Return to Monkey Island

[Utwarrior]

43 minutes ago, roots said:

The most disappointing part of this controversy is it has tainted any chance for a "retro mode" as an addendum (even post-release) to the base game.

 

Oh, well... let's not create some kind of "Release the Snyder-pixelart-cut"! 

[OzzieMonkey]

17 minutes ago, Jake said:

I don’t know that Gilbert is interested in parity with the Special Editions, which he had nothing to do with other than being on the commentary track, and at this point it doesn’t seem like he or Grossman see this as the third game in a trilogy, but rather the nebulous “next” entry in a series that has had many beloved entries.
 

Yep, as Ron said "It's not 3, it's not 6, it's Return to Monkey Island. It defies numbering" (which I'm still very boggles as to what that means but nontheless excited to find out). 

[roots]

42 minutes ago, Jake said:

I don’t know that Gilbert is interested in parity with the Special Editions, which he had nothing to do with other than being on the commentary track, and at this point it doesn’t seem like he or Grossman see this as the third game in a trilogy, but rather the nebulous “next” entry in a series that has had many beloved entries.
 

Did people ask for a retro pixels mode for Curse when it came out in 1997? (Actually they probably did and I’ve forgotten. Actually I probably asked for that sort of thing on this very forum and have forgotten, may I never be reminded of my old posts.) 

 

I can't say for certain as I wasn't online back in those days, but my perception was that the longing for "retro" and pixel art didn't really start significantly cropping up till the mid 00s when a lot of franchises stumbled on transitioning to 3D and/or Consoles.

 

Regarding Gilbert & Grossman, I agree that (especially now) there is no interest in parity with the SEs (Parity was purely a hope/pipedream), but I'm unsure of where exactly RMI sits. Ostensibly the birth concept of the game is a more direct continuation of MI2 and Gilbert's take therein, so in some sense it is the conclusion to the "Gilbert Trilogy". I think ultimately the confusion stems from RMI explicitly trying to not step on any toes, but as discussed before I have personal theories as to how this could be achieved in the Watsonian sense.

Edited May 11, 2022 by roots

[Jake]

After my earlier remark I decided to do the worst thing possible and look up the Scumm Bar's "Curse of Monkey Island Fan Reviews" page, containing a bunch of reviews that went up basically right after people got to play Curse for the first time. Unfortuantely my review is in there, a review with which I find no faults absolutely disagree with on almost every point made, when I read it back today.

 

There are a few people complaining that it should have been 256 color pixel art, and blame the excesses of the new high res production and far-too-fancy art style on why the game is ruined (Of course Curse was also 256 colors but they probably just meant the 320x200 part). And a lot of people really upset that Herman Toothrot isn't in the game (the monkeys paw curls and EMI is born), to the point that it almost seems like it was a meme in the community that people picked up on from each other and said "you know, yeah youre right that does suck!" but it's really hard to wind the clock back and tell. I think the truly old Scumm Bar forums are gone. It's really hard to tell the context of this at all without the rest of the discourse that surrounds it - a lot of the reviews look like they're written in response to hate that didn't get recorded as vehemently in reviews.

 

Anyway sorry for what 16 year old me wrote at the time. He's an idiot.

[Marius]

46 minutes ago, Jake said:

Anyway sorry for what 16 year old me wrote at the time. He's an idiot.

Amazing, thank you for sharing this Jake. It takes a lot of courage to share things the younge-self made.

[Lagomorph01]

16 year old you is excused, Jake. I think/hope that’s not the only stupid thing you did at that age. 😉

 

Anyway, to me RtMI/ReMI doesn’t have to pare with the SE’s in any way. Don’t get me started on THOSE art styles or production values.

To me they can pretty much begin with a blanc slate if that’s the game they want to make. I’m curious to what they’ll do with the start of the game at Big Whoop, but even that’s optional for me. Making a sequel to a 5 part game saga tends to let you start with a lot of baggage that can drag a story down. Freeing yourself from that baggage must feel really liberating, although I’m sure some fan(atic)s (thanks for the reminder) would disagree.

[roots]

Of all the things I would expect to find out about discourse back then, people being aggressively passionate about Herman Toothrot is not one I ever would've ever expected.

 

50 minutes ago, Jake said:

Anyway sorry for what 16 year old me wrote at the time. He's an idiot.

 

Cringing at your past self many years later is a intrinsic and essential part of the internet experience in my opinion.

[Thrik]

3 hours ago, roots said:

Putting that aside, I'd love it if RMI ties the stump joke into the Underground Tunnels providing that the plot does end up continuing down that line. It's such a perfect way to throwback to "the infamous stump" IMO.

