Vainamoinen

Elaine was first tricked into wearing a cursed ring, then turned and objectified into a literal statue, a mere thing and treasure to be stolen and retrieved and stolen and retrieved. Elaine then gets ten waking seconds to commit an act of domestic violence and is next shown tied up and gagged, having to listen to LeChuck's story how he killed her dad. Next scene, a good demure Christian marriage in white. I have my reservations about CMI's "20 lines of dialog" Elaine plot, and it definitely shouldn't have ended in marriage. It's obvious in LeChuck's Revenge how that was never Ron's plan. Monkey 2 showed us in no uncertain terms that Guybrush chose gold and fame over her, whatever the player did. He wasn't ready for a relationship, let alone marriage. But, what Ron might have been setting up with LeChuck's Revenge was, in a nutshell, a coming of age story arc, to be concluded in a future game. If it was that, Curse has smashed that arc to pieces by declaring the issues between the two resolved or at least so irrelevant that they would of course marry. I totally understand why Ron would take issue with that. So how do you pick up the pieces of this arc, 25 years after the smashing? By having the characters go their own ways for a good while. Like, Guybrush with the treasure hunting and Elaine with the Marley Foundation. Let them find together anew, define the issues again, then finally have them resolve what truly kept them apart. And that would be an emotional depth that from my point of view CMI didn't have. I don't know whether Ron's the type to not riddle genuine emotional moments with rich and unsavory layers of irony with bacon taste, but I'm absolutely certain that Dave can do it.

One of the most clever twists of ReMI's announcement was to "declare" CMI, EMI and Tales canon in the Gilbert-Grossman-verse. Because it keeps us wondering how they're going to treat past lore, what they are going to explicitly honor and what they are going to ignore. What characters besides Murray might be coming back. What places we might re-visit, what history they might reference or even re-stage to bring the newbies up to speed with the lore. Judging from my "WAIT IS THAT MORGAN" moment in the trailer, a whole lot of non-puzzle-adjacent detective work is coming up, and I'll find that quite delicious.

Depends on Disney. If they let Devolver, something like this might surface: https://merch.devolverdigital.co/collections/all-products If nothing surfaces, or nothing good, we'll have to print our "An attempt at a walkthrough" appreciation book ourselves.

It's so stupid I have to go to nitter to read those comments, but people are actually turning around quite a bit on twitter as well. And that's so great to see after all that crap that we've seen after the trailer. I even found one comment on a German forum yesterday – dude said he just can't cope with the art style, "I'm out". Which really is the way to deal with this. I've seen so many "Ron Gilbert sh*t on my childhood" type comments at the beginning of the month, I'm actually thankful for these occasional "civil negativity" ones. On that same forum, some guy has never played Tales because he didn't like the art. But he'll be back for Return, so ... 🕉️ ... getting there!

Yes, yes. JUDGE PLANK 🪵

Unless the pyrite parrot returns, I'd say there's a good chance they won't.

Hope they're not overdoing the "mighty pirate" line. Tales kind of ran that joke into the ground.

Do we have any idea what engine they use, is it by any chance the one Ron programmed for Thimbleweed Park?

- the judge ... I wonder if he's also LeChuck ... 😊

I had hoped for zooms; they did wonders for the Book of Unwritten Tales backgrounds. That along with the music and the ice formations really makes the scene here. The central building (town hall?) and its icicles look like they're formed by the storm, and that's just incredible. We still have animals in every scene, it's just that on Brr Muda, they're all frozen. 🥶

AHHHHHH BRRRRRR MUDA SPOILOOORRRRZZZZ 😅

They likely wouldn't put it on GOG so I couldn't care le I actually have a demo of a Devolver published game installed, Terra Nil. I can't shake off the feeling that the developers put so much time and energy into the demo that they won't be able to complete the game until next year. So ... I'd rather time and energy was spent on completing Return to Monkey Island. Today, I want teh music. 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶 (read: dededededelededededeledeledede)

