MurraySchull

Will be out of town for a week or so but I'll be able to play the game properly upon my return. Have sampled the prologue however and you guys have done a great job! Am looking forward to seeing how the remainder of the game was preserved and remastered. (Also thanks for making me feel old by realising that I'm now playing remasters of games that I played the first time around at launch!) (Little thing, though, after Max turned back from a plant in the prologue, he remained invisible while Sam was talking to him and popped back in after the cutscene. Just thought I'd flag it up here!) And yes, in terms of future projects for Skunkape, a remaster of Tales seems to make the most sense to me and I'd be all over that. I don't even think Disney/Lucas owns Tales in its' entirety as it's never included in the game bundles with the rest of the games (including Return), so I guess it would be a matter of either purchasing the rights from whomever owns the non-Disney share of Tales now (am just guessing!) and then getting the all clear from Disney/Lucas to make it happen? IMO, Tales has a lot going for it in terms of the main characters' journeys and the general storyline, but I realised upon my 2022 playthrough that it's let down by the visuals of the day (the close-ups on the low-polygon character models in particular do a lot to remind me that the visuals are holding it back) so I think improving the visuals similar to the S&M remasters would help give the game a great overall lift. (I was actually never bothered by the repeated character models, but if they want to re-work the minor characters' models a little more, I wouldn't say no to that.) Would also be great to hear the music played live where possible as the melodies themselves are great, but they just need that "authentic Caribbean flavour" that CMI/EMI has to bring it up to those levels. Would also love to hear Leilani Jones Wilmore as the Voodoo Lady in Tales before it's too late, just to maintain that consistency across the series.

I have my physical CD’s of the Season 1 and 2 soundtracks, and it always kind-of stung that we never got a matching Season 3 soundtrack. If we did see an official physical S3 soundtrack release that lined up perfectly with the other two in terms of appearance, layout, design, shape, etc. (barring the Skunkape logo instead of TTG of course), I’d absolutely be open to purchasing it, if only to complete the lineup! Am looking forward to the release of Series 3’s remaster very much, and am hoping to soon have the opportunity to introduce my younger cousins to adventure games in digestible chunks beginning with Season 1 Episode 1, progressing until the end of Season 3. I felt the S&M episodes would be a great place to start!

Upgrade kit was delivered yesterday. First things' first, the order of the games has been corrected on the new cover! Very happy that they took the opportunity to fix that while they could. The rest of the art is the same as before, just with Return added at the bottom of the games lists. The golden key is smaller than I imagined it's be but it still looks good, well made and sturdy. My copy of ReMI for PS5 arrived with this set too. (I still don't have a PS5 so I'll keep it sealed for now just in-case!)

Finally got my dispatch notice on the "upgrade kit" yesterday, so it looks like those are being sent out now. Would imagine it will be arriving in 1-2 weeks or so.

Still nothing on the Anthology Upgrade for me. I enquired about a month ago and got the standard "according to the website, it's still in development so it's not shipping yet!" Apparently the standalone editions (at least the PS5 version) has been shipping for a while now, but Limited Run groups all of your items into one order and withholds sending any of your order until everything is ready. Which makes sense I guess, but it's still been over a year now!

Yeah but relatively it was a short enough gap that I’m willing to let it slide in order for the rest of the rock-solid theory to pan out! 😉 Speaking of theories, I like to think that Guybrush/Elaine got back in their ship, sailed back into the real tri-island area, and the mystical fog or portal or whatever made them lose their memories of everything that happened in SoT ( and maybe the portal got all confused both times and made Elaine’s voice go all screwy, which may canonically explain her different voices in SoT and Escape ) that way, this SoT chapter could still fit comfortably enough in the series. The dream-like state of these episodes also make it easier to be more flexible on canon too. Yeah I know ReMI made it so that wavering canon isn’t as big of a deal in this series, I’m just trying to make some kind of effort to piece it all together logically!! P.S. Are @Jake and @Marius planning to continue playing SoT anytime soon?

