Wally B.

Why not just drop the game? 👀 As soon as the games comes out I will cut internet from my life until I finish it. I have always played Monkey Island. Didn't have internet at home for the first 4 and for Tales I was already of the mindset that point and click games to me are all about that feeling of "I don't know what I'm doing, why am I so dumb?" followed by "YES! I am the smartest man alive and I will never get stuck again" in loop. I may use the hint system in a moment of weakness, but intend not to use it

In this article he says: "I was always bothered by these close-ups. While they were great art, I never felt they matched the style of the rest of the game. Not sure how I feel about them 20 years later." I always took it that he didn't like the fact that there were close-ups to begin with, and that's the reason there aren't very many close-ups in Monkey 2. Though again, I could be wrong.

I think that's a given, since Ron is at the wheel. But all the other games took risks with their story (maybe Curse less than others, but still). Well he can't hate it that much since he played the VGA version to get ready to make Return, right? (at least I remembered him saying that in an interview or somewhere, I might be wrong). As far as "canon" goes, the canon version is whichever one you like best. The VGA was the go-to version for me for YEARS, only last year I played the original EGA with my girlfriend and found out I prefer it over the other Curse and co. weren't "Ron canon" since a couple of months ago, so who knows what might happen? Maybe Ron will come out and say that the best and only true version of Monkey1 is the Sega CD port!

As I said, I have a doubt about this. Are we sure those sprites were made for the VGA version of Monkey1 and reused in Monkey2 and not the opposite?

I'm mostly considering the original EGA version for comparison with the art style. Also I'm not sure the VGA sprites for Monkey1 were done before or after those for Monkey2. To me they are similar in the same way Curse Guybrush is similar to Escape Guybrush, pretty similar design but with changes in clothing and some other small details. The only difference is that Curse Guybrush is 2D and Escape Guybrush is 3D which creates a bigger contrast in game. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how I see it

I don't think Ron or anyone from the team decided to make any "safe" choice with this game. I think that they made the choices that they thought were best for the game they wanted to make and for a new Monkey Island game. The music is a very important aspect of Monkey Island (one could argue the most important), all the games had at least one of those composers working on it, seems like a pretty obvious choice to me. The voices were already perfectly cast and I doubt they had someone else in mind to do them, so why would they need to change them? Doesn't seem to me like this is nostalgia pandering, but simply that they had (most) of the casting job already done. The returning characters were a thing since Monkey Island 2 (there aren't many important characters in the first game, but most of them return in the sequel) even though they are few. The UI we don't know anything about really, other than it works with a mouse OR with a controller, and that they worked really hard to make the controller option worthwhile. I think this really shows how really willing they are to modernise the way adventure games are played in a modern era. This leaves the art style, which changes in every Monkey Island games (even between the first two). If there was a safe choice with the art, they couldn't take it while trying to make a modern game. Pixel art is out of the question because they don't want to get the "nostalgia game" label that Thimbleweed Park got, so it was a choice of choosing an art style that suited the game. They decided to go with 2D probably because it gives a cleaner look and ages the game less (look at how Curse aged better than Escape and even Tales visually) and getting the guy who made Ron's favourite fan art and worked as an art director in very good looking games was the best they could do. Also, Steve Purcell, Peter Chan, Bill Tiller and many others who worked on the art of the first 3 games were probably busy with their other jobs so... P.S. Also I'm new here, been lurking around since page 1 of this thread 🙃