Monkey Island 2 Remake

[Megakles]

I have to say, I agree with your sentiments, guys. I also thought the first two games had outstanding art direction and atmosphere, particularly the second one. I never understood the love for the CMI cartoony style. I loved the games for their immersive atmosphere and sense of real adventure just as much as the humor.

 

I also loved the light horror aspects of MI2; the game had an edge. LeChuck was a really badass looking villain who you actually feared a little. He's since become more of a buffoon/less threatening presence, but man, his wavering, rocking corpse glued my eyes to the screen back in the day. And how evil did he look when he was taking such pleasure in torturing Guybrush. I remember jumping in my chair whenever he would burst into one of the tunnels during that showdown.

 

These elements are what made it a cut above everything that has come since. All the games were funny, but MI2 had an edge that everything else lacked. And by the look of things, they are not embracing that, but are trying to tone it down. Guys - don't. Nothing has ever topped MI2 and this is one of the main reasons why.

 

In terms of character design, from what I've seen they have nailed the supporting characters, but I agree about Guybrush and LeChuck. Steve Purcell's covers did indeed define the look of the first two games. And just look how he crafted LeChuck. That, is an iconic villain.

 

Giving LeChuck short, cartoonish legs does nothing to improve him - it makes him look comical, and that is the last thing you want. LeChuck is not funny. LeChuck is cool, badass and terrifying. Guybrush is funny. The supporting characters are funny. LeChuck is not, and never, ever, should be. The moment the villain loses credibility is the moment the dramatic tension is gone from the story. And Monkey Island is more than just an excuse for jokes. Or the first two were, anyway.

 

They did nail his walk, though. Man, that is an awesome walk.

[Snugglecakes]

to be honest when I first played MI2 I never thought "oh, holy cow, this game has an outstanding art direction!", I probably thought "this is friggin hilarious!".

 

Wow... did you play it in 91? lol I thought it was by far the most amazing thing I'd ever seen... and it was.

 

What you don't seem to realize is that this remakes aren't created for us: hardcore MI fans. Even most people that know Monkey Island aren't hardcore fans and it's for them and all the new MI fans that LucasArts do it and aim to.

 

So, what they are trying to do is update the art-style, modernizing it a bit so that it can compete with games of this time, not with games from 20 years ago (like you suggest it should be, like if the game was frozen in time).

 

I think you should be happy that the game contains the original version, which makes the whole thing even more pointless. Why would you recreate the exact same visuals in the exact same way if you are already having the original version in it?

 

It doesn't matter who it's being created for. There's nothing wrong with the original characters, and your argument makes no sense because they ARE redoing all the art to make it look good in the year 2010. I never suggested the SE should be in 320x200 and have adlib sound did I? Of course they have to modernize it, and they've done just that. But why on earth change the way the characters look? They could easily look like the original characters and still be "modernized". I see no point at all, for new fans or old, in changing the way they look. The game is set in an old Caribbean time, it's not as if the original was set in 1991 and now needs updated characters to be fashionable in 2010.

[Snugglecakes]

I loved the games for their immersive atmosphere and sense of real adventure just as much as the humor.

 

I also loved the light horror aspects of MI2; the game had an edge. LeChuck was a really badass looking villain who you actually feared a little. He's since become more of a buffoon/less threatening presence, but man, his wavering, rocking corpse glued my eyes to the screen back in the day. And how evil did he look when he was taking such pleasure in torturing Guybrush. I remember jumping in my chair whenever he would burst into one of the tunnels during that showdown.

 

These elements are what made it a cut above everything that has come since. All the games were funny, but MI2 had an edge that everything else lacked. And by the look of things, they are not embracing that, but are trying to tone it down. Guys - don't. Nothing has ever topped MI2 and this is one of the main reasons why.

 

LeChuck is not funny. LeChuck is cool, badass and terrifying. Guybrush is funny. The supporting characters are funny. LeChuck is not, and never, ever, should be. The moment the villain loses credibility is the moment the dramatic tension is gone from the story. And Monkey Island is more than just an excuse for jokes. Or the first two were, anyway.

 

Exactly

[Lagomorph01]

I was actually very afraid that this would happen.

How could they possibly make a Special Edition of the best adventure game ever?

I was especially afraid after I saw how the first SE looked...

Well, maybe it's because of the low expectations that first one gave me, but I think they improved just about everything. They really listened to their fans.

 

That said, I might even play this one! But probably only once...