Finally got a chance to finish the game! (Was out of town for a few weeks so was only able to begin recently.) Overall, though there was a lot that I enjoyed about this third part (for the same reasons as the first two parts, the music, the atmosphere, the environments, etc.) I found this part the most cumbersome to play. Most of the puzzles were really quite clumsy largely due to them being so spread out, particularly the telescope puzzle, which unless I missed something, didn't really establish itself as something that needed to be carried out. In a MI game, you can talk to other characters to gather an idea on what to do next. This felt like much more trial and error, which also felt a lot riskier given how spaced out the island was. Steering Kate's ship in the right corners of the lava tunnels was also a nightmare. I also encountered more glitches this time around. TWICE I emerged from the water in a cave in an area that I clearly wasn't supposed to discover (and I dropped one of my items down there, so that was fun trying to recreate the glitch to find it again!) and there were a few mismatched dialogue/character labels in the climax (i.e. LeChuck delivering a line, but the subtitles read "Kate Capsize" etc.) A few music tracks, sound effects and VO lines also didn't play / play correctly near the end either, namely during the LeChuck fight and as we were sailing away, which again kills the illusion to a degree. And as always, that checkpoint system is the worst. It doesn't suit the "casual gaming" style that I'm forced to play games in nowadays. But yeah, everything I said before still stands. This game has the best atmosphere and immersion of all of the Monkey Island games. The orchestration of the music is also absolutely stellar, and exploring these locations in 3D is an absolute dream. But yeah, story and writing wise, it's pretty weak when the content is not lifted directly from the original games, and the interface is still very awkward for me as well. I think this is definitely the MI game I'd go back to the least for all of those reasons, so I'd probably rank it at the bottom of my list, but I also don't want to undersell the areas that the game really does excel at. I'd really be interested to know if this expansion was a hit or not. It really didn't seem to get people talking that much online, even among these forums, but being a free DLC, I suppose it'd be difficult to judge. Maybe they'll just gauge how many people played all three episodes to the end and determine if it was a success based on that. As a side note... has anybody noticed the pattern that Monkey Islands' returns seems to be following? MI1/MI2 *6 years later* CMI/EMI *9 years later* TMI / SE's *12 years later* ReMI / SeMI Based on all of this, and assuming another three years are added to the next hiatus, Monkey Island's next return should be due in 2038! Mark your calendars for another two games from then! (Followed shortly by a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Secret!!! )

Great interview! Great to hear some insight into what to expect with Episode 3, and Dom’s future in general! Annoyingly I won’t be able to play the episode for another couple of weeks but I’ll be back to report on it once I’ve finished playing!

Finally finished Part 2! Some spoiler-ish thoughts below: I still think the "checkpoint" save system is a garbage way of playing a tall tale, pretty much making it very difficult to play the game casually as I'm forced to do at this time of life! Every time I load the game, I need to sail into that stupid portal and watch the LeChuck scene again. Wish there was an option to just pick up directly where I left off and bypass all of that. (Plus, I lost all of my swordfighting progress after finishing the treasure trial first and then closing, which irked me!) But yeah, on the other hand... I *really* cannot stress how GOOD the music is in these games. They absolutely nailed the "Deep In The Caribbean" atmosphere that CMI/EMI had. As good as the other games' soundtracks were (the SE's, Tales, Return) I don't think they quite had the atmosphere and instrumentation down the way those other two games did, and they don't quite invoke the same "piratey, caribbean, tropical" feeling as those soundtracks, but this game brought it all back. Of the main series canon, Curse probably has the strongest atmosphere, but even then, I think SeMI (if that's really what we're calling it!) has topped it. I don't think I've ever been as enriched in Melee Island's visuals as I have here. Everything from the ambient sound effects, the fog, the birds, it really feels like a living, breathing world where the other games, even at their height, still felt like you were playing a game. I'm just gonna say it. This is the real MI1 Special Edition. 😎 Really hope they get the chance to do this with MI2's storyline down the line as well. It's difficult to gauge at this point if this tall tale is finding an audience or not, and if the typical SoT player / MI player really does cross over as much as they're hoping.

New trailer for Episode 2! In particular, a sneak peek at some of the returning characters. Loved that pirate leaders line! https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cwh99jsq1nP/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== There was also an earlier posts that confirms Carla (she shares a voice actress with the Voodoo Lady, so it was probably a safe bet that she’d appear, but it’s cool to see it confirmed!) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cwh5B-0NKkp/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Next Tall Tale coming 31st August! https://www.instagram.com/p/CwUr0j8OTv8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Am very curious if voiceover for Part 3 was able to be completed before the actor strikes began. The fact that Part 2 is coming so soon makes me hopeful that it was.

