Vainamoinen

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. 💀