Vainamoinen

It's pretty much always contradicting impulses when it comes to narrative media. We want the old back, of course, but it has to feel new. It has to have completely new elements, but they must not feel alien. The resolution to a story should follow entirely logically, but still surprise the heck out of us. It should have the old characters, even when their arcs are long completed. It should really take risks, be bold and daring, but not shock us. It should take liberties with the source material but not infringe on the holy canon. It should fit just like your worn-out favorite gloves but still have that fresh-out-of-the-cow leather smell. As an author, I guess the best thing to do is not to listen to the fans because they are, myself definitely included, slaves to those contradicting impulses. Which people will like Return to Monkey Island may in fact by and large already be decided. But I'm guessing this will play out well for you and me. 😊

I guess that theme is based on my "could work" theory, but better entry points to cheap nostalgia definitely wasn't what I was after. It was not about revisiting old games in the first place, it was about experiencing different stages in Guybrush's life, most of which the fans have never seen. It was about spreading an entirely sparkling new storyline throughout Threepwood's lifespan. Maybe a bit like Dragon Age 2, with Guybrush himself as an entirely unreliable narrator with "Big Fish" ambitions and even choice points for the player (in order to seriously rip the canon and chronology to shreds, that could be great). Now, we do have certain nostalgia moments confirmed for ReMI, the Return to Monkey Island first and foremost, then there's Melee Island again. So we're dealing with certain nostalgia moments anyway, the question is how "cheap" that nostalgia will feel. And ... maybe a good framing story can sell a whole lot.

That's a Ron trope I guess. He did it in TSoMI, did it in MI2:LCR, did it in Thimbleweed Park. Something in maze mechanics seems to agree with him. And ... I also never liked the mazes.

It was like someone took insult sword fighting and took out the witty mechanics. A wholly nonsensical puzzle that's solved through trial-and-error and not at all with your brain ... not my kind of puzzle even if it was, somehow "new" to the series. I keep wanting to go back to MI4. I haven't touched since I played it first, and now the Monkey Combat is one of the few things that I still remember about the game. Recently I looked up the music on youtube and found that it was great. Maybe I should get myself to experience the rest again.

It's a valid gripe. Ron had invented a lot of unique things for The Secret and explicitly decided against a lot of recurring patterns with LeChuck's Revenge. What CMI brought back of the old it made compulsory for future games. I love CMI – it was in fact my first PC game right after I switched from the Amiga, and the second I ever used a helpline for – and it really bolstered the legend of that series as a whole. It also is responsible for making some elements of Monkey Island games a little too formulaic. Oh, I don't even know what "multiverse" means and probably counted time travel into the paradigm. If you asked me what multiverse meant, I'd probably say "It's a Disney thing, right?".

Ohhhhhh but the swordfighting insult mechanic clearly was in Tales of Monkey Island! 🙈 You're helping a male Manatee to woo a female using just a human-manatee travel phrase book (episode 3, Lair of the Leviathan). The paradigm was masterfully adapted, and damn I always fail so hard at this. I agree with Rogers, we're probably not going to get another iteration. The mechanic was picked up in parts 3, 4 and 5 by other designers, maybe because it turned out to be one of the most widely quoted things from the first part. But RoDaTi haven't put it in LeChuck's Revenge. It's a bit of a mystery how much of the TSoMI insults was in fact their creation and how much was written by Orson Scott Card. Possibly, Ron thinks of the insult sword fighting as an alien creation 👽 foreign to his body of work. The Ron parts did it in dream sequences, and I always felt he was just playing with Star Wars as a source material (Luke kills Dream Vader and finds out he has his face / Guybrush is confronted by LeChuck, who turns into a younger version of himself). The throwbacks to Melee Island™ in Curse were for the laughs, I think, and never had any deeper meaning. The only actual 'multiverse' stuff was in part 4. The much beloved Escape from Monkey Island tried to rejuvenate a series that was erroneously felt to be old and brittle with some time travel. I ... have recently heard the rumor that Lucasfilm will attempt the same thing with another series of theirs, 20 years after EMI. Urghhhhhhh.

