Vainamoinen

With a little help from your friends!

I'm not up to speed in game culture these days, so I'm going to ask: How often has this actually happened these last ten years? Because I'm going to guess "never". 😬 I absolutely expect the new trailer to be a release date trailer though, I mean, how many damn trailers are they going to make? Had the forces of evil prevailed eight years ago, this (link) is the kind of journalism we'd have today, minus the sarcasm. For me, the ghostly image of fleshy lips superimposed over the rotting skelletal jaw symbolizes ... ermmmmmmm .... let's say, getting the word out there about a new instalment in an aging series, against impossible odds.

It's still made from trees I guess, but wafer would sue you for defamation if you said it's as thin. THREE chickens. And I take the memes over the speculation. 🏴‍☠️ Murray as a VERB could be cool! 🏴‍☠️ I guess the c-word was reserved for "chicken" all along. Uhm ... I admit, I kind of think that it 🐻s repeating. Especially when looking at the unedited versions of comments on Ron's blog or the trailer on youtube, it becomes abundantly clear that a whole lot of people thought it was going to made for cis white males. It really is better to punch these dudes repeatedly in the face with how "woke" something is going to be and how "woke" The Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck's Revenge actually were back in the day, because they're actually really stupid people. TSoMI was the story of a pudgy guy who knows nothing about the world, who first gets beaten by a competent black woman several times, then attempts to rescue a damsel for two thirds of the game even though she was in control of the situation for the entirety of the game. LeChuck's Revenge shows that "damsel" naming her dog after the protagonist and throwing him out of her house while he's not in any discomfort at all wearing a pink dress (well, it has no pockets). Copy that, paste that, they don't understand even after a thousand times. I'm sure that in some forums, new shitstorms will emerge on that old info, but come release day, they will still be surprised again. Regarding the criticism of modern game journalism, this really is a special case, because the journalist probably handed in his script, and then Ron and Dave said "you can't say that" to a few parts, then Devolver to others, and Disney to all of them. If this feels like shredded bits of wood, it probably wasn't the journalist who did the shredding.

Wait what? PC Gamer is spoiling the 1911 Treasure Island cover by N. C. Wyeth?! Those bastards! 😈

Useless, unimpressive and inactive. They basically sat around in the Scumm Bar and pretended to drink grog. Made every passing flooring inspector a pirate so they wouldn't have to do squat. They did nothing against the LeChuck threat in TSoMI and when the governor was kidnapped... they were not seen again. So, basically, now we have active pirate leaders with a plan and some voodoo stuff. Ye Olde Pirate Leaders took over the shop and are blowing up blowfish. 🐡 And there's actually a blowfish emoji in here! That will come in handy for walkthroughs.

No, no, no, and FUCK YEEEEEEEESSSS These adventure gamey moments in RPGs always feel so half assed. It's really not the same kind of exploration or combination. I wish the genres would actually seamlessly merge, that really has potential. Point and click adventure RPGs. I'd buy those! But I'd rather make those myself.

These are great! I experienced myself how easily the pencil glides when drawing on the designs of Rex' team. These characters suggest so much detail, you just know how they look in any style.

What a silly question. They're obviously lovers. I mean, great video at just over five minutes. I hate how people drag their videos out nowadays so youtube's search algorithm doesn't forget about them. And some nice little flashbacks into Guybrush's childhood would be incredible. 🥰

Thank you! I might reevaluate the map after playing ReMI ... and draw a new one. Next time, with a bit more pizzaz. 🍕 And here I thought "Duck Island" would get you first. 😛 Thank you so much! I love maps so much, every time they show Wally as a gullible punching bag I'm like BUT HE DRAWS MAPS HE'S LIKE A SUPERHERO YOU DORKS. I hope Return can set the record straight and have him save Elaine and Guybrush from a burning building. Or maybe there's actually time travel involved, he goes back in time, the cannibals chop off his head and use him as a navigato ... oooookay, let's not go there. I always interpreted Mêlée Town as a tiny village at the edge of a vast island wilderness, just a starting port for budding pirates. Maybe I just wanted to feel like TSoMI gave us the full picture. My map mostly tries to link what we've already experienced as backgrounds with Secret's title screen. The title screen shows a certain elevation of the glowing lights already, but it's the clocktower background that really gave me a sense of 'going up': The archway to the right shows houses placed significantly lower. And left to the actual clock tower there's a building that could either be five or six stories high ... or it's simply placed much higher than Hand-at-ten Avenue. Add to that that coastal towns usually take care not to be accidentally washed away (Florida being the exception to the rule) and Bob's your ghost uncle.

