Monkey Island 2 Remake

[Snugglecakes]

1. SMI and MI2 aren't cartoony, because they are;

 

It'd be a mistake to try and make the games 'realistic', because they are not. I don't have to remind you that Guybrush flies out of a cannon - twice - in the original alone.

 

We're talking about the backgrounds, and once again, I've said before that I'm not talking about what the characters DO, which is always what people go on about. I'm talking about the backgrounds, the buildings etc. Look at the first game, there is nothing cartoony about any of the buildings or locations. The backgrounds are far closer to "real" than "cartoon", no two ways about it. MI2 is much the same. Yes it's stylized and creative but that's no cartoon, absolutely not.

[Snugglecakes]

CMI and TMI both have as much 'realism' and 'grit' as SMI/MI2, which quite frankly isn't much...

 

I don't think you're seeing what we're seeing here... which is weird cos I would've never been a fan if I didn't see it.

 

...I'm just bothered by the idea that the first games were somehow gritty and realistic.

 

They WERE. Backgrounds. Not what the characters get up to. Locations, atmosphere etc. By your argument, Lord of the Rings is a cartoon.

[Fealiks]

Alright Fealiks, just let me know when you create that traditional hand drawn game with the amazing 3D realtime lighting then.

 

I'll be sure to drop you an email.

 

And you make sure you let me know when you get rid of all the sand in your vagina, won't you? I'll come and live on the resulting peninsula.

 

[SyntheticGerbil]

As if using insults from a South Park episode over 10 years old is somehow a clever way to make a point? You're a moron.

[Remi]

Can we bring the thread back to subject, please? ¬

[Fealiks]

As if using insults from a South Park episode over 10 years old is somehow a clever way to make a point? You're a moron.

 

In all seriousness, sand-vagina jokes aside, I'm not looking for an argument at all. None of my posts were even slightly malicious. I wasn't even treating this like an argument, I was just pointing out that it would be difficult to add shadows to the game. That's all.

 

Then I read your reply, and thought to myself "I can either wade through the sea of ball-kicking and insults and eventually arrive, nauseated and bruised at his actual argument, or I can make awful jokes about how much sand there is in his vagina." And you know what? I chose the latter. I chose to make jokes about how much sand there is in your vagina. And do you know how much sand there is in your vagina?

 

 

There's a whole lot

 

[Remi]

Can we bring the thread back to subject, please? ¬

 

So how about that remake, huh?

[s-island]

It looks ace. It better sound ace too!

[SyntheticGerbil]

The remake is wonderful, everything looks as great as it does in the original game game, only better. The Special Edition team who is located in Singapore did an amazing job considered the outsourced work.

 

All of this is incredibly faithful artwork, backgrounds, and animation but it also adds it's own style which separates it from the original game, but is still strangely fitting and suitable either way. It looks great.

 

Also I can understand them not putting shadows because they wouldn't be good shadows unless they worked in real time lighting environments much like the real world, so I'm okay with them missing.

 

Now we don't have to insult eachother ever again since we can agree on everything in this forum from now on.

[Fealiks]

Your sh*tstorm of douchebaggery came BEFORE I started acting like a moron. I'm acting like a moron because, frankly, I don't feel like arguing with you, and I thought that making stupid jokes would ease the needless tension and calm you down a bit.

 

I gave you an innocent, friendly post about how it would be difficult to implement shadows into the special edition and you replied with what can be best be described as a 500-word kick to the face. I only read a bit of your post and I already felt like I'd been fisted by The Thing.

 

In short, f*ck you and your abhorrent demeanour. If I wanted to be on the receiving end of profuse amounts of misguided aggression, I'd ask for it. I don't come to this forum to listen to pompous, sarcastic arseholes tell me why they're better than me.

[Thrik]

You know, I was playing CMI recently and I noticed they had shadows on all the characters. It would have been nice to see that in the SE. ;

[SyntheticGerbil]

Ah, see that's the thing, I don't even care if they have shadows or not. It's not a big deal because the game still looks fine. It would just be nice since I see they are putting other nice touches like reflection and all.

 

To me, as someone who animates things like characters and shadows as well as draws backgrounds for crappy 2D games for crappy clients at this bizarre children's game company I work for, it's crazy talk to suggest that in order for shadows to look right in 2D games they have to have realtime lighting effects, when this pretty much hasn't been the case ever. I'm not saying you are crazy yourself, Fealiks, because sure all that kind of dynamic lighting would look amazing in any 2D game, but little translucent blobs with feathered edges are fine too. I would prefer you just be sarcastic back to me (or anyone else) instead of just resorting to a bunch of name calling and swearing everytime this happens.

[Fealiks]

I would prefer you just be sarcastic back to me (or anyone else) instead of just resorting to a bunch of name calling and swearing everytime this happens.

 

I find all the sarcastic arguments that happen here horrible. Why would you prefer to be subjected to genuine abuse over playful abuse? What's more offensive, saying "you have sand in your vagina," or verbosely sarcastic personal attacks?

 

Also, swearing doesn't contribute to how offensive something is at all. You can attack a person's character and make them upset without saying much at all, never mind swearing (having said that, I believe you were the one doing all the swearing until my last post).

[SyntheticGerbil]

I said **** and ****ing but I wasn't calling you a name. I have no idea what makes sarcasm more offensive or personal over a barrage of name calling. I shouldn't have even called you a "moron," but I guess that's how mad I got.

 

The Monkey Island games have a lot of sarcasm for instance, but they don't really come off as offensive.

 

Like instead of, "How appropriate you fight like a cow," I think it would be more offensive to say, "How appropriate, you're a gaping rotten **** with a bunch of ****ing **** stuck inside your anus."

 

I don't even know if my parents would let me play a game like that.

