Return to Monkey Island

[Laserschwert]

I haven't played ToMI in a while, but at least in my memory it didn't feel too constrained, but gave the feeling of covering a lot of ground during your journey. Sure, you return to Flotsam, but it was different enough to work well.

 

What excites me in that IGN interview was the definitive confirmation that this is a pirate story, island hopping and all. I was still somewhat afraid that it might be a meta setting along the lines of Thimbleweed Park, which could easily suck all the atmosphere out of the pirate setting. 

[Udvarnoky]

Yeah I think TMI in aggregate felt of the proper scope. The budget constraints were more evident at the episode level, where there was clearly an exact number of environments that could be afforded. But so it goes. A proper remaster where Land's score gets the live instrument treatment and some tertiary characters actually get designs could be revelatory. As with Sam & Max, the bones are good, and an upgraded audio/visual presentation could show off the quality that was already there in a potentially dramatic way.

[MurraySchull]

2 hours ago, Zaxx said:

I guess it can also be a factor that ToMI wasn't exactly loved by the fanbase in general plus the game distances itself from the plot of the main series.

 

Really? From what I remember, Tales was generally really liked by the community at the time. Maybe that's changed over the years but I still look back on it fondly.

 

Personally, I think it started off weaker from a game/puzzles/humour perspective but got much better as it progressed, with Episode 3 really being the turning point. Even though I felt the actual maguffin of "La Esponja Grande" itself was not particularly strong (though are we really going to say that "Big Whoop" or "The Ultimate Insult" were much better in comparison?   ) and some of the episodic style pacing/bosses not being the best, I did feel that the plot in terms of the characters' journeys was the strongest in all of the games. LeChuck turning human, Guybrush being killed and becoming a ghost/zombie, Elaine/Guybrush's love being challenged, the Voodoo Lady's true intentions being questioned... I don't think any of the other games tested the characters and their relationships as much as Tales did. Every character felt less black and white than before, and that's something that Telltale in general did really well back in the day.

[MurraySchull]

10 minutes ago, Udvarnoky said:

A proper remaster where Land's score gets the live instrument treatment and some tertiary characters actually get designs could be revelatory. As with Sam & Max, the bones are good, and an upgraded audio/visual presentation could show off the quality that was already there in a potentially dramatic way.

 

Oh man, now you've got me theorising about a TMI remaster! (Geniunely, I hope Skunkape do take this opportunity while the iron is hot to jump on it!) Yeah, I think the key things I'd love to see would be a live recording of the soundtrack by Land/McConnell/Bajakian (the tracks themselves are pretty much all great, but the instruments don't do them many favours), possibly some reworked character models, improved lighting and visuals where possible and Leilani Jones Wilmore as the Voodoo Lady.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I agree with you @fentongames. I thought Tales attempted to do some interesting stuff. I remember I really enjoyed it. I think it's sort of forgotten or ostracised now. I can only speculate as to why: Possibly because it's not something people grew up with. Possibly because in people's minds it wasn't from an "official" source (LucasArts or Ron Gilbert himself), despite the fact that Grossman was in the room, and Gilbert himself apparently offered some input.

 

Also, some of the adventure game die hards still haven't gotten over the fact that Grim Fandango was in 3D, let alone two Monkey Island games. For some reason they feel 3D destroys adventure games. And finally maybe it's just a bit harder to get up and running compared to the first three games, so people play it less? (You can't just download it and run ScummVM, in fact I don't even know how I'd go about playing it again if I wanted to.)

 

I think it deserves more love generally.

 

Oh and I found this interesting quote from Ron in the depths of the Mojo archives:

 

Quote

Do you think a Monkey Island game would work in an episodic format? Not that we’re being hopeful or anything…
 

Yes, I think they would. A few years ago I contacted LucasArts about doing a episodic MI3 (Monkey Island 3: The Secret Revealed or Your Money Back). They were interested and we had several months of discussions, but they it just ended. I never knew why. I'd jump at the chance if it came up again. I had a very cool story planned out.

 

I wonder if anyone has ever asked him about this version??

[Zaxx]

22 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

For some reason they feel 3D destroys adventure games.

 

Yep, this was most of the feedback I've seen along with the general notion that Telltale games were "dumbed down" in puzzle design. Most of the people I know who were interested in a Monkey Island game just really hated the art style and the 3D graphics to the point that I don't think they ever played ToMI. I think some of that was fair tbh, I replayed the game a few months ago and it definitely aged worse than the prior Sam & Max games in visuals. Telltale Sam & Max looked flat too but that somehow fit the style of those games while for example ToMI's lighting is just unpleasant to look at in most cases. What I was surprised by though is that it ran flawlessly at 120 Hz, old games usually have speedup or animations issues but nope, ToMI is just really smooth at 120 fps and it's a joy to look at the game in motion.

 

Overall I really like ToMI, I think it has some issues and I don't think it's comparable to the first 3 games but it's absolutely better than Escape.

[Zaxx]

Btw. did Telltale ever update the ToMI digital releases with the version of Episode 1 that has Earl Boen in it? My DVD from the old Telltale CE still worked the last time I installed but that disc is just very old now and I'd love to never have to use it again.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Zaxx

[ATMcashpoint]

I'm afraid not. They said they would back in the day, but they never did. Which is why the currently available digital versions use Adam Harrington's voice even now.

Edited May 3, 2022 by ATMcashpoint

[Jake]

Telltale management was extremely against patching unless absolutely necessary because it cost QA and producer time. It was a bummer. 

[OzzieMonkey]

The GOG version recently patched in Earl Boen, but it came with a nasty bug that causes the music to not change correctly in different areas on Flotsam. I just use the DVD version and copy it over to my GOG copy. Works a treat.

[Jake]

2 hours ago, OzzieMonkey said:

The GOG version recently patched in Earl Boen, but it came with a nasty bug that causes the music to not change correctly in different areas on Flotsam. I just use the DVD version and copy it over to my GOG copy. Works a treat.

Oof! I should play the DVD version, it's been a long time.

[Lagomorph01]

6 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Oh and I found this interesting quote from Ron in the depths of the Mojo archives:

 

 

I wonder if anyone has ever asked him about this version??

Please don’t share that quote outside this forums… The “intended 3a” crowd will have a field day… 😱

[Lagomorph01]

I should replay ToMI again. I remember not being impressed by the first episode, but warming up to the rest pretty fast. I liked the story and the character driven plot, I liked hook Guybrush (and in the end wishing they had the balls to make it permanent), I liked the new characters and bad guys too. I’ve only played it once, so I should definitely give it another go. I stranded at CMI with my playthroughs though, so I’ve still got some ground to cover.

[Vainamoinen]

So the IGN interview just announced that all MI games would be considered canon for ReMI, and I just wanted to be the first to ask: Does that put the literal coffin nail in Stan's return?
 

20 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

Good to see you FINALLY join, @Vainamoinen... only took you like 20 years.

 

I recently checked on how many anticipation threads we had on the Telltale forums before Tales (pre-release). And it was like 400 threads! Granted, there was that persistent Italian guy who told us that this game couldn't be Monkey Island 5 because his fan game was Monkey Island 5 already. But a whole lot was good fun, and I'm missing it dearly now that my anticipation is ramping up for ReMI in much the same way. All the pictures are gone from Majus' pirate faces contest though. Including mine. 🥺

 

5 hours ago, OzzieMonkey said:

The GOG version recently patched in Earl Boen, but it came with a nasty bug that causes the music to not change correctly in different areas on Flotsam. I just use the DVD version and copy it over to my GOG copy. Works a treat.

 

My recent run through the game was killed in episode 4. The game crashes - always - upon entering the jungle with the new, "foldable" map variant. I installed the GOG version too. I do own the Telltale DVD version as well ... might be worth a try.

 

On 5/2/2022 at 12:11 PM, KestrelPi said:

I don't think any speculation beyond that is gonna be particularly fruitful.

 

Quite right. Back when Ron left Double Fine, I thought of that as a natural move for him. At DF, Tim was literally the boss of Ron and that just didn't feel right. Afterwards, Double Fine owned the rights to The Cave, which obviously was all right with Ron until a Mega-Corporation bought Double Fine. Tim Schafer's lack of involvement in ReMI can be seen as a necessary act of emancipation from Ron's side without any form of animosity involved. 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Toymafia1988]

I really like Tales of Monkey Island.

 

My big issue with it though was the cliffhanger ending with the voodoo lady.

 

It just cheapens Tales and makes it feel unfinished.

 

Don't do a cliffhanger unless you have a confirmed sequel on the way. 

 

Maybe they were trying to create a cliffhanger like mi2 or maybe it was attempt to force lucasarts to let them do a sequel.

[Laserschwert]

5 minutes ago, Toymafia1988 said:

Don't do a cliffhanger unless you have a confirmed sequel on the way. 

Back to the Future begs to differ.

[Toymafia1988]

1 minute ago, Laserschwert said:

Back to the Future begs to differ.

Did that game end with a cliffhanger too? Only played the first episode.

[Laserschwert]

11 minutes ago, Toymafia1988 said:

Did that game end with a cliffhanger too? Only played the first episode.

I'm talking about the movie.

But now that you mention it, yeah, the game does too.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Laserschwert

[KestrelPi]

1 hour ago, Vainamoinen said:

 🥺Quite right. Back when Ron left Double Fine, I thought of that as a natural move for him. At DF, Tim was literally the boss of Ron and that just didn't feel right. Afterwards, Double Fine owned the rights to The Cave, which obviously was all right with Ron until a Mega-Corporation bought Double Fine. Tim Schafer's lack of involvement in ReMI can be seen as a necessary act of emancipation from Ron's side without any form of animosity involved. 

I don't even think there's any need to go that far or assume that had anything to to with it. In 2020 Tim was extremely busy working on Psychonauts 2, and I just think it's highly unlikely that he could have agreed to take anything else on at that time even if he wanted to. I'd be interested to know if they talked about it - and somewhat surprised if they didn't, but his non-involvement makes perfect sense in the context of what he was doing at the time without having to guess at some conscious decision on Ron's part

[Toymafia1988]

1 hour ago, Laserschwert said:

I'm talking about the movie.

But now that you mention it, yeah, the game does too.

Back to the future is a weird one. The original was intended as a standalone and they never planned to do sequel that followed up the cliffhanger. It was more of a joke ending.

 

When the sequel happened they were wrote into a corner and had to undo the cliffhanger.

 

Tales is different it was clearly meant to set up a sequel that never happened.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Toymafia1988

[OzzieMonkey]

With regards to Tim's lack of involvement, I think it's a combination of a couple of things, none of which need any kind of conspiratorial thinking around his current standjng with Ron;

 

1) As has been stated, he's a busy guy. He had a big, now Microsoft-owned company to run, while also making his own games at that company. Not a lot of wiggle room to work on another company's game. 

 

2) Tim tends to prefer moving forward, and after Broken Age, the Lucasarts remasters and Psychonauts 2 I think he probably just wanted to distance himself from the familiar.

 

3) This is similar to 2, but I think Tim is probably just done with Monkey Island. Out of the three guys, he's got the most prolific resume and is probably tired of going back to that well. I believe I heard that the reason onaretrotip couldn't get an interview with him for his video  was because his PR people came back

and said he was just tired of talking about those games.

[MurraySchull]

5 hours ago, Jake said:

Oof! I should play the DVD version, it's been a long time.

 

You should! With Marius! On stream!...   (if you want to)

[Vainamoinen]

3 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

But now that you mention it, yeah, the game does too.

 

The game's ending tried to parody the first movie's ending ... but not with the same "open ending" vibe. With a gazillion of alternate Martys (Marties?) flying around time and space, there's no coherent story any more – least of all one so tightly written as the Back to the Future movies. Maybe Telltale killed off any chance of a sequel with that ending. The original BTTF movie, on the other hand, survived the rocky segue from throwaway "gag" ending to meticulously planned sequel.

 

And to make that happen, they only had to deposit a sleeping Jennifer in a dark alley. Twice.

 

2 hours ago, Toymafia1988 said:

Tales is different it was clearly meant to set up a sequel that never happened.

 

I loved Morgan LeFlay, and I loved Winslow, I was totally on board with the Merpeople and the darker turn these last two episodes. I'm really not sure if a sequel can still happen, but I'd be up for it, definitely.

[KestrelPi]

I think this line of thought is going to be easier to follow once we understand exactly what ReMI is. So far we know:
 

• It begins where MI2 left off
• But the sequels are still 'canon' and Murray is in it
• It's been hinted that while it's at its core a pirate adventure, they'll be going some weird places with it just like they did in MI2.

This could mean a whole lot of things:

• It could mean that everything in ReMI takes place before CMI and they just kinda backfill an explanation for why Murray is there. (I doubt this idea, but mainly because it doesn't 'feel' right to me)
• It could mean that it starts at the end of MI2 but then there's a lengthy time skip to after all the other games, and we largely ignore them and tell a new story with a slightly older guybrush (this is my favourite pet theory at the moment)
• It could mean that the game itself is going to, by the end, play with the idea of what's real and not real in the world of Monkey Island, and our current ideas of what happens in what order become fuzzier as a result
• It could mean that the game just has time travel in it now
• It could mean there's some sort of multiverse theory of Monkey Island
• It could mean something completely different that nobody has thought of

 

But until we know what it means, I think it's very hard to speculate how the story of Tales fits into the overall puzzle.

 

Edited May 4, 2022 by KestrelPi

[Toymafia1988]

9 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

I think this line of thought is going to be easier to follow once we understand exactly what ReMI is. So far we know:
 

• It begins where MI2 left off
• But the sequels are still 'canon' and Murray is in it
• It's been hinted that while it's at its core a pirate adventure, they'll be going some weird places with it just like they did in MI2.

This could mean a whole lot of things:

• It could mean that everything in ReMI takes place before CMI and they just kinda backfill an explanation for why Murray is there. (I doubt this idea, but mainly because it doesn't 'feel' right to me)
• It could mean that it starts at the end of MI2 but then there's a lengthy time skip to after all the other games, and we largely ignore them and tell a new story with a slightly older guybrush (this is my favourite pet theory at the moment)
• It could mean that the game itself is going to, by the end, play with the idea of what's real and not real in the world of Monkey Island, and our current ideas of what happens in what order become fuzzier as a result
• It could mean that the game just has time travel in it now
• It could mean there's some sort of multiverse theory of Monkey Island
• It could mean something completely different that nobody has thought of

 

But until we know what it means, I think it's very hard to speculate how the story of Tales fits into the overall puzzle.

 

If there is a time skip will it ignore the cliffhanger of Tales and do its own thing or will we see an evil voodoo lady in this one.

 

Ron has said before he'd rather avoid the baggage of continuing someone elses story... unless the plot twist of the evil voodoo lady was an idea of Ron's that he gave them when he gave his input on Tales.

 

More likely if there is a timeskip it will go way past Tales timeline.

 

My theory: If this game had time-travel... maybe the icey island is from the future?

Edited May 4, 2022 by Toymafia1988