Return to Monkey Island

[KestrelPi]

[Rum Rogers]

1 hour ago, Vainamoinen said:

but I'm confident that he wouldn't draw this much attention to the beginning part