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Udvarnoky

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Posts posted by Udvarnoky

    Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 10/3/2022 at 9:06 AM, Jake said:

    I think you might be projecting if you’re implying the Curse team effectively censored themselves for mass appeal, when it’s probably just that they didn’t like that stuff and didn’t want it in their game. I think the team did see themselves as artists and did feel free to create what they wanted, and it’s just very different from what you wanted. I think that team just didn’t like those surreal and mysterious themes that came to a head at the end of 2, so they chose to interpret that moment as “I hope LeChuck didn’t cast a spell on him or something” being the literal plot truth, and based their game on it.

     

    Even though I like Curse a lot, it’s never been the Monkey Island 3 that I wanted, because it ignores the things you’ve been talking about (which I also love about the series), but I’m sure it’s the game they wanted to make, with the only real compromises coming from budget and scope restrictions, not creative or thematic. Personally I didn’t ever care if I got “Rons original vision” in future monkey Island games, but always wanted them to live in that exciting space where uncertainty exists, where the world feels like it’s almost projected on paper and you can see that unreality and feel like you could poke a hole through it or fall through at a moments notice, if you dig too deep. I don’t think that stuff remotely appealed to the leads on Curse, though. In that case they were the ones who were irritated at the thought of the potential head on car crash with those themes, and drove the car as far away from it as possible as the motivation for their game.  You’re probably right that it was a big contributor to its success - not necessarily because those themes are unpalatable, I think, but because their absence from the plot made Curse a soft reboot in a way, a great entry point in the series for a new era of players. 
     

    Sorry my thoughts on this are kind of jumbled. It’s not something I’ve thought about enough. 

    I know I’m late to this, but I think it’s an interesting area.

    With regard to the CMI team’s perspective on MI2’s ambiguity: I always figured that literalizing its predecessor’s ending was more about making a judgment call not to disappoint what they perceived were the audience’s expectations (“What’s this soluble daydream hokum doing in my pirate game?”), rather than it necessarily representing a personal distaste or rejection of the innuendos Ron was making.

    Skirting that stuff may have in fact been partly out of respect, with the thinking being “Only Ron can wrap up whatever it is he was driving that, so we’ll just proceed from the escape hatch we were given instead of trying to divine intentions he himself might not have mapped out.” Which, by Ron’s own admission, he in fact hadn’t.

    Maybe I’m giving too much credit for forward-thinking here, but just look at the way, by intention or by accident, things worked out in the end: Ron was able to complete the statement he was making without having to pretend the other games didn’t exist. Those interim sequels successfully kept the bench warm for the creator’s eventual return -- they didn’t override Ron’s vision so much as postpone it, and it’s probably ungenerous to think this happened entirely by dumb luck. Every team brought their own tastes to the way they grappled with that shoddy seventeenth century electrical wiring, but it was grappled with.

    CMI seems to have the reputation of being the Monkey Island game that steers the clearest of the meta-angle that Ron was toiling in, but I think it’s a little underappreciated in this regard. It definitely carries the torch of the first two games in terms of perpetuating that surrealistic undercurrent, the anachronism/fourth wall jokes, and the near-constant theme park evocations. Both Plunder Island and Blood Island have plenty of Disneyland nods both subtle and overt, and of course the entire final act takes place at a danged theme park. The fact is, a game that truly flouted the weirdness of the series and insisted on being a pureblood, risk-adverse pirate adventure with an inflexibly straight face would not look like CMI.

    We know Ron wouldn’t have made CMI, but that game’s team was neither unconscious nor careless about recognizing the substructure going on in his games, in my opinion, and they made an earnest attempt to do that aspect justice. In the wake of Ron finally getting to have his say after thirty years, I actually find myself more impressed than ever with the ways the middle chapters walked that tricky line they were lumbered with.

    • Like 4
    • Chef's Kiss 2

    Indiana Jones 5

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    At this point I think it's certain Mutt won't be in the movie, but I'm sure his absence will be acknowledged in some way. Marion I'm betting gets a cameo.

     

    Helena, the character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge who seems to be Indy's main sidekick, has been called Indy's goddaughter by producer Frank Marshall. It's been speculated that she might be Marcus Brody's daughter, but who knows.

    Maniac Mansion remaster/remake

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 9/25/2022 at 8:21 AM, MichaelSon said:

    But LOOM wasn't that successful commercially.

     

    As with the commercial success of most of these games, the data is too sketchy to be confident either way. By some accounts, the game sold half a million units over its life, which if true is quite a hit for an adventure game. I don't know that I buy that number.  But I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the game sold at least as well in its time as Monkey Island 1 did.

     

    I think it's possible that both things can be true: that Loom was a genuine hit in its time, but the IP being left fallow allowed it to be forgotten to the point where its own studio was cracking jokes about its obscurity in The Curse of Monkey Island. Awareness is largely a matter of continued exploitation. Monkey Island got sequelized, and Loom did not. In 1990, I doubt that Loom was necessarily considered less fit for a sequel than Monkey Island. But its creator wasn't interested right away, and other attempts to get a design greenlit didn't work out. When the moment passed, inertia had its way.

    • Like 3

    Mojo's ReMI Interview

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Not posting the video was part of the terms...not that I think our interviewers cried too many tears over it.

     

    I think the raw transcript approach works great for these things. The results remind me of the old (2004ish?) interview with Ron that Jake and Chris Remo did for Idle Thumbs (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It was good enough for Peter Bogdanovich and Orson Welles.

    • Like 2

    Indiana Jones 5

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

    Another thing that bugs people (including me) is how the film LOOKS...:(

     

    How it looks is the furthest thing from a negligible point for a movie. The idea that it's ugly is a matter of taste (mine, for example), but I think the aesthetic does real damage to the movie's sense of immersion. It's not like these adventures have ever been about verisimilitude, but they've at least felt like they took place on Planet Earth, in physical, tactile environments where gravity might actually have an influence. The smeary, self-conscious look is distancing, and without immediacy, you can't have stakes or peril. That's just an upfront, totally gratuitous liability before you consider the shortcomings of the writing.

     

    But I will fully admit that for the imaginary sect of people that were disappointed by the movie on the basis that they didn't believe ants could climb on top of each other, you've set the record straight. ;

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