Unpopular opinions

[Kroms]

2 hours ago, BillyCheers said:

Most of the insults are not funny at all to me… 

Napoleon Bonaparte was excommunicated by the church for annexing Rome and insulting the Pope—a mere misdemeanour compared to your heresy. A Biblical stoning, while regrettable, might be required. 

[Remi]

I don't know if they're as much unpopular opinions as they are unpopular facts, but...

 

1. CMI is a milquetoast game.
2. EMI is better than CMI.
3. The Godfather is a middling movie.

Sure, #3 doesn't technically have anything to do with the topic at hand, but I do feel it helps illustrate #1 and #2.

[Udvarnoky]

[BeleG]

Nice topic, finally a place to say this!

 

The experience of playing Loom is actually HARMED by the Tchaikovsky Swan Lake soundtrack. Out of place! Kicks me out of the game every time it starts sounding. They should have produced an original soundtrack instead of reusing a timeless, ubiquitous classic.

 

There I said it. I feel lighter now...

[Elle]

Hahaha what?!

 

Tchaikovsky's music is what makes Loom Loom. Forget about the ballet. Swan Lake was totally written for that game; the composer just didn't know it yet when he wrote it.

[Trapezzoid]

A few of the classic LucasArts melodies are a little less original than we always assumed. Some of them are old folk songs and maybe meant to be recognized, but a couple push it and I'm not sure if they just hoped nobody would notice:

 

Doug the Moleman = Murder on the Orient Express

 

LeChuck = Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Trapezzoid

[BillyCheers]

7 minutes ago, Trapezzoid said:

A few of the classic LucasArts melodies are a little less original than we always assumed. Some of them are old folk songs and maybe meant to be recognized, but a couple push it and I'm not sure if they just hoped nobody would notice:

 

Doug the Moleman = Murder on the Orient Express

 

LeChuck = Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle

 

OMG... please at least tell me, the MI theme is an original from Land. 😅

 

Never new that. A long time ago I read somewhere that Stan's Theme (from MI2 on) was a traditional, but LeChuck's? Nice fact!

[Lagomorph01]

16 minutes ago, Trapezzoid said:

LeChuck = Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle

 

I want to go back in time 5 minutes to when I didn’t know this yet… 😢

[Romão]

I'm not convinced about that Lechuck's theme similarity. The chord progression is the same at first, but then the melody veers into a different direction. Strikes me as purely coincidental

[Elle]

19 minutes ago, Lagomorph01 said:

I want to go back in time 5 minutes to when I didn’t know this yet… 😢

 

So do I. The LeChuck theme, OMG.

[MPinillos]

- There are no solid reasons to make a CMI Remastered.

- Some EMI production values are the best of the entire saga (Music, some dialogues...)

- LeChuck as the nemesis of the whole saga is soooo boring.

- We don't deserve Brian Moriarty.

[Vainamoinen]

42 minutes ago, Trapezzoid said:

LeChuck = Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle

 

Not convinced! Now if you had said that the Prothesis Shop theme is like Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle, THAT I might have bought. 😉

[BillyCheers]

9 minutes ago, MPinillos said:

- LeChuck as the nemesis of the whole saga is soooo boring.

From CMI on, yes. But only because he became this cartoon villain with goofy characteristics and only one goal... (hope RMI will change that a bit)

[Benny]

1 hour ago, Trapezzoid said:

LeChuck = Beautiful Things from Dr. Dolittle

 

You monster, I will never be able to unhear this now (well done)

[KestrelPi]

Not convinced by either of those honestly being a conscious thing. I mean, it's hard to write a memorable melody that isn't like some other memorable melody anyway, of course. I once asked Peter McConnell if a piece he wrote was consciously based on another thing. He said it wasn't but also pointed out that a piece of mine that I had showed to him had a melody very similar to Somewhere Over The Rainbow, while also having a completely different feel to that song.

[Spiketheclown]

1) CMI is the best of all games in terms of graphic style (better than MI1 and MI2, not to mention EMI and Tales).

2) In general, the cartoony high-res style (CMI, King's Quest 7, Discworld 2, Toonstruck) is the best ever. Cartoony pixelated (DOTT, Sam & Max Hit the Road) is also great, and 3D and photorealism cannot hold a candle to them.
3) I don't like Star Wars AT ALL, and I hate it that LucasArts switched to making endless Star Wars titles instead of adventure games.

4) Game remasters are boring and useless, they would be much better off making full-fledged remakes with changes in plot and puzzles (think Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded)

[Trapezzoid]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

Not convinced by either of those honestly being a conscious thing. I mean, it's hard to write a memorable melody that isn't like some other memorable melody anyway, of course. I once asked Peter McConnell if a piece he wrote was consciously based on another thing. He said it wasn't but also pointed out that a piece of mine that I had showed to him had a melody very similar to Somewhere Over The Rainbow, while also having a completely different feel to that song.

You're probably right. When you instinctively find a melody that "sounds right" it's not always clear if it's The Muse or a faded memory of something you heard years ago. LeChuck's theme more likely used Grim Grinning Ghosts as a conscious inspiration, but maybe another eerie 60s children's song got mixed into that process.

 

The Orient Express melody is a little less simple. Hit the Road is packed with great music, I'd love to listen to inspirational material they used.

[ATMcashpoint]

7 hours ago, Trapezzoid said:

You're probably right. When you instinctively find a melody that "sounds right" it's not always clear if it's The Muse or a faded memory of something you heard years ago. LeChuck's theme more likely used Grim Grinning Ghosts as a conscious inspiration, but maybe another eerie 60s children's song got mixed into that process.