That was always the case with Monkey Island instalments (except, notably, LeChuck's Revenge). When Telltale's Tales chopped off Guybrush's [spoiler/not his dick], that could have been a lasting change that future designers would have to cope with, but Threepwood magically got his thingie back by the very end of the last episode. I kind of wonder whether Ron and Dave would even want to keep their lasting footsteps on the canon to be this light. It's possibly exactly the opposite logic: We respected everyone else's work as canon, now respect ours. We don't know yet what central themes the story will revolve around (we just know that one of its symbols/falcons is keys 🔑 ). But LeChuck's Revenge seems to heavily tease that Ron would want to get into Guybrush's family matters. And that would indeed create a lot of canon for future writers that's not easily ignored. "Alternate universe" as a playground to do anything with the series. I must say, I'd rather have Ron be the one to write the non-alternate canon. 😄 There are a whole lot of other options here though. Ron has said that ReMI is "neither MI3 nor MI6", which could of course mean anything. The following is not a theory that I find likely, but one I think could work: Return to Monkey Island has a framing story set after Tales (possibly even at the end of Threepwood's life / when he's an old man). From that starting point, we would see a series of flashbacks as Guybrush remembers scenes from his life, the first would bring us right back to the carnival. The red thread of the story would be one of Guybrush's lifelong struggles (e. g. his lust for piracy, his fleeting love for Elaine, the search for his lost parents, the eternal battle versus LeChuck, his struggle with cleptomania ... who knows) . The flashbacks/mementos themselves could be set between any of the MI parts and would serve as individual chapters tied together by cutscenes from the framing story. In that way, without any kind of time travel or alternate universe stuff involved, we could reintroduce any character from the series without violating the canon. Also, it would give Rex the opportunity to represent Guybrush in a whole lot of different ways throughout, including physique, beard growth, hairdo, and clothing.

Here's a nine year old article that I keep re-reading. https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4716444/how-atari-box-art-turned-8-bit-games-into-virtual-wonderlands This is about game covers / posters / key art from the Atari era, and how they worked with the imagination of the player to transform the pixelated monochrome oatmeal on the tube into the greatest graphics you've ever seen. Likewise, my favorite Monkey Island cover didn't take that many pointers from the art found in the game. Now, Rex will probably do great cover art, he's done some great stuff for Knights and Bikes already. But when I listen to Rex describing his art for ReMI as purposeful blanks that we're supposed to fill in, I wonder whether the cover art could not attempt the same thing that those Atari covers of old did. Game cover art is not in the best of states. A cover is something to be put on a box, on a poster or a magazine, things we don't really have any longer. Steve Purcell made some great covers for Telltale back in the day, but if I remember correctly, they mostly came out after the respective Season had finished, in time for the physical/retail editions, so these artworks haven't really had the opportunity to inspire the day one most hardcorest fan. When gog.com first released Tales of Monkey Island, they were so desperate for meaningful key art that they stole one of @Laserschwert's fan artworks for the background (I hope I remember that accurately). I'd feel great about getting so much of the old back. Cover art before release day would be incredible. And to do the cover art, get Rex Crowle ... or Steve Purcell ... or, I don't know, there are so many great choices. Peter Chan, or Olly Moss. James Gurney. Juanjo Guarnido. Heck, Wylie Beckert would be an incredible fit.

Thank funk! I was afraid they'd hired Dominic Armato to voice Chuck the palm tree.

Same here. This year folks. My eyes are acting up and no doctor seems to be able to help. My neighbor upstairs is a stoned literally psychotic a-hole that no one is moving out. Putin doing all the hitlerisms including genocide. People in Germany throwing all pandemic countermeasures over board simply because they feel entitled to. Prices are exploding and no salary raise is in sight. I can't expect my BFF to focus on my silly problems while her dad is in such a horrific state. So this announcement really was a ray of light in the darkest times. This weekend I'll try to color my sketch from Wednesday, then maybe try to interpret the same shadow shape in different ways. Foster some positivity somewhere.

Clearly, they're bringing a Telltale character back.

Those run-off-the-mill conspiracy myths make the dehumanization so much easier. "Corporate cash grab" isn't criticism, it's not an "opinion", it's not an argument, it's plainly a personal insult. Same goes for "outsourced to a sweat shop". Some people seem to think that the lower they go, the more influence they will have on the final product. It's an attempt at emotional blackmail: I will tell you that you're a bad person for not making this game in exactly the style I want. And that's indeed nonsense. I don't even doubt that this person thought he was giving honest and maybe even constructive criticism. But he did it in the way the internet taught him to. Maximum impact on the site of construction at the press of a button, details when I finally have your attention. I know how this game works, I've been there, I've flung horrible things. And I can say with absolute certainty that it draws the life blood out of creators. Granted, giving art criticism is one of the most difficult things you could do. Even in my drawing forums, i. e. my actual motivation/support groups, there are those artists that know how to give a great critique and those who don't and probably never will. It's always tiptoeing around the sensibilites of a very vulnerable soul, artists and authors alike. They're the most human of all of us, often the most insecure, and would of course love to explode in some critics' faces.

