Vainamoinen

I predict that we will be shown absolutely nothing of the location Monkey Island™ until release. They've taken so much care to not show us anything. I'm rather certain that the entirety of Monkey Island is one big whoop boo boo spoiler alert. 🙈 Inventory items, also extremely spoilery. No inventory items will be shown. I mean, what if Guybrush has 69 Pieces o' Eight in his inventory and by pure deduction we guess the entirety of the game? ( @Al.DeHyde will know why this is hilariously funny if, you know, he did the thing) 🙉 Unless the UI is some miraculous new invention that enthralls both the "I'll point and click on it even if it's just the trailer" as well as the "sure I'm sitting in front of my PC using a console controller for a lucas-artsy adventure game" crowd, I also predict we will not be shown how the UI works. 🙊 My guess would be that (a) they show us more of Melee Island, because they've been using that nostalgia hook and first-part-no-foul spoiler policy for a while now; (b) it will contain or even be music from the game and (c) that music will comprise some motif that gives us some hints as to what locations or characters to expect.

Waiiiit I'm not just taking this at face value. There has to be a quiz about the thread first.

... and I really love these establishing shots, they give a great sense of place. 🥺

Could you elaborate on this a bit? I have no idea what this means. 🤔

I can totally relate to that. I don't feel that on these forums, of course, because my love for Escape is limited, but there are plenty of other forums where some of my likes, dislikes and subjective opinions are a few degrees of latitude off the forum mainstream. 😬 It happens, and I know all too well how the outsider in just that one topic is sitting in front of her/his screen thinking: Well I SHOULD react to that comment and tell them how I see it and why, I don't know, marihuana legalisation would be a horrible idea in Germany, PC gaming without Steam is and definitely should remain possible, why cars seriously should drive themselves in less than a generation, and ... as soon as you tell them, there's the needless discussion and maybe at the end of the tunnel and after the groundhog day hijinks, the blessed agree to disagree and the why did I bring that up I knew where it would end do I really fit here what if I said nothing again ever. Stay with us, please. We'll do anything. I may even play EMI again. The love for Monkey Island is what unites us and let nothing tear us apart. 🤎

I'm constantly making fan art. It's just that a lot is not up to where I'd like it to be. I'll post a swordmaster sketch this weekend. One that I'm mortally afraid to color because I'm way too certain I'll funk it up ...

No ... no, I guess they won't. 🐏 I've had a discussion about 'pixel art' these last days on the gog forums. And, of course, at one point somebody drew the wikipedia article out of his back pocket, where the art form is defined by the careful, purposeful and intentional placement of pixels. Which made total sense to me, but of course to just pixelate high res artwork is plainly not "pixel art". It's not what TSoMI did, it's not what the Monkey Island 2 artists crafted out of low res scans, it's not how Thimbleweed Park was made. Guybrush especially scales down or rather pixelates up badly, in my opinion. He looks like a hunchback. The warped anatomy is much more jarring, the eyes way too high in the head and it doesn't look like he's got a nose or a mouth or an ear at all. Guybrush's hand and rim of jacket weld together to a new, incomprehensible form. So ... this wouldn't do as a low res version, really. To make pixelated Guybrush acceptable, an artist would have to repaint the whole Treepwood. Establish contrasts, make the individual elements readable, iron out parts that could be misinterpreted. Even if they could, technically, make a pixelated version at the push of an any key, it wouldn't be "pixel art", and I highly doubt it would be accepted by people who'd rather urinate in Ron Gilbert's living roo throw themselves on the floor screaming than attempting to deal with the new art style.

I don't know what Guybrush we'll get, but I know that guy can RUN.

I've met a former co-worker's son last weekend. This dude, at 11 years old, is making instructional youtube videos for Minecraft, I kid you not. He was asking his father once what software he uses for video editing. He got the name, made the research himself, and now edits his videos himself. We got him talking about streamers and streaming, youtubers and youtubing, and we couldn't stop him, literally couldn't stop him until his dad sent him to bed. During the few waking hours he doesn't spend on his PC, he's playing his Switch in the living room. So I say to him: "I'm looking forward to Return to Monkey Island! It's also coming out on the Switch apparently." Shrugs. 😔

I'm betting five Spanish silver dollars / 40 bits on that Guybrush will dryly comment on it, like he's seen the monkey head rising in a fever dream, but it has no bearing on the ReMI story whatsoever. That is AWESOME. 🥰 And they even retain all the islands from all the games, which gives Monkey Island a sizeable chunk of that map.

They're ignoring the robot monkeys, I'm certain of it. Dave: We talked all about canon and these other games, and the fact that we liked them, and the audience liked them, and so we made it our point of philosophy to adhere to canon wherever possible, but with two caveats. One of which is, it’s actually kind of hard to keep track of everything that’s canon, and some of these other games don’t even agree with each other. So a little bit of paradox is necessary and probably healthy for us as creators and as human beings. And the other caveat is that too much canon can get in the way of the story you’re trying to tell, so we decided that we would adhere to canon unless it was going to get in the way, and we would ignore some minor details if we needed to. https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/ron-gilbert-dave-grossman-return-to-monkey-island There isn't much that can get more in the way of telling a good pirate story than giant monkey robots.