Strong first four paragraphs, @Groggoccino. After that, I do have a few objections. It's true that dissing Escape has kind of become a canonical Monkey Island fan reaction. But it's also true that this community has done its utmost to throw that old paradigm out the window. We're trying to wrestle that negativity to the ground. We're absolutely not losing great, dedicated, contributing and positive community members over this trivial matter. To find analogy to the criticism voiced towards Return to Monkey Island's art style is, in my opinion, valid. But there are of course also glaringly obvious differences. In, for example, the places that criticism is voiced in. Its tone. Its foundation. The course of argumentation. That it's targeted at real people. That it attempts to explain the reasons for the choice by plainly insulting the greatest heroes that the people in this thread have. That's not like criticizing Escape, that is something new and horrible that didn't even exist 20 years ago. The art style 'debate' has quickly degenerated into one of those "Not all fans" defense methods. What filth Ron had to wade through on his own blog was completely unacceptable. Just about five percent of those posts were insult trolls and right wing nutjobs. If I hated the living guts out of ReMI's art style, I would rather have shot myself than putting my own "respectful" criticism right there between abusive a-holes and nazis. I would not have been that desperate to get my "arguments" directly to the creator to participate in the abuse. Voicing respectful art style criticism in respectful, positive minded communities is ... difficult ... though, I readily concede that. I think there's a good reason. Some arguments would easily survive the tone police but still be insinuating quite nasty things ("selling out", "corporate art"). Some claims about the looks of the game are factually wrong ("cheap flash game", "bad animation"). Often times, the more civilized criticism views the whole franchise through coke bottle thick nostalgia glasses and claims fantastic things about the older games. Then there's the "should have been pixel art" crew (impossible). The "just do the graphics of MI2 in HD" crowd (impossible). The "like CMI but in HD" crowd (also, quite impossible). The "could have chosen any art style BUT NOT THIS ONE" folks. You can voice above criticism in a civil tone, but it would still be laughable criticism. At the face of it, it's art criticism. And that is on the one hand fiendishly subjective, on the other hand it's like taking a knife to the artist's soul. Not many people have the knowledge and skill, and even fewer have the empathy for that. If you've ever been on an artist forum, you might even come to the conclusion that even the artists themselves often lack the empathy for constructive art criticism towards their peers. So what I'm asking of the critics might, another concession here, impossible for them to give. But I hope it has become obvious why I can so seldom accept the form of the present criticism.

But but but ... yours doesn't rhyme?!

The madness is escalating.

With a teensy Guybrush or even Elaine walking around on it. Oh, I'd be over the moon. I want all those delicious maps now. And you have of course all the facts at hand concerning he 69 joke. 🥸

Just out of the habit of contradicting myself, I'm also pretty certain the Marley Foundation is on Monkey Island.

So that's where I'm at and no idea how to proceed. Well ... it's got to have a monkey with a pipe of course ...

By the way, yes, I click on those fish bones to pick them up. Then I use the corn starch with the vichysoisse. I then use the solidified vichysoisse with the fish bone and mold a tasty raw fish lookalike. This enables Guybrush to win the raw fish eating contest that the Brr Muda monarch usually dominates. I will totally rock at Return to Monkey Island, y'all. 🤘

Here you go. 😬

I predict that we will be shown absolutely nothing of the location Monkey Island™ until release. They've taken so much care to not show us anything. I'm rather certain that the entirety of Monkey Island is one big whoop boo boo spoiler alert. 🙈 Inventory items, also extremely spoilery. No inventory items will be shown. I mean, what if Guybrush has 69 Pieces o' Eight in his inventory and by pure deduction we guess the entirety of the game? ( @Al.DeHyde will know why this is hilariously funny if, you know, he did the thing) 🙉 Unless the UI is some miraculous new invention that enthralls both the "I'll point and click on it even if it's just the trailer" as well as the "sure I'm sitting in front of my PC using a console controller for a lucas-artsy adventure game" crowd, I also predict we will not be shown how the UI works. 🙊 My guess would be that (a) they show us more of Melee Island, because they've been using that nostalgia hook and first-part-no-foul spoiler policy for a while now; (b) it will contain or even be music from the game and (c) that music will comprise some motif that gives us some hints as to what locations or characters to expect.

Waiiiit I'm not just taking this at face value. There has to be a quiz about the thread first.

... and I really love these establishing shots, they give a great sense of place. 🥺

Could you elaborate on this a bit? I have no idea what this means. 🤔

I can totally relate to that. I don't feel that on these forums, of course, because my love for Escape is limited, but there are plenty of other forums where some of my likes, dislikes and subjective opinions are a few degrees of latitude off the forum mainstream. 😬 It happens, and I know all too well how the outsider in just that one topic is sitting in front of her/his screen thinking: Well I SHOULD react to that comment and tell them how I see it and why, I don't know, marihuana legalisation would be a horrible idea in Germany, PC gaming without Steam is and definitely should remain possible, why cars seriously should drive themselves in less than a generation, and ... as soon as you tell them, there's the needless discussion and maybe at the end of the tunnel and after the groundhog day hijinks, the blessed agree to disagree and the why did I bring that up I knew where it would end do I really fit here what if I said nothing again ever. Stay with us, please. We'll do anything. I may even play EMI again. The love for Monkey Island is what unites us and let nothing tear us apart. 🤎