Vainamoinen

Desperately trying not to write something horribly cynical about IGN and unbiased reviews in connection to their favorable treatment of Hogwarts Legacy. Ooooofs noq I acciadfwally mada a knop im ny fingweras.

I had a whole paragraph about that up there and eventually I just did not open that can of worms. There are enough cans of worms opened here I guess. Here, let me put it this way. Back when Grim Fandango re-released, gog.com held an art contest. The deadline was brutal. I had a weekend. I opted for a messy technique with graphite dust and just went at it. I took a few minutes in photoshop to apply a brown tint. This was the result: As gog summarily ignored the effort, I posted the artwork on my favorite art forum. One of the members jokingly asked: "Is that old school or remastered?". I answered: "Ten hours old school and then five minutes for the Remaster. Just like the game.".

I played Curse of Monkey Island in 2000 on my first PC, because stupid LucasArts wouldn't port the game to my Amiga No, wait, maybe a less abrasive approach would be great for this discussion. I hadn't started to learn about art and style, so I basically took it all in uncritically. It was a great game! It had great music and the German voiceover was good too. It wasn't until much later that I started to question some of the stylistic and narrative choices in the game. Like making Guybrush a lanky, possibly even elegant pirate and of course making Elaine a literal gold statue with eyes bigger than my fist. Escape didn't tickle my fancy as much, it's true, but its individual style at least prevented a repeat performance of the irks that I had with Curse. Grim Fandango definitely is near or at the pinnacle of anything LucasArts ever did. But with the exception of polygonal main characters and pre-rendered backgrounds, technically it was just about as much 2D as its point & click predecessors. What's proposed here is literally in the title. It's not about "making EMI 2D". It's about "making EMI with CMI graphics". But that means stamping Bill Tiller's individual style on the sequel, or worse, on more games in LucasArt's legacy. I'm not opposed to remaking, rebooting, remastering Grim Fandango properly, not at all (tank controls and flip through inventory were a mistake in my opinion). But it should be remade in the originally intended style as clearly laid out in the breathtaking concept art by Peter Chan. The game just didn't succeed in communicating all those suggested moods, the grit, the wide open spaces, the stylistic references, the vertigo inducing perspectives, the distorted architecture. If you have to look at the concept art to understand how it was originally meant, something went wrong from concept to execution. What I never understood, particularly as we were gearing up towards the Return to Monkey Island release last year, is this weird and worrying fan obsession with CMI's graphics culminating in sometimes aggressive demands to model sequels after "that style". Bill Tiller is great! CMI's artwork is great! But it has no business in Grim Fandango. It has no business in Escape or Return.

Maybe Harrison is just trying out some new facial expressions ... ? Might just be an oddly selected shot. The second foto has the ancient and scruffy Indy I want and I'm pretty sure that's the whims Disney will be catering to.

"Disney left us with a whole lot of creative freedom, but decided on the logo design for us". Sounds familiar ... 😇 I'm actually undecided on this. They use the font, they have the sort of cheesy gradient that suggests the flames. It's just that they don't use overlapping letters and the clunky shadows we're all used to so much. In any case, I appreciate that what we have here is a traditionally painted poster. For the most part at least – artist Tony Stella works in much the same way that Drew Struzan was forced to work in for Crystal Skull (an experience that directly led him to retire). These are a number of individual traditional paintings chopped up and pasted together digitally. I never really liked those posters that try to put in a gazillion characters, and don't really show what the movie is about. The poster kind of stepped into both these traps. And Disney really doesn't need to worry about spoilers any longer. We have a pretty clear picture of what the dial of destiny does at this point. I love the strong red splash with its orange and grey accents. I love how for once Disney doesn't do photorealism and goes for the strong abstraction. I love how basically one sixth of the entire illustration is Indy's whip, painted with just a few brush strokes. It's so iconic, there's no need for more. Last week I fell into the trap of reading some of the more deplorable 'news' about the movie, and it was so full of forced negativity and in some cases pathetic theories sold as utter truth ("This youtuber who's wrong all the time heard this rumor but won't tell us where so let's write a 700 word article about that"). And I thought, damn, I need the mojo forum back now.

I invoked Ron's name today already when my gaming website of choice tried to tell me that Elon Musk would be buying Steam. ☠️ In that vein, we ... could probably make the thread title a little lighter on the clickbait. My excitement is pretty well documented in the respective Mix'n'Mojo thread. I tried to discuss the game elsewhere, but was appalled at the level of negativity. That feeling persisted for much of the nearly eight months that passed until I could play the game. I drew a lot of fan art, vowed to never touch any spoilers and then of course consumed all of them two dozen times, minutes after they were tweeted. The community interaction was really great, just as I remember it from the Telltale forums back before (and while!) Tales released. It was wholesome to see that this kind of collective community hyping still works in these dark times of the net. When I finally played Return, almost three months had passed and the Mix'n'Mojo forum had become a barren landscape again. But my best friend, who had played it with the original PC release, has jotted down all the things she wanted to talk to me about while playing the game. And then, back in December, we started re-playing it via Discord. Thank god for technology. We're having great fun, but we seldom find the time for those sessions (which, in retrospect, makes those recap things pretty swell). We'll probably finish the game next time. Monkey Island is an old franchise right now, it's in its sixth instalment, and it still felt fresh and exciting for me to sail the seas again. Of course I have some quarrels with how the story was going, and the ending, but Dave and Ron have definitely woven an intriguing story. The first sharp shock was of course the tree scene. That one froze me for a minute or two as I was slowly understanding what it means when a protagonist never changes. Guybrush was back, and it was the old Guybrush without a care or consideration in the world. A certain Dominic told us that this game would have 'a depth to it'. And it does, I think it contains some fundamental truths about life that can hurt sometimes. But in that moment, I had to get over the fact that the protagonist of this series might not be as likeable as I made him to be in my mind. And that was difficult. Of course when Elaine found out about Guybrush's shenannigans, I thought that she would leave him. Which tore me in two. On the one hand, Guybrush would definitely have deserved that. On the other, we knew from the framing story that any break up would not last forever. And how odd would it be if Monkey Island 'ended' on that note. Eventually, the game ended in a bizarre way. Bizarre, maybe in a good sense, because while some layers of the game world's reality have been torn down while others, like setting and era are very much intact. The graphics shine and the details - hearing the criticism, you'd think no detail exists - are amusing my friend and me to no end. The twitching kid caught in the climbing frame back on the playground had us rolling on the floor laughing. Dee's ridiculous anchor lesson became a favorite of ours. The music was everything that I hoped for and even more. It didn't at all feel like a re-hash to me, especially since many new musical motifs have been added to my personal MI canon. The engine is, hands down, the best 2D adventure game engine I have yet seen, and I would love to see it used not just for one game. Bottom line, I'm desperately waiting for another true point & click adventure game of this magnitude. Not necessarily from Dave and Ron (I would of course be on board with that!), not necessarily a LucasArts franchise (I'd be over the moon and halfway on my way to Mars about a Fate of Atlantis Reboot/episodic five parter), but very similar in the approach to user interface, interactive story elements, dialog heavy, musical collossus, smooth movements of the protagonist, closeups of faces and important actions in the story.

I was so looking forward to her. That was a great design, and she would have sounded great in a combo with Jojo.

I was thunderstruck by the ending as well, but after attempting to jot down my feelings several times, decided to take a step back and just let the thing sink in. Now I think that I should have seen it coming. Of course Ron would double down on the bewildering ending of LeChuck's Revenge. There was no other way. And it's more complex than I thought at first. We're not switching from the reality of the Monkey Island stories back to the frame story. We're switching to kind of an interlude reality, with which Guybrush trolls his son in the same way that Ron trolled us all those years ago. Boybrush becomes the fans, the fans become Boybrush; and Ron becomes Guybrush just like Guybrush becomes Ron. All too fittingly, Guybrush-Ron would hastily concoct an alternative one sentence ending after Guybrush/the fans tell him what they would have liked to see. But that is of course no kind of "satisfying" ending within the self contained reality of the Monkey Island series. Like many others, when I hear fans lamenting how the ending of Return destroyed the Monkey Island series, I have to think of the same criticism voiced about LeChuck's Revenge. It's actually true: The Monkey Island series was destroyed back in 1991. The hole that Ron tore into the fabric of his creation's reality could not possibly be closed. LeChuck's Revenge made a sequel impossible, and more than that, even undesirable. ... ... it's still the best game of the series and has spawned no less than four sequels. 😎 Maybe it's not so much the ending of Monkey Island 2 that Ron wanted to recreate, maybe it's what happened to the series after that final and all breaking ending. A new tree arising from salted earth. The new steward of the Monkey Island series will have to honor the series' spirit yet they will be utterly forced to completely ignore the authoritative ending of Monkey Island 6, the final word of its original creator. What a delicious irony. Whoever takes up the baton to conduct these characters in the future, I'll definitely be in the audience. The monkeys are listening.

If you're interested, Terminator 2 - Judgement Day is just about the best action/sci-fi movie with emotional depth that is out there. Boen's minor antagonist role is that of a psychiatrist stunted by decades of seeing the worst, and he skillfully walks on a tightrope between scientific interest turned sadistic impulse and halfway well meaning treatment of his patient. One minute you just want to punch his face, the very next you'd like to tell the protagonist to not treat him that brutally. A small role, but a perfect performance in a perfect movie.

Yeah I know. Three posts above and more than a week ago. 🤣 That's why it's so embarrassing for me to only have stumbled upon it yesterday. I really need to celebrate this more.

Only now have I stumbled upon the teaser. Telltale's actual swan song deserves just this. I'm pissing my pants with anticipation. An hour of additional JEJ music, finally the soundtrack release on bandcamp, a day one release on gog.com and of course a European tourist that actually looks like Marius would be great. 🥸 This should be discussed more ... ... it should have its own subforum dammit. Looking forward to laughing my butt off about the Aeroschwein and Weltraumliebewachzauberkrieg jokes again.

