Return to Monkey Island

[KestrelPi]

2 hours ago, madmardi said:

Besides, if they can change Guybrush's character model so drastically between games, what's so different from changing between pines and palms?

 

I think the difference is... A lot? Guybrush is still Guybrush if you change the design. Same character with the same history and basically the same personality (even if I might quibble with some of the writing) the designs might suggest different things about the character at different points in his life, but he's still the same person.

 

A pine forest isnt a tropical jungle, though. They are different, and feel different, and it's not trivial. And I'm not saying they CAN'T make that choice but I am saying they can't do it without fundamentally affecting the feel of the location. Same if they'd replaced it with a bamboo forest, sure you can do it but don't be surprised if people ask questions about why this isn't the same place. Not quite the same as giving Guybrush a new coat or something.

[OzzieMonkey]

10 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Just stepping in to add that they really have to release Return to Monkey Island once we hit page 100.

Well, I guess they better do it now. Chop chop, Ron  

[Thrik]

I’ve been enjoying Horizon Forbidden West, and man this music that plays in some old pre-apocalypse ruins made me think of the underground tunnels from MI2 (approx 0:45–2:15). 😆
 

 

 

[Vainamoinen]

10 hours ago, Remi said:

I don't disagree, but it isn't exactly a "minor detail." I have a decent feeling they'll keep it in.

 

I'm betting five Spanish silver dollars / 40 bits on that Guybrush will dryly comment on it, like he's seen the monkey head rising in a fever dream, but it has no bearing on the ReMI story whatsoever.

 

5 hours ago, Romão said:

It's also pretty cool to see pretty much all the islands from the Monkey Island games featured in the book Atlas of Imagined Places

 

That is AWESOME. 🥰

 

And they even retain all the islands from all the games, which gives Monkey Island a sizeable chunk of that map.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Thrik]

7 hours ago, Scummbuddy said:

Why can't the monkey head that was part of the robot not just be the "third" biggest monkey head that Guybrush has ever seen, conveniently also situated on Monkey Island? I mean, with so many giant monkey heads laying about it's no wonder they named the island after it...

 

As an aside, a discussion broke out on our Twitter about the topology of the island, and how exactly LeChuck gets his ship in and out of Hell.

 

Someone suggested that it’s a ghost ship so it can just glide through the land, however the presence of Elaine on board somewhat defies the notion. Of course the ship could have fantastic powers that make its inhabitants ethereal temporarily.

 

It was noted that the Monkey Head sits upon a large hill in MI1:

 

 

You can see the same on the overhead map:

 

 

So Hell might actually be a misinterpretation of Hill, as Remi put it.

 

Anyway, if you look at the island it’s clearly developed around a line of volcanic activity, with what looks to have been an active volcano on the left end, and perhaps a budding volcano on the right which instead merely leads to the bowels of death.

 

I did wonder if perhaps the left volcano also once featured a Monkey Head, long ago.

 

We then got on to trying to figure out where LeChuck might take the ship, to travel at sea level through the island to Hill. Someone pointed out the water outlet at the bottom, where the ridge you get the oars from is.

 

I then noticed this area of disturbed water with no obvious source unlike the other cracks and rivers across the island, where there may be a route in through the side of the former volcano, going right through the island.

 

 

In fact, who’s to say LeChuck’s ship isn’t parked beneath the old volcano, and Guybrush gets there via the catacombs?

[Marius]

Aah, I'm here for these discussions. Love it!

Was Dread steering the ship in that last image? 😄

[KestrelPi]

My guess, which I'm keeping suitably vague, is that by the time we get to the end of Return to Monkey Island, we will understand how this game can coexist with a game in which the giant monkey head is part of a giant robot monkey and isn't even there anymore.

[madmardi]

10 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

I think the difference is... A lot? Guybrush is still Guybrush if you change the design. Same character with the same history and basically the same personality (even if I might quibble with some of the writing) the designs might suggest different things about the character at different points in his life, but he's still the same person.

