Return to Monkey Island

[madmardi]

So who thinks I'll be able to run RTMI?

 

 

Or should I think about getting a new Mac?

Edited June 11, 2022 by madmardi

[Vainamoinen]

9 minutes ago, madmardi said:

So who thinks I'll be able to run RTMI?

 

 

Or should I think about getting a new Mac?

 

Ron's undeniable affinity to Apple products and the chosen ReMI graphic style should work in your favor here. I've found that my processor or graphics card didn't really outdate that much these last years. It was plainly RAM that forced me to upgrade (which was 4 GB though).

 

I think you'll be able to run the game.

Save that money for merchandise. 😇


13 inch? Well, someone here won't be complaining about not enough detail.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Goury1]

8 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

 

It's a process where audio is processed to be in its released form, and some of the things that might be involved, for example, include applying some equalisation and compression in order to make all the sounds which were recorded across several months and in 3 studios sound like they all come from the same game. There's a -little- bit of a grey area between mixing and mastering, especially when talking about music, but generally mastering is the stage after all the volume levels and FX processing and editing has been applied, the final piece of processing that needs to be done in order to ensure that everything sounds nice and consistent.

 

So this means that they are almost done with the dialogues, right?

[Vainamoinen]

1 hour ago, Goury1 said:

So this means that they are almost done with the dialogues, right?

 

Where could you possibly be going with this line of inquiry? 😅

 

I get it, you'd like to know whether they'll release next week. Now, that's fairly doubtful, but there are some good signs. We've been given the estimate that ReMI has 14,000 lines of dialog, now Ron has told us more than 13,000 lines are going to be remastered. He has also joked that it would be impossible to re-record the "forgotten" line about the real secret of Monkey Island, so we can assume that count is final. Larger budget productions often do voice recordings in earlier parts of the development process as they complete slices of the game. That's likely not in the budget here. So, yes, it's probably fair to assume that we're in the final stage of production. But as that includes not just audio, but also bugfixing, it's unclear what that means exactly for the schedule.

 

A positive thought is of course that we can clearly expect ReMI to be "on schedule" for a 2022 release. And as November and December, and even the latter half of October traditionally are a release window that indies don't touch because of the dominant AAA releases ...

 

... four months to wait, max.

[OzzieMonkey]

6 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Where could you possibly be going with this line of inquiry? 😅

 

I get it, you'd like to know whether they'll release next week. Now, that's fairly doubtful, but there are some good signs. We've been given the estimate that ReMI has 14,000 lines of dialog, now Ron has told us more than 13,000 lines are going to be remastered. He has also joked that it would be impossible to re-record the "forgotten" line about the real secret of Monkey Island, so we can assume that count is final. Larger budget productions often do voice recordings in earlier parts of the development process as they complete slices of the game. That's likely not in the budget here. So, yes, it's probably fair to assume that we're in the final stage of production. But as that includes not just audio, but also bugfixing, it's unclear what that means exactly for the schedule.

 

A positive thought is of course that we can clearly expect ReMI to be "on schedule" for a 2022 release. And as November and December, and even the latter half of October traditionally are a release window that indies don't touch because of the dominant AAA releases ...

 

... four months to wait, max.

All I ask is that the game doesn't come out during uni times. I'm gonna have assignments coming out of my butt, and I know I'll end up procrastinating to play it, which is not ideal  

[Thrik]

I guess if you imagine one person is doing the mastering (not sure if that’s typical) and you imagine it’s five minutes to do each line, that’s still like 140 working days to do all 14,000. 😅

Maybe it’s multiple people, maybe it’s more or less time per line. In any case, there’s plenty to do!

[ThunderPeel2001]

1 hour ago, Thrik said:

I guess if you imagine one person is doing the mastering (not sure if that’s typical) and you imagine it’s five minutes to do each line, that’s still like 140 working days to do all 14,000. 😅

Maybe it’s multiple people, maybe it’s more or less time per line. In any case, there’s plenty to do!

 

Yikes. @KestrelPidoes this add up? 😥

[Vainamoinen]

2 hours ago, Thrik said:

I guess if you imagine one person is doing the mastering (not sure if that’s typical) and you imagine it’s five minutes to do each line, that’s still like 140 working days to do all 14,000. 😅

 

If that guess was accurate, Telltale would have closed down some time in 2006. 😘

 

Pretty sure Bay Area Sound is doing the good work here, and they know their ship.

[Jake]

I’m pretty sure a lot of game voice mastering is done in bulk, either a batch process that you then spot check, or literally stringing a bunch of the voice together in one long file and looking/listening to it. You don’t go and do each individual line in a vacuum, because the point is to get it all sounding uniform. So rating time-per-line isn’t going to be a useful metric. 

[Vainamoinen]

Well good morning Jake, I hear somebody's been playing cards with Ron Gilbert yesterd

 

Uhm, nothing to see here.

[KestrelPi]

22 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

 they should be able to do a good deal of that in a fairly automated way, once they know the changes they need to make. I think it's unlikely they'll be making adjustments to each individual line manually at the mastering stage.

 

This is what I had to say about it before, yes.

 

Now. I don't think that the game is very likely to come out as late as November. It wouldn't shock me, but here's my line of thinking:

 

A few months ago they felt confident enough to announce it for 2022, and when asked whether that date might slip, Ron said that barring anything disastrous it would be this year.

 

I think November would be pretty close to be able to say that definitively. A fairly small delay could push something slated for November release into next year. But if you're saying 'we really, really believe it's going to be this year unless something very odd happens' I feel like that puts it into october-at-latest planned release territory.

 

I think if it was a july release we'd have heard more by now. So I'm going to narrow my expected window to August-October. But if it were me, and knowing that Ron has thought about release dates in relation to other games, I'd be looking at getting it out the door before the september-october flurry of high profile releases.

 

August is a relatively quiet looking month, but Devolver are already releasing a game on August 11th, so they won't want to overlap with that, which makes late-August to early September look like a pretty juicy timeslot to me.

 

Counterpoint - November would also be a good slot, and it could explain why they didn't want to put out a trailer quite this early. But I'm still gonna put my money on September for now.
 

[Thrik]

Good to know the mastering isn’t as gravely long a process as I thought. 😅

[Toymafia88]

I'm convinced Return was planned to have more promotion by now but has been pushed back due to fan reaction.

 

When the backlash happened the news suddenly dried up.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Toymafia88

[Jake]

1 hour ago, Toymafia88 said:

I'm convinced Return was planned to have more promotion by now but has been pushed back due to fan reaction.

 

When the backlash happened the news suddenly dried up.

I bet not, even though it seems that way. There was the announcement trailer that blew up decently, then a good number of interviews that seemed redundant to us but did a good job of going wide with the news of the games’ existence, casting a broad net to scoop up more fans and get them on the same page. I suspect as we get closer to launch the rate of media will increase. I expected a trailer of some kind at the Devolver event and still expect one soonish, but don’t think there was some media blitz that got pushed back. I think the tuned in fans are just hungrier than normal people so for us it seems like starving off scraps, while for everyone else they’re just not thinking about the game much, but will be once a bigger push starts closer to launch. 

[OzzieMonkey]

3 minutes ago, Jake said:

I bet not, even though it seems that way. There was the announcement trailer that blew up decently, then a good number of interviews that seemed redundant to us but did a good job of going wide with the news of the games’ existence, casting a broad net to scoop up more fans and get them on the same page. I suspect as we get closer to launch the rate of media will increase. I expected a trailer of some kind at the Devolver event and still expect one soonish, but don’t think there was some media blitz that got pushed back. I think the tuned in fans are just hungrier than normal people so for us it seems like starving off scraps, while for everyone else they’re just not thinking about the game much, but will be once a bigger push starts closer to launch. 

Agreed. This is just Disney's usual MO; show nothing right up until release and make people squirm. People talking about lack of marketing does all the marketing for them. 

[Jake]

I think it’s simpler than that even: The people who are predisposed to talk about it on their own will do that; you don’t really need to give them any more (even though they’ll ask for it). But the people who are vaguely interested (but not totally tuned in or predisposed to care about your thing on autopilot) you only get a few shots at them before they’re over saturated, before your marketing has diminishing returns. If you oversaturate too early you start hearing things like, “didn’t that come out already?” I know it’s not always true, and this might not be what they’re thinking, but I think generally it’s best to keep your powder dry and only do a few sparing attention-grabbing bursts of media until you’re ready to start telling everyone everything close to release (release date, cost, availability) or you lose people and then have to try harder to bring them back. 

[Vainamoinen]

In an apparent second round of raising awareness, German magazine GameStar published an interview with Ron and Dave just two weeks ago. It's behind a paywall, but I have no doubts that absolutely no new information is contained for the English speaking world. The journalists have sent their questions right at the beginning of April and have only recently heard back from them. The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are similarly crazy for the ol' point'n'click (no, seriously, I am not kidding. Tim was wrong), I guess they've gotten their "exclusives" these days also. And, seriously, these guys are all (still) happily falling over themselves to promote ReMI, and they're a bit insulted that it took Terrible T. so long to use them.

 

There is only so much buzz you can create with the extremely limited info that they repeatedly divulge at the time, but from the looks of it, marketing for Return to Monkey Island has never stopped.  The "backlash" created by really just a few people has had no effect here.

 

If anything, the buzz is much greater around ReMI than around any other Devolver game in recent history. As has been demonstrated in this forum and elsewhere, reviving the Monkey Island brand has brought Devolver new customers, and they're likely aware of it.

 

And come to speak of it, I haven't heard any kind of overly negative comments during the last weeks. These people are not gaining a foothold in actual Monkey Island or point & click communities. They rant in completely different communities that wouldn't play ReMI anyway – and in those Oceans of Eternal Rant, a single thread about Return's aesthetics really doesn't make a difference.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[KestrelPi]

14 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

If anything, the buzz is much greater around ReMI than around any other Devolver game in recent history.

 

 

Mm, I mean, I don't know. I suppose it is true that Monkey Island brings them a new kind of customer, but I don't know that they think this is the hottest e-ticket in town. I think it can feel that way from our Monkey Island bubble, but a brief look at their release list shows that they've had a string of healthy releases and also a couple the biggest indie releases of the last several years. Fall Guys and Inscryption I think both fall in that camp, and I remember a whole lot of buzz around Weird West.

 

There's great buzz about Return to Monkey Island, sure... but.. mainly places like here. Outside of the usual suspects I haven't heard a whole lot of buzz around the internet. I've seen a bit of Let's Play activity from people using this as an opportunity to play the series for the first time, but honestly not quite so much as I expected.

 

It's sorta easy to see why though - the teaser was extremely aimed at people who already knew what to expect from Monkey Island and are, well, like us. There hasn't been anything revealed yet that would give a complete MI newbie much incentive to want to learn more, and I think until we reach that point there's a limit to how much buzz Monkey Island can possibly generate. And even then it's still the 6th game in a series of what has become a relatively niche genre - it's never going to have the breadth of appeal of something like a Fall Guys which is multiplayer, a perfect streamer game, etc etc.

 

I'm comfortable with the idea of MI being a passion project, or a sort of prestige-get for Devolver, rather than something they consider a flagship title.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by KestrelPi

[OzzieMonkey]

6 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

In an apparent second round of raising awareness, German magazine GameStar published an interview with Ron and Dave just two weeks ago. It's behind a paywall, but I have no doubts that absolutely no new information is contained for the English speaking world. The journalists have sent their questions right at the beginning of April and have only recently heard back from them. The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are similarly crazy for the ol' point'n'click (no, seriously, I am not kidding. Tim was wrong), I guess they've gotten their "exclusives" these days also. And, seriously, these guys are all (still) happily falling over themselves to promote ReMI, and they're a bit insulted that it took Terrible T. so long to use them.

 

There is only so much buzz you can create with the extremely limited info that they repeatedly divulge at the time, but from the looks of it, marketing for Return to Monkey Island has never stopped.  The "backlash" created by really just a few people has had no effect here.

 

If anything, the buzz is much greater around ReMI than around any other Devolver game in recent history. As has been demonstrated in this forum and elsewhere, reviving the Monkey Island brand has brought Devolver new customers, and they're likely aware of it.

 

And come to speak of it, I haven't heard any kind of overly negative comments during the last weeks. These people are not gaining a foothold in actual Monkey Island or point & click communities. They rant in completely different communities that wouldn't play ReMI anyway – and in those Oceans of Eternal Rant, a single thread about Return's aesthetics really doesn't make a difference.

 

 

Someone over on the Thimbleweed Park forums found a translation of that article. They highlighted one new thing of note, which is that they're going to include a "Catch-Me-Up"  feature to recap important things from the other games. No idea what that's going to look like, would be weird (but awesome) to see a "Previously on Monkey Island" bit that has scenes from the other games in Rex's art style. Man...it'd be really interesting to play a remaster of MI1 and 2 with his art direction.

[Vainamoinen]

5 hours ago, OzzieMonkey said:

Someone over on the Thimbleweed Park forums found a translation of that article. They highlighted one new thing of note, which is that they're going to include a "Catch-Me-Up"  feature to recap important things from the other games. No idea what that's going to look like, would be weird (but awesome) to see a "Previously on Monkey Island" bit that has scenes from the other games in Rex's art style. Man...it'd be really interesting to play a remaster of MI1 and 2 with his art direction.

 

Thanks for that!

 

It is, of course, an English interview that was translated from the German but was originally English, so shrug emotes galore. Could mean anything.

 

The interesting thing in this tidbit, for me, is less that they want to bring you up to speed with the other games, but rather that they feel a need to. You can play any of the Monkey Island games without knowing squat about the others. So what has changed in the series? Is it possible that they'll jump wildly through acts of Guybrush's life like I predicted all those pages ago ... ? 🙃

 

This also points to quite an acceptance of MI canon, if that feature includes scenes from 3 to 5. Dammit, we COULD see Morgan again!

[roots]

A narrative with timeskips which needs to recap all the other games in the series seems like it'd be an utter nightmare to write without contravening the stated goal of not explicitly contradicting or de-canonising the games post-MI2.

 

It also feels like it'd potentially make for a really exclusionary game for casual fans that aren't heavily invested in the series as a whole. Seems unlikely to me after the criticism that was levelled at TWP for being heavy-handed with in-jokes and references.

[MurraySchull]

"Stan's Previously On Monkey Island!"

 

That sounds pretty interesting, actually. Wonder if they're planning to recap Curse-Tales or if it would just focus on the first two games.

[Vainamoinen]

8 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

 it's never going to have the breadth of appeal of something like a Fall Guys which is multiplayer, a perfect streamer game, etc etc.

 

I did look that game up. It of course can't hold a candle to Dynablaster on the Amiga, but it looks pretty fun to play. And, absolutely, the assorted twitchables will always reach a larger and younger audience.

 

Then again, this is how the gamestar.de main navigational bar has looked for the past two months:

Not seeing those Fall Guys anywhere ... but ... 😍

[KestrelPi]

42 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

I did look that game up. It of course can't hold a candle to Dynablaster on the Amiga, but it looks pretty fun to play. And, absolutely, the assorted twitchables will always reach a larger and younger audience.

 

Then again, this is how the gamestar.de main navigational bar has looked for the past two months:

Not seeing those Fall Guys anywhere ... but ... 😍

 

Ha! I think we can probably also allow for probably the biggest territory for adventure games, relatively speaking, having a little bit more adventure buzz.

I'd be surprised if we ever see headlines like this though:

 

Honestly though, I think you're right that there's a certain segment of the, uh, game-liking population for which this is the most exciting thing in ages. I'm just trying to separate my own personal feelings about it with what I'm seeing elsewhere, and as much as I'd love this to be Devolver's big hope, with all the marketing enthusiasm that might imply... it wouldn't surprise me if they're largely managing the stage door, while letting Ron go with whatever release marketing he sees fit. I mean, clearly they already indulged him with the April Fools' reveal 😆

 

I s'pose... no matter what you actually thought of their presentation, did you SEE it? That was expensive. I reckon a company with that much money to throw around on a frivolous wrapper around 5 trailers probably also has money to take a punt on 2 years of development for a long hoped-for adventure game revival (possibly with the help of LucasFilm/Disney too, unclear if they put any money into it) without being all that worried about the staging of it.

 

[BillyCheers]

The catch-me-up feature is interesting. I like that they implement lots of those things that weren’t in the other games. In general, I prefer new and fresh ideas than another “get your crew” or swordfighting puzzle. 🤔
 

I am also pretty curious about the console controls. Ron talked about getting it “right”. Till now I never imagined, playing an adventure game on the PS or anything, but if it’s well done and works totally organically… I’d love to play RTMI from my sofa on the big tv. 😎