Vainamoinen

Spoiler policy was extremely reasonable until now. If Disney is taking marketing into their hands in the home stretch however, that could be a bit of a disaster, but I don't think they know what they have on their hands, really. I think Dave and Ron are still at the helm of this whole campaign, and they wouldn't spoil this if their lives depended on it. 🤞 I seriously hope Disney isn't pulling off any timed exclusivity shit.

Yes, in eleven days. Not sure what to expect. If there's a new trailer at gamescom, there's going to be a release date, because you can only do so many trailers. I also don't know what these gamescom openings usually entail (I've been in the physical vicinity of gamescom once in my life, and it was to meet Mark Darin, and I never ventured there ever again). Actual gameplay, just a quick ten minute sequence from the beginning part, would make sense to me. I'm sure Ron would love to finally show off the UI, verbs and inventory. It would be nice to have a little time with that, but I just don't know whether gamescom opening night is the thing to give Ron the time. Concerning the Monkey Island Mondays though, I think Monday they're finally giving us Elaine and the next Monday they're giving us nothing, or just a peek at the gamescom stuff.

They should have listened to me.

My line wasn't from Escape ... 🦊

How about the "It's impolite to stare at a woman's chest" line? 😄

Grog and the pirate life. I knew it'd get Guybrush in trouble one day! 😄

Nintendo: "Placeholder price". The End. 🔚 Yeah, it's probably the final price, but Devolver didn't yet settle on a release date. As soon as they have one, we'll know. This might not be your run off the mill "Spit it out like you'll win your spit in gold" release date decision. Devolver might be, more than for any game before, weighing their options. Not just when they'll release, but also what and where. I think that right now, day in, day out, they're discussing more release platforms, more voiceover languages, a physical release, and merchandising, that all should best case scenario come out on the same day. And that makes setting that release date incredibly difficult. I get that! I may have to go dark upon release date announcement anyway until the GOG version is confirmed and in their catalog. If it comes to that, I may have a going away present ready for you guys (Yes, @Toymafia88, you've seen part of that already).

Verb peg leg?

I finally started with Delores. Just to see where the new UI could go to. Now, this is a pretty raw build of something new, and I'm not certain it ever was a diamond in the rough. I instinctively disliked huge verb-noun text popping up right in front of the mouse pointer, possibly even blocking the view to the thing you want to interact with. I'd much rather have the old fashioned sentence building up at the bottom of the screen. Everything else worked mostly fine here. The inventory can be switched on and off here, but let's be honest, nobody is switching it off and that's a bit sad. Here's hoping they took the evolution a bit further than that (and I definitely think they did ).

One thing that came up in the GOG forums, and that I've been mulling over a bit. A user (who is looking forward to the game) said that LeChuck sounded like a "generic pirate voice from a Nickelodeon cartoon". From my point of view, the idea is reinforced by parts of his dialog being substituted with "bla bla". He is supposed to sound like a generic cartoon villain. Now I think our narrator / point of view here really is LeChuck. Who is really fed up with being and sounding like a cartoon villain and wants to make a change in his life. And it fits in with what we've seen from the game: the stress relief toy especially. He's sick and tired of being evil pirate LeChuck.

The main villain in Return to Monkey Island will NOT be LeChuck. The villain will be unveiled in the third third of the game. It's ...

Redskin fire moustache was compared to Inigo Montoya on the adventure gamers forum, so now I am going to call the character Inigo.

Maybe they should just say no more. The interesting question is: Whose POV is it? Can't really be Guybrush. So who is the narrator figure here? Maybe even LeChuck?

Every time I see a new Rex character, I think "This can not possibly be a minor character. They probably have a HUEG role to play." Also, can we start with the upside down ghost memes already? Thanks. The absence of the violinist is getting annoying! 🥺

FIVE MINUTES LATE AND STILL THE FIRST

The next MIM tweet will be posted eighteen minutes after get home. I will have logged into the mixnmojo forum and have my answer form open so that I would most definitely be the first one to see and post the new tweet, but then I'll be terror eff fiving the wrong twitter account or get distracted by other shiny pirate things and will only be able to react three minutes after one of you guys post it first.

Great. Now I want to paint that band.

Sure, here we go.

Kickoff theory: The Monkey Island series is and always was set 1000 years in the future. There was an apocalyptic weather event right on what is now called Monkey Island that brought civilisation as we know it to an end. But what we know as Monkey Island today was actually a much larger island that broke in three: Monkey Island, Brr Muda and Melee Island. The original Pangaekey Island held weather in balance, but now that it's broken, Brr Muda has become this icy thingamagig. Way back when Melee Island was of course called "Meltee Island" for obvious reasons. Return to Monkey Island is about joining these islands again and fixing the climate catastrophe.

This time, Ron (not Dave) is going to show off a short scene with Elaine in an environment with an unsurpassed plethora of extremely cute critters in it. The scene will be on Monkey Island™, but they're not telling us of course. There will be a bit of new music in it, but Elaine will mostly talk over it, so the new motif can't grab hold of your brain. Guybrush and Elaine are caught in some kind of battle of wits, we don't quite know the exact context, but it seems like Elaine is winning again. They're not showing the UI, but they're using scenes from the Mac version again so there will be an extra black mouse pointer present. There, you can de-hype for now. 😇

Trailer tally: 32 🏴‍☠️ MIM tomorrow!

And beyond LeChuck just being an evil dude. He might not even be the main villain of this one. Heck, there might not even be a main villain. The website notably does not suggest that we'll be working within the old "LeChuck has new evil plan, Guybrush thwarts evil plan, end of game" paradigm again. Breaking that paradigm might be the decisive step towards a game with "deep currents" – in which the central emotional core of the narrative works, in which the protagonist is humanized through his struggles instead of being a mere projection figure. Or it could just be another Weltraumliebewachzauberkrieg. 👽

What if we have the choice to free either Stan or Otis from prison?

And Cruff.

It it's LeChuck, that would mean that it's not the same voice as Judge Plank, which in turn would mean that Judge Plank is not an alias of LeChuck! And it's so embarrassing when my bold predictions go wrong. 😔 It might be Elaine, which is dangerous spoiler terrain, because her whereabouts, calling and relationship to our protagonist is still very much an enigma. ... I think it's Elaine. But I'd be ready for a deliberately falsified teaser (like for "The Siege of Spinner Cay". That was awesome.)