 

A pine forest isnt a tropical jungle, though. They are different, and feel different, and it's not trivial. And I'm not saying they CAN'T make that choice but I am saying they can't do it without fundamentally affecting the feel of the location. Same if they'd replaced it with a bamboo forest, sure you can do it but don't be surprised if people ask questions about why this isn't the same place. Not quite the same as giving Guybrush a new coat or something.

 

Well, IMHO I have to disagree with this point. Changing a character model is pretty significant in my mind. Not that I'm against it at all, but when each game redesigns Guybrush, sure he's the same character, but each iteration adds to who that character really is. For example, I think that changing Guybrush's height (as in Curse) makes a huge difference, and not only do the new writers help form and flesh out who Guybrush is and the story he tells, but his image contributes to that as well. As does his voice, etc. We aren't just talking about a change in wardrobe, but a completely new look. With each game we've learned more about, redeveloped, and transformed who Guybrush really is, and I don't think that's ever been static. Each character model still holds the essences of the person we know as Guybrush, but it has also helped his personality grow.

 

So from my point of view, changing Guybrush's height is way more drastic of a change than changing the forest (the background to the story) from pine to palms. Sure, it makes it feel different, but MI has never taken itself that seriously, or been that detail oriented with continuity (even between the first two games), so whether one artist wants to paint the background of Melee with pines, palms, or bamboo, I don't think its that relevant or as out of place of a change compared to other differences in the games that get much less attention.

[madmardi]

17 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

My guess, which I'm keeping suitably vague, is that by the time we get to the end of Return to Monkey Island, we will understand how this game can coexist with a game in which the giant monkey head is part of a giant robot monkey and isn't even there anymore.

 

I hope you're right!

[madmardi]

4 hours ago, Thrik said:

As an aside, a discussion broke out on our Twitter about the topology of the island, and how exactly LeChuck gets his ship in and out of Hell.

 

Someone suggested that it’s a ghost ship so it can just glide through the land, however the presence of Elaine on board somewhat defies the notion. Of course the ship could have fantastic powers that make its inhabitants ethereal temporarily.

 

It was noted that the Monkey Head sits upon a large hill in MI1:

 

 

You can see the same on the overhead map:

 

 

So Hell might actually be a misinterpretation of Hill, as Remi put it.

 

Anyway, if you look at the island it’s clearly developed around a line of volcanic activity, with what looks to have been an active volcano on the left end, and perhaps a budding volcano on the right which instead merely leads to the bowels of death.

 

I did wonder if perhaps the left volcano also once featured a Monkey Head, long ago.

 

We then got on to trying to figure out where LeChuck might take the ship, to travel at sea level through the island to Hill. Someone pointed out the water outlet at the bottom, where the ridge you get the oars from is.

 

I then noticed this area of disturbed water with no obvious source unlike the other cracks and rivers across the island, where there may be a route in through the side of the former volcano, going right through the island.

 

 

In fact, who’s to say LeChuck’s ship isn’t parked beneath the old volcano, and Guybrush gets there via the catacombs?

 

Actually, that's what I always thought. Even though the monkey head entrance is towards the East, I always assumed LeChuck's ship was beneath the volcano.

[KestrelPi]

5 hours ago, Thrik said:

I’ve been enjoying Horizon Forbidden West, and man this music that plays in some old pre-apocalypse ruins made me think of the underground tunnels from MI2 (approx 0:45–2:15). 😆
 

 

 

 

Yeah, it's a very distinctive sequence, one of my favourites

 

(also incidentally really easy to play on a guitar with barre chords: just start anywhere and do a bar chord with an Am shape, then go one fret down, bar chord with E major shape, one fret down again, Am shape, and so on, just moving down one fret at a time and switching between the Am and E shapes.)

