Return to Monkey Island

[KestrelPi]

28 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

I don't know if you've gotten around to the clips of magazine articles that back this up? It was literally a subject of conversation at the time: "Comedy in video games... can it work?"

 

 

I feel like this came around again later too, because even when adventure games faded somewhat and story driven games in other genres became more common, there was still no real 'theory of comedy' in games. It was fairly easy in adventure games because there's lots of characters and dialogue which happens at a predictable pace, so you can have a lot of control over the comedic timing, and I think it took a long time for other genres to find ways of making jokes land consistently.

 

At the time, something like say... Portal (2007) felt very fresh because nobody was really doing comedy in a first person game, and I feel like there was a bit of 'comedy in games' discourse around that time too, which made me think 'well, I've been laughing at games since 1990...'

 

Even as late as 2011 we had Atlantic articles like ''Portal 2': A Video Game That Gets Comedy Right'. I think that is a very quaint sounding headline only a decade later, when the diversification of game budgets and the different sorts of stories people are trying to tell with varying levels of sophistication, it's not weird any more to encounter games with real emotional resonance, with real laughs, with genuine surrealism, with the kind of breadth that you would expect to see in a maturing medium.

 

I think we're seeing the 2010s and 2020s finish what the 1990s started. It became interrupted in the late 90s and early 2000s because the budgets for games were getting so big, and the tools did not yet exist to make the process of game creation accessible to most, so most of the games getting greenlit at the time were safe bets in established popular genres by well-funded developers. Hence big-budget adventure games dying off. Hence games like Psychonauts only juuuust managing to avoid getting cancelled.

Edited July 25, 2022 by KestrelPi

[madmardi]

18 hours ago, Jake said:

(Also: I really like and appreciate your enthusiasm for Escape. It’s not my favorite game by a long shot, but there’s a lot to like in it, and you can tell the team worked hard on it.)

 

I think about this a lot actually, especially after the backlash against Ron and his team recently. Regardless of how a game turns out I feel a lot of respect for the amount of time that goes into making these works of art, and I don't think anyone could spend 2 years working on something and not be proud what they made. I guess I just wish Sean & Mike & team could get a bit more of the MI love that's out there, as I feel like there's crowds of people that love each of the other games and will jump to their defence if anyone says something against them, yet there's only a few of us that speak up for Escape. Anyways, I unashamedly love EMI but writing out a more detailed post of my reasons will have to wait to another time (when I have more time!).

[Garystu]

I think all the MI games have a really Gen X attitude and sense of humour, actually. They each stress different parts of the Gen X outlook, but its always there. It makes sense, since most of the writers throughout the years have been Gen X or are Boomers on the cusp of Gen X.

 

I think many gen X-ers are also changing with the new generations, to see their past apathetic nihilism as a failure in their attitudes. What a gen x-er is and believes isn't set in stone.

 

And then we have gen y and gen z Doomers, young people who are consumed by apathy. Generation theory is messy stuff.

 

3 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Given in ReMI we have an older guybrush, perhaps having a new younger generation of pirates to deal with, I hope the direction the story is going in is not going to be a 'pirating was better and more pure in the old days' sort of thing. I'm definitely fed up with stories which feature the Youngs ruining everything with their confusing ways, we get enough of that in the daily discourse without having to have it be a theme of games too. I hope the subtext of ReMI isn't 'let's get back to the good old fashioned days of pirating where things made common sense', and that's my main worry for the plot of the game at the moment based on what we've seen. For a game that's so open to trying new things, it'd be a shame if it was rooted in a 'people were better in the old days' mentality. I hope it's more optimistic, and if there's any sort of moral to the story I hope it's more like 'we need to move on, but we can't do so by making the same mistakes of the past' or something.

 

I'm not worried about this. And its because the game is willing to try new things that I'm not worried.

 

The games have always made pop-culture jokes about contemporary trends, so I do expect those. They made a joke about NFTs on the ReMI teaser site. And while I still hope the NFT thing was just a joke for the site, I don't mind if ReMI makes a few remarks about the fortnites and the tiktoks or whatever. But I would be very shocked and disappointed if there was cruelty.

 

There were never any good old days of pirating in the MI series. In every game, there's been problems in pirate society. I'm trusting ReMI to be smart enough to know this.

 

But I get where you're coming from.

[BaronGrackle]

2 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

The point I was making is that comedy was rare. Very rare.

 

Of course there were outliers beforehand, but not everyone agreed that the smutty humour of LSL was actually... funny. The Secret of Monkey Island was mainstream and consistently funny. Maniac Mansion and Zak had funny elements and a sense of humour... but nobody goes around quoting them the way they do with MI.

