OzzieMonkey

I really want Finn to get a show with something like that happening.

So a couple of things to note about that trailer: Firstly, were they using the Ultimate Talkie edition of MI1 in that footage? It has classic vga with Guybrush's voice and you can hear the SE version of the Scumm Bar music briefly. Either that or there's an extra-customisable remaster on the horizon, god that'd be good Also, I'm starting to get a bit confused about how the scrapbook is meant to function as a recap. Put yourself into the shoes of someone who's never played a Monkey Island game; does this give a comprehensive picture of the story of 5 games, or to them, would it just be a series of images? I wonder if it'll be a narrated scrapbook by Guybrush or if there are pages with writing on them that we haven't seen.

I think the most important part of the puzzles is not how difficult they are, but just that they're memorable. I want the game to have me doing interesting stuff, whether it takes me an hour or 5 seconds to work it out. Therefore I think in the long run I'd prefer a game I can figure out quickly but where all the puzzles have an impact over a tedious game that took me weeks to finish, OR an easy game with unmemorable puzes.

I have a feeling that the Steam version will go live the same time Monkey Island Mondays happen, because Ron has been describing the game's launch as "the ultimate Monkey Island Monday" so around 8am PST.

I have no shame in using the in-game hints, but I'll avoid looking anything up online. For me the story is the most important thing, so I want to see it all as quickly as possible the first go around, then when I play it again I'll probably look for in-jokes and things like that. First time around I'll still be using all dialog choices and looking at everything because I won't know how to solve all the puzzles yet, but given my track record with adventure games I'm usually pretty good at getting through them relatively fast. I finished Thimbleweed Park in about 2 days.

I know this isn't entirely what you're talking about, but I have seen the mere knowledge of a new Monkey Island coming out has resulted in new people doing blind let's plays of the series to prepare for Return's release.

I love Star Wars yet I hate talking about Star Wars, because the discourse gets heated very quickly. I've seen all the shows except Resistance and watched all the movies and spinoffs and I like most of it. I only really dislike Rise of Skywalker and Book of Boba Fett slightly less than that. I love The Mandalorian, The Clone Wars and Rebels and my favourite movie is Empire. I have a softspot for the prequels despite their flaws and I enjoy a good meme from them. I'm looking forward to Andor because I dug Rogue One a lot and I think this is a great opportunity to explore Cassian's journey before that film.

Yeah I agree with this, though one more new island wouldn't go astray. Who knows how big Brr Muda and Terror Island are though, I hope they have just as much to offer as Melee. In recent interviews Ron and Dave have suggested that Melee is dedicated to Part 1 as a temporary stop to for Guybrush to start his adventure and remind players of the classic MI feeling before heading off to sights unseen for the rest of the game until we finally reach Monkey Island. I can imagine seeing the Goodsoup crypt in the scrapbook as part of catching new players up on who Murray is for example, but yeah, full recreations for a few seconds is probably off the table.

If this was just MI3a, exactly as it was described back in 2013, I think I would be expecting to be disappointed. With Return shaping up to be something very different, I'm much more excited and hopeful. I think it's going to be something special, even if the plot goes in directions that are controversial. I don't have any expectations as far as what the game SHOULD or SHOULDN'T do though. I'm only expecting to have a lot of fun, as much as I have with the previous games. I said I was expecting nothing less than MI1 and 2 greatness, but with the idea that it's as good as Curse, because that's my #1 MI game, with LeChuck's Revenge being a close second. I can see it being in my top 3 at the very least, those 2 are tough to beat; I reckon it can easily beat Secret, it's a great game but it's definitely a lot more straightforward story-wise and has a much smaller scope than the others. I also think Tales has the best story so far, so Return's competing with that, but it also has a richer vein to draw from with MI2's ending, the Secret, etc. Reviews will probably do fine, though I fear there will be a number of critics who can't look past their negative bias against the artstyle...I hope that doesn't happen. I reckon we're looking at 70-80. I don't think we can kid ourselves that this will be the best-selling game of the year, or even win GOTY, it's too niche. Best selling adventure game? Probably. Maybe even Ron's best selling game, I hope that for him. It won't be Devolver's best seller, they have too many other games out that aren't as niche as a point and click.

Sort of...what qualifies that distinction? 👕 I beat #Mojole #168 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💛 💚💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Considering the Voodoo Lady is a character who can see the future (and might have influence over it if you go with Tales' interpretation), it would make total sense for her to have an item that can help Guybrush even long after he's left the island she's on. I imagine that even if you have to go and get the hintbook, there probably isn't a whole puzzle chain dedicated to getting it, as it would be truly madenning to get stuck getting hints for another puzzle you're stuck on 😂

I'm actually more excited for this now than I was when this game was a hypothetical and we all thought it would erase the last 3 games from canon. Now that we know that's not exactly the case, I'm really curious about what solution Ron and Dave have come up with to start at the end of 2 but also after Tales somehow, because it sounds like it's going to be more complicated than a simple timeskip.