 

It's a very unsettled sort of sound, and perhaps that's because you're alternating between a minor chord, and then a major chord with a root a tritone below the previous chord, and so harmonically you're really quite off piste from the start. It might just be that I'm not as steeped in music theory as I need to be to do a quick analysis of this but I'm not even sure how you would functionally describe that second chord... it's clearly setting up the following chord, but in relation to the I chord it's the... secondary dominant of the 7th chord of the harmonic minor scale? Maybe someone more fluent in music theory can help me figure out what's happening functionally here, I'm likely overcomplicating.

 

Anyway theory is for working things out later, the point is that it's very distinctive sound because you've got this chromatic (semitone) through line with makes it really easy to follow, but then these big unsettling tritone jumps in the root, it's an ideal device for creating this kind of mysterious, uncomfortable feeling.

 

I think it's a gorgeous sound and I love to use it.

[KestrelPi]

3 hours ago, madmardi said:

 

Well, IMHO I have to disagree with this point. Changing a character model is pretty significant in my mind. Not that I'm against it at all, but when each game redesigns Guybrush, sure he's the same character, but each iteration adds to who that character really is. For example, I think that changing Guybrush's height (as in Curse) makes a huge difference, and not only do the new writers help form and flesh out who Guybrush is and the story he tells, but his image contributes to that as well. As does his voice, etc. We aren't just talking about a change in wardrobe, but a completely new look. With each game we've learned more about, redeveloped, and transformed who Guybrush really is, and I don't think that's ever been static. Each character model still holds the essences of the person we know as Guybrush, but it has also helped his personality grow.

 

So from my point of view, changing Guybrush's height is way more drastic of a change than changing the forest (the background to the story) from pine to palms. Sure, it makes it feel different, but MI has never taken itself that seriously, or been that detail oriented with continuity (even between the first two games), so whether one artist wants to paint the background of Melee with pines, palms, or bamboo, I don't think its that relevant or as out of place of a change compared to other differences in the games that get much less attention.

 

I suppose my point is that no matter how much you redesign guybrush they:

 

• Are still redesigning the same character
• Are doing so with particular goals in mind, either to say something about the story or about the side of the character you want to convey.

So, when they changed guybrush's design from MI1 to MI2 what are they trying to say about him? He's grown up a bit, he's also a bit more well off, considers himself more of a real pirate, has maybe become a little bit vain. Those are the parts of his personality they want to evoke for that game. But he's still the same character. He has the same history. The same stuff happened to him, and the design choices make sense within the story they're telling.

 

When they moved from MI2 to CMI, what did they want to say with that design? Well, I don't know for sure but I'd say that by making him tall and gangly they wanted to emphasise the sort of weak, feeble side of his character and by stripping him of his fancy clothes they wanted to be showing a more humbled version of guybrush whose brush with the carnival of the damned has left him having to start from scratch, a riches to rags sort of thing.

 

With EMI he's just married, has some of his swagger back, etc etc

 

They're all different design choices, but they make sense with where a character is at a particular moment. Even if the changes are significant and drastic, it is expected that a character will undergo these kinds of changes over the course of an arc (and also expected that their design will change in line with art style changes).

 

I don't think it's expected that artists will change the whole architectural style, layout, landscape, colour palette, and tree makeup of what is after all mainly a forest island so that it is hardly even recognisable as the original.

 

Also: An island can have an arc too, and it can undergo changes - like in ReMI we know Melee island has seen better days, and you can see that in the broken windows and holes in the roof and general run-down ness and ricketyness of stuff. But it's still visibly the same place. (just like even though guybrush has had lots of designs, he's still visibly guybrush)

Edited July 21, 2022 by KestrelPi

[KestrelPi]

One thing to add seperately to that design discussion: I think it's fair to say the biggest change Guybrush has gone through design-wise was the transition between MI2 and CMI. The changes made to the design for MI2 have influenced every version of the design since, from the special editions to the 3D games to ReMI too. And not coincidentally it's also my least favourite of the redesigns.

 

... Not because I dislike it, I actually got used to it quite well and I like a lot of the design. I just felt like it was such a statement about the character that it perhaps said too many things a bit too strongly about who guybrush is as a character, not all of which quite vibed with my notion of Guybrush coming fresh out of MI2.

 

So yeah, I got used to CMI guybrush but I  have always disliked how many of those choices have become baked in as the standard for subsequent Guybrushes (the lankiness, the long face, the very blond hair - I feel like other choices can be made with Guybrush)

 

All of which is to say that I'm definitely not saying that I don't think that changes in a character design can have a big impact. They absolutely can, and I think we've seen that happen to some extent with Guybrush over the years. It's just that I also think a certain amount of change in character design is to be expected over the course of a series, and makes sense in context. I can look at all the changes to Guybrush's design, even the ones I don't like so much, and think to myself 'yes, I see why they did that'

 

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by KestrelPi

[KestrelPi]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

 

Yeah, it's a very distinctive sequence, one of my favourites

 

(also incidentally really easy to play on a guitar with barre chords: just start anywhere and do a bar chord with an Am shape, then go one fret down, bar chord with E major shape, one fret down again, Am shape, and so on, just moving down one fret at a time and switching between the Am and E shapes.)

 

It's a very unsettled sort of sound, and perhaps that's because you're alternating between a minor chord, and then a major chord with a root a tritone below the previous chord, and so harmonically you're really quite off piste from the start. It might just be that I'm not as steeped in music theory as I need to be to do a quick analysis of this but I'm not even sure how you would functionally describe that second chord... it's clearly setting up the following chord, but in relation to the I chord it's the... secondary dominant of the 7th chord of the harmonic minor scale? Maybe someone more fluent in music theory can help me figure out what's happening functionally here, I'm likely overcomplicating.

 

Anyway theory is for working things out later, the point is that it's very distinctive sound because you've got this chromatic (semitone) through line with makes it really easy to follow, but then these big unsettling tritone jumps in the root, it's an ideal device for creating this kind of mysterious, uncomfortable feeling.

 

I think it's a gorgeous sound and I love to use it.

 

Oh and the thing I forgot to say is that as well as having this implied chromatic, semitonal descent, because you have that tritone drop in the bass that also means the bass can get there via whole tones (tritone just means 3 whole tones) so that's why you have the bass doing things like C Bb Ab Gb to get from one to the other. And the whole tone melodic material is another good way to convey a sense of mystery, like you get in Sam and Max's Mystery Vortex:

 

so, implied semitonal descent + tritone leaps + a smattering of whole tone melodic material for the underground tunnels = a whole heap of mystery, while still somehow remaining easy on the ears ❤️

[madmardi]

2 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

I don't think it's expected that artists will change the whole architectural style, layout, landscape, colour palette, and tree makeup of what is after all mainly a forest island so that it is hardly even recognisable as the original.

 

Sure... but it's also not unexpected. If we can change up characters so drastically, I still see no issues changing any of the items from your list. Frankly, I think Guybrush in Curse is unrecognizable from Guybrush in MI2, but seeing as Curse was 25 years ago I've almost forgotten how shocked I was when I first saw him in that game. Not that I'm saying I dislike any of the character redesigns, just that I don't see why changing any of the items in your list is a big deal if we're okay with other artistic changes.

 

Anyways, I feel like now we're splitting hairs and we'll probably not agree on this, so I'l try to get back on track with ReMI 😅

[KestrelPi]

16 minutes ago, madmardi said:

 

Sure... but it's also not unexpected. If we can change up characters so drastically, I still see no issues changing any of the items from your list. Frankly, I think Guybrush in Curse is unrecognizable from Guybrush in MI2, but seeing as Curse was 25 years ago I've almost forgotten how shocked I was when I first saw him in that game. Not that I'm saying I dislike any of the character redesigns, just that I don't see why changing any of the items in your list is a big deal if we're okay with other artistic changes.