 

I don't know if you've gotten around to the clips of magazine articles that back this up? It was literally a subject of conversation at the time: "Comedy in video games... can it work?"

Like you and others said, I guess it was there in smaller amounts (without people noticing as much), and then Secret pulled off the comedy rather brilliantly. For Maniac Mansion, think of every single possible ending for that game. I think the least comedic ending is: cartoonish-looking Meteor Police are called and arrest the antagonist.

 

I mean... I never experienced Kings Quest, but the past month I've been listening to let's plays on Youtube. So many puns. One puzzle has you bring a goat to defeat a bridge troll, with narration that says it's a well known fact that goats are enemies of trolls. I can visualize a hypothetical Monkey Island situation where Guybrush dispatches a bridge troll by "Use Goat with Troll", with the exception that he'd be carrying the goat in his inventory.

 

Of course, the reality in Secret is that Guybrush dispatched a troll with a literal red herring, and also the troll wasn't real. So that's definitely a different brand of comedy. And perhaps it's a microcosm of the humor that set Secret apart.

[Jake]

8 hours ago, Staple Remover said:

So… on a scale of Slim to None, what’s the likelihood of a Demo happening? I know that demos are becoming more archaic for game development/releases, but every Monkey Island game (citation needed) had a demo in the past. It might not be too far-fetched to expect one on a MI Monday drop? 

Demos have been coming back into style lately! Lots of PC games do demos for the recurring Steam Next Fest event, which is demo focused, and they are also encouraged for the Nintendo Switch eShop. Not sure what that means for Return, but they are more common than they were a few years ago. 

[KestrelPi]

I think some of this discussion has made me realise something that was important about the humour of the first ... I would say 3 games, which is that for the most part except for extremely heightened moments or twists, the basic bare bones synopsis of the game could actually be played pretty serious.

 

MI1: A young aspiring pirate called Threepwood completes a series of trials to be accepted as a pirate, falls in love with a governor, Elaine, who gets kidnapped by a ghost pirate LeChuck, and gathers a crew to journey to Monkey Island to rescue her, encountering a strange castaway, cannibals, and a monkey-head temple with catacombs leading down to the ghost ship. In the end he returns to Melee, confronts the LeChuck, and reunites with Elaine.

 

Goofiness level: 1/5 - this could be told perfectly straight, really.

 

MI2: Threepwood, newly separated from Elaine seeks a new adventure, since his stories of LeChuck are no longer satisfying his pirate peers. He seeks the most famous pirate treasure of all. After getting waylaid on Scabb Island, he accidentally brings about the resurrection of LeChuck, and begins a race against the clock to find the pieces of the map to the treasure before LeChuck catches up with him. The quest takes him around three islands, and culminates in his capture and escape from LeChuck's fortress, just in time to find the treasure he has been looking for. But when he finds it, it turns out that LeChuck claims to be his brother all is not what it seems with his world.

 

Goofiness level: 2/5 this is a pretty non-goofy plot until the end.

 

Curse: Lost at sea after his strange experience with Big Whoop, Threepwood drifts into port only to get immediately captured by LeChuck, in a battle with Elaine. In his escape, he accidentally destroys LeChuck once more, and finds a ring which he uses to propose to Elaine. The ring turns her into a gold statue. To turn her back, he needs to find a ring of equal value, and the quest takes him to Blood Island where he must unravel the legacy of the residing family and resolve their ghostly troubles to finally get to the ring. But LeChuck, newly resurrected as a demon is not far behind, and the game culminates with a return to the mysterious big whoop, where Guybrush must foil LeChuck's plans to build a skeleton army.

 

Goofiness level: 2.5/5 I'm going to say that the repeated encounter and resurrection of lechuck makes this one a touch goofier, as well as the extended stint in the theme park at the end and weird plot contrivances about why he built the theme park.

 

Escape: Threepwood and Elaine return to Melee island to find Elaine is presumed dead, and a new pretender to the title of governor is in town. Going by Charles L Charles, he is making unreasonable promises. Elaine sends Threepwood to sort out her situation with the lawyers, and along the way he's confronted by the australian Ozzie Mandrill who intends to commercialise the carribean, with chain stores. But this just turns out to be part of a deeper plan he has to find a treasure called the Ultimate Insult, which he plans to use to mind control pirates all over the caribbean. It turns out that LeChuck, disguised as Charles L Charles is also in on the deal, and wants the Ultimate Insult in order to win Elaine, and the two villains are working in cahoots. Guybrush is left stranded on Monkey Island and while there discovers that the castaway, Herman Toothrot was actually Elaine's grandfather all along, and that the monkey temple from the first game is a giant robot, which he gets control of and uses to confront Ozzie and LeChuck once and for all before they can use the insult to take over the Caribbean

 

Goofiness level: 4 actually this game has a pretty convoluted plot so it was difficult to condense it all without missing out important details, but more importantly it's noticeably goofier.