The vast majority of comments now is positive. Unfortunately, the negative tormentors, I mean commentors, have the tendency to bla majorly. I really understand how responding adequately to such nonsense doesn't serve a real purpose besides generating instant negativity. "Don't try to be Batman" is one of the central teachings I took away from "Crash Override". But with comments like that, it's so_damn_difficult. I'm absolutely okay with people that didn't like the artwork at first sight. I myself was exactly as shocked and provoked by the artwork as Ron Gilbert vocally intended. But this. These "arguments", the artwork supposedly looking "generic" or cheap or "like a mobile game", whatever that means. I don't know how to handle that without exploding. I've tried for 18 years to draw and paint, and I haven't got an ounce of Crowle's inventiveness, creativity and stylistic consistency. These backgrounds aren't jotted down, they are meticulously planned. The composition is, the angles are, the color scheme is. The position of the main character is, his impact is planned. 🎯 And why doesn't this guy know that the LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition was mostly outsourced to "some sweatshop" aka Lucasfilm Animation Singapore? I really hope Rex and his entire team can disregard comments like that by people who don't know their sh*t, and I hope those comments won't reflect negatively on the MI fandom as a whole. It's clear what's happening here, we're tapping into childhood memories which elevate MI1 and MI2 (or even CMI for those late to the party) to a level of perfection that these games never had. The visual nostalgia was always destined to be the most bitter and divisive battlefield. I still think that this kind of gatekeeping mentality is more prevalent in other franchises, but I kind of dread the release of the first Guybrush pictures. 💣

Oh, and don't worry. I'd never. Depending on when ReMI will be available on DRM/launcher free platforms, I'll have to rely on you folks to keep things very very spoiler free.

Big spoiler:

Others have made it up decades ago and you're left with the impossible task to make your perfectly round story fit that square socket. All the time knowing that you could write a much better story if you just ignored some of the previously established material. That seems to be Dave and Ron's path though, and I'm thankful for it. 🙏 In most popular narrative media, having established canon that plays out in the series' future is a ball and chain. I'm off that sauce. The prequels, the interquels, spinoffs, crossovers. They tend to ruin my stories. Heck, an entire Star Wars prequel trilogy was boring as funk because you knew all the time what was going to happen, and what they made up to keep the canon in check was on the "wipe those droids' memory" level throughout. Now that's a script that Dr. Fisher couldn't fix. Sure, Star Wars writers and good ol' Georgie did write their way around everything eventually. But even if they more or less succeeded, that didn't create any magical "aha" moments. The reason for those jumps through hoops wasn't to write the best story they could, it was only ever to shove that round plug into that stupid square hole. A process that, of course, tends to open up new holes in our game as well: Why doesn't Stan comment on why he's being locked into a coffin in CMI? Damn. Uhm, maybe Guybrush wears a disguise. Or we're playing another character at the time. Or maybe Stan gets knocked on the head and has amnesia ... I don't know. It's all a bit too much "there I fixed it" for my taste, not trying to step on anybody's toes. They can have Stan walking around in total freedom all of the time, without explaining a single thing, for all I care. It's just this laborious jumping-through-somebody-else's-hoops that I don't like to see. "How do we write the best story" should be the question, not "How do we make ReMI fit what comes after?".

Guybrush was trying to make a name for himself in TSoMI, so he told basically everybody his name. News of a "new, inexperienced" pirate even got to LeChuck way below Monkey Island. The business savvy Stan could would of course know that name, but not divulge any information he doesn't have to. And I really won't be the one to nitpick the funk out of ReMI going "But in CMI Stan said that it was Guybrush who locked him in that coffin". 🙈 Personally, Stan was never one of my favorites, so I'd be okay with a short and sweet nod to his predicament without actually getting him out of there.

Just what I thought. If CMI is canon, Stan can't be in ReMI. Well, if someone cuts a hole into the left and right side of his confinement, we would have a wildly hand waving coffin, which would be hilarious and wouldn't break canon. But I'd actually rather have Jojo return! Because he plays the piano, almost as badly as I do, and Guybrush didn't listen to his mom and didn't practise enough. Also we need to get a band together with unnamed ghost lady at the violin.