Although it doesn’t carry the same sort of gravitas because CMI goes its own way, that has already been done. Apparently the dock on Blood Island is also the same one Guybrush can drown under on Melee. DEEP LORE. 😉

[KestrelPi]

7 hours ago, roots said:

The most disappointing part of this controversy is it has tainted any chance for a "retro mode" as an addendum (even post-release) to the base game.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this never ever ever e v e r would have happened in a million, billion, squillion years, so I wouldn't spend time pining for it.

 

5 hours ago, Jake said:

Anyway sorry for what 16 year old me wrote at the time. He's an idiot.

Ah, it could have been worse. 'Voices ruined the game' and 'Ugh, now we're gonna get ICE LeChuck' aren't the worst video game takes I've ever heard, but they are pretty funny.

[MurraySchull]

On that note, I wonder what form LeChuck might have in this game. Maybe he'll fluctuate between Chuckie and undead LeChuck throughout the story. If the game leads into Curse, he may very well be a zombie again. Otherwise... maybe a skeleton?

 

(Also LeChuck in MI1 had a blue coat, and in MI2 had a red coat. Maybe this time he'll have a green coat!)

[Marius]

35 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

4 hours ago, roots said:

The most disappointing part of this controversy is it has tainted any chance for a "retro mode" as an addendum (even post-release) to the base game.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this never ever ever e v e r would have happened in a million, billion, squillion years, so I wouldn't spend time pining for it.

Oh yea, those chances are right. One reason is the giant effort this would require. Building games is so hard, and adding things that are not planned from the beginning is an extremely complicated process and kill joy.  You would basically need to make the game a second time from the ground up to achieve that goal. Nobody will pay for that (and I can't imagine the team would want to do that anyway.)

Also, if the lead artist isn't the one pushing that feature, I think it's simply disrespectful to ask them to do that.

 

22 minutes ago, fentongames said:

(Also LeChuck in MI1 had a blue coat, and in MI2 had a red coat. Maybe this time he'll have a green coat!)

 Maybe his new form is salesman and he'll wear a check coat!

 

 

 

[KestrelPi]

Jake's old CMI impressions triggered 2 memories in me about EMI: one was that I felt kind of uncomfortable playing the demo and kept on turning the subtitles on and off to see if it would make the game funnier. Something about the writing wasn't working for me. Another is that I really WANTED to like it, so much so that I gave it quite a poorly written but positive review which now can only be found on the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010129024900/http://www.adventuregamer.com/reviews/lucasarts/emi.shtml

 

Mojo's first impressions article itself (https://mixnmojo.com/features/reviews/EMI---First-Impressions ) shows that initial written impressions of the game were mostly fairly positive, and it seems to be largely in hindsight people have thought 'hmm, maybe this isn't as good as we all thought'

 

Anyway, here's my review of my review:
 

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The plot in general is much more self-mocking than in the previous games, and for the most part this adds to the humourous impact of the game. This has distracted some monkey island purists, as particularly towards the end the plot (the ending, incidentally, is very big) goes into the realms of the vaguely ridiculous, but personally I think if you go into the plot with no expectations of what it should be like, then the kind of self mocking irony that runs throughout the plot of the game can be appreciated. Having said that, I think that after this game, returning to the tried-and-tested formula of Monkey Island plots will be a relief, for the next game (I think there will be one)

I think this is a lot of words to say 'the plot is a mess but if you don't think about it too much it's fine'

 

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Is it funny? Of course it is, the jokes are nearly all at least witty, and though I’d say this game isn’t quite as funny as 'King' Monkey Island 2 (the funniest jokes in this game are possibly among the funniest in the series).

'nearly all at least witty' - I sound like I'm trying to persuade myself here.

 

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Well, I can say that graphically, Monkey Island has never looked better. The background artists have managed to capture the feel of the monkey island world perfectly in 3D, and each characters animation adds tremendously to making the game an enjoyable experience. But most of all: the cutscenes. The video cutscenes are quite simply incredible. The facial expressions show infinite subtlety, and the camera angles and animation make it all supremely cinematic.

Wow, I think I really did believe this one at the time.

 

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A lot of people are going to disagree with me here, but I think the music is the best since Monkey Island 2’s fantastic soundtrack. I found the tracks altogether more memorable than CMI’s, more like MI2’s in fact, and though much of it was adapted from themes from previous games, there were enough changes, and enough original material to make the soundtrack very enjoyable to listen to.

I do like EMI's soundtrack, and I agree it has a flavour of MI2 about it, but in hindsight CMI was a much more cohesive piece of work.
 

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And with EMI I think LucasArts have shown us how a traditional adventure game doesn’t need to be full of puzzles that are all use-this-with-that-to-get-another-thing format. The point is- the EMI puzzles are fun. I wanted to play them again because the process of completing them was enjoyable. They are also helped by the fact that many puzzles have random factors meaning that you can’t just complete them second time round by remembering what you did last time.

I was one of those people who didn't hate Monkey Kombat.

 

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But I keep on mentioning gripes and things I disliked, so what can they be? Well, mainly… bugs. There are lots of them, some of them small-but-annoying and some of them actually quite large. I am aware that many of these bugs have been sorted out in a patch release from LucasArts but there are still more bugs than I would expect from a Lucasarts game. Some are of the annoying type where you can occasionally talk to someone about a subject before you have found out about it, while one more serious puzzle meant that I had to keep trying to complete a puzzle towards the end 3 or 4 times before it actually worked properly.

I don't remember this at all. I suppose they fixed these?

 

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I’ll tell you what, Lucasarts, I’ll give this game 4 stars. And you can have a half-star bonus if you get another patch out with most remaining bugs fixed!

This whole thing has the flavour of being like I wrote this review in reaction to some of the negative feedback that had started to filter through, perhaps in the hope of convincing them there was a good game here, but perhaps more in the hope of convincing myself.

[MurraySchull]

8 minutes ago, Marius said:

Maybe his new form is salesman and he'll wear a check coat!

 

I think we've got it! He'll steal Stan's jacket!

 

It also just now occurs to me that we've never seen LeChuck without a hat before. That might be interesting. With his full head of unruly, gross, undead hair just floating on its' own in the wind...

[Lagomorph01]

It would be funny if Stan's jacket is some sort of voodoo knick-knack which turns the wearer into a fast talking obnoxious sales person! That way we'd get a totally unique new LeChuck which is annoying as hell!

Edited May 11, 2022 by Lagomorph01

[Marius]

12 minutes ago, fentongames said:

It also just now occurs to me that we've never seen LeChuck without a hat before. That might be interesting. With his full head of unruly, gross, undead hair just floating on its' own in the wind...

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Marius

[Huz]

(Love that green Adventure Gamer design! Ignore me.)

[MurraySchull]

1 minute ago, Marius said:

 

 

Woah, nicely done! 😆  He looks almost jolly without the hat! Would've never pictured LeChuck being bald, I always imagined he'd have long, thick flowing locks of hair!

[Thrik]

39 minutes ago, Marius said:

Maybe his new form is salesman and he'll wear a check coat!

 

 

 

 

(Putting the CMI art in there made me further realise how good this new art actually is. The details are just so exquisite.)

[KestrelPi]

5 minutes ago, Thrik said:

 

(Putting the CMI art in there made me further realise how good this new art actually is. The details are just so exquisite.)

 

Ha! For me, it's looking at how expressive the faces are on the ghost and on murray when in motion. If we can expect this sort of attention to detail in the rest of the game then it's going to be a real treat to watch the characters.

[KestrelPi]

Wait a minute. I'm sure this must have come up earlier in the thread but I don't believe I only just noticed what looks to me like a guybrush silhouette walking across the ship at the 50 second mark in the trailer

[MurraySchull]

Yeah, that was discussed a while back. That character walks back/forth several times across the trailer, which makes me think that is is indeed Guybrush!

[Toymafia1988]

Im pretty sure that's a chef with a hat. Otherwise Guybrush has a gigantic head.

 

But who knows... 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Toymafia1988

[KestrelPi]

2 minutes ago, fentongames said:

Yeah, that was discussed a while back. That character walks back/forth several times across the trailer, which makes me think that is is indeed Guybrush!

Oh. Weirdly I'm less sure now. It looked like a little easter egg to me at first but the way he's carrying boxes back and forth makes me think he's just another ghost pirate. Still, the more I watch the trailer and the more I look at the pictures the more detail I notice - little things in the animation, in the faces, in the background and it makes me really excited to see the whole thing.

[KestrelPi]

2 minutes ago, Toymafia1988 said:

Im pretty sure that's a chef with a hat. Otherwise Guybrush has a gigantic head.

 

But who knows... 

Well it's only up to the shoulder, so it's difficult to see how big the head is in relation to the rest of the body. But as I said above, I'm less convinced now I've seen the box carrying animations.

[Thrik]

Haha. Yeah I spotted that and wondered. It looks like it could be intentionally reduced in detail to make it ambiguous, however it could also just be someone wearing a hat.

 

This is how my eye saw it at first: