. RoS wimps out on this and completely rejects it by the end by basically ending up saying 'no, skywalkers are actually the most important thing in the world, psych'. Cowardly retreat from what TLJ set up. Also cowardly - failing to address the whole thread in TLJ about wanting to move on from the Jedi order as the ultimate force for good, burn the sacred texts. It's not even rejected this time, it's just an important part of TLJ which is just... dropped, ignored. I think that's cowardly, because in order to talk about that they would have actually had to do something interesting. Finally, the whole decision to bring back Palpatine as the main antagonist. They had no confidence in their ability to craft Kylo Ren into a credible villain, or alternatively create a story without an established big bad at its head. Rather than try, they just kind of did a non-sequitur insertion of Palpatine into the story. Lazy and cowardly. I have an appreciation for the things that TLJ set up, which is possibly why I see RoS as a cowardly rejection of that. I don't think comparing TFA and TLJ is similar - TLJ subverts some expectations but it never says 'there's a bunch of stuff in TFA that we're gonna pretend never happened or doesn't matter, we're just gonna do another thing'. Luke throwing away the lightsaber was SO great, so bold, because it's the last thing we expected, it seemed like such a moment, and turning it on its head sets up the mystery that drives that whole part of the film: what HAPPENED to Luke? It also provides an intriguing answer to why Luke was so hard to find in the first film. Kylo putting the mask back on is just 'shrug, I guess I didn't mean all that 'kill the past' stuff in the last film, let's never address or think about it again'.

I've definitely seen some of that, and last I looked the trilogy was at about 100 in the Steam charts, so definitely SOME people are buying it with a view to playing before the release. I also think some people will content themselves to watch a summary, or someone else do a let's play of the game. It'd be interesting to find out how much of the eventual sales of the game came from people who have never played the originals, or from people who only recently played the originals, and how many are long-time fans. I think the price point is too high for most people to try it on impulse, so I'm gonna guess there won't be too many people in the first category, unless it reviews surprisingly well.

* Honestly, I really don't care about the makeup of the Empire or First Order beyond that they're the reason the stakes are high, and I repeat my assertion that the original trilogy was making up the empire as it went along just as much as they were making up the First Order as they went along, and that I find them to be comparitively flimsy antagonists - the only reason the Empire is more fleshed out is because of the tons of expanded universe material that came out since. * I don't think a single line from Darth Vader during the first film is enough to claim they'd established a clear idea of how the force works. Yeah, you're right, it sort of implies that some people are better in the force than other. But idk, maybe Luke is a quick learner especially good at picking up on the force training he's had, it might not have anything to do with some sort of innate ability and it doesn't really establish that being talented with the Force isn't something that everyone could do with training. In any case, force lore in the first film is at BEST flimsy. But.... again. Please. Stop trying to debate me out of my liking of TLJ. I don't agree, and I won't agree. This is well-worn territory. Every single TLJ-disliker I've ever engaged to wants to turn it into an argument about how I'm wrong to like it and if I thought about it enough then I, too, wouldn't like it. This is exactly why I didn't want to do this, and I don't blame you, it's my own damn fault for engaging with it in the first place after saying I wouldn't. I saw this coming, and did it anyway.

Well, more to the point when ReMI got off the ground he was in an extremely busy part of Psychonauts 2. I doubt he'd have been able to be involved even if he really wanted to be.

Remember when they announced Palpatine's return in Fortnite, and then in RoS this was tossed out as a single line at the beginning of the opening text crawl

He's commented a few times on twitter on some of the stuff. Not very much. But he's probably conscious of the fact that talking about it invites questions. He probably doesn't want to make the pre-release of the game be about his lack of involvement in it. Perhaps he just wants to let this be their thing. I get a bit uncomfortable speculating about why things did or didn't happen and all that because y'know. Maybe there IS bad air between Ron and Tim. Maybe they've quietly decided not to work together. Maybe Tim could have worked on ReMI and chose not to. Maybe he was never asked and feels sore about it. All these things are possible, but it's just as possible, probable even that the timing didn't work out and he's just staying back because he doesn't want to make things about him.

Not to put words in @ThunderPeel2001's mouth but I think the point is that it's not just twists that can be spoiled. Arguably knowing about any of the story in advance is a spoiler, and seeing any sort of cool moment whether it's a twist or not could be a spoiler. I can't personally live like that, because first of all I think it's super hard to draw the line and secondly as I've talked about I think knowing a certain amount of what to expect sometimes can be useful in setting appropriate expectations (see what I've said about why I wasn't disappointed by No Man's Sky, for example). But I think to be fair we have to acknowledge that when we talk spoilers we're not just talking twists. But something I think is true is that if something has true quality, the first watch of it is only a small part of the experience. So much the stuff I like the most rewarded repeat viewings. Heck, I have no idea what my first watch of Back to the Future was like. But I LOVE that trilogy and rewatch it often, and still sometimes notice new things. That said, I've also talked about how I usually only have time to play a game once or twice, even if I really like it, so perhaps there's something to be said for the idea that the first (possibly only) play through of a video game is best left purer. I get that. I just can't bring myself to spend a lot of energy worrying about it. My first play of ReMI will be fine. I don't need an altar and candles.

"The Empire wasn't a credible threat. They had the plans for their ultimate weapon stolen by a small band of rebels, built it with a glaring weakness, and despite the emperor's right hand man being some sort of all-powerful sorceror, they don't seem all that keen on advertising that fact and using it to their advantage given that nobody seems to be quite sure whether he is or not. Also their superweapon gets blown up by a small squadron of fighters and then the best idea they have to retaliate is to build another one." The thing is, if you phrase it right, you can dismantle any character, any device, any bit of lore ever established for Star Wars. And that's not an indictment of Star Wars. It was always supposed to be this pulpy, fun action flick. That's the whole reason for the opening crawl, this idea of a serial drama writ large. That's the reason they didn't really care who the emperor was or what his deal is until RotJ. That's why half the characters are archetypes from old westerns. The only reason people care about the wider Star Wars universe is that it becomes inevitable people will once a work of fiction reaches a certain level of popularity. People have questions, and there's money to be made in answering them. Nobody watched the first Star Wars in 1977 and really cared about who Darth Vader worked for, how many planets the Empire actually controlled, why there's a tentacle beast living in the Death Star's bin, what a womp rat actually is, what the kessel run is and how its completion time can be measured in parsecs, who Jabba is, all this stuff was just window dressing. It was only later when the films became a Big Deal that any meat at all started to get put on those bones, because it really didn't matter. It's "not that deep", y'know? The empire are bad and scary, the rebels are good and wholesome and things go zippy zappy boom boom and everyone leaves having a good time. Yeah, it tries some interesting things within that framework, and it's cool when it does it (I think the way ESB explores Luke's relationship to the force is good. Heck, even in the prequels I think some of the political intrigue is good fare, especially Palpatine's bits, and I've talked about how I think TLJ is thematically interesting) but it's really mostly the zippy zappy boom boom stuff isn't it? And that's okay. This is another interesting point. Yeah, in the first film it's never once established that the force can be strong in particular people. In fact, the whole motto of 'may the force be with you' kinda implies the opposite, that it can affect anyone who wants it to. Luke's father was a Jedi but that doesn't really mean it has to be hereditary. The idea of force sensitivity isn't really explored until later. It's another way that this stuff didn't actually matter until they decided it should matter. In the first film the force was just space wizards, it didn't matter how it came about. They had laser swords because it looked cool. It was a more elegant weapon from a more civilised time but their lasers bloodlessly kill enemies while the first thing a lightsaber does is dismember someone and leave blood all over the floor. It was rule of cool and nothing more. Not that deep. The more I think of it, the more absurd it seems to suppose that Star Wars original trilogy had a strongly grounded idea of its own setting. They were absolutely making it up as they went along.

Yeah, but alas

Siggggggh. I've heard it all before and clearly don't agree. This is why I didn't reaaally want to do this. Yes, I did think TLJ was surprising. Can think of a good number of examples off the top of my head: * Yes, that opening bit with Luke. * The deconstruction of Kylo Ren's character * The casual dispatching of Snoke midway through the trilogy * yes, that force projection of Luke and its willingness to kill that character. * that it was bold enough to question a lot of series assumptions (Skywalkers are extra-special, the Jedi order is unquestionably a force for good) and also perform a bit of a reset on characters who in more recent iterations had become too self-serious (Yoda's moment in particular was so welcome, especially, after the prequels.) In fact, why am I even trying to justify the claim the film is surprising? Extremely famously, half the internet lost its mind about the decisions the film made about several of the characters (Poe, especially Luke, even Yoda in some cases). Doesn't that make it surprising almost by definition? It's just that my reaction to those decisions was largely positive, while some people had a negative reaction to those decisions. But as I said before I neither need nor particularly want to justify this. I liked it. I thought it was really great. Couldja just believe me and stop trying to tell me why my liking of it is wrong actually?

I wasn't going to indulge but I suppose I will because I should be going to sleep and I'm putting it off. To go back to the original question. I don't even think the original Star Was films DO give a good sense of how big the empire is. It's sort of implied they're the dominant force in the galaxy, but we really don't know anything about how many planets that really covers (if this is covered in dialogue then it must be a very throwaway line because I can't remember it), and how many exist outside of the empire, whether they are one of many large controlling forces, or whether they're the only game in town. We assume they are the latter (and I'm sure the expanded universe goes into it a lot more), but in the films themselves we're actually given very little about how big the empire is and how it is run. Anyway, the implication is that the empire is 'big' but I'd struggle to tease out more detail than that. And that's fine, because the story isn't really about that. The empire is just there so that the rebels have something to be rebels against, and to make the conflict bigger than the interpersonal stuff between Luke and Vader. You ARE given the impression that the empire is still struggling to obtain absolute power, because it's only just managed to get rid of the senate, and they clearly have a problem with the rebels. Does this mean they're a fledgeling but growing empire or a well established force? Probably closer to the former, given that the empire only gets going less than 20 years before the start of A New Hope. But I always felt that the empire was a bit vaguely defined, and didn't really care because all these questions are interesting but really not that important. The First Order, I always saw as a remnant of the empire trying to re-establish control. Where they get the sort of resources they have I don't know (or really care - again, it's just not that sort of film), and to what extent they've been able to establish control isn't well defined, but they're clearly a large threat, but one living in the shadow of the former empire. Its leaders are less formidable than the empires, and are often shown to stuggle to impose authority, making up for it instead with sheer might. They have resources, but they're clearly not experts at weilding it in the same way as the original empire is portrayed. I think that's a comparable level of worldbuilding detail, to be honest, but I'll go back to my original thing that to me the interesting things about the original films weren't the mechanics of the empire but Luke's growth, his relationship to Vader, Vader's arc, and the adventure of the small group of rebels. And the interesting thing about the sequel trilogy (at least until RoS decided to chuck it away) was about navigating a new relationship with the force, making a break with the past, re-examining tradition, all of course again through the hi-jinks of the core cast of characters (in this way, come to think of it, this made the First Order ideal antagonists - trying to re-play the past, make the same mistakes over again, but even in their attempts never succeeding in recapturing what was lost) So that's what I mean when I say I don't really care about the First Order. It's the same way I don't care about the Empire. They're just there to make the story have big stakes. In the original trilogy, they didn't even properly use the emperor of the Empire until the 3rd film, and later went back and changed ESB. Clearly they only decided he was really important to the story in RotJ, by which time Star Wars was a big enough deal that they almost had no choice but to pay a bit more attention to their worldbuilding. I do mean it though when I say I probably won't hang out much in this thread because... I really have had all these conversations before. I like The Last Jedi a whole bunch and it's tiring to be told I need to justify it whenever I bring it up. I don't think it's perfect. My main problem with it is that because of its structure they keep characters apart who I think have great chemistry in VII, and severely underuse Finn (though RoS is way more guilty of that one) But I think it's the only genuinely surprising Star Wars film in the main series, apart from ESB, and it manages to be surprising in completely different ways to ESB. I think it's a huge shame that the thematic breadcrumbs clearly left by TLJ were either walked back by RoS or just completely ignored. RoS is one of the most cowardly films ever made. Heck, even the prequels that I'm no big fan of were thematically consistent. Anyway, bed time.

Since the subject of expectations has come up in other threads, I feel like I want to say. The way I've trained myself not to worry too much about expectations is that I think it's a good idea not to focus too much energy on 'I hope the game doesn't do x, y and z'. Because it probably will do some of the things you don't want it to, and if you've already prejudiced yourself against the idea then it becomes harder to accept the game on its own terms. Like... on the earlier point, I admit I kinda agree that characters like Murray have worked best in smaller doses. I also suspect we've seen a lot of Murray because he's a very popular but not very important character, and therefore is an easy choice to feature in teasers. But let's say they've decided to use Murray a lot more in this game... Sure, that might not be how I think Murray has worked well in the past but if I've worked myself up thinking 'ahh, no that's a bad idea and they shouldn't do that' I'm going to be in a bad mood before I've even got to think about HOW he's being used, and how funny his lines are, and all that stuff. I guess a better way to say this is... I think there's a trap in inventing a fuzzy, blurry imaginary perfect version of this game in your head and then pitting the game we actually get against it. Our individual ideal ReMI is a mirage. Don't worry. Just play. Don't try and pre-load your feelings about it, they can sort themselves out later on.❤️

About expectations I do think it's possible to separate your excitement from your expectations, to a certain extent, but they are linked. I feel like expectations don't rule my excitement, exactly, but it can be used to help me know where to direct it. They're just an... estimate about how much I'm going to like something. I've found that generally something hits PRETTY close to my expectations, and the more I know about something in advance (to an extent) the more accurate my expectations are. For example, if I'd gone on a complete media blackout on ReMI since the announcement I'd have no idea where to set my expectations because I haven't seen anything. I'd be very, very excited, but I'd have no way to think about whether and how my excitement would be matched by the game we get. But then again if I'd allowed myself to watch the trailer and a couple of other tidbits, maybe I'd be more excited about certain details than I ought to be, because I really enjoyed the trailer and certain comments made in interviews. As it is, I've looked at everything I can, but I won't be seeking out major story spoilers when the game comes out. This, to me at least, has lent my excitement a sense of... realism? I'm still very excited about the game, of course, but I've seen enough to know I'll probably like some bits more than others, maybe not everything will hit the way I'd like it to, but it's playing with some really cool ideas and I think I'll have a great time with it over all. I remember very much the same process happening with No Man's Sky. People who didn't play very close attention were expecting it to be some life-changing forever-game where you can do anything, but actually in interviews and stuff the developers were really clear that in it's first iteration it was really supposed to be this slow, relaxing, vibey sort of experience, and with that knowledge I got what I wanted out of it. More recently, I quite enjoyed a game called Biomutant. I wasn't blown away by it, but I wasn't really disappointed either because the more I looked at the pre-release material it the more I realised that it was a 7/10-as-heck game, and if I approached it like that then I'd have a nice time. I feel like I know what ReMI is trying to be, at this point. I'm ready to meet it on its terms. I can't wait, and my excitement is still all the way up here *indicates a high spot* to see where they go with the story, the intro, to learn the secret, to hear the new soundtrack, to spend time in this world again - but my overall expectations are just that I'll have a good time and come out the other side fairly happy. You can if you want, but I don't think I'll join in. You actually don't need me or anyone else to tell you whether I think the First Order was blahblahblahvhfdjsklf because I literally do not care, it has little to no bearing on what I think of that film, and I like you but I don't feel any need to justify my liking of it to your satisfaction 🙂. I've had all the conversations I can possibly bear to have about why I think The Last Jedi is great (not perfect, but really great) and heard what I think is every single point that everyone has ever made about why they disagree, years ago - and I'm not especially interested in revisiting it again 😅 (incidentally I also think this would be a perfectly understandable response for EMI-likers to have - I get that it can be frustrating when you like something a lot and everyone always seems to want to 'disprove' you. You don't have an obligation to justify your liking of something. It's just that I also think that it's reasonable to expect that people's opinions of EMI might come up from time to time on the Mixnmojo forums 😄)

The perfect example of the trade-off for me, is that recent video of Guybrush's visit to the SCUMM Bar (spoilered below in case anyone doesn't want to see anything about it) Quite. I'm a certified The Last Jedi liker, and I'm pleased that the first time I saw it I knew very little, because I got to experience all the fun surprises and subverted expectations that it set up. I'm glad that I had that experience, but I don't think it had much to do with why I ended up really liking it. For all I enjoyed that, it was only after rewatching it twice that it really became cemented as one of my favourite Stars War. I've had this experience with a lot of music. I'm an album sort of person, I like an album that I can listen to start to finish, I rarely listen to my music collection on shuffle and I think the skip button really is a double edged sword for music likers. There are albums which have really impressed me on first listen, but failed to stick with me on repeat hearings - the kind often which are catchy but sort of 'empty music calories' and don't reward repeat listening. I've also experienced albums that did very little for me on first play but grew on me a whole lot over time if there was something about them that made me intrigued enough to give it more chances. Games are tricky because there are so many I want to play and they're so LONG. Even some of my favourites I've maybe played a handful of times, maybe even once. I tend to revisit the LucasArts back catalogue habitually, but that's about it. Maybe some games would grow on me if I replayed them a lot, but who has the time? So yeah, I do think there is something unique about the first play, I just don't think that I need to treat it as so sacred that I have to ensure that it's done with a certain 'purity'. I do like to try to recapture that feeling of a first play, if I really enjoyed it - which I've found it's possible to get a taste of by watching another person play it for the first time. Just a little second hand buzz of discovery. Do you find when you play someone else a song you really like for the first time, you listen to it with sort of fresh ears? Pay attention to it in a way that you'd forgotten how to? I find that at least. I'm sure there's some psychological mechanism at work.

There is a worry of course that if the start of the game is all it's cracked up to be, then the rest might feel like a let down in comparison. MI2's weirdness hit hard for me because it hit at the end. If ReMI's weirdness is all frontloaded and we don't see it revisted by the end, I don't know how I'll feel about that. But eh. They know what they're doing.

I think it'll be a good Monkey Island game, perhaps even a very good one. I think it'd be very unlikely if I rank it equal to 1 and 2, maybe even 3 just because especially the first two of those games were just so much part of my formative years that I find it very hard to disentangle how those games make me feel from who I am today as a person. It's nothing against ReMI to say that I don't think it is going to sit easily alongside games that feel like an almost literal part of me. But I have high hopes for it, because Ron and Dave are saying all the right things (moreso than I thought they would) and I love most of what I've seen so far. I think it'll review decently but it's a niche genre and there are a limited number of reviewers who truly appreciate it. 8/10s from the average reviewer if it's as good as I hope. It's not going to be the best selling Devolver game of this year. What are you TALKING about. Cult of the Lamb has just been a huge hit. Weird West did 400k in its launch window too.

The Ars Technica piece is pretty clear on how this secret relates to the original:

Does it? It says an early puzzle, not the earliest, and it's super vague about it.

I liked the early part. It made me more eager to play the game. I don't think it properly spoiled anything but it gave me a little taste of a couple of things. At least I didn't see anything that is arguably a real spoiler that hasn't already been mentioned in the trailers.

Ah see .... I don't worry about expectations. I agree that high expectations can lead to disappointment. But... so what? There are worse things in the world by being disappointed by a piece of media. It's not very often these days I'll be anticipating something so much I will follow every little piece of information coming out about it. About the only things that currently do this for me are ReMI and whatever's going on in FFXIV. But it happens from time to time. And I enjoy getting excited about a thing. That feeling lasts a long time, and is nice. If I'm disappointed by it in the end, that feeling might be quite intense depending on how much I was looking forward to it. But it's also fleeting. There's always another thing. That thing didn't work out? Oh well, it's really no biggie. Maybe the next thing will. I'm not going to spend very long moping about what might have been. Expectations might affect my experience but at absolute worse I'll be a bit sad it wasn't what I hoped , or in the opposite situation the best thing that could happen is that I'll get a pleasant surprise. So I don't feel compelled to organise my behaviour around managing my expecations. Sometimes they'll be exceeded and that's nice. Sometimes they'll not be met and that's a bit of a bummer. Such is life. (incidentally my friends saw Rogue One at the same time as me, but I might recall it getting some buzz at the time. Everything Everywhere all at once was getting huge buzz when I saw it, and I did know about that, and it didn't stop me getting blown away)

The thing is, I'm not sure I subscribe to the premise of the thought experiment. Firstly both the examples you gave were of films. The experience of watching a film is very different to that of playing a game. If you watch even 5 minutes of a film in advance you've seen a significant chunk. If I gave a few examples I would want to think of games, because I think my attitude to game spoilers is somewhat different to film spoilers. But I'll try. Incidentally, though, it's difficult for me to think of films I've been disappointed by... I tend to only watch ones I think I'll like and I'm usually right, so it would be hard for me to think of film examples. Nothing comes to mind right now. I'm not a huge moviegoer. As for game disappointments - the Longest Journey, that's my go-to one. My pre-knowledge of TLJ was that it was very very highly regarded as an adventure game, and I believe I'd played a demo of it once too, but by the time that I got round to playing it I had no memory of the demo except that I think part of it was on a boat. As for game 'blown away' experiences, there've been quite a few. Deus Ex springs to mind from way back (I played the demo over and over trying to complete it in every possible way, and remember it being one where I read a lot of previews and saw a lot of buzz pre-release). Portal would qualify - I didn't know very much about that one going in. The Stanley Parable, similar. Grim Fandango... I believe I must have looked at everything I could get my hands on for that game, but I can't say I remember well. If I had to give film examples I'd say recently in the +++ pile, Everything Everywhere All At Once - I knew some of the stars, and that there was some sort of multiverse plot line but I knew nothing else. Knives Out I knew was a mystery and nothing else. In the --- pile as I say, it's much harder for me to think. Maybe Star Wars: Rogue One? Most of my friends loved it and I just thought it was okay. I knew it was about the Death Star plans, apart from that, I don't recall looking up much about the film, maybe I saw a trailer. The 3rd of the new Star Wars films too. That was disappointing. I really enjoyed The Last Jedi but I had a feeling the 3rd one wouldn't deliver on its promise. I didn't expect it to fail as badly as it did. I did follow some of the pre-release material for that, but not really very closely. I'm not sure if it's a good example as I didn't have high hopes for it. This was a case where it failed to meet even my pretty low expectations. My overall sense is that it varies, that's why it's hard for me to give just one example. Sometimes I feel that going in completely sight unseen enhanced the experience, other times not so much. I don't ever recall a game being ruined for me by a spoiler, I'd have to think about that very hard. It's possible! But it's not actually something I spend that much time thinking about because I'm someone who ... doesn't seek spoilers but isn't particularly concerned about them either. I wouldn't want to hear about big twists, but I can't think of an example of being spoiled on a big twist. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to construct a counterargument, as I'm really not, I'm just trying to come up with examples as honestly as I can, and when I look at it it's hard for me to come up with the examples you want because I just... don't think about this stuff in these terms. Sometimes I like a thing, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it blows me a way. Often that's when I know nothing in advance, but not all the time, and I feel... perfectly comfortable with my current approach to spoilers, which is why I just don't really think about it much. You, as someone who obviously thinks about it a lot might not understand the perspective of someone for whom this is just not... really a big thing. Not in the sense of I don't care about spoilers, I do, to the extent that I try not to be spoiled on big plot details and twists, etc. But I really spend zero time worrying that I'll see too much of something, so answering your question, in the way you frame it, is genuinely hard for me.😅

I totally respect people's desire not to want spoilers. But I also think a few things: Firstly I think everyone would agree different people have a different relationship with spoilers and I don't think it makes sense to assume what is true for one person about them is also true for everyone else. I also think attitudes to spoilers have changed a bit over the years to the point that I feel like if I, personally, treated spoilers with the same level of aversion that some people do, then it would ruin a different pleasure for me - that is to say, the pleasure of anticipating something through the slow drip of information. I like this bit - obviously I don't want to know the whole story, all the twists, all the jokes, and I'm looking forward to meeting characters, visiting locations, hearing music and solving puzzles for the first time when I play the game. But I... basically trust that Ron and team also don't want to reveal anything they believe is best experienced fresh in the game for the first time. So I don't feel like I want to cut myself off. I enjoy the bit where we get to analyse every shot, guess at what it means, speculate on stuff. It's always been part of the fun for me. I did it for CMI, EMI, Tales. If I tried to shut my eyes and close my ears, I might, possibly, be improving my first time experience of whatever 60 seconds of game I refuse to watch, or I might not see something about the themes of the game that Dave mentions in an interview, but I'd also simultaneously be denying myself the joy of speculation, that drip of information that heightens my anticipation. I only get to play the game for the first time once, but I also only get to anticipate the release once too - and I can't replay my anticipation. I do think that some movie trailers do a pretty poor job of holding stuff back in a way that could lessen enjoyment. But as far as ReMI goes, if you'd told me know I could erase my Monkey Island related memories of the last 6 months and so play the game as if completely unseen, I think I'd still say no, because that would mean erasing all the fun I've had wondering about what will happen, hanging on Ron and Dave's every tweet, pausing the trailer every half second to get a closer look. I mean... I THINK we've had fun... right?

I really do feel like bumbling from problem to problem of his own making is peak guybrush, and so presumably they won't be making him TOO competent. I like how in the latest clip nobody knows or cares who he is. I think that's as it should be. No matter how much he achieves on paper, everyone sees him as at best irrelevant, and at worst an annoyance who gets in the way. Though I like the character of Morgan LeFlay, on my last play of Tales I wasn't that enamoured with the idea of a Guybrush fan. It helped that later on she discovers her idea of Guybrush was severely distorted, but still I feel like Guybrush doesn't quite work if he truly becomes a legend. The only people who really consistently care he exists are Elaine and LeChuck... and perhaps the Voodoo Lady.