 

Anyways, I feel like now we're splitting hairs and we'll probably not agree on this, so I'l try to get back on track with ReMI 😅

 

Sure, and like I actually agree with what you say about CMI's guybrush and see my follow up post above, I would go as far to say there IS an argument that CMI's guybrush design changed too many things at once, so much so that I think that it had a disproportionate influence on all subsequent designs.

 

The difference to me is that while CMI changed a lot of the character design, he still comes across in character as a somewhat weak, inept, but occasionally sly and witty character we recognise from the first. I don't think the Melee of EMI still comes across as the dark, rough-around-the-edges, quietly mysterious night-time island. It's just 'kinda generic caribbean island at night.' MI1 Melee was eerie at its best. Look at that cliff path leading to the governor's mansion and how the cliffs themselves loom over the house. There's a sense of scale there, and it matters. I don't think EMI Melee is eerie at all. That's why I say I got used to one change and not the other.

 

But yes, moving on topic...

 

My main hope for the new locations in ReMI is that they make me feel a way? I always remember how Melee made me feel, and how the feeling was different for all the other major locations. I think CMI was really good at this too. Plunder was a bit of a mishmash of previous Monkey Island locations, perhaps (maybe they felt they needed to create a familiar feeling by making it a kind of amalgam of all previous MI islands), but Blood island really manages to evoke that sentiment of an old place with a history that it past its prime and left with a lingering sadness. It pervades the whole island, not just the hotel, I think it's a really wonderful, evocative location.

 

That's what I hope. I hope Brrr Muda's vibe is more than just a joke about a cold tropical island, and I hope that whatever Terror Island is, it has a feel of its own, that will be memorable. To me the places in an adventure game are almost as important as the characters. If I'm gonna be wandering around solving a puzzle in a place for any length of time, I want that place to stir something in me, and that if anything is why I feel so strongly about the paticulars of a location

 

 

[Jake]

Guybrush Threepwood occupies a space in my brain similar to Gordon Freeman: he’s almost an empty vessel for my own thoughts and experiences, a theming around my cursor to help frame the choices imposed on me as a player by the game’s design, and not a character with a ton of hopes, dreams, hangups. Guybrush’s desires align closely with my own, especially in the early games that formed the foundation of the series. He wants to prove himself worthy of solving the mysteries of the game, to have a real pirate experience, to get to say the best comebacks, etc. He has more to him than that, sure, but he’s far more of a player vessel than Ben or Manny. Note he was conceived of as a guy named “guy.” I don’t think that’s a bad thing - I think the ability to see yourself in the game through him is part of what works about the Monkey Island formula. For that reason it’s never really bothered me that he changes shape and size. When Dom started voicing him in Curse, that was the hardest jump for me because suddenly my interiority had a voice, but now I’m used to it and welcome it - it’s almost like my interiority is now in audiobook form and has always had the same narrator doing a bang up job. 

 

To be clear, I think there is more to guybrush than that, but it’s stuff that gets revealed when he ends up (what I perceive as) off the mark in a story. For example in Escape I felt like Guybrush started becoming the butt of the joke not just to the people around him, but to the game itself. In the earlier games, the games seemed to be on his side more. In Escape and even Curse, the inciting incident is “Guybrush is a screw-up who everyone’s mad at,” where the player is tasked with cleaning up the player character’s mess as the goal of the game, but that wasn’t always the case. Eg at the start of Monkey Island 2, Bart and Fink are dismissive of everything Guybrush accomplished, but Guybrush will have none of it, insisting he’ll prove them wrong and repeat his success by finding Big Whoop. He then basically turns to the camera and says “we’ll do this together,” and you believe it.* So, Guybrush as a guy who perseveres in the face of impossible odds and a lack of faith from his peers seems like an actual character trait that you can say is part of who he is, and when people “get the character wrong” it’s because he strays from that template without reason. (But even then, part of why that’s who Guybrush is, is because it’s the way players are coming at the game.)

