Vainamoinen

Ohhhh Tim would sue their asses off. 🤣

"Towering one in the middle" is a good guess though. 😄

Quick question: Did we have another character name reveal without me noticing? https://monkeyisland.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Madison Where was she called "Captain Madison"?

Morgan LeFlay can strictly speaking be considered a henchperson of the Marquis, so Morgan LeFlay it is.

Octoburp the Burpteenth it is. Not surprisingly, a Thursday! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Clearly, the storekeeper was evicted by Stan for owing him 5,000 pieces'o'eight. 😱

So the plot of Return is that Guybrush has a diminished lung capacity from drinking too much grog and he can't even win a belching contest let alone hold his breath for three minutes. His sole superpower is GONE and we still have a game. Take that, Marvel! By the way, I had this scene on repeat in the background now for 15 minutes. Something is wrong with me. Somehow I have the feeling that the solution to this puzzle is the longest belch in history, and that @Dmnkly intends to tell us that he got it right on the first take. 🤭

I see we are going back to the basics. 😅

Precious few reply with the correct answer. But the people who understood "What video games do you want [us to make] real hard [difficult]?" sure are hilarious.

Mind blown - 🤯 - thank you! That completes the picture! I've been following McCaig's blog back in 2010 when he was posting a bit of art instruction. Unfortunately his blog is dead now, but man he's so great. I visited his short and sweet artstation account just now, and although he switched to digital in the meantime, I still think he wields the stylus like paintbrush. Occasionally a traditionally painted piece steals the show. His watercolors especially because those leave no room for mistakes. A whole lot of artists study themselves in the mirror for facial expressions, so a partial likeness is something that does occasionally happen as a happy accident.

Some time ago, I stumbled on the tidbit that some (most? all?) of these portraits were actual LucasArts employees. Life really sparked from those closeups, from the Swordmaster, Elaine, Sophia Hapgood's newspaper picture. They ruined it all for the special edition of TSoMI of course, because that's a horrifically tricky rights situation. Today, the portraits are a reminder that the carefree can-do attitude of the LucasArts adventure crew is gone forever, and that adventure games today will absolutely have to innovate because they can not go back to what is impossible today.

I think he gives my language a new kind of rythm, and I love that. Igh/buingemigh/middemazbjaum 🎶

I've watched the Dom speaks German part six times and still couldn't figure out what he says. Well, I probably couldn't understand him because I was laughing so hard. 🤣

Also, Bill Nighy called. He wants his hands back from CMI Guybrush. No, sorry, bad joke. Nothing to see here.

I think Rex has copy-pasted Guybrush's mouth here.

From briefs to boxers ... in a year.

Isn't that a common phrase used by artists when they are just doing their own thing without bothering about public opinion? Sounds to me like a promise kept, to release something so polarizing and non mainstream that you'll "either love or hate it, but nothing in between"? On the other hand, it would be "just" a phrase. As they say over here, the soup's never eaten as hot as it is boiled. And last not least: LeChuck's Revenge was provocative and shocking, and not what everyone was expecting. Curse of Monkey Island was. Escape of Monkey Island was. Tales of Monkey Island was. It would have been odd if Return wasn't. Maybe our brains are so washed out and brittle that we can no longer cope with the provocation and shock, the range of stylistic choice and the reinvention of an entire franchise that was a daily occurrence in the 80s and 90s.

I actually do think a toxic fan backlash was inevitable. It's a conclusion I drew by looking at the reaction towards each new and always radically new art style of every Monkey Island in the past, and present online discussion culture as a whole. In the same vein, I am utterly convinced that any Monkey Island art style is remarkably distinct from any of the art styles in previous Monkey Island games and instead more in line with styles outside the franchises (e.g. EMI looked like Grim Fandango, CMI looked more like a Disney movie, and ToMI, for several reasons, was often compared to Wallace & Gromit). Oh, you think so? I actually hope you're right, but you could still be very wrong. But when it turns out they're doing something radically new with the UI, I won't throw myself to the ground wishing eternal hell to the creators. I see where you're going, and I like it, but I can't fully agree. Because the art style wasn't chosen to shock the fans out of their wits, not just "to risk something". It was chosen because Ron really liked it, he called up Rex first chance he got. It was chosen because Ron assumed that if he chose something he liked, his fans would like it as well. So in a sense, he may have thought that he doesn't take any risk at all, and he was wrong because he underestimated the toxicity in Monkey Island fandom. And that is a highly depressing thought. 😔

I'm so torn on this. Because on the one hand, discussing the art style should be possible. On the other, subjective negative impressions, rhethorically sharpened for maximum derisive impact, aren't exactly a "discussion"; and also, there are so many places that allow and encourage these youtubey insult contests. adventuregamers is still THE website for point & click adventure game news, and look at their forum. Just look at it. If we get another Monkey Island, ever, I'm pretty certain adventuregamers won't bag the first exclusive interview again thanks to that community. It's really not like I want to stifle free speech, but toxic fandom is just that: toxic. 😬