Oh, they're definitely cool. There isn't much to it besides LeChuck's Theme and Cemetery. 😬

I haven't made up my mind about characters, story and puzzles yet, but the music, to me, is stellar. First of all, there is no shortage of new themes/tunes/motifs in this game. I must have listened to the Blockade theme about two thousand times, and I still think that technically, that should count as three new 'tunes'. Several new motifs on Brr Muda have caught my attention and I was humming them for days, the main town hall music especially. The accordion theme of Guybrush and LeChuck fighting is also great. There is almost no rehash of old themes on Monkey Island, Scurvy, Brr Muda, and Terror Island. Melee didn't quite click for me, but then again, not everything has to. The iMuse opus magnum is of course on LeShip. A few new themes have made it to my piano (though I'm trying my fingers at Phatt Island Jail right now and it's a bit frustrating), there's one LeShip theme that I really love. But of course LeChuck's theme is looming throughout LeShip. There's that one variant where I feel like they "call" out with the first notes of LeChuck's theme and "answer" it with notes from the cemetary theme. And I really feel like they "reworked" themes in an often surprising and elaborate way. Like transposing the Lookout theme (unheard since TSoMI, I think?) into a minor key, and immediately it sounds like it was written that way. And the rock version of the Scumm Bar, wasn't that great? I had hoped that being ten weeks too late to this game would have the ultimate perk of hearing all the new arrangements by fans on youtube. They're not yet there, sadly. I really think this soundtrack deserves more recognition and praise.

Ohhhh let's do that, that gets really interesting with Curse. But don't forget to factor in perspective!

Wait, this thread still going? You guys are pathetic in the best possible sense. Just so that this is clear, no counting monkeys in Return until GOG gets the game. As to counting islands ... folks ... why doesn't anybody listen to me? "In 2008, Royle writes, a nissologist—one who studies islands—named Christian Depraetere “selected a threshold of 0.1 sq km… and calculated that there are 86,732 islands at or above this size on earth.” When he reduced this threshold to .01 square kilometers, the number jumped up to around 450,000. When he brought it down still more, it rocketed to nearly 7 billion, “although there is some doubt as to the validity of his formula at this scale,” writes Royle." If we use quantifiable measurements to determine what an island is and what is just a speck of dirt in the ocean, there's yet another problem, which is that we don't know how big these islands on the screen really are. Unless of course we measure our islands in Guybrushs.

I don't think Europeans are Devolver's target group here.

The greater spoiler to me is that it reveals one particular formerly released screenshot to possibly contain deliberately falsified information. And I really really hope they did that. In other news ... THE CLOSEUP. How cool is that?!?

I finally got it, folks. 🤯 Back when Dave said that chronology might become difficult, he meant that it might become difficult with the Monkey Island game that's next after ReMI. Return to Monkey Island concludes the timeline – not the series – with an older protagonist who finally gets his shit together. But video game characters aging in that way, that's unheard of in this kind of serialization. Directors of future Monkey Island games will likely choose to place their story between Tales and Return, get him back to his younger self. These games will be prequels to ReMI. This of course means that Ron could kill off Guybrush at the end. Just saying. 😅

Effing love your stuff!! "Bad Days" for Monkey Island? Pretty please with Turtles on top?

I'd love to know what people worked on both Broken Sword (5?) and Return to Monkey Island. I think I'm going to research the entire team. I need to find out who was new to Monkey Island, who was not, and who started crying during the job interview. 😃 Love that name!!

Love that extra reprise (is it a reprise? I don't have a clue) at the end of the Monkey Island theme. The music during the scrapbook is great, but not that much different than what we've heard in the TSoMI special edition, if there's a difference at all.

It's great for what it is. 😇 Adventure games more than any other have to communicate what your goals are and what the mechanics to achieve them are. I think that is because the best games demand a fair bit of exploration in a huge playground and suggest vast interactive options for the player. There has to be some guidance because she'd get lost immediately, and getting lost never was fun, even in the nostalgia covered old days. So yes of course, side quests could be confusing! And a questlog would feel fairly out of place in an adventure game. As great as the "You completed Act I of the first game" banner would be for the superfans, that just wouldn't be a particularly fun thing for the newbies. And I'd like all newbies aboard! Seamlessly integrated interactive story elements (like the often raised ship sinking option in TSoMI) should do the trick, and I hope there's plenty in the game. I'm not a big fan of substantially altered endings, but I guess the core of it will remain the same in ReMI.

The official communication always was "It's not about the nostalgia", but we already know that two dozen characters and two islands will return, and that Guybrush is rather explicitly out to retread the paths and relive the glory of the past days. It will be so interesting to see how these seemingly contradictory things can be seamlessly joined. Naturally, fans are ambivalent in that respect too – they proclaim that they want to see something new and fresh, but would still rejoice at recognizing backgrounds, characters, and themes. Optionally collecting proof of trial completion would be a great and unobtrusive way to give the more nostalgia minded what they want out of the game, without upsetting the people who are trying to keep their experience new and fresh – but I also don't think they will do this particular thing. Still, I would love to see more pronounced "side quests" in point and click adventure games, and I kind of expect ReMI to radically shake things up in some areas, so ... who knows, especially at this point?