The original just holds such fond memories for me, to me it's totally unnecessary to make a remake. This was my opinion on the first one, and it still is on the second one.

 

I like the *ingame* look of LeChuck though, he looks scary, I think he looks scary enough, even though his stand is a little too stiff. I just hope he still spits when he talks.

Guybrush actually looks more like Guybrush now, even though I don't like the blonde hair in this version.

The thing that bothers me though is that everything looks like it's animated in Flash.

I think the pixels make the game look less cheap. Nowadays everyone can make those kind of animations. For example, the LeChuck walk (however awesome) looks really tweeny. While the original just looked like frame by frame pixel animation.

 

This being said, I like the extra efford they put in this version. I just think it was unnecessary to make special edition of an already perfect game.

[SyntheticGerbil]

They could easily look like the original characters and still be "modernized". I see no point at all, for new fans or old, in changing the way they look. The game is set in an old Caribbean time, it's not as if the original was set in 1991 and now needs updated characters to be fashionable in 2010.

 

I think his point was that somehow realistic style characters aren't modern anymore, but I see the painterly look done all of the time with slightly exaggerated realism now with digital art, which is pretty much Purcell's style when he's not doing full exaggeration.

 

So I don't agree with the actual style being dated, but I guess it's a subjective thing.

[Valkian]

It doesn't matter who it's being created for. There's nothing wrong with the original characters, and your argument makes no sense because they ARE redoing all the art to make it look good in the year 2010. I never suggested the SE should be in 320x200 and have adlib sound did I? Of course they have to modernize it, and they've done just that. But why on earth change the way the characters look? They could easily look like the original characters and still be "modernized". I see no point at all, for new fans or old, in changing the way they look. The game is set in an old Caribbean time, it's not as if the original was set in 1991 and now needs updated characters to be fashionable in 2010.

Well, I'm not saying the character design is dated, I love it. I just don't see why is so hard for some of you to understand the changes (you don't have to like them of course), it's a new version, changes are going to happen.

And I'm puzzled by this... you are really bothered that they changed the character design, but you don't seem to mind at all the fact that they change the music and the sound design (which they do, the music has new arrangements and lots of sounds have been added which weren't there before, affecting the dynamic and experience of the game in doing so). So, you are ok with them significantly changing some things, while other changes are just plain wrong. Don't really get it.

 

I certainly don't love all the creative decision making on this or previous SE (specially previous), but on the balance of things I see SO MANY positive things on this wonderful releases that I would feel pretty much an ungrateful bastard for criticizing any of it beyond mocking the slightly wrong bits.

Would it have been great if they retained the same character design? sure! but facing the changes I'll be damned if I whine all over them and become an overly-complaining bitch (not that I'm accusing any of you of being one).

[Snugglecakes]

No that's ok I probably am an overly-complaining bitch!

 

Thing is, yes the music has changed, but they're still the same tunes. They've made it better using technology that's available now. Same on the background art. It's still the same picture we had before though. I'm sure that if they could, LucasArts would've done it this way in 1991. But would they have done this to the characters?

 

I highly doubt it.

[Valkian]

Yeah, you have a point there. Probably the reason I don't mind it that much is because Lechuck's design especially, has changed significantly across the different titles (and in some cases in the same title), so I guess I don't have a really defined Lechuck image in my mind.

[SyntheticGerbil]

Well, I'm actually somewhat worried about the music just because I'm curious on how well they are going to work with the iMuse transitions since they will now be recorded instruments instead of sequences of bleeps and bloops. Because isn't iMuse set up so that no matter what point in time the music is at, it can start a sequence to transition into the beginning of the song for the next location you skip to? Or is it just there is a preset transition arrangement from all possible locations? If it's the latter, I think they could have just recorded all of the transitions... Even if were the former, I think it's still the only solution available, assuming I actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to iMuse. I'm not sure.

 

They will (hopefully) still be the same arrangements.

[Snugglecakes]

Well, I'm actually somewhat worried about the music just because I'm curious on how well they are going to work with the iMuse transitions since they will now be recorded instruments instead of sequences of bleeps and bloops.

 

Woooah that's a good point! I'm no expert either but there have been threads about upgrading the MI2 music which was deemed impossible because of iMuse. Unless they somehow came up with a new way to do it... I hope so. I love those transitions in Woodtick.

[Valkian]

I wouldn't worry about that, as Julian Kwasneski explained in the recent Mojo interview the only reason it wasn't done with instruments back then was because of storage limitations, but iMuse supported recorded audio. I imagine the score itself was composed with that idea in mind, so hopefully we'll enjoy the same transitional wonders in all its instrumental splendor.

[Snugglecakes]

I wouldn't worry about that, as Julian Kwasneski explained in the recent Mojo interview the only reason it wasn't done with instruments back then was because of storage limitations, but iMuse supported recorded audio. I imagine the score itself was composed with that idea in mind, so hopefully we'll enjoy the same transitional wonders in all its instrumental splendor.

 

awesome

[Monkey Mania]

First footage of classic mode!

(This BBCode requires its accompanying plugin to work properly.)

[Lagomorph01]

Wow... The execution is really expertly done!

I thought the voices wouldn't fit, and it would seem all wrong altogether, but boy was I wrong!

Now I'm definitely buying this!

[sinus]

I wouldn't worry about that, as Julian Kwasneski explained in the recent Mojo interview the only reason it wasn't done with instruments back then was because of storage limitations, but iMuse supported recorded audio.

 

Of course, see CoMI!

[KestrelPi]

I wouldn't worry about that, as Julian Kwasneski explained in the recent Mojo interview the only reason it wasn't done with instruments back then was because of storage limitations, but iMuse supported recorded audio. I imagine the score itself was composed with that idea in mind, so hopefully we'll enjoy the same transitional wonders in all its instrumental splendor.

 

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. There are things that are a lot easier to do in midi than with pre-recorded audio and MI2 takes full advantage of this. I think compromises will have to have been made, but as for how many, we'll have to see. I think we might find out pretty soon.

[Snugglecakes]

Surely you'd have to split the tracks into individual instruments or something... no expert. It's extremely clever though, iMuse, thinking about it now. Amazing stuff for 1991. I'm sure it could be done though, and it's not like filesizes are any kind of problem because the first SE was a billion mb anyway.

[KestrelPi]

Splitting the files into individual tracks would solve some of the technical hurdles, but not all of them by any means. Changing around instrument arrangement is only one of the tricks that iMUSE employs. Technically everything in MIDI could be at least -approximated- in pre-recorded audio, but it's a hell of a lot of work (and therefore resources) and so it really depends on how much room they had in balancing making a good updated soundtrack against making one very faithful to all of the iMUSE foibles of the original. I'll be interested to know how far they went.

[SyntheticGerbil]

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. There are things that are a lot easier to do in midi than with pre-recorded audio and MI2 takes full advantage of this. I think compromises will have to have been made, but as for how many, we'll have to see. I think we might find out pretty soon.

 

Yeah, that's my understanding, that even though the later Scumm games with digital audio still use iMuse, they aren't fully utilizing it in the way that MI2 does with midi. There are certainly less seamless transitions in the music going on in CMI.

 

Surely you'd have to split the tracks into individual instruments or something... no expert. It's extremely clever though, iMuse, thinking about it now. Amazing stuff for 1991. I'm sure it could be done though, and it's not like filesizes are any kind of problem because the first SE was a billion mb anyway.

 

Yeah, I believe it can be done as well. To me, it's just hoping the SE team does it right, since they didn't do a lot of things right the first time, nor go back and give us all a patch. Apparently, according to a Lucidity player at Idleforums, a patch was promised for that game as well, but they failed to ever issue one.

 

So, I just hope it's all done right in the first place.

 

Splitting the files into individual tracks would solve some of the technical hurdles, but not all of them by any means. Changing around instrument arrangement is only one of the tricks that iMUSE employs. Technically everything in MIDI could be at least -approximated- in pre-recorded audio, but it's a hell of a lot of work (and therefore resources) and so it really depends on how much room they had in balancing making a good updated soundtrack against making one very faithful to all of the iMUSE foibles of the original. I'll be interested to know how far they went.

 

Do you think with this in mind, would it be possible for the team to do something like record every location transition possible for every point in the game, instead? Would that be hard to do seamlessly? Sorry, I'm really kind of ignorant about midi and everything technical about iMuse outside of it's basic abilities.

[Valkian]

I don't think it's really that complicated, I don't really know how iMuse or videogame audio engines works, but I have my share of professional audio knowledge and to me that's not extremely hard. Music is now a days tightly sequenced in many genres and MIDI is still used (not the MIDI sounds, but the MIDI data which is what MIDI really is, data.). I could re-create transitions like that using Ableton Live. I actually don't recall the transitions in MI2 at all (but I imagine it blended perfectly the music from one place to the next), so this is another excuse to play it again (all this MI2 talk really makes me want to revisit it). Even in the original MIDI, it was all hand composed I really really doubt there was anything computer generated involved.