I'm going to step in and say that an accurate depiction of the Caribbean might not be the primary focus of a game that displays "pieces of eight" as gold coins instead of silver.

TRIPLE POST WOHOOO. Just stepping in to add that they really have to release Return to Monkey Island once we hit page 100.

I smell a hell of a puzzle chain, or rather puzzle shish kebap, coming up, and I really want to stir that soup again.

The Zombie Guybrush one, that I should have known. Sadly my replay this year ended horribly in episode 4. 😬

I'm not saying I want Fester Shinetop back, but ... I want LeChuck's shape shifting abilities back. It's something that was just used once in TSoMI, but never again. Like Guybrush's being shot out of a cannon ability.

They're playing up the TSoMI locations and characters disproportionately right now to lure the nostalgic crowd back on board, I think. Now that I know they're aiming at recreating iconic backgrounds with basically the TSoMI perspectives, I'm pretty convinced that we ain't seen nothing yet. 🤘 Take Melee Island: Of all the new content, it was the island they most focused on. We've seen the docks, the lookout, the scumm bar interior, voodoo hut, prison, locksmith, and just a little bit of the governor's mansion interior. What we haven't seen on Melee Island is Hook Island exterior/interior, Stan's brand new Sunken Vessels above/below water, the shop interior, church interior, troll bridge, streets, the extensive woods, overview map, treasure clearing, circus clearing, Carla's old hut, governor's mansion exterior, Ten O'Clock Square, Smirk's hut ext/int., Scumm bar kitchen/back door docks, and probably half a dozen additional places I can't remember right now. I'm pretty sure they'll recreate most if not all of these iconic places/backgrounds and then add some new ones. ... and we've seen next to nothing of Monkey Island, Brr Muda and Terror Island.

Well then, on to more speculation instead of discussing all the new things we know. 😎 I always wanted Act/Part II to have one giant ocean map and lots of islands to explore. But Guybrush already knows how to get to Monkey Island – what if Monkey Island becomes available rather early on in the overview map, and the finale plays out on yet another island, one we haven't yet heard about?

I do hope they're done with the Melee Island spoilers now though. On to Monkey, Terror, and Brr Muda. And, well, the half dozen other islands in the game.

ALSO And I really love the positive energy below that tweet.

Thought bubbles: So Dave rolled the D2 crit this time. This looks incredible. Just incredible. It's so dimensional, and – something that EMI didn't do – it is a perspective recreation of the original TSoMI Melee harbor. Which is a primary connecting point to childhood nostalgia. This is so well done. I was one of the people who was thinking: Really, back to Melee Island? Is that necessary? But seeing that Scumm Bar sign, I now think: How could Ron not go back to Melee Island?! The pelicans. By now it's become quite apparent that almost every background we've been shown, even interiors, has one or more animals present. How are we going to make sense of them all? I still say stuff them in my inventory. Guybrush's running speed. If this is an accurate reflection of in-game velocity, let's say age hasn't slowed that Threepwood down. LeChuck's ship anchoring directly at the Scumm bar. And governor Swordmaster is not up in arms? There's something rotten, and it's not just the usual sea stench! Curly green Tiller mist around LeChuck's ship. The colors: I could write books about it, but those first four inches, that descent from the lookout, it's incredible. Greens, blues, cyans, magentas, all seemingly thrown together but so awesomely well composed. How did they do that? Bit disappointed by the ocean here; there's some movement in the reflections around LeChuck's ship, but apart from that, reflections are static. The drinking guy animation in the Scumm Bar window though, much appreciated! I'm certain he could drink all night without becoming visibly inebriated. Maybe I should leave that scene on for eight hours, just to make sure. Guybrush seems to be viewable from the front and the side, but there seem to be no betweens. Feels a bit abrupt when he turns (0:01). Notably missing ghost violinist lady is dearly missed. Nice music, but of course, just ten seconds. The Act I intro had more of a punch for me. Oh look! More shadow shapes on LeChuck's ship for us to obsess over! Who is going to be the first to suggest that it's still Guybrush, but rather his twin broth... oh wait that would be Chucky. Yes, again I am clicking on things in a video expecting a reaction. That's so dumb, isn't it. But at least I already know where I'm getting a decent length of rope from.

Rather unlikely, judging from their website. Pretty sure they'd have that copyright slapped on each and every product, photograph, or asterisk. And from Disney's perspective, printing 30 year old posters on T-shirts, that's not "where the brand's at" in their eyes. 😆 Hope you can kick their butts.

Oh god the disappointment. And then, the relief after the third one ... 🙉 We need to gag Don if these fake things keep appearing. 🤣

Sure we all love Monkey Island Mondays But now there's no news on Sundays.

I'm fairly certain that a release (or rather just bombshell info) on Talk like a Pirate Day is something Terrible Toybox/Devolver think of as a "stars align" moment right now, in much the same way as the April 1st/4th announcement was a "stars align" moment. If it looks like it could work, they're doing it, but it's just a nice to have. I mean, there are nicer things to have, like Return to Monkey Island in August. If they can do that, then personally, I don't need TlapD shenannigans. 😆