 

* the game still does bring LeChuck back by Guybrush behaving like a goober outside the players control, when he shows Largo LeChuck’s beard, but it’s still not the inciting event for the story, it starts an ominous B thread slow cooking that doesn’t collide directly with you until the end of the story. 

[neoncolor8]

I feel the same way about the locations, I don't miss a character and want to play the game again as much as I miss a certain mood of a location in the game. Curse and Monkey1 do this perfectly, the world is alive and the geography makes sense: you can look from the beach in Monkey1 to the little mountain with the vista and vice versa. Small details like this make me so happy. This details are missing in Monkey2 sometimes, but the incredible music makes me forget this. 

 

Guybrush being a vessel makes so much sense, he's just guy experiencing 

an adventure. This way the ending of Monkey2 makes total sense. The game is over, we go back to our lives. 

 

About the beard thing in Monkey2:

I never made the connection between the beginning of the game (Guybrush loses the beard to Largo) and the ending (Guybrush gets the beard back, now in zombie form). 

 

Largo used the beard to revive Lechuck, Guybrush uses it to defeat him again. 

There's something about this beard in this game (and spit, tons of spit)!

 

 

 

[KestrelPi]

3 hours ago, Jake said:

Guybrush Threepwood occupies a space in my brain similar to Gordon Freeman: he’s almost an empty vessel for my own thoughts and experiences, a theming around my cursor to help frame the choices imposed on me as a player by the game’s design, and not a character with a ton of hopes, dreams, hangups. Guybrush’s desires align closely with my own, especially in the early games that formed the foundation of the series. He wants to prove himself worthy of solving the mysteries of the game, to have a real pirate experience, to get to say the best comebacks, etc. He has more to him than that, sure, but he’s far more of a player vessel than Ben or Manny. Note he was conceived of as a guy named “guy.” I don’t think that’s a bad thing - I think the ability to see yourself in the game through him is part of what works about the Monkey Island formula. For that reason it’s never really bothered me that he changes shape and size. When Dom started voicing him in Curse, that was the hardest jump for me because suddenly my interiority had a voice, but now I’m used to it and welcome it - it’s almost like my interiority is now in audiobook form and has always had the same narrator doing a bang up job. 

 

To be clear, I think there is more to guybrush than that, but it’s stuff that gets revealed when he ends up (what I perceive as) off the mark in a story. For example in Escape I felt like Guybrush started becoming the butt of the joke not just to the people around him, but to the game itself. In the earlier games, the games seemed to be on his side more. In Escape and even Curse, the inciting incident is “Guybrush is a screw-up who everyone’s mad at,” where the player is tasked with cleaning up the player character’s mess as the goal of the game, but that wasn’t always the case. Eg at the start of Monkey Island 2, Bart and Fink are dismissive of everything Guybrush accomplished, but Guybrush will have none of it, insisting he’ll prove them wrong and repeat his success by finding Big Whoop. He then basically turns to the camera and says “we’ll do this together,” and you believe it.* So, Guybrush as a guy who perseveres in the face of impossible odds and a lack of faith from his peers seems like an actual character trait that you can say is part of who he is, and when people “get the character wrong” it’s because he strays from that template without reason. (But even then, part of why that’s who Guybrush is, is because it’s the way players are coming at the game.)

 

* the game still does bring LeChuck back by Guybrush behaving like a goober outside the players control, when he shows Largo LeChuck’s beard, but it’s still not the inciting event for the story, it starts an ominous B thread slow cooking that doesn’t collide directly with you until the end of the story. 

 

I don't know if I see Guybrush as a vessel (or at least not close to Gordon Freeman, for me), so much as... in the earlier games I always saw him as kind of understated. They didn't go really BIG with the character but there was enough there for me to percieve him as this kind of eager but not entirely competent guy who has dreams of fitting in with the in crowd which in this case is pirates, and has enough determination to actually get that done.