 

The Orient Express melody is a little less simple. Hit the Road is packed with great music, I'd love to listen to inspirational material they used.

This is exactly what I suspect happened with the origins of LeChuck's theme.

 

As for the Doug the Moleman music, it might be a musical joke of sorts, since it seems (like in the Agatha Christie novel) like everyone in the carnival except the Kushman Bros. either helped Bruno & Trixie to elope or was keeping their secrets safe.

[Staple Remover]

Here are some of my hot takes:

 

- EMI was the funniest Lucasarts game. 

 

- The shopkeeper’s vault puzzle in MI1, and the Vista Point boulder puzzle in MI4 are far worse puzzles than Monkey Kombat. 

 

- Tales of Monkey Island episodes 4 and 5 are the best acts in any Monkey Island game. 

- I would welcome an Infernal Machine remaster before a Fate of Atlantis remaster. 

[Jake]

4 hours ago, Staple Remover said:

Tales of Monkey Island episodes 4 and 5 are the best acts in any Monkey Island game. 

An opinion I can’t get behind because the correct answer is “the four map pieces,” but warms my heart all the same. 

[Udvarnoky]

4 hours ago, Staple Remover said:

- The shopkeeper’s vault puzzle in MI1, and the Vista Point boulder puzzle in MI4 are far worse puzzles than Monkey Kombat. 

 

I agree. Memorization and maze type puzzles are way more off-putting to me in a Monkey Island game.

 

While I understand why Monkey Kombat isn't a favorite of people (it seems to answer the question "What if we took insult sword fighting and stripped out the part that made it charming?"), it's really not the grind people make it out to be. As I recall, you only need four victories to be ready for Jojo Jr. So while it can definitely be tedious, it's really over with before it gets into truly objectionable territory. I am pretty sure the insult swordfight training sections in Monkey 1 and CMI last longer.

 

The real issue with Monkey Kombat is that it doesn't have some sort of UI to track what you've learned, which is weak design (as is anything that requires you to write stuff down in an adventure game). I have always chalked that up to EMI's compressed production schedule. That the PS2 version addresses this is probably a sign that it's the sort of thing that would have been smoothed out on a project that had the luxury of lengthier polish time.

 

The Mysts of Time Marsh segment is another example of this: you pretty much have to write those directions down or deal with the aggravation of making Guybrush bust out his inventory (which means waiting for a slow animation of Guybrush slamming his rowing stick into the marsh) every time you raft onto a new screen. There should have just been a key assigned to bring that up during this section. There are a few areas in EMI where it feels like the need to ship by Thanksgiving deprived it of that last little layer of user-friendliness that could have made a substantial difference.

[Udvarnoky]

On 6/8/2022 at 3:12 PM, cinnamon said:

I liked the Monkey Island 2 ending as a series ending and the "mystery" reveal. 

 

Yeah, it always felt more like a mic drop than a setup to me. I thought it baffling when Ron started publicly pushing the idea that he imagined the saga as a trilogy, with a third game paying off the mysteries. I am not surprised he walked that back.

 

When Ron alludes admiringly to the ending of Blazing Saddles, he suggests an intention that I find way more convincing than anything supportive of a "master plan" idea. I would also contend that there's nothing coincidental about the fact that MI2 should be developed at a time when Twin Peaks was at the height of its influence.

 

Dreamy/ambiguous/middle finger punchouts have always been a thing, but they were kind of in vogue at that time in particular. Examples like Barton Fink or Raimi's original ending to Army of Darkness come to mind. By no means does the early 90s have a monopoly on these Deal With It type endings, but they certainly seemed to be "in the air" for a while there.

[Thrik]

I’m reading Rogue Leaders properly after first skimming through the bits about the games I like 14 years ago, and I think it’s a good book — as long as you take it more like a ‘Masters of Doom’ origin story rather than expecting too much in the way of new art curios, etc.

[Staple Remover]

1 hour ago, Udvarnoky said:

The Mysts of Time Marsh segment is another example of this: you pretty much have to write those directions down or deal with the aggravation of making Guybrush bust out his inventory (which means waiting for a slow animation of Guybrush slamming his rowing stick into the marsh) every time you raft onto a new screen. There should have just been a key assigned to bring that up during this section. There are a few areas in EMI where it feels like the need to ship by Thanksgiving deprived it of that last little layer of user-friendliness that could have made a substantial difference.

Oh I forgot about the Mysts of Time! That went on way too long, and the tank controls would change direction when on a new screen and send you into the wrong direction too quickly and then have to start over. 
 

Now that I look back more on it, There are a lot of EMI puzzles that could be in the running for “Worst non-Gabriel Knight 3 puzzle in an Adventure game”.

 

 

[Udvarnoky]

EMI certainly throws a gauntlet down in terms of puzzle difficulty. Which is strange, given that it was the final LucasArts adventure game. While the progress wasn't exactly a straight line -- MI1 and DOTT arguably had more logical puzzle design than any game after, and Loom was truly ahead of its time -- there was a general evolution toward accessibility. No wonder EMI came packaged with a walkthrough.

 

There are these contradictory tensions in EMI that I think make it fascinating. On the one hand it is aggressively pushing "forward" (moving to 3D, adopting console friendly controls) while arguably regressing to puzzle logic aimed at an older-school player. It's a game that's brash and bold and irreverent (including toward canon) in a way that pissed off lots of series fans, yet at the same time it's also the most desperately fan-serving, with a truly staggering volume of callbacks and reprisals that stands out even in an in-joke heavy series.

 

It's something else!