Completely unrelated to anything, here's some criticism of Tenet. Two friends told me it really didn't click for them at all. I watched it, I liked it quite a bit. So clearly I wasn't influenced by the people who watched it at a movie theater when I finally got to stream the thing a year later. Were there points of criticism that I had? Yes, of course, but they didn't ruin the movie for me. Nolan doesn't really risk anything new, visually. It mostly felt like I was back in Inception. And the second point of criticism, it's the classic Nolan mindfuck, and that's simply not accessible. People are sitting there watching a 150 minute movie, stop paying attention at minute 30 because they don't have a fighting chance to understand it all, and then they're going online to be brought to understand it. And they're still the target audience, because they think that's art, a two and a half hour narrative that can only be understood in retrospect. But let's talk about Return to Monkey Island for a bit. Because clearly, risks were taken when a bold new art style was chosen. It was of course clear that you couldn't satisfy the pixel art fans, or the Curse of Disney Island fans, or even both, so in a sense Ron was nudged in the bold and shocking direction. A hint system AND difficulty settings will take care of accessibility in a genre that was once notorious for its punishing difficulty and obscure puzzles. And those are just two great and commendable decisions that we know of where Dave and Ron have outdone Christopher Nolan. One other thing that I just have to say. This idea that the more destructive critics were somehow "shamed" into silence, we simply know that this is not how it works. We see in the adventure gamers forum that a negative stance has taken a hold there. They are constantly saying horrible things, they are literally having a contest as to who says the worst thing about the art style. They weren't shamed into silence. I'm on two other German forums where we had this discussion up and down. On the whole, negativity persists, but three or four people are slowly coming to their senses. Yes, they do come to their senses because they find something they like in the new art style, that does happen, but also because they are beginning to understand simple market realities. And some of those market realities are the probability of a heavily shitstormed game getting a gog.com release, getting non-English voiceover by some international publishers, a phyiscal release or even a "big box" with certain extras. They're freespeeching Return of Monkey Island into the grave before it's even released, and that I find remarkably heinous. At least people watched Tenet before checking with their friends whether they should find it crappy.

I envision it as an oversized coffee table book that merges official design with fan art, interspersed with the kind of walkthrough that LucasArts was putting out back in the day i.e. with extra official art, jokes, and behind the scenes stuff. I call it "Return to Monkey Island. A mostly failed attempt at a walkthrough." Oh, and you're going to do the layout.

And adventuregamers was the first website to get an exclusive interview ten days after the announcement. This shit must break Emily's heart. Anyway ... I couldn't resist and left those folks a note.

More platforms are extreeeemely welcome. I so want to wishlist El Pollo Diabolo out of ReMI on gog.com. But also, releasing on the two major consoles (or rather their capable and available predecessors) would be cool, I really don't want anybody to be left behind. And not just via stream, physical releases would be great too. Of course you can't release physical PC or console editions weeks or even month after the game's out (unless you're Limited Run), so they'd have to be synched up with one release date. My folks are also biting their nails because they want voiceovers in German, and of course hot on our heels are the no less nutjobby fans in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. Devolver could announce what deals with what publishers they struck. For Germany, Koch Media and Daedalic seem the only possible options. Then we could get news about an official soundtrack release, maybe even on bandcamp, which has been a fairly great outlet for Devolver and wadjeteye soundtracks these past years. Also merchandise via the Devolver store, of course! Devolver really isn't particularly inventive with their merch (like, for example, Telltale was). But the soundtrack on vinyl, T-shirts, beanies, and art prints are kind of what they're usually doing, and that wouldn't be wrong at all. Thanks for having your mind blown by something I posted, by the way. 😊 It's kind of a very low bar though, reverting a gold statue back into a living person instead of shoving it into your pirate hoard and introducing it as "the ol' ball and chain" to visitors. 😂 I still have to think about Marius' beginning joke in his flash version of LeChuck's Revenge. Guybrush looking for friendship, but stupid pirates put the thought in his head that treasure is so much better. I think that, right there, is Guybrush Threepwood described perfectly in three seconds. But I don't think that his inability to focus on one thing means he's not ready for a relationship. And then I think about Dom's introductory words to the ReMI trailer: "ships, fights, love, treasure, betrayal, and root beer". Six words with love in the middle, looking like they're all of equal worth. That too, it's so Guybrush. He speaks of love (for the first time?), but he's only juggling several things he loves and thinks they belong to a good story. One of the things I loved in Tales of Monkey Island was how Morgan was introduced as a rival to Elaine, much more aggressive, much more competitive, much less compromising. And she ruthlessly did the same thing Guybrush did to Elaine, she chose her professional career (pirate hunting) over loyalty (or fangirling, whatever). She was kind of a mirror held up to Guybrush. We had no shortage of people on the Telltale forums shipping the two. Guybrush was never interested, not a damn second. I have yet to see a relationship between equal partners in Elaine and Guybrush, but the loyalty, I've seen that.

Yeah, I had the pretty strong feeling he chose the map over her. That doesn't mean I found that all too great, because it felt a bit like Guybrush would have to give up all the pirating fun to really commit to Elaine. To me, that's kind of a bachelor's idea of senseless dedication/investment to a relationship, sacrificing all your life and identity to practically merge with another person. It's clear how both what Guybrush does in LCR as well as what he would have had to do to win Elaine in that moment were "wrong" steps in the coming of age narrative's perspective. Escape and Tales tried to fix their differences by making a pirate out of the governor – the couple shared that interest henceforth, which justified their relationship. In my opinion, absolutely not what Ron would have wanted, but he'll just have to deal with that idea now. If Ron had done "his" Monkey Island 3 in the 90s, who knows how these two characters would have ended up. Maybe Ron had a genius plan to strike a balance and reunite them, maybe he just hated the idea of Guybrush and Elaine being together and they'd sail away in opposite directions in the very last scene. Maybe I would have loved it, maybe I would have hated it. I'll never know. But it seems like for the first time in six games, we'll be playing Elaine in Return. And that's not just "shaking things up", I think it also means that she's growing to be more of a protagonist, more of Guybrush's equal (not necessarily in the piracy sense). I'd love for them to work together in that scene/those scenes, maybe even in a dayofthetentacly kind of way. That wouldn't just be something that I'd love to have back as a game mechanic, but would mean the world for their relationship to each other as well.