MurraySchull

Woah, sounds like you can pretty much knock through the lite-mode of the four map pieces chapter in 20 minutes! I think I only played easy mode once and forgot about half of these expedited solutions.

Did easy mode in MI2 skip over the Captain Kate plot entirely? I have vague memories of just walking into the Booty Boutique and simply buying the map piece. Was it really as easy as that? (If that's the case, I guess that removes the need for the spitting contest and library puzzles as well.)

Yes it is. The later games do definitely have their moments as far as "cruel humour" goes! As a side-note, I'm just picturing the level of speculation, concern and panic that would ignite in these threads in the event that the voice actor of Jojo Jr. announced they were returning for ReMI...

Jojo Jr. tells Guybrush that his father, Jojo Sr. , was swinging on the lever that controlled the Monkey Head switch after being trained to hang there (in MI1), but never recieved the command to let go, so he "starved to death, waiting for a simple command that never came!" Guybrush can also examine his grave later on but I don't remember if he had any particular quips about it there. As a side note, the monkey in MI1 that hangs on the switch is never named in-game, but in MI2, the piano playing monkey is actually named Jojo, and is unrelated to both Jojo Jr. and Sr. I guess all monkeys in this world are just naturally called Jojo!

Exactly! That kind of humour wouldn't have been out of place in the first two games. I'd definitely be open to more of those kind of jokes here.

I'm very curious if we're going to be going back to the more "jerk-like" Guybrush that was more prominent in MI1/2 (i.e. insulting Meathook, trapping Stan in a coffin, sawing off the pegleg, getting the cook fired for money, etc.) With Ron/Dave writing the next game again, I think it's fairly likely that Guybrush will be more along the lines that he was in MI1/2, which I feel would be a welcome change of pace. Before the talkie version of MI1/2, I did always feel a disconnect between the Guybrush of the first two games to the rest of the series (not a huge one, but it never gelled 100% between writers) but having Dom's voiceover in the first two games definitely helped to bridge that gap knowing that all of Guybrush's dialogue has now been delivered by the same voice actor, and I can now completely believe it's all the same character.

Okay, that’s kindof a relief then. I don’t really want 3-5 to be undone after all the great things that came from them. If it were up to me, I’d set the first third/half of the game directly after MI2, explaining how Guybrush escaped the carnival/became an adult again, etc. Then have a “20 years later” or whatever time jump, where Curse-Tales could theoretically have happened in that timeframe, but we don’t go too into the details of those games and it’s ultimately up to the player to decide if they’re still canon or not. I guess a big question mark in terms of the plot would be “are Guybrush and LeChuck actually brothers?” Which I always assumed they are since the LeChuck voodoo doll works with the skull of Guybrush’s parents, but it’s a pretty huge thing for the rest of the games to completely ignore! So I’d imagine we’ll finally get an answer on that now! Also I don’t know if/how Ron would U-turn on Guybrush/Elaine being married since that apparently wasn’t his original plan. If we do have a time jump to post-Tales, I personally think he’ll keep them together and maybe introduce some complications, but that’s all speculation! And finally, Ron did hint at one point that the Voodoo Lady being evil was an idea that he had that Tales ended up hinting towards. I feel that after Tales, that should be explored more here. (Also would love to know if they got Leilani Jones Wilmore back too! Looking over her filmography, she’s mostly been providing audio description tracks for movies lately, the latest being 2019. Hopefully she can be convinced to return!)

Exactly. Curse’s opening is definitely the best version of the main theme, but a new version every game is always something to look forward to. To be honest, those Escape opening credits are so p**s poor all around, from the recycling of the main theme, to the camera angles, to the PowerPoint transitions to the zooming in on the bottom left corner of the letter “M” on “Mike Stemmle” at the end. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had 1 day to go before launch and realised they’d forgotten to make an intro! The soundtrack is definitely one of the main reasons to be excited for the game. It’s the first time since Escape that the trio of Land, McConnell and Bajakian will be together, and we’re more than likely going to be getting a soundtrack comparable to the production values and quality of Curse/Escape. Even if you dislike Escape (which I personally never have) the soundtrack is still top tier. It also hit me recently that this is the first new Herman dialogue we’ll have gotten since Escape (not counting the SE’s since that dialogue was written for the original games) and he didn’t appear in Tales. Very curious how they’re going to navigate Escape/Tales in this story. CMI is still canon according to Ron, but the other two games weren’t specified.