[s-island]

Here are some hand bags:

 

 

Now, you two, grab one each and hit each other with them until you're tired. It's more productive than this tired run-around.

[Fealiks]

Wait, why am I the one being given infractions? What am I supposed to do, sit back and take a loquacious beating I've done nothing to deserve? It takes someone with more humility than most people have not to rebuke this crap.

[Thrik]

And if you don't I'll use a plastic bag and suffocate you — in the same one.

[Scummbuddy]

I just noticed there is no way to ignore posts from a LucasForum user. Sad, really.

-------

As for this remake, I'm quite excited for the game, perhaps some of that excitement just for the game back in the news, but the bonus features sound fantastic. I hope it lives up in some regards.

 

These backgrounds are quite decent, and as stated, not bad for outsourced work. I am also disappointed that they would resort to outsourced art this time around, though.

[SyntheticGerbil]

Wait, why am I the one being given infractions? What am I supposed to do, sit back and take a loquacious beating I've done nothing to deserve? It takes someone with more humility than most people have not to rebuke this crap.

 

Hey I got an infraction too if it makes you feel any better.

 

These backgrounds are quite decent, and as stated, not bad for outsourced work. I am also disappointed that they would resort to outsourced art this time around, though.

 

I should probably clarify that while they are outsourcing a majority of work to Singapore, it appears the concept artists and art director reside here in the US. Outsourcing sucks more not because it gets people to work for cheaper than a local person getting the job, but because it can create all sorts of communication problems when someone's countries away and there's a great energy that happens when everyone is in the same studio working on the same project.

 

Also, I have no idea if there are many Monkey Island fans in Singapore since the games seem to be loved worldwide, but I would guess it would be easier to get artists that are also fans in California. Certainly Singapore has some capable artists, because one of my favorite comic book artists ever lives there but sadly he's not working on these games.

 

They outsourced for the first one as well, but whatever they did, someone at Lucasarts is making sure it looks much better this time around.

 

Haha, and they showed they know how to do Day of the Tentacle style backgrounds as well.

[bakana]

...it always amazes me when people assert the 'cartooniness' of the first two MI games in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, not the least of which being the fact that the games don't look like cartoons.

 

 

The in-game graphics are 'realistic,' and it's not just nostalgic people filling in the gaps of primitive graphics with what they want. The MI games had the same resolution and color depth as Day of the Tentacle and the Indiana Jones games. One look at the proportions and design of any MI character sprite shows they have way more in common with the Indy sprites than the DOTT ones. The MI games don't lack an obvious cartoon style because of technical limitations, as the great cartoon graphics in Sam & Max and DOTT demonstrate.

 

MI1 and 2, while fanciful, were NOT the Disney cartoon CMI turned the series into. It had more aesthetically in common with the Pirates of the Carribean ride, and pulp adventure story covers. When elements are exaggerated (Gov. Phatt, Stan), they are more in the style of caricature, aiding the atmosphere of a surreal, distorted, funny reality than some kind of Saturday morning cartoon reality.

 

That's not even considering Steve Purcell's outstanding cover and close-up art for the games, which shows what the graphics would have looked like at higher resolution. I mean, it's not like Steve was some hack hired on to do the cover art after the fact, he did art direction on the game. Regardless of Rob Gilbert's opinion of the close-up shots in MI1, Steve Purcell was the primary artist on the game, and his aesthetic IS the MI aesthetic in the first two games.

 

Anyway, to try and return to the topic at hand; is this a big improvement over the first Special Edition? Of course, though that bar was extremely low. The art style is a little 'zanier' than the original backgrounds, and maybe a little inappropriate, but it is at least competently done, has me kind of interested, and I can see myself playing through the new version while listening to the developer commentary, even if the new art isn't quite at Purcell/Chan levels.

 

Which is a HUGE step up from the unwatchable aesthetic abortion that was SMI:SE.

[bakana]

Also, Fealiks, cut it out with all the 'sand in the vagina' stuff. It makes you sound like a misogynistic jerk, and kind of undercuts your points. I can understand the reasoning behind lightening and argumentative atmosphere with absurd humor, but I think you're miscalculating and actually coming across as more ignorant nasty and abrasive than you would be if you were just arguing back.

[Snugglecakes]

MI1 and 2, while fanciful, were NOT the Disney cartoon CMI turned the series into. It had more aesthetically in common with the Pirates of the Carribean ride, and pulp adventure story covers. When elements are exaggerated (Gov. Phatt, Stan), they are more in the style of caricature, aiding the atmosphere of a surreal, distorted, funny reality than some kind of Saturday morning cartoon reality.

 

Exactly! I don't get how some people think the first two games are cartoony at all. They are far, far from it. And that's the Monkey Island I love, not this new interpretation.

[Haggis]

I love Monkey Island.

 

In all seriousness, I've just been looking at all these images for the first time, and I quite like what I'm seeing. (I've been away for a week because my gallbladder was surgically removed, which really puts things into perspective. It seems to me exceedingly silly and ridiculous to be arguing about a special edition that looks pretty decent.)

 

Is it perfect? Nah, but it'll do for me. It's good enough, and LucasArts doing all this is really a bonus. If they didn't make a remake, we'd all still be sulking in a corner, playing the old versions of the games; and actually, there's nothing stopping us from doing just that if we don't like the special editions. What is actually useless is arguing with each other about this. That's not going to change anything about how this special edition looks. If you want to at least have the illusion of having your opinion heard, contact LucasArts with your concerns. All this bickering amongst each other is achieving nothing at all, other than creating a lot of chagrin here.

[Aububuh]

I don't get how some people think the first two games are cartoony at all. They are far, far from it.

 

Mhm.

 

[KestrelPi]