[KestrelPi]

I don't think it's really that complicated, I don't really know how iMuse or videogame audio engines works, but I have my share of professional audio knowledge and to me that's not extremely hard. Music is now a days tightly sequenced in many genres and MIDI is still used (not the MIDI sounds, but the MIDI data which is what MIDI really is, data.). I could re-create transitions like that using Ableton Live. I actually don't recall the transitions in MI2 at all (but I imagine it blended perfectly the music from one place to the next), so this is another excuse to play it again (all this MI2 talk really makes me want to revisit it). Even in the original MIDI, it was all hand composed I really really doubt there was anything computer generated involved.

 

Okay, it IS a bit more involved than you remember. The main two things that they need to do like this:

 

* Ability to bring instruments in and out of the mix as required

Example: riding the coffin to the Voodoo Lady, and the various different configurations of the graveyard music.

Digital Solution: Record all the audio parts required into individual tracks, so that the game can cue them up individually. Possible, certainly, but could bump up file sizes quite considerably, as this sort of trick is used all the time in MI2.

 

* Seamlessly transition from one piece of music to the next, or one part of the music to the next.

Example: The way when you meet Largo, his theme always ends properly no matter where it is in the music when he leaves, and there are several different possible endings to the music

Digital solution: Several different transitions (or in the case of the example, endings) might need to be recorded, and it would have to be coded so that it waits to transition at particular timecodes in the audio so that it's not sudden and jarring. This is similar to the Midi solution but they will undoubtedly need to do a bit of tinkering to get it work right in digital audio.

 

The latter would probably be the source of most technical headaches. It's just not that easy to do in audio which is why for CMI they opted, at most, to just crossfade between tracks (to great effect on the rollercoaster).

 

Think of the pirate song in the middle of CMI. When you click on a new dialogue option to start the next verse, the background music basically quickly crossfades into the next verse, only doing so seamlessly if you manage to click at the right moment.

 

In MI2 style iMUSE, the midi file has special codes called SYSEX codes embedded in the Midi file. There would be a sysex code for every seamless transition point (say, at the end of every bar) which basically acts as a signal. The player would click on the dialogue and iMUSE would say 'okay, the music is ready to change now, but don't do it until you get the signal!' Or at least that's the general principle. It's very easy to do in MIDI and have it sound totally seamless, but a bit trickier to pull off in pre-recorded audio, which is likely why they didn't bother for CMI.

 

Maybe they'll try to do it in MI2:SE. If they do, I'll be very happy. There are other things that iMUSE does in MI2 which are even harder to do in pre-recorded audio, but those are the main ones.

[s-island]

Woodtick sounds almost like a demo of sorts of what iMuse could do with about 10 or so endings to every boat theme as well as Largo's.

 

For several of the places where instruments fading in and out, it wouldn't be necessary to split up every instrument into isolated tracks. The only thing that changes in Swamp Rot Inn for example, is the melody line so only 3 separate tracks would be needed to pull it off. Of course, there are the 10 endings each track would need to be completely faithful to the MIDI soundtrack...

[SyntheticGerbil]

Haha, this is great stuff, hearing you guys talk about it. The amount of time and work everyone put into the original MI2 is astounding. The way the music works in MI2 has always been fascinating to me. The transitions were noticeable even when I was too young to understand what was going on.

 

They were even more noticeable when the music failed to transition correctly and I was stuck on an island with the old background music still playing over the top of the new background music, making me have to save and reload. I think ScummVM fixed those problems though, since I didn't experience it once when I played MI2 again that way a couple of years back.

[Snugglecakes]

They were even more noticeable when the music failed to transition correctly and I was stuck on an island with the old backgrounds music still playing over the top of the new background music, making me have to save and reload. I think ScummVM fixed those problems though, since I didn't experience it once when I played MI2 again that way a couple of years back.

 

Nope it still happens... last time I played (ScummVM) I was on Booty Island with one hell of a double-tune going on! And if you try to quit and load the game again, it's still there. Good point though... horror.. a flaw in MI2!

[s-island]

Yeah, the scripts mess up a bit there. It usually happens if you leave place 1 to go to place 2, then before the music from place 1 has stopped playing, you go to place 3. Imuse ends up with 3 bits of music playing at once there and it tends to get stuck playing the first or second one indefinitely.