All we need ist MOAR THREADS like in the Golden Times of Online Discourse. 🥨* * The pretzel stands for pretzellence

The Style: A whole lot of stuff that Jake posted up there looks like it could easily be from Curse of Monkey Island (the first!), from Day of the Tentacle, or – and that makes things interesting – from Return to Monkey Island. That one with the cobwebs from Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, a little color and texture adjustment and it could be a background down there in LeChuck's ship. Rex Crowle has stated that he's going for backgrounds that you'd finish in your mind, leave things open to interpretation. I guess 50's animators thought of it the same way, especially since 50's televisions were pretty skimpy on the detail. But Rex also said that he'd love to see fan art that fills out all the blanks that he's intentionally left in there. Now that's something 50's animators could never hope for. In any case, I'm intrigued how this plays out (artistically, socially, culturally). My pencils and brushes are ready and version 1.0 of the locksmith is well messed up already. The Secret: I never thought of "The Secret of Monkey Island" as an untold twist in the lore that could be revealed and have the players gasp at how they could have overlooked that for more than 30 years. Guybrush found and experienced Monkey Island, above and below, so he's found its secret. The Jokes: I was a big fan of the anachronisms back then, because they were comparatively seldom. Fast forward four parts, and I got pretty annoyed at the prevalence of photographs and cameras in Tales of Monkey Island. 😘 The Meaning: The first two Monkey Island parts were magical in that they actively encouraged interpretation. The sudden throwback to Melee Island in LeChuck's Revenge was a great example. This was a screen that in TSoMI had no other purpose than to get caught by Fester Shinetop in, basically a meaningless dark alley. It also had the circus poster – rather a poster of the prototypical circus that Guybrush still loved like a child, not the actual circus in which Italian madmen named after noodles fire him out of a cannon. But like in literature, the author's art is not to bluntly hide "a secret" or "an interpretation" in a scene, but rather to combine core thematic elements until flashing associations give a spark to the imagination of the recipient. The first two MI games did that exceptionally well (there was a Melee Island throwback scene in CMI as well – an "easter egg" that didn't have an ounce of the same interpretative impact). I'd love to see similar things in ReMI again.

The game's ending tried to parody the first movie's ending ... but not with the same "open ending" vibe. With a gazillion of alternate Martys (Marties?) flying around time and space, there's no coherent story any more – least of all one so tightly written as the Back to the Future movies. Maybe Telltale killed off any chance of a sequel with that ending. The original BTTF movie, on the other hand, survived the rocky segue from throwaway "gag" ending to meticulously planned sequel. And to make that happen, they only had to deposit a sleeping Jennifer in a dark alley. Twice. I loved Morgan LeFlay, and I loved Winslow, I was totally on board with the Merpeople and the darker turn these last two episodes. I'm really not sure if a sequel can still happen, but I'd be up for it, definitely.

So the IGN interview just announced that all MI games would be considered canon for ReMI, and I just wanted to be the first to ask: Does that put the literal coffin nail in Stan's return? I recently checked on how many anticipation threads we had on the Telltale forums before Tales (pre-release). And it was like 400 threads! Granted, there was that persistent Italian guy who told us that this game couldn't be Monkey Island 5 because his fan game was Monkey Island 5 already. But a whole lot was good fun, and I'm missing it dearly now that my anticipation is ramping up for ReMI in much the same way. All the pictures are gone from Majus' pirate faces contest though. Including mine. 🥺 My recent run through the game was killed in episode 4. The game crashes - always - upon entering the jungle with the new, "foldable" map variant. I installed the GOG version too. I do own the Telltale DVD version as well ... might be worth a try. Quite right. Back when Ron left Double Fine, I thought of that as a natural move for him. At DF, Tim was literally the boss of Ron and that just didn't feel right. Afterwards, Double Fine owned the rights to The Cave, which obviously was all right with Ron until a Mega-Corporation bought Double Fine. Tim Schafer's lack of involvement in ReMI can be seen as a necessary act of emancipation from Ron's side without any form of animosity involved.

Some people don't like the new art style for being just too different from previous Monkey Island games. Those same people dread that Ron Gilbert would just unload cob webbed nostalgia boxes with the same old characters and islands and mechanics with this game. So in essence they believe that ReMI would modernize where it doesn't count for them, but not modernize where it would count for them. That's ... wildly pessimist, I think. 💀