Return to Monkey Island

[Knight Owl]

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1553041302643548160?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1553041302643548160|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F

 

So I think Ron's tweet from this morning was probably partially a joke, but a couple things stood out to me:

 

1. Ron is OK with the game being referred to as "Monkey6."

2. His abbreviation for the game is RTMI, not ReMI

 

Just thought that was interesting 😛

Edited July 29, 2022 by Knight Owl

[Wally B.]

I don't think Ron or anyone from the team decided to make any "safe" choice with this game. I think that they made the choices that they thought were best for the game they wanted to make and for a new Monkey Island game.

 

The music is a very important aspect of Monkey Island (one could argue the most important), all the games had at least one of those composers working on it, seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.

 

The voices were already perfectly cast and I doubt they had someone else in mind to do them, so why would they need to change them? Doesn't seem to me like this is nostalgia pandering, but simply that they had (most) of the casting job already done.

 

The returning characters were a thing since Monkey Island 2 (there aren't many important characters in the first game, but most of them return in the sequel) even though they are few.

 

The UI we don't know anything about really, other than it works with a mouse OR with a controller, and that they worked really hard to make the controller option worthwhile. I think this really shows how really willing they are to modernise the way adventure games are played in a modern era.

 

This leaves the art style, which changes in every Monkey Island games (even between the first two). If there was a safe choice with the art, they couldn't take it while trying to make a modern game. Pixel art is out of the question because they don't want to get the "nostalgia game" label that Thimbleweed Park got, so it was a choice of choosing an art style that suited the game. They decided to go with 2D probably because it gives a cleaner look and ages the game less (look at how Curse aged better than Escape and even Tales visually) and getting the guy who made Ron's favourite fan art and worked as an art director in very good looking games was the best they could do. Also, Steve Purcell, Peter Chan, Bill Tiller and many others who worked on the art of the first 3 games were probably busy with their other jobs so...

 

 

P.S. Also I'm new here, been lurking around since page 1 of this thread 🙃

 

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Wally B.

[KestrelPi]

58 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

"I wanted the art in Return to Monkey Island to be provocative, shocking, and not what everyone was expecting."

 

Do you think he was exaggerating, in this blog post? When he gave that talk and said he didn't want to make puppies; he wanted to make something that half the people loved and half the people hated, do we believe him?

 

Hmmm. Good question. Maybe exaggerating a little? Not on purpose. I've seen Ron say a lot of things over the years and I don't think he's a liar, I think he says what he means in the moment. But I don't think it's unfair to say he's not the most straightforward person, doesn't always talk precisely and isn't always consistent.* It's fine, this isn't a criticism, he's human. if we took Ron on his precise word every time he ever said anything, we'd have a hell of a logical knot to untangle.

 

So... I think it makes sense look at the context in which he said this. He was saying perhaps a little defiantly trying to deflect criticism and turn it into a positive. It feels like it was his way of saying 'hell yeah, you don't have to like it, that's the point. It's s'posed to be that some people don't like it, that's means it's working.'

 

I've no doubt that he wanted the art style to be interesting, and he wanted it to be distinctive. And I think 'not what everyone was expecting' is accurate. But if he really wanted the art to be shocking, I'd say he kinda failed. He could have picked artists way more suitable for THAT goal.

 

More than anything though, I defintely don't think 'provocative/shocking' was the main goal (and Ron never said it was.) I just think he really liked Rex's art and wanted to do that. That trumps any other consideration. It can be as provocative and shocking as he likes, but it's still gotta be a fit. Personally, from what we've seen I think it's gonna be a great fit but I can see how it might take some getting used to.

 

* That Monkey6.exe thing is a case in point, actually. Previously he's tweeted he doesn't consider it either Monkey 3 or Monkey 6 and that it defies numbering. Now he's happy enough to include 6 as a poll option. I don't think that really means anything, he's just goofing around anyway, but I mean it goes to show that maybe we shouldn't be hanging on his every word.

Edited July 29, 2022 by KestrelPi

[Remi]

26 minutes ago, Knight Owl said:

2. His abbreviation for the game is RTMI, not ReMI
😛

That is clearly just an egregious (and somewhat embarrassing) typo. 

[BaronGrackle]

20 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

This leaves the art style, which changes in every Monkey Island games (even between the first two).

That never fully sticks when it's thrown at me, since Elaine is the exact same sprite as her VGA Secret version, Stan and Voodoo Lady are recolors, and Guybrush can stand next to his MI1 version in the dream without it feeling like a fourth wall break.

 

Yeah, I know the backgrounds are completely different things. I know certain characters like Governor Phatt have exaggerated features.

 

But none of that makes the main character sprites disappear from my mind's eye.

 

EDIT: Also Herman, right?

Edited July 29, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Wally B.]

1 minute ago, BaronGrackle said:

That never fully sticks when it's thrown at me, since Elaine is the exact same sprite as her VGA Secret version, Stan and Voodoo Lady are recolors, and Guybrush can stand next to his MI1 version in the dream without it feeling like a fourth wall break.

I'm mostly considering the original EGA version for comparison with the art style. Also I'm not sure the VGA sprites for Monkey1 were done before or after those for Monkey2. To me they are similar in the same way Curse Guybrush is similar to Escape Guybrush, pretty similar design but with changes in clothing and some other small details. The only difference is that Curse Guybrush is 2D and Escape Guybrush is 3D which creates a bigger contrast in game. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how I see it 

[KestrelPi]

4 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

That never fully sticks when it's thrown at me, since Elaine is the exact same sprite as her VGA Secret version, Stan and Voodoo Lady are recolors, and Guybrush can stand next to his MI1 version in the dream without it feeling like a fourth wall break.

 

Yeah, I know the backgrounds are completely different things. I know certain characters like Governor Phatt have exaggerated features.

 

But none of that makes the main character sprites disappear from my mind's eye.

 

EDIT: Also Herman, right?

 

I think to me though this only exaggerates how determined they were to iterate on the art style. Like, the games were made a year apart (unthinkable, now), and subject to pretty much the same technical limitations of each other (at least once everything was VGA, of course), so it's not entirely surprising that they reused some assets, and sprites for the same characters are the most obvious choice for that.

 

But also with the games so close together they could so easily have gone for a very similar background art style too, nobody would have thought it was odd if they'd gone for something similar, computer drawn, in the same style as MI1 VGA. They had to go out of their way to use the marker drawing and scanned approach.

 

There might have been other, practical reasons they changed the art style as well, but scanned art was very much not the obvious, go-to choice, so I think the fact that the sprites are similarly proportioned enough that they were able to reuse some assets from the game they made a year ago is fairly trivial in comparison with the overall ambition of what they were trying with MI2.

[Wally B.]

1 minute ago, KestrelPi said:

so it's not entirely surprising that they reused some assets

As I said, I have a doubt about this. Are we sure those sprites were made for the VGA version of Monkey1 and reused in Monkey2 and not the opposite?

[BaronGrackle]

13 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

I'm mostly considering the original EGA version for comparison with the art style. Also I'm not sure the VGA sprites for Monkey1 were done before or after those for Monkey2. To me they are similar in the same way Curse Guybrush is similar to Escape Guybrush, pretty similar design but with changes in clothing and some other small details. The only difference is that Curse Guybrush is 2D and Escape Guybrush is 3D which creates a bigger contrast in game. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how I see it 

Oh, "similar in the same way" makes perfect sense. I'm one of the ones who think MI has three art genres so far: Semi-realistic (MI1-2), Cartoon (MI3-5), and Scrapbook (MI6-?). Those model ships by the new pirate leaders... do we think they're ACTUALLY paper, in-universe? Or do we think they're wooden or something, and the paper appearance is just...?

 

But that's enough about art from me, at the moment. The last time I dwelled on the art, I left my discord and de-wishlisted the game from my Switch.

 

You guys can answer me if you like, and you have enough information on me to deduce my answer, so I'm going to try again to step back from that.

 

. . .

 

I wonder if the upcoming game will confirm that the Secret of Monkey Island is the exact same thing as Big Whoop.

Edited July 29, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[KestrelPi]

12 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

As I said, I have a doubt about this. Are we sure those sprites were made for the VGA version of Monkey1 and reused in Monkey2 and not the opposite?

 

The 256 colour version of Monkey Island came out in Dec 1990, only 2 months after the 16 colour release and long before MI2. It's possible they were developed with both games in mind, though.

 

----

 

Boo, merged topics

 

I think the most specific thing I've ever seen Ron say about the secret was in the #monkey-island DALNet chat:

 

<Dalixam> Hi Ron, glad to meet you :) The secret of Monkey Island is probably the most well kept secret ever. Can it actually be seen/found in MI1 or MI2? I'm not asking you to reveal it :)

<Ron-G> Yes, if you really look at what's going on, you might be able to come close.

<Ron-G> There are a lot of jokes, that aren't really jokes.

<Ron-G> The problem with the Secret of Monkey Island...

<Ron-G> is that it's built up sich a mystic, that when I finally do reviel it, you're all going to go "That was dumb". :-)

 

I can't remember who recently said in an interview that he felt like there's stuff going on in ReMI which is very relevant to how Ron has talked about the secret before, so even if the secret isn't exactly the same as it was in 1991, I think it might be related/close.

Edited July 29, 2022 by KestrelPi

[Garystu]

4 hours ago, Knight Owl said:

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1553041302643548160?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1553041302643548160|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F

 

So I think Ron's tweet from this morning was probably partially a joke, but a couple things stood out to me:

 

Hope he drops the big retcon and names the file Guy.exe

[Aro-tron]

3 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

I'm one of the ones who think MI has three art genres so far: Semi-realistic (MI1-2), Cartoon (MI3-5), and Scrapbook (MI6-?). Those model ships by the new pirate leaders... do we think they're ACTUALLY paper, in-universe? Or do we think they're wooden or something, and the paper appearance is just...?

I don't quite get this ... obviously, we aren't meant to think the ship is really made of paper, just like we're not meant to think the boats in the earlier games were made of pixels or water colours or polygons or whatever. It's all artifice, isn't it? I personally think the new style looks more like a pop-up book or puppet-show than a scrapbook.

 

I've made a similar argument to what you've said about the art styles before, and I still think it largely scans, although it does diminish the visual links between MI2 and MI3, as well as the ignore the stylistic jump from the computer art of EGA MI1 to the scanned-water colours of MI2.

 

I think it's fair to say that MI3 reinterpreted the series in a way that cast a long shadow, and in a way that has kind of been undervalued by fans in the past 20 years. Both MI4 and MI5 are clearly attempting to translate that style to 3D, and even MI6 appears to be influenced by it. However, whereas MI4 and MI5 seem like kind of predictable points on a line, as successive attempts to tone down the exaggerated style of Curse in order to translate it to 3D, Return pushes the exaggeration in some unexpected directions, while bringing in visual touch-points from the pixel-era games as well

 

What I like about the MI6 art style is that it is similar to the MI3 change in that it kind of retroactively casts the previous games in a different light. It has emphasized elements from various points in the series, but in kind of surprising ways. The more I think about this aspect of it, the more I like it, actually.

[KestrelPi]

48 minutes ago, Aro-tron said:

I think it's fair to say that MI3 reinterpreted the series in a way that cast a long shadow, and in a way that has kind of been undervalued by fans in the past 20 years.

Hmmmmmm. I agree that CMI's art choices cast a long shadow, but even as quite a bit of a CMI-liker I'm not sure I think that I necessarily like that about it. Which I've sort of said before in different ways, but basically I think that especially the guybrush design has been very much influenced by CMI, you see that influence in RMI too, and it feels like it somewhat restricts our imagination on what a guybrush can possibly look like, I want more darker-blond, not so long in the face Guybrushes, personally. These features definitely feel like CMI holdovers.

[Laserschwert]

Steve Purcell pretty much gave us a high-res sprite of MI1's Guybrush already. 

 

[BaronGrackle]

13 minutes ago, Laserschwert said:

Steve Purcell pretty much gave us a high-res sprite of MI1's Guybrush already. 

 

I see that foreshadowing dress and hook. Maybe this game will be the tattoo?

[Jake]

And Monkey Island 7 is a Cap’n Crunch crossover. 

[Garystu]

I'm hoping for the peg leg #teampegleg

[Aro-tron]

27 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

the guybrush design has been very much influenced by CMI, you see that influence in RMI too, and it feels like it somewhat restricts our imagination on what a guybrush can possibly look like

 

Yes, I kind of like the kind of wavy, unkempt hair from MI1 and MI2 more than the big swoop of bangs that he's had since Curse. Looking at how his sprite has evolved, you MI2 might be my favourite Guybrush, and he's definitely the one that's the least lanky and the least YELLOW. I like things about all of them though. MI5 Guybrush is actually a pretty successful design (I like the patterned jacket a lot), and I think the new Guybrush borrows a lot from that approach. The Swoop is more pronounced (and more yellow) than ever though!

 

 

I wonder if Purcell's MI1 paper dolls here inspired the pink party dress Guybrush gets to wear in MI2 (and in Marius' excellent recap animation) ...😄

[Monkey Wrench]

5 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

Steve Purcell pretty much gave us a high-res sprite of MI1's Guybrush already. 

 

Did you ever do an upscaled version of this? It would look great framed, same with the giant monkey head, monkey jumble and other tidbits from the Adventurer, https://mixnmojo.com/media/galleries/The-Secret-of-Monkey-Island-Concept-Art

Edited July 30, 2022 by Monkey Wrench

[Vainamoinen]

From briefs to boxers ... in a year.

[Garystu]

 

I'm memeing don't take this too seriously lol

[Vainamoinen]

1 hour ago, Guybrush Transmasc said:

 

I'm memeing don't take this too seriously lol

 

I think Rex has copy-pasted Guybrush's mouth here.

[KestrelPi]

7 hours ago, Aro-tron said:

 

Yes, I kind of like the kind of wavy, unkempt hair from MI1 and MI2 more than the big swoop of bangs that he's had since Curse. Looking at how his sprite has evolved, you MI2 might be my favourite Guybrush, and he's definitely the one that's the least lanky and the least YELLOW. I like things about all of them though. MI5 Guybrush is actually a pretty successful design (I like the patterned jacket a lot), and I think the new Guybrush borrows a lot from that approach. The Swoop is more pronounced (and more yellow) than ever though!

 

 

I wonder if Purcell's MI1 paper dolls here inspired the pink party dress Guybrush gets to wear in MI2 (and in Marius' excellent recap animation) ...😄

Man looking at them side by side makes me appreciate the new Guybrush all the more though. It's very distinctive while still unmistakably Guybrush, and his face is so expressive, he really looks like a man who is going through some stuff.

 

I never got that from Guybrush before, and I think/hope it speaks to a Guybrush more like the one in the first two games, who even when in silly situations, has a sense of seriousness about his goals.

[Marius]

7 hours ago, Aro-tron said:

Oh no! Comparing the hands, it looks like Return-Guybrush's hands are BOTH cursed, like Tales-Guybrush's left one! 😱

[Thrik]

Those are some big hands.