 

Tales: After botching another attempt to destroy LeChuck, Threepwood accidentally turns him human and apparently decent, instead. But before he can get a hold of the facts, he's stranded on Flotsam Island, a place where the winds make it impossible to escape, and manages to unleash a LeChuck-themed disease on himself and the Carribean. He discovers from the Voodoo Lady, someone who had helped him several times before, that only a giant sea sponge can heal the pox, and after fixing the problem with the winds goes on a quest to find it. Along the way, he's swallowed by a giant manatee, reunites with an apparently reformed LeChuck, and is chased by a french scientist intent on studying him to try to use the pox to discover the secret of life, and encounters Morgan LeFlay, a conflicted bounty hunter and admire of Threepwood. His trials lead him back to Flotsam, where he narrowly avoids conviction in court for the trouble he's caused, but at a critical moment, after discovering the Voodoo Lady's own motives might not be pure, LeChuck reveals his true motives and kills Threepwood. To win the day, he must travel the underworld, return to life and defeat LeChuck once more, with the help of those he met along the way.

 

Goofiness level: 3.5 - this is also quite a wacky convoluted plot, but I'm giving it a bit lower goofiness rating because its wackiness still feels like it is grounded in the context of a pirate adventure to me, where a lot of 4's wackiness seems to come completely out of left field. I suppose you could say the same about MI2's twist, but in that it was mainly a bit at the end, and was left very ambiguous. Also because it's episodic, it's not suprising that Tale's plot has a lot of twists and turns in it.

Edited July 25, 2022 by KestrelPi

[Staple Remover]

We got a dialogue tree! And VO in action!

 

[Vainamoinen]

AHHHHHH BRRRRRR MUDA SPOILOOORRRRZZZZ 😅

[KestrelPi]

• Cool to see some dialog, but still little idea of what is meant by 'reactive dialog trees'
• Nice to see those skulls back on the dialog options
• Nice little dynamic music transition. I might well be wrong, but feeling a little bit of a Bajakian flavour for Brrr Muda?

[neoncolor8]

I like the zoom-in effect inside the courthouse. I was a bit concerned because everything in the trailer was really big and zoomed in. It seems like the camera shifts to match the situation. 

 

Edit: the emotion of the judge really comes across, the characters look really vibrant in action. 

Edited July 25, 2022 by neoncolor8
Added something

[Staple Remover]

The Judge acts and sounds like he’s straight out of MI2, and it’s nice to hear more of Guybrush again!

[Jake]

1 minute ago, KestrelPi said:

Cool to see some dialog, but still little idea of what is meant by 'reactive dialog trees'

I think this is a case where people are putting too much weight and expectation on a word in an interview. 

[Vainamoinen]

25 minutes ago, neoncolor8 said:

I like the zoom-in effect inside the courthouse. I was a bit concerned because everything in the trailer was really big and zoomed in. It seems like the camera shifts to match the situation. 

 

I had hoped for zooms; they did wonders for the Book of Unwritten Tales backgrounds.

 

That along with the music and the ice formations really makes the scene here. The central building (town hall?) and its icicles look like they're formed by the storm, and that's just incredible.

 

We still have animals in every scene, it's just that on Brr Muda, they're all frozen. 🥶

 

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Knight Owl]

The walking up stairs animation is blowing my mind a little. Idk why they took the time to make his steps actually match each stair, but they did! Actually is this the first stair-walking animation? I feel like previous games would have just had guybrush walk diagonally upwards with stairs.

[KestrelPi]

10 minutes ago, Jake said:

I think this is a case where people are putting too much weight and expectation on a word in an interview. 

Hmm, I didn't get it from an interview though - the phrase is used twice on the website, too. Once when you talk to Stan and once in the overview screen. I've got to imagine it means SOMEthing more than 'the game has dialog trees', otherwise why would they keep saying it?

Edited July 25, 2022 by KestrelPi

[MurraySchull]

Very nice! Can definitely tell that this is going to feel like the original games.

 

- iMuse-esque transition was lovely! Can already tell that the soundtrack is going to be a highlight.

- Background motion and details are crazy! The snow, the flags, the parallax, the first time we've seen snow in a Monkey Island game (bar Monkey Mountain). Not even Curse's world felt this alive.

- Dom hasn't lost his touch one bit.

- Great to see the dialogue trees working as we remember them. Perhaps "reactive" dialogue trees mean that some of them will be on a timer ala. The Walking Dead. That'd be a first for the MI games.

- Not really in love with the first judge's talking animation with the wobbly, distorted head, but the second "ORDER IN THE COURT" animation was spot on.

- There appears to be lip sync!

- The voice actor of the judge... I wonder if he'll also be LeChuck's voice actor...

Edited July 25, 2022 by fentongames

[Vainamoinen]

7 minutes ago, fentongames said:

- The voice actor of the judge... I wonder if he'll also be LeChuck's voice actor...

 

- the judge ... I wonder if he's also LeChuck ... 😊

[MurraySchull]

3 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

- the judge ... I wonder if he's also LeChuck ... 😊

 

Yeah, that's what I sa-   Ohhhhhhh!! 😎

 

The "I" and "bench" especially sound very Boen-esque. I could see it!

Edited July 25, 2022 by fentongames

[ThunderPeel2001]

It's interesting: The more I see in action, the more I'm getting totally comfortable with the graphic style. I actually didn't even notice it when I watched that clip... I just wanted to see what was going to happen. I hope the rest of the fandom are coming around to it like I am.

 

Anyways... loved the video. Want to play it. NOW... But OH GOD (here's come the fanboi), I don't like the text wobble! I hated it in Thimbleweed Park (and I hated how longer lines scrolled off the edge of the screen, too).

 

Of course, I'll cope. I'll cope.

[Knight Owl]

2 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Anyways... loved the video. Want to play it. NOW... But OH GOD (here's come the fanboi), I don't like the text wobble! I hated it in Thimbleweed Park (and I hated how longer lines scrolled off the edge of the screen, too).

Haha, I always liked that text wobble. Made it feel more lively or something 😛

[demone]

Some might hate this comparison but all the distinct locations are giving me an Uncharted vibe strictly in terms of the scope of locations being visited and how varied they are. The islands, underwater, LeChuck's ship, the carnival. So much is going on. 

 

Other MI games of course had plenty of locations, but the scope seems bigger than ever in this one. I hope you can go from island to island like in MI2. The puzzle chains that stretched across multiple islands is what made that game so amazing and satisfying for me. 

Edited July 25, 2022 by demone

[KestrelPi]

11 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

It's interesting: The more I see in action, the more I'm getting totally comfortable with the graphic style. I actually didn't even notice it when I watched that clip... I just wanted to see what was going to happen. I hope the rest of the fandom are coming around to it like I am.

 

Anyways... loved the video. Want to play it. NOW... But OH GOD (here's come the fanboi), I don't like the text wobble! I hated it in Thimbleweed Park (and I hated how longer lines scrolled off the edge of the screen, too).

 

Of course, I'll cope. I'll cope.

 

I actually had to rewatch the video to even know what you meant by text wobble. I think that detail must have completely passed me by because I never even noticed it before. I can't say I mind it either way. But if it is particularly annoying to you maybe ron will add an option if you ask nicely.   I mean... a month or two ago he said he'd do something for speed runners because they asked nicely (I can't remember what the twitter thread was, now)

[Knight Owl]

Something about the Judge's angry hammer slamming animation reminds me of LittleBigPlanet. Feels very puppety in a good way

2 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

 

I actually had to rewatch the video to even know what you meant by text wobble. I think that detail must have completely passed me by because I never even noticed it before. I can't say I mind it either way. But if it is particularly annoying to you maybe ron will add an option if you ask nicely.   I mean... a month or two ago he said he'd do something for speed runners because they asked nicely (I can't remember what the twitter thread was, now)

In thimbleweed park you could turn off the wobble if you went into the prefs.json file, so I'd assume the same is true here

[Vainamoinen]

5 minutes ago, Knight Owl said:

In thimbleweed park you could turn off the wobble if you went into the prefs.json file, so I'd assume the same is true here

 

Do we have any idea what engine they use, is it by any chance the one Ron programmed for Thimbleweed Park?

 

[KestrelPi]

6 minutes ago, demone said:

Some might hate this comparison but all the distinct locations are giving me an Uncharted vibe strictly in terms of the scope of locations being visited and how varied they are. 

 

Other MI games of course had plenty of locations, but the scope seems bigger than ever in this one. I hope you can go from island to island like in MI2. The puzzle chains that stretched across multiple islands is what made that game so amazing and satisfying for me. 

 

I don't mind the comparison but I don't know that I'm yet sold on Brrr Muda as a concept. Obviously we don't know much about it yet but between the pun name, the very video gamey conceit of 'what haven't we done before? Ah, an ice level!' it still seems a bit odd to me, almost too on-the-nose as a kind of location MI hasn't done before, but it might make perfect sense in the context of the story.

 

Come to think of it, why DID the ride in CMI have that snow section? All the others were scenes to do with events of the previous games (or their lore) - why snow and yetis suddenly. It would be fun if Brrr Muda retroactively justified the existence of that scene on the ride....