Good point, Cummings was in a lot of mainstream movies/TV series to the point where his potential LeChuck voice could lean towards any of his familiar set, but at least in terms of the acting itself, he’d unquestionably do a great job. Boen had acted a lot before MI, but Terminator aside, I think he largely stayed away from franchises. So yes, he was a lot less recognisable in the role because of that. He’s such an underrated talent.

Cummings would be amazing. His Pete voice isn’t too far removed from LeChuck if he were to just “pirate it up” a bit. Also thinking Jess Harnell may be able to give a great performance too, particularly if they’re bringing the storekeeper back anyway, he could double up! Hell, maybe Denny Delk could do it!

Haha! As much as that would put most of us purists at ease, I highly doubt an Escape remaster would change any of the plot! (And truthfully, within the confines of the one game, I’ve never minded it anyway!) Monkey Kombat was made a little easier in the PS2 version by having a diagram included that could keep track of the moves (making it so that you don’t need to write them down yourself) so I’d settle for that diagram being ported across into a remaster. Aside from that, increasing the resolution, improving the quality of the audio, upconverting the backgrounds (and making them widescreen if possible) and maybe improving the controls for PC are the features I think are reasonable to expect.

British Elaine goes through hits and misses in the performance to me, and both of those stand out more, whereas I felt Escape’s Elaine was consistently good and I was never taken out of her performance. In fact, Escape’s voice acting is pretty much flawless across the board in my opinion. It actually makes me wonder if we ever got to the point where Escape was remastered, if they’d redub Elaine’s voice with Alexandra Boyd just to have consistency across the games. (Maybe they could have a toggle between “British/American Elaine Mode” in the settings to please everybody!)

Oh no, I had no idea he’d passed! Rest in peace, Kevin. He did such a great job. Looks like it will be a newcomer in that case. I’d rather they go with somebody who sounds like Earl’s LeChuck than somebody like Harrington, who wasn’t bad in his own right, but the difference in his voice to Boen was very striking. It reminds me of Kingdom Hearts III when Xehanort was recast after Leonard Nimoy’s passing. And while Rutger Hauer (and later Christopher Lloyd) did well in the role, the continuity felt broken as they weren’t specifically looking for soundalikes.

That shows how good Blackton was as human LeChuck, though if Rum thought it was Boen all this time! I'd like to hear how he'd have delivered "undead LeChuck." The hints of it near the end of Episode 4 showed promise in my opinion.

Is that not his white/grey hair rather than a hat? Plus Scallion was on Scabb, not Melee. And that is the storekeepers' shop, so I'm still betting on it being the storekeeper. If it IS Rapp, however, and he is alive here, then that could mean that the Melee section of the game takes place before MI1/2 (possibly shortly after Guybrush escapes the amusement park?) If so, that could mean that a degree of time travel may be involved... Look at us theorising over a new Monkey Island game's plot based on a few pixels! It's the EMI days all over again!

I have to admit that my excitement has been taken down a notch knowing that Boen isn't back, but really hoping they choose a very, very strong replacement voice for him to make up for it. It'd suck if we had a very off LeChuck voice just for one game. On another note, I'm guessing that the man in the window on the right of the Melee screenshot is the storekeeper. If so, that likely means Jess Harnell could be back to voice him too. Him and Boen were two of the voices that transitioned perfectly into MI1SE and still gave fantastic performances despite the dialogue that was clearly written to be read.

The Adventure Gamers interview also sadly confirms that Boen won't be back as LeChuck. Very unfortunate but completely understandable given his age and retirement. His replacement has a lot to live up to. It's really going to feel offputting if we don't have somebody with Boen's energy and passion in the role. My immediate thoughts to towards Kevin Blackton, the human voice of LeChuck in Tales. While he didn't have too much of a chance to play "evil" LeChuck, the small parts we heard showed promise and definitely sounded enough like Boen that he could fool the casual player. Adam Harrington sounded so different to Boen that it was just so distracting, despite his performance itself mostly being fine, so I hope that the re-cast doesn't become too much of an issue with RMI.

That’s very interesting. On his Twitter, he said he’s returning but I don’t think he’s specified he’s playing Stan (I’d imagine he is, though). I definitely liked his Stan portrayal in Tales, but for the sake of consistency, I’d have absolutely gone with Pat Pinney just to round off the trilogy with the same cast. Pinney’s voice with the speed of Hammond’s delivery would be my ideal Stan voice. I think Stan’s delivery was hindered in the Special Editions by being too slow paced.

Haha, that’s great! I remember a very old interview with Ron saying that he only got 20 minutes into Escape and “got stuck.” I’d imagine that even that early in the game, it wasn’t exactly true to his vision of the series, so it’s probably no surprise that he distanced himself from it and maybe isn’t aware of the games’ plot that followed. I also remember a collection of theories on one of the MI sites about how it could actually be possible for the Herman/HT plot to work out between games, and some of them actually did make sense, but who knows if that’s what the developers were intending. I think within the confines of the one game, the twist works fine, but when compared to the rest of the series, it makes you stop and think maybe a little too much. I also theorised that this was the reason that Elaine was recast in EMI to be American, just so that the Herman twist might seem vaguely plausible with them both being American. (And having Herman be British might’ve given it away too soon!)

So, in the light of this new announcement, any chance of @Jakeand @Marius (and Dom?) playing the rest of the MI games in the leadup to the new game? Seems like there’s no better time to do it now! *hint* We could also do with a new Mojo podcast discussing the announcement at some point!

Not sure if it's been brought up in this thread yet, but Alexandra Boyd has been confirmed to return as Elaine. And, in a more surprising announcement, Rob Paulsen is returning as the lookout of Melee Island! A very unexpected twist since the lookout is a character that hasn't been seen since MI1. That, to me, means two things. 1. We're definitely going back to Melee Island in some capacity (the website background art alone confirmed this) . And 2. This emphasizes, to me, that the story will be coming full circle in some way, and when we play the game, it will truly feel like the third and final part of Ron's vision. Appreciate it's still early days, but nobody has answered the question about Earl Boen yet. The thing is, he'd be completely within his rights to turn it down at this stage. He's long retired at this point, and just turned eighty last year. But at the same time, something will really be missing if we don't have a LeChuck performance that has the spark that Earl had. Really hoping for one last hurrah (or "HURRARGHHHH!!!") out of him but I don't know if it's something we can count on. Also somebody mentioned a while back if the success of this game could mean more sequels? Honestly, I think after this, in terms of new entries to the series, we'll be done. It's similar in some ways to Bill & Ted 3. It took forever to happen, then finally it happened after thirty or so years while the old team were still around, and able, to make it happen. Who knows how long certain members of the Monkey Island team/talent will be with us. Maybe we won't be so lucky as to have the whole team within another 5-10 years. It'll happen now while it's able to happen with the right people, and a 30 year waiting game for "the real MI3" will be over at last. If "Ron's MI4" was never something on his mind in 30 years, I doubt it's something he'd miraculously come up with now. A remaster/rerelease of the other MI games on modern consoles, however? I think that's increasingly more likely.

Regarding a potential Skunkape remaster of Tales, knowing that Bosco was re-cast for the S&M remasters, I believe the same could happen with the Voodoo Lady's voice actress in Tales for similar reasons. However, if this were to happen, I would be open to a recasting if, and only if, they re-recorded her dialogue with the original Voodoo Lady from MI1-4. Tales was the only game where she didn't return (most likely due to the monthly nature of recording sessions) so just to add that sense of continuity, I'd love to have her be voiced by Lelani Jones Wilmore in a potential Tales remaster. (The same could potentially happen with Van Winslow, but that's another story!)

The door is open for a CMI remaster now, I think. This would be the ideal opportunity to bring the games to new consoles too. The only thing really that holds Curse back visually is the resolution, which crunches the background/character art down significantly and all but destroys the cutscene quality. A game like Curse would truly shine in 4K resolution, not to mention widescreen, with the non-scrolling backgrounds most likely being expanded to 16:9.

Just checked YouTube and apparently the trailer is fluctuating between the #5 and #10 trending spots worldwide at this moment! A very strong sign that people are generally very excited by this news!

There's literally more than 30! (probably) I find it kind-of interesting that CMI & EMI were the harder games to find 10-12 years ago due to them being out of print physically and not being available digitally yet, not even when the iron was hot after the release of the Special Editions and Tales. Then in a twist of fate recent years, Tales became the hardest game to find after Telltale's closure and its' disappearance from various platforms. I believe it may have only been available through physical means for a short while, and even then only via the likes of eBay, etc. Eventually it came back to digital platforms on PC at least.