Vainamoinen

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?

Better yet, presenting the pirate leaders with evidence of trial completion could be the first actual side quest in the Monkey Island series!

Not in this life.

While I am in panic waiting for the GOG announcement, I found out what Return to Monkey Island really is about and this is the spoiler thread, so ... The three pirate leaders from Monday's clip say they moved on, but of course it is a huge burn mark on Guybrush's soul to never have completed the three trials or rather, brought back evidence to the pirate leaders. These three artifacts have to be brought back to them. And, what do you know, we already spotted the idol in one of those screenshots! That leaves us with just two T-shirts to find. We return to Melee Island, present the pirate leaders with the evidence, screen says "Act I of The Secret of Monkey Island completed", game ends.

Huge can of worms. Depending on your definition of "island", Tales could win by a landslide. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-makes-an-island

Let me ask Gunther von Hagens about this. * ring ring * "Hello, Gunther? Vee hav an interesting der kwestshun for you [...] " Well, good news. Gunther says that plastination is possible with chicken as well. He's just not too certain about the sound effects.

I will not admit this new evidence to the trial. It is the court's understanding that Mike was the result of a failed beheading attempt that left the chicken with almost its entire brain stem intact.

OBJECTION A chicken can run for three to five seconds in "head off" mode, but only if the escape command was previously executed in "head on" mode.

... if we're counting live chicken heads displayed on screen, the count for TSoMI is zero.

There was just a single dev quote, I don't even remember who said it exactly (neither does the Monkey Island wiki), to explain the very basic concept of the in medias res beginning of the Tales. And somehow that idea took fans' brains hostage. It was everywhere. People kept parrotting it on the forums. They talked about how that would affect canon. They wanted Telltale to "do Monkey Island 5 next" so that horrible gap would be closed. The Telltale forums mod squad spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to get rid of that false info that Tales was "actually Monkey Island 6". And see where it led us. 🤣 Maybe planting the seed is easier than removing the tree, so I think I'll start talking about a "fictional Indiana Jones 1" in which he finds Shorty and the Nurhachi. By the way!

Ohhhh mirror/light puzzle coming up.

Maybe I should watch Memento again to prepare for this.

Pretty sure they will not substitute that question mark with an exclamation point. I think they'll just change the question mark's font. 🦊

Just another reason why I want to do a real one.