Vainamoinen

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.

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. 😬