I was talking about a strong trend in modern games (notably neither about books, comics, movies or other narrative media!!). Now, we've seen some great narrative games that counter this trend this last decade. But as soon as games are, as Sean Vanaman would say, "gamey" (WHICH I LIKE), the mechanics of the media dictate that there's a challenge involved, a competition, a puzzle that you would master, win or solve, yielding the feeling of success. It's my personal theory that "gamey" story games tend to communicate to the player that "all is well because you fixed it all" at the end. The designers/authors are afraid that the crucial feeling of success or accomplishment is getting muddied by a less than perfectly good ending is perceived as a failure. I have absolutely nothing against stories where it's clear from the get go that those two characters will end up together, the kingdom will be saved and the protagonist will be filthy rich. No problem and I of course see what you mean with those hopeless modern times. No one of us will have to subject themselves to a tide of frankly depressing narratives with no hope or color. Which is the other extreme really. Personally, I don't see any worth in a serialized narrative like The Walking Dead, where there are no ifs, but only whens for dying characters. But I also dread the backlash if the supposed and possibly actual "final" instalment of the Monkey Island series gives us a less than super happy ending for Guybrush and Elaine.

URgh, wrong ship. How embarrassing. Will amend. What I meant was of course that it's entirely possible to return to Melee Island in TSoMI with SeMad Monkey, swordmaster, Otis and Meathook, but Escape treats it as canon that Guybrush abandoned them marooned on Monkey Island. That would be so funny if I didn't see it work that way. 😆 It's the way it worked in above mentioned The Devil's Playhouse: but it doesn't really matter because Sam as well as Max are the epitome of throwaway characters anyway. Or that's what we thought at least. Riots on the Telltale forums. THEY CAN NOT DO THIS. THIS IS WRONG. And, I mean, I was amongst those rioters. If the treatment of the fictional universe and its characters that you're invested in emotionally/nostalgically is found to be lacking i.e. runs counter a perceived canon style/genre, creative choice is often even perceived as a targeted personal insult towards the fanbase, and then shitstorms happen. It's complete and utter nonsense as you say, but it happened already with Return to Monkey Island, and on the face of it, we know jack shit about the game yet. 😔

@Aro-tron's theory hits the nail on the head for me. And it isn't just the gameplay that's new and fresh, the narrative has this strong contrast in that the protagonist tries to rehash the first part, but fails in that respect and finds something merely personal instead. I have to concede that LeChuck's Revenge didn't feel like that much of a grown up, deep storyline to me. But it did feel like a brilliant parody of intellectual/literature tropes, culminating in that final Star Wars reference, and a Star Wars reference it was. I'm not disappointed in that ending, but I understand all the disappointment it has gotten. The Devil's Playhouse's ending has deepened my understanding of this disappointment: In a parody setting of casual exaggeration, frequent fourth wall breaks and crass anachronisms, light hearted mentions of keelhauling or white slavers, it is a dangerous thing to care for your protagonist so much that you can not abide the integrity of the fictional reality to be scratched or even broken. Canon inconsistencies become sacrilege, interactive story elements become difficult to accept (which is why EMI made the "Guybrush sunk the Mad Sea Monkey" timeline canon). Expectations become one-sided and specific ("Monkey Island must be a pirate story, so that means that giant monkey robots can not be canon"). The perspective of the unreliable protagonist might be interpeted as absolute truth ("TSoMI was a story of great success for Guybrush, and not a senseless goose chase that turned out to be completely superfluous because the damsel was in control all along"). What happens to the protagonist has depth and meaning, an emotional truth for us, and if that emotional truth is disrepected or used for laughs by the creators, god help them. 💀 We are as of right now totally in the dark about how "deep the currents are" in Return to Monkey Island. There will certainly be a bit of the personal in there, of Ron as well as Dave, and of the lives they've led. I'm pretty certain we'll have a good bit of closure in the game, it might just not be a happy ending. Unfortunately, that perfect happy ending has kind of become the standard not just in Monkey Island games, but in video games overall. Might be because developers and players confuse the feeling of success in "beating the game" with the protagonist's success in getting what she set out to do. It's a bit infantilizing, really, all these fairytale happily-ever-afters. 😄 Prince of Persia (2008) had one of the best endings in video game history because it was so utterly bitter, and so expected, at least if you didn't lie to yourself. Maybe they'll try something like that for Return to Monkey Island. It'll feel like an open ending although all the loose threads have been properly cauterised. ... I'll try to keep an open mind.