Okay, after all of my hassles in working out the interface, questbook and checkpoints, I FINALLY was able to get through the chapter! It’s rare that I struggle with a games’ interface like I have with SoT (maybe I took the SCUMM interface for granted all this time!), and maybe on consoles it’s fine, but it’s a pain on PC. Had a number of glitches that wouldn’t let me speak to characters too, which I would later find out weren’t gamebreaking, but still annoying. BUT… the good stuff. Yeah, atmospherically this game is something else. It might even capture the “piratey” atmosphere in a way that many of the official games didn’t (save for perhaps Curse) and it absolutely has the production values to pull that off. Environmentally too, this was clearly made with love. The music is wonderful too. If MI1 had more ambient music, it’d probably sound something like this. Wish there was a way to integrate the new music into SMISE. Was also pleasantly surprised how many of the SMISE voice actors came back too (in particular the pirate leaders, who I THINK were recast for ReMI, but all keep their original VA’s here.) And YES to more Jess Harnell as the storekeeper! Kate Capsize’s voice was definitely recast but I wasn’t a big fan of her MI2SE performance anyway. Her SoT voice definitely seems like a better fit for her. Otis also had his ReMI voice actor again. I’d guess his original actor retired or was unreachable for these new games. I like his new voice but I did love his SMI/EMI voice more. So I guess Corina was just messing with Guybrush in particular about her name all these years. Elaine knew it already! XD Murray having a working body and being unable to keep it under control was hilarious! In a strange way, it never really bothered me when Melee Island was redesigned in Escape (despite it being moreorless done for the sake of it than any narrative reason) nor when the majority of the side characters didn’t appear. But seeing them return in ReMI and this game, and keeping their designs and geometry intact, it does retroactively feel more important to keep those elements familiar when returning to them. Also turns out there actually was a clever way that this could fit in alongside the series with this world being a dream-like state. In that sense, even when removing the “telling a story to my son” element, this plot could still work in the timeline. And yeah, despite my grievances with the interface itself, once I found out what did what, it WAS fun to play. I enjoyed finding the different things I could do with the different object I had (i.e. the banjo and the accordion). I don’t know if I’ll ever have the time to play SoT for the main story but it’s a fun game to muck about in! Yeah, very short and could probably be easily done in one sitting, but for a free DLC especially, I got exactly what I was expecting upon announcement. Looking forward to more!

I must be a total idiot because I genuinely can't see any log book on my ship. Only a book that I can use to "Cancel The Tall Tale" which I'm scared to press. I can open my "Quest Book" in my inventory to reveal a drawing of Scabb/Phatt/Booty, but if it's supposed to be useful to gameplay, then I've got nothing. Also maybe the interface is easier on consoles, but on PC it's a real chore. Really makes me appreciate ReMI's interface all the more.

Yeah, I lost all of my progress the first time, then got a little further and ran into a glitch where I couldn't use the second interaction/talk key with specific key characters (which worked the first time I played it). I had some minor glitches like that when I first played the other day, but interacting with another object first usually fixed it, whereas todays' glitch remained constant even after dying. I was told that my "quest book had been updated with a checkpoint" or something, so I restarted the game hoping it'd load where I left off, and it put me back at the beginning of the level again with no sign of my progress. I AM really enjoying the atmosphere, the returning voice actors, the environments and the MUSIC (I wish there was a way to put this supplementary music into the MI1SE!) and it's undeniable how much love and effort went into this DLC, but yeah, between the glitches and the lack of saving/loading options, in terms of progressing through the story, it's pretty much unplayable as it is. The glitches were probably a freak accident and don't affect everybody, but they didn't exactly give me the best first impression of Sea of Thieves. If saving/loading REALLY works like that in the standard Sea of Thieves, that's pretty damn abysmal imo.

Um... there's a way to save your progress, right?... Am really enjoying the atmosphere and exploring the environments, but I'm not seeing any save/load options anywhere...

SoT is currently down for maintenance (presumably while they're loading Legend's assets into the servers) but we have a start-game screen in the meantime with some new details! (And a new version of the main theme!) Yeah, what a great deep dive! A ton of love and passion obviously went into creating the expansion and it confirms some awesome things that I was hoping for! Love what they've done with the "iMuse" like effects in the Scumm Bar too. If Monkey 1 had been made a year later with more music capability, it would've probably done something like that.

New promo video for the first “tall tale.” Some first looks at the characters. In particular, the storekeeper! After the false start we got with his lack of appearing in Return, he seems to be finally featuring in this game. Can only hope Jess Harnell still voices him and gives is some more hilarious reads. In general, every character seems to be faithful to their SMI classic mode designs as opposed to the special edition.

At least we know LeChuck isn't telling the story. Dead men tell no tales.

Or maybe it's his kid telling the story this time... 🤨

That or Guybrush and Elaine's wedding ship unknowingly slipped through a fissure in time, eventually leading to the events of Legend. Sometime after the ending of Legend, Guybrush and Elaine got back on their ship and unknowingly slipped back through the fissure, wiping their memories of the events of Legend, accidentally colliding with a ship of random pirates who board their vessel, tie Guybrush to his own mast, battle Elaine, and set the events of Escape in motion. Tada! Canon! 😎

Some new Monkey Island cosmetics coming to Sea of Thieves in time for Episode 1's launch next Saturday! (Including a piranha poodle!) We also get our first brief look at Elaine. I picked up Sea of Thieves in the recent Steam sale but have yet to make a start on it! Will probably try and learn the ropes of it at some point this week. The reveal that the story takes place following on from the end of Curse honestly makes even less sense than before (Since Escape begins only three months after Curse, there's no time for Guybrush to be Governor and in the mansion for almost a year.) So I'm just gonna ignore any sense of canon that this game will have and just treat it as a bonus feature.

Saw it yesterday. No spoilers but overall had a good time. I did always have a worry leading up to the movie that this one, no matter how good it was, was inevitably going to feel “tacked on”. The first three movies were basically standalone and episodic. And the fourth, for all its faults, acted as a bookend for the series with the movies’ final scenes. And yeah, this one basically is an extension of the series without a huge amount of reason for being. In terms of visual effects and tone, the film works a lot better than Crystal Skull and better captures the spirit of Indiana Jones. It feels like the natural progression from the 80’s movies if they had more advanced CGI available. From a story point of view, however, it’s another Indy movie, and even Crystal Skull did more to further the main characters and world than this one (plus I did truthfully prefer the side characters in Crystal Skull as well. I think people are quick to forget that John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone, etc. were all in that movie and did excellent jobs. I feel they get lost in the bashing of everything else!) Also it’s probably important to note that this is not Indiana Jones: Endgame, where every plot thread from earlier movies is paid off masterfully. It’s a movie in a series of relatively disconnected movies that just happens to be the last one. Treat it as a stand-alone movie and you’ll have a good time! I’d say of the three Lucas properties Disney has adapted, this one has fared the best overall (assuming this will indeed be the only movie like they’re promising). I was honestly enjoying the Star Wars revival a lot until The Rise of Skywalker, which lets the whole thing down for me. And Willow was just a dumpster fire with the occasional good moment buried in an avalanche of awfulness, and all things considered, honestly deserves to be buried. But yeah, Indy 5… good!

Same, I'd have gone with different labels too, but this was the only template on the site I could find that included all 14 Lucas adventure games plus Return. So, you know, give and take! A couple of these sort-of overlap a little bit. I'd probably have put "Save The World" in the third tier originally, but the remaster pushed it up to second for me with the visual facelift. I was also teetering between tier 2 and 3 for Maniac Mansion. (Was also semi-teetering Escape for tier 2 and 3, but I can't help having a soft spot for it!) Broken Age is on my list to play, however, as I still have it from the Double Fine pandemic sale!

Was feeling curious, with enough time having passed since Return's release, what our thoughts were on whereabouts it ranks alongside the other Monkey Island/LucasArts games. Then I started thinking about Tiermaker and wondered if a template had been made yet that included Return. Lo and behold! : Create a LucasArts & More Tier List - TierMaker (There were a couple of other options on Tiermaker that were more extensive, but weren't completely up to date.) I've given the games their scores in terms of how they compare to each other. (i.e. I don't think Zak actually is "Dreadful", just when compared to the rest of the games!) And yes, it appears I've yet to catch up with the majority of the side-Lucas titles! Here's mine:

Will Sea of Thieves definitely be in the sale this year? I'll pick it up on Steam then if so.