I've taken the liberty of writing out text for a video interview with Ron that was done by Rock, Paper Shotgun but was locked by a paywall. There's some further detail of the hint system and confirmation of how it works as a mechanic within the fantasy of the game world as well as hints to what the story is (he's still vague enough about it but it's a great tease) So Ron, what has it been like for you returning to this world? It's been a lot of fun! It's been 30 years since I really immersed myself in that world and it's a lot of fun to sort of get back to it. I was a little worried at the beginning about what that was going to be like, but it is just like a comfortable glove at some point, you know when I started working on it with Dave, we just fell into it so quickly. Awesome! So what can you tell us about the story? Well, the story is...we kinda call it unfinished business. You know Guybrush, in the first game even though it's called The Secret of Monkey Island, he never actually found the secret, so this game is really about him finding the real secret to Monkey Island, and I think it's also unfinished business for Dave and me as designers, because we never disclosed what the secret was, and you know Monkey Island 2 ended on this bizarre cliffhanger, so for us it's unfinished business and for Guybrush it's unfinished business. Yeah we were talking before about this huge cliffhanger at the end of 2, so where in the Monkey Island timeline does this land? So the game starts right after Monkey Island 2 ends...and then it just gets bizarre from there. Can you explain what kind of bizarre things we're gonna see? No, you'll have to buy the game (laughs) I love that! So one thing that was talked about on the panel was this idea of puzzle creation and adventure games are known for their challenging puzzles. Will Return to Monkey Island follow in its predecessor's footsteps, or what kind of puzzles are we gonna see, what should we expect? Well it's definitely a point and click game. There's a type of puzzle that really inhabits a point and click adventure, so we're definitely doing that. I think that times have changed, players have changed, we're different people, we've changed, and I think adventure games need to change with that. And it's not about making thongs simpler, but I think it's how you design puzzles. You need to be a bit clearer about things with people, and there are people who don't know point and click, don't know Monkey Island, and you need to kinda ease people into that stuff. One thing we've added to the game is a hintbook, so if you are stuck you can look at the hintbook. I mean these days, when you get stuck on a puzzle, you don't puzzle theough it for a month and talk to your friends about it, you just run to Google. We didn't want people to leave our game to do that, so we added a hintbook, and it's part of the fantasy of the game, it's actually a physical object that Guybrush has in his inventory. And you have to go get the hintbook, it's not something that's just given to you. So we hope that people who do want hints use our hint system, because we can be very clever about the hints, we know where you are and what things you've tried, so we can give you hints that are very tailored to the specific issue that you have. As someone who's had a relationship with Monkey Island for so long, how has your approach changed from the older games to the new one? What's different? I think creatively, design and story-wise, not much has changed at all. We start with a high concept for the thing, down to the individual parts of the game, then below that the character arcs and below that the puzzles. We've always done that with games and I don't think that part has really changed.

I remeber there being a pretty huge breaking of the embargo for part 1 of Broken Age. In the documentary, Tim was trying to figure out how to deal with it and whether or not to let other journalists break it too. Messy stuff.

We're gearing up for the penultimate Monkey Island Monday, which means we're 2 weeks away from launch. I'm now more nervous than ever that a Largo review Embargo will lift, which means lots of spoilers from careless journalists I don't expect an answer, but are Mojo staff going to get an early code? This is probably the only site I trust to give an impression without revealing too much.

I so want to meet these guys one day just to say thankyou, but I can't afford an overseas trip any time soon and the last time Ron came to an event in Australia was 2013 for his storytime speech 😢

Huh...can't complain about that one. 👕 I beat #Mojole #165 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤💛🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛💛💛 💚💛💚💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Something about his wording makes me wonder if we'll be interacting with the crew AS LeChuck. That'd be quite something!

More compelling evidence of this being mostly post Tales in this interview. https://www.gamersglobal.de/interview/return-to-monkey-island It seems as though Elaine and Guybrush will still be married in the game, which I'm glad isn't being erased.

I have failed myself and brought shame to the Mojo community...I thought it was MI1 too.

Of course, there's always the possibility that the game's hint system is so good that we won't need external help.

Ok, for some reason I can no longer share my results, but I got it in 5. Shouldn't have kept using my old guesses.

Personally I think hints should be a seperate thread so people can ask for help without inadvertently reading story spoilers. I don't want to accidentally find out what the Secret of Monkey Island is while I'm trying to figure out what order to put the skulls

Probably for the best. I still think they're keeping most of the game a surprise, hence the focus on Melee. Called it, inventory!

So what are our guesses for Monkey Island Monday this week? For my money, I'm betting on seeing the inventory, where the only item we have is...you guessed it, the horse armor.