 

It didn't feel weird to me that he was understated as a character but maybe that's also because he was the first character I ever controlled in a video game that actually had dialog and stuff to say, so at the time if anything I would have been overwhelmed by the idea of a video game character having a personality at all.

 

But yes, starting with CMI there were I guess attempts to dial in some of those personality traits and be a bit more specific and perhaps bigger with those choices, and that for me is something that I've had a kind of mixed time with. For the most part I like the CMI version of Guybrush  - like you, the voice was the biggest adjustment for me, and like you I'm very happy with it at this point. And I think the writing *around* Guybrush is very on point in that game - something that's fun to play with, with Guybrush is how often he's puzzling stuff out and getting things done and nobody could care less. I love it when he comes back from the graveyard and nobody at all is bothered that he's alive again, that feels like a very MI1 and especially MI2 style approach to Guybrush's place in the world.

 

Since then IMO there's definitely been a tendency to overwrite the character, which I've talked about a bit in the past, but he skews a bit goofball. And I never really saw Guybrush as a goofball. In the first game I saw him as a naive wannabe, and in the second a bit more of a self-important poseur, and I think you need a bit of bite in his writing to really get that part of his character over. They've also made him less intelligent, in (to some extent) CMI, EMI and Tales (I noticed this in particular in my recent replay of Tales).

 

I never considered his ineptitude to be a result of a lack of intelligence - I think he actually has plenty of wits about him, I always thought of it as a result of his hubris, callousness about the effect of his actions on others and vanity and even just blind optimism - y'know, he'll accidentally give away LeChuck's beard because he wanted to show it off and prove himself, or he gives Elaine the ring because he's in a hurry to impress her after the reunion, or he interferes with Elaine's plan at the end of MI1 because he's overconfident in his own, or he can't command the respect of his crew in MI1 because he severely overestimated his readiness to be a captain.

 

I wonder what sort of Guybrush we'll get this time.

[Vainamoinen]

I don't know what Guybrush we'll get, but I know that guy can RUN.

 

[KestrelPi]

Heh. Maybe ron should just add a pixellate filter in graphics options. It's amazing how just by pixellating it, my gut reaction shifts from 'this is new and scary' to 'this is old and familiar'. (I love the art style if it wasn't already clear, but it's also very new and so it always feels a little odd at first, just like CMI did I suppose.)

[KestrelPi]

[Knight Owl]

3 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

lol, wasn't there some guy who got mad at Double Fine for adding in a pixel filter to Broken Age as a fun little thing rather than taking the time to make pixel art backgrounds and sprites for every character?

[Lechuck]

10 hours ago, madmardi said:

 

Sure... but it's also not unexpected. If we can change up characters so drastically, I still see no issues changing any of the items from your list. Frankly, I think Guybrush in Curse is unrecognizable from Guybrush in MI2, but seeing as Curse was 25 years ago I've almost forgotten how shocked I was when I first saw him in that game. Not that I'm saying I dislike any of the character redesigns, just that I don't see why changing any of the items in your list is a big deal if we're okay with other artistic changes.

 

Anyways, I feel like now we're splitting hairs and we'll probably not agree on this, so I'l try to get back on track with ReMI 😅

 

There's a difference between art style and content changing. The art style may have changed between games, but Guybrush is always a man with a pony tail. He doesn't fundamentally change.

 

Architectural design and foliage changing is different. It's not like they changed them to stylized pine trees, they completely changed the plants. This would be like if Guybrush were suddenly a person of a different ethnicity or gender.

 

There is a difference there.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Lechuck

[DM81]

8 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Heh. Maybe ron should just add a pixellate filter in graphics options. It's amazing how just by pixellating it, my gut reaction shifts from 'this is new and scary' to 'this is old and familiar'. (I love the art style if it wasn't already clear, but it's also very new and so it always feels a little odd at first, just like CMI did I suppose.)

Same for me