A look to the left will suffice! 🪨 I'm always up for drawing beautiful beautiful maps. And I'm pretty certain it's obvious where High Street and Low Street are. 🗺️

I may attempt to draw a map later this evening, but for now the elementary problem is clear, we don't have that much room to navigate behind the church, because we only have a few dozen feet before we hit solid rock. I don't think there's a street running behind church and prison. There's no space.

That's the thing with Rex' art direction, it's probably wide open to interpretation. YOU DECIDE. Which is actually great for fan art! Maybe it's burn marks, maybe he's bleeding from spinning that globe too much, maybe he did what I do all the time these days, resting my arms on the table while painting and accidentally soiling everything with the paint. Personally, I will cling to the theory that he has gigantic compass needles tattooed on his forearms. It all makes sense.

* click on door * Oohhhhh iMuse transition! * click on exit * Ohhhh iMuse transition! * enter next screen * Ohhhh iMuse transition! * go back * Ohhhh iMuse transition! That last one didn't work too well though TBH. Let's try that one again. Notion rejected! All the ships have sunk in Stan's old shop. I want to go there and deep dive in ten minute increments! 🤣 And she has well funded competition. The three new pirate leaders seem to deal in voodoo too. Time for Guybrush to nuke those folks out. Something like that. Guybrush longs to grow, for a coming of age moment and some kind of fulfillment, but he can not understand that the pirate life is just a completely different kind of narrative. 😅 So he searches for another Bigger Whoop and finds something deeply personal instead. Wouldn't be the first time! We already had strong suspicions in this thread about what island she's actually on. I guess we'll stumble on her the same way we stumbled on her in LeChuck's Revenge, short, sharp and salty. They're estranged again, their goals in life could not align any less. They might be having a moment of deep emotional truth, one that you wouldn't expect in a Monkey Island game, and then they part ways again. I doubt that the conflict will be resolved in its entirety. I doubt we'll see a 'happy end'. We might see a bitter truth that Guybrush will have to face to finally grow up a little. Hopefully an elaborate puzzle. And even more hopefully, one of the Pûzzlés du Rón™ that jumble their parameters every time you start a new game! That is the spiriiiit!! It's not just the entirety of the OLD Mêlée Island, ohhh nooo!! They also added MOAR locations on Melee. Then they give us three to five additional islands of equal or greater size. Ahahahahaaaa!! 🤯 They've been working for two and a half years on this game. Less than one on LeChuck's Revenge. And compiling the game doesn't take the entire night any longer! The team is much bigger! They have more graphic designers than LeChuck has new minions! So what could go wrong? This is going to be an absurdly massive game and speedruns are going to be ten hours long. Still want to know who this Putra is.

"Putra"?! Who's "Putra"?!

Nah. We're done with the Mondays. They'll skip the next, then we'll have one last spoiler drop on Tuesday next week, and a release date in the very near future to go with it. How's that for positivity? 😆

There's no Melee Island without the map, and if there's a map, there's Hook Island to explore. At least that's how I see it ...

I do hope they keep spoiling Melee Island, because they have to spoil SOMETHING, and it'd better be from the very beginning part of the game. 😔 But, yeah ... enough with the spoilers, can we haz game nao?

ACTUALLY, it's "invent ORY". And "ORY" is the IATA airport code for the Orly Airport in Paris. So, Return to Monkey Island is obviously about inventing aircrafts in the 1600s. Sorry for all the spoilers.

Less than 24 hours until MIM strikes again! Probably on Dave's channel this time ... 😘 Not many months left. It won't be September 1st of course, because Ron is at Pax West from Sept 2nd to 5th. Not much sense in marketing an already released game.

You mean that icon that's printed over the the straw that people are grasping at ... ? 🤨

And the release platforms, I pray. You give me hope! I'll take it. Ohhhh somebody do that please. This marketing stuff is so ... ephemeral. We'll miss it when it's gone.