MurraySchull

Just finished replaying Last Crusade and Fate of Atlantis ahead of Dial of Destiny's release. Been 5-10 years since I've last played them, and still enjoyed them both for different reasons. Crusade is definitely the rougher and more dated of the two in terms of interface and visuals, and even tonally it's a little all over the place as well, but in terms of having an open-ended nature, it's remarkable how many variations of puzzle solutions there are, some of which involve entire sections being able to be bypassed while other sections are made more fun with the optional alternatives. It makes the game more re-playable than it might have been to know that there are multiple ways to play it that can potentially change the game significantly. I will be honest and say that given the number of easily findable dead-ends, I found the game very difficult to play without a guide. Thankfully, Thunderpeel's Game Guide is still proving useful after all these years! Music in the game is fairly limited as in most of the older games (and mostly lifted from the movie) but it's still nice to hear in MIDI form regardless. Overall, a good game despite the technological limitations from the time. (Also, Last Crusade is easily my favourite of the Indy movies so I'm happy to have the game available as a companion piece.) Fate of Atlantis in my opinion still holds up as easily one of the best of the LucasArts Adventures. Primarily, again, because of the replayability, most of which is due to the three paths, and all three are worth replaying the game for to experience them all. That being said, I don't find the names of the paths (wits, fists, team) to be completely representative of the puzzles themselves (i.e. I didn't find the wits path significantly harder than the other two, Sophia reunites with you in the other paths eventually, and in the fists path there are at least two fights which are far more preferable to skip!) But yes, the three paths is a definite standout of the game that sets it apart from a lot of the other LucasArts games. The soundtrack despite being MIDI completely captures the spirit of the John Williams soundtracks and the melodies themselves are very memorable. I really enjoy the story, characters and puzzles. Despite deaths still being possible in this game, I don't *think* there are dead ends in terms of puzzle design (I could be wrong). The game honestly feels like a nice mid-point between the pre-MI1 and post-MI1 era, in which death is still possible, but you need to make an effort to make it happen, which feels perfect for an Indiana Jones adventure game, to be honest. Fate of Atlantis' only real limitation is the technology it was made with, which is fairly clear particularly now in 2023. Despite that, however, I'm actually very happy to consider FoA canon alongside the movies, which is a remarkable achievement given the difference in format and style, and says a lot about the games' merit as a work of art. I very much doubt we'll ever see a remaster of these particular games (barring unofficial fan remakes) but one can dream of how the games may appear with an updated visual style and interface while keeping the gameplay intact. When the Lucas special editions/remasters got it right, they got it right. I'd have liked to have seen these games (particularly Fate of Atlantis) get another chance someday.

The three “Tall Tales” release monthly according to the pinned comment on seaofthieves’ Instagram post!

It does really make me question where exactly this fits into the storyline. Granted, Return thankfully made those details less important with the way the stories are framed, but even aside from that, you ever notice that there's genuinely no consistency at all with G/E's relationship between games?! Secret: Guybrush smitten with Elaine. Revenge: Elaine angry at Guybrush. Curse: Guybrush is the only man Elaine ever loved. Escape: G/E are in love like a 1970's sitcom married couple. Tales: Some potential trust issues but G/E are still in love. Return: G/E are in love and as cute with each other as could possibly be. If they're hinting that Guybrush and Elaine are broken up, or worse, that can only place this game after Return. But still, their relationship is a real rollercoaster between games, and it feels like we miss huge chunks of it based on how they interact! Their overly-cutesy interactions with each other in Return almost felt like a overcorrection after they decided to change it from G/E being separated from each other. And yeah, Guybrush's appearance in this checks out when combined with the line about him being locked away in the mansion for a year. It makes me think there's been a tragedy, or the like, in his life to the degree that he wants to distance himself from the rest of the island, despite being Governor, apparently!

A few more details. The first of three “Tall Tales” focusing on MI launches on July 20th, apparently… https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172620/Sea_of_Thieves_2023_Edition/

In before the Mojo news post!! Woah, another out of the blue announcement! Was literally just thinking moments before that the time to strike with a new Monkey Island may be sooner rather than later (so that we can make the most of the vocal talent while they’re with us, etc.) and it sounds like LucasFilmGames agrees! I’m getting the impression that this is more of a DLC than a full game (particularly since it appears to be free to those who own Sea of Thieves) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being on the short side, but all the same, any way that means Monkey Island continues is good enough for me! I never played Sea of Thieves, by the way, but this will certainly change that decision. The animation from the trailer isn’t exactly Pixar quality, but seeing these classic locations from MI1 being able to be explored in full 3D is surely going to be wonderful. Sounds like mostly all of the characters’ voice actors from Return specifically are in this too. Makes me wonder how/if it fits into the plot of that game. Just over a month to go! Will keep an eye on this closely! EDIT: Also this means the LimitedRun set is out of date again, GDI.

Cressup (behind the excellent interviews with LucasArts/Adventure Game legends) is releasing an interview with Tim Schafer today, apparently... 👀 Cressup - YouTube P.S. I really should play Psychonauts at some point!

If my calculations are correct, we would’ve found out about Return one year ago exactly. What a day that was, huh? Happy anniversary!

Has it been a year already?! I gave the initial April 1st post next to no thought at all. The last MI game was 12 years ago (13 if you don’t count the special editions) and Ron didn’t have the license, so I put no stock into the idea that it might be real. Then April 4th came, and I had one of those “the world has stopped turning” moments as the trailer launched, the reactions poured in, the community reassembled, and key players that we hadn’t heard from in a decade or so all “revealing the secret” that they’d kept from us all this time. The announcement was a wonderful moment, and seeing the trailer on Devolver’s YouTube account reaching the #5 trending video on the entire site that day (not just in gaming, in general) really felt like something special was happening. I’ve played the game twice since launch, and while I can’t quite say I can call it my favourite for a few reasons (lack of Earl Boen and a few other recast actors, etc.) the good moments in the game really stand out, and really elevated the series to a new level in terms of storytelling. Even though I think the ending could’ve been executed better on a technical level (I.e. I think it could’ve really benefited from some Telltale-style dynamic camera work to better sell the emotions and set the scene of the reveal) after sitting with it for six months or so, I accept what it did for the series in terms of recontextualising it and giving us plenty to theorise about, even if I don’t fully follow it. (That being said, I like it MUCH better than the YouTube crowd at the time. OOF you should’ve seen their reactions!!) EDIT: Not to mention that Noah Falstein, Dom, etc. really weren’t joking about the opening scenes of the game and how it deals with the end of MI2. The reveal made my jaw hit the floor in a way that very few pieces of media have in a long time. Absolutely brilliant storytelling.

LimitedRun have responded to my email regarding the ordering of the titles on the spine and have stated that the order will be "printed as shown"in the attached image. Hopefully this will indeed be the case as the promo art on the 30th Anniversary collection from 2020/2021 was correct as well, only to be incorrect upon printing! At least there's less reason now for the order to still be broken on the reprinted editions, plus the fact that they've been given the heads up! P.S. That golden key bundle seems to be gone! 🤭

Yeah, the book was very extensive and clearly had a lot of effort put into it, but it definitely needed another proofread. There’s a lot of, mostly minor, typos and grammatical errors here and there that add up over the course of the book (i.e. Earl Bone) and one or two misplaced sections. (An El Pollo Diablo anecdote midway through the MI2 retrospective.) It’s also fairly unbalanced in the sense that MI1 and 2 have a significant number of pages devoted to them while Tales has maybe four.

Nicely done! 😜 Surely having ONE collectors set, the anthology upgrade kit, and the other three golden keys for a relatively lower price would’ve been a more enticing option than including an additional, and redundant, THREE copies of everything in the collectors editions!! At a push, include all four game platforms if they have to just to avoid having to make multiple listings, but we don’t need four copies of EVERYTHING in the gift sets!! I kindof hope this backfires and they reconsider that listing to a more reasonable alternative. I’ve gone for the stand-alone physical edition of the game on PS5 (I don’t have a PS5 yet but it’s next in line when my 4K Blu-ray player dies) and the anthology upgrade kit. I’ve also dropped LimitedRun an email to check if the games on the side of the box will be ordered correctly. Will post the response when/if it arrives.

If you wanted to buy all of ReMI's collectors editions and golden keys in one bundle... turns out you can do just that!! Return to Monkey Island Gold Key Bundle – Limited Run Games EDIT: Also, preorders are live now!!

Regarding the order of the games being incorrect on the 30th Anniversary Limited Run set, I looked back over the promo art of the set and saw that the order was actually correct there: https://limitedrungames.com/products/monkey-island-30th-anniversary-anthology-pc But somewhere in-between promo and print, the order got switched. I would *hope* that they’ve fixed the order now that they’ve created a new version including ReMI, but if this is anything to go by, there’s no guarantee. Is there a way of ensuring that the error will be fixed before we put the money down on the upgrade collection? Seems like LimitedRun have basically shut off public interactions on their social media.

Very pleasantly surprised to see that an upgrade kit will be available for the Anthology set. I'm not the physical collector that I used to be when I bought the anthology set (in 2020!) , so I think I'll skip over the individual ReMI box and get the upgrade pack just for the sake of completion. Also, I *really* hope they've taken this opportunity to switch the Curse/Escape logos to the correct order on the outer sleeve. (They are corrected in the promo art, but we can only hope that the same revised visuals will be ported over to the actual outer sleeve. That was a really embarrassing mistake last time.) The ReMI collectors edition items are cool, but I think the ones in the upgrade kit will be enough since it'll also include one of the golden keys, and I don't know if I'd make active use of the other collectors items, even for display. Part of me is also tempted to pick up a PS5 copy of ReMI, even though I don't own a PS5 and have no plans of getting one at this time (not until my 4K Blu-ray player dies at least) but I also feel like this will be the only opportunity to own the game physically. (Hmmm... maybe I'll keep it sealed!)

Have been dreading the news of Earl's passing for a while and was very upset to see it confirmed last week. His casting and performance as LeChuck was absolute perfection, and it blew my mind years later to find out that he was in the Terminator movies as well. The reveal of his absence from Return near the games' announcement did put a damper on my excitement for the game, which speaks volumes about how impactful he was in the role, but in the back of my mind I did have the worry that even considering the fact that he was retired, he may not have been physically able to deliver the performance to the standard he felt LeChuck should be, hence his blessing to recast the role. I was happy with Harnell's performance in the end, and I presume he'll become LeChuck's definitive new voice actor in potential future instalments which I wouldn't be opposed to, but Earl was so iconic and his voice so naturally lent itself to LeChuck. He'll be greatly missed. P.S. Wishful thinking, but I was always hoping that @Dmnkly and Earl would just randomly meet in the street one day, Dom would take a picture with him and post it to social media captioned "All friends in the end!"

The "Previously On" feature is working for me now. Upon loading a save game, we cut first to Guybrush and his son on the bench, and Boybrush can ask for a re-cap of the story so far. A clever feature! Cheers! Overall, it seemed to be a really polished game. Seems like they went over every detail and possible interaction with a fine tooth-comb. The only real glitch that I found, so to speak, was that the music wasn't looping properly in the underwater section on Monkey Island (where we first see the squid). Wonder if that's been patched. ALSO... did you all read the note at the end of the scrapbook after completing the game? 🥲

Going back a couple of pages (this thread is moving quickly!) regarding the fan-service nature of ReMI. This was a feeling that I had about Tales in a lot of ways, but for different reasons. Tales repeated a lot of catchphrases, lines and puzzles from previous games, to a point that really towed the line between "homage" and "ripoff". Return brings back a good amount of characters and locations from, particularly, the first game, but Ron and Dave made it a point not to re-use jokes or dialogue from previous games too often, and many of ReMI's puzzles also felt more fresh to me compared to Tales. So I would argue that as a game, Return is the more fresh, original game to play by comparison, and even the returning locations and characters have evolved. Also, don't think this has been linked here yet, but Dominic appeared in Cressup's stream the other day (she's playing the game on Twitch this week) and gave his thoughts on a few moments in the game, particularly the opening (also noting that the Forgiveness Frog puzzle wasn't in the rough cut that he played originally, amongst other things): Dominic Armato (aka Guybrush) joining for a chat! - Twitch Anybody know what the 9MB Steam update was yesterday? Maybe they quietly patched a bug!

Also, what was the "Previously On" feature supposed to do? I was expecting it to give me some sort of recap when I re-loaded a saved game, but as far as I know, it didn't do anything.

FINISHED!!! (P.S. I played on Hard Mode without the Writers Cut on) - Loved every moment of it. - Curse-Tales officially represented in the games' scrapbook. Right off the bat, the canon debate has been resolved! - As mentioned in the other thread, I can't remember the last time I've been this surprised by a twist in a work of fiction. An absolutely genius way of threading together the games and recontextualising them in a way that helps the story rather than hinders it. - Would've preferred the option to use the middle mouse button to open the inventory. It felt like an unnecessary step to navigate to the bottom-left of the screen every time I wanted to see my items. - Voiceover work was exceptional. Probably the best and most consistently great cast since Escape. Returning performers were practically all on their A-game and the few re-cast actors (Otis, The Pirate Leaders, The Chef, etc.) also did great jobs. - Jess Harnell was thankfully better than he appeared in that first preview. Great comic timing and an appropriate amount of malice in his voice. Would I have loved and preferred Boen, totally, but hearing the age in some of these performers' voices that do feature in this game (particularly Neil Ross, Denny Delk and, surprisingly to me, Rob Paulsen) it may be the case that Boen just doesn't have the voice that he used to, sadly, which could be why he passed on the game. Either way, Harnell does a good job here filling in for Earl. - Artwork and animation worked wonderfully in-game. In still images, I can see how the art wouldn't do it for everybody, but in the context of the game, the LIFE in this art and animation, the background motion, the colours, the mood, etc. is just wonderful. - Parts I through III, I practically breezed through. The puzzle solutions just came naturally to me, only having to use hints a couple of times, which I wasn't expecting, and I really felt that the game was going to be over before I knew it. Part IV thankfully was more difficult and longer, and I had to use the hintbook a few more times, which is a far better alternative in this day and age to quitting the game to find a walkthrough. - MI1: THREE trials. MI2: FOUR map pieces. ReMI: FIVE keys. - Soundtrack was largely one/two giant tracks running through each part/island, switching up the instruments in each room in an iMuse fashion. Feel like this may have been a method to keep the track numbers down but the interactivity flowing, which I think worked out really well for a game. Admittedly, I did find the reprises of the original tracks more memorable than the new music, but as this was only my first playthrough, I'll let the tracks sit in my mind first! Standout tracks for me so far were LeChuck's ship and the Brrr Muda town hall. - With Morgan LeFlay being represented, not only in the scrapbook but also a dialogue-tree puzzle (and an author of one of Carla's books also having the last name "LeFlay") I was genuinely expecting her to make a surprise appearance by the end. Was low-key surprised when she didn't. - I still had *lots* of trivia cards that I hadn't found at the end. Either I'm bad at searching or the remaining cards can be found across the other modes? - The scene with the former pirate leaders on the streets of Melee never played for me. I imagine this is a Writers Cut scene (or potentially Easy Mode?) I also don't believe I ever got the scene with Elaine lowering herself into the pit. - Some of the puzzles seemed to go nowhere? There was no reason to free Otis at the beginning (which is probably why it was the gameplay preview video in retrospect) barring getting an achievement, but I also didn't ultimately need to give Putra a promotion. I thought that might sway her vote to go to Monkey Island towards me, but ultimately it wasn't needed. - Zero reference to the Voodoo Lady's true allegiance. I totally get why they skipped over Herman being Elaine's grandfather (we had one very small potential reference of "Herman Toothrot?" "I think so?!", and even Elaine refers to him as "Herman Toothrot" at one point) but I really thought the Voodoo Lady's allegiance would be followed through in Return, given what a big deal it was at the end of Tales. It also seemed like a Ron-esque idea as well. Maybe this is just something we're supposed to assume resolved itself in-between games. - I need to think about the ending some more. I... think I get it... XD Where the opening had my jaw dropped, the ending had me sitting in silence contemplating what just happened. And I feel that's probably the point, and I was expecting some degree of ambiguity about the secret anyway, and I'd partially joked the other day about the game leaving it up to interpretation. It's not *quite* the out-of-game experience that Thimbleweed Park's ending was, but it's definitely on the same family tree. Anyway, yes. I told myself I'd break up the playthroughs, but now that there's a writers cut AND an easy mode? That changes things... Going to replay very soon, I think, and complete my thoughts... P.S. Take a look at the Steam achievements to see other things that you can try. Nine of mine are hidden until they're discovered in-game.

MAN I wish there could've been a camera on me at the moment when the camera panned over and revealed my jaw dropped. Then when I hovered the cursor over it and revealed ...my jaw was on the floor. 31 years of theories and predictions... did *anybody* manage to predict this correctly?!! 😵 I don't think I ever saw one person suggesting that I was racking my brain trying to think what Noah, Dom, etc. could've possibly meant by the game having such an unbelievably clever way of dealing with MI2's ending that didn't involve time travel or "a wizard did it" logic, that we couldn't have figured out anyway. But man, did they find a way. I think this is honestly the most surprised I've been by a twist in a work of fiction for a long time. I don't have that much of a visible reaction to movies/games/TV anymore (I still feel, it's just internalised!) but yeah, this was something else. And yes. I have finished the game! I don't have the coherency to write an essay on the whole thing (again, this opening is the exception), so I'll post my full thoughts in bullet points in the other thread. Teaser reaction: "!!!!!!!!!!"

In my leadup to release, I’ve finally finished the Monkey Island Chronicles book that came with the LimitedRun Anthology collection. (I’ve been putting it off for a while and wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I didn’t finish today!) Man, the end of the book is so ironic and weird to see so much of the team saying that there’ll never be another Monkey Island, that it had a good run, that they hope Ron’s third game gets a chance to happen, and Ron himself stating that he’d love to make another game. Particularly knowing that when the book was being made, he was in active development on ReMI. (Just envisioning him now signing all of those certificates and cackling to himself.) Overall it was a great book. Lots of anecdotes and backstory behind the games, lots of input from the original team, lots of archival art and a good amount of deleted content, etc. I’d say all that holds it back is it needed another lookover before publishing. The number of typos and errors (ie. Earl BONE, Tales FROM Monkey Island, etc.) and randomly misplaced sections (I.e. an anecdote about El Pollo Diablo in the middle of MI2’s retrospective) and other moments like that do add up. Plus, the set is basically obsolete now anyway given ReMI. Maybe we’ll see a 35th Anniversary set which will include ReMI and the Curse - Tales remasters that will definitely happen probably maybe.

That’s when the game’s activating, right? Sometimes with Steam releases, we can download the games earlier but they’ll only activate at a specific time. Haven’t seen any signs of being able to download the game early yet.

Or, if they want to go a step further to drive us nuts... it's totally randomised!

So close!!! Just checked Steam to see if the download had enabled at this milestone, but still nothing yet. (Any idea of when this might be activated or is it just randomised?) Switch owners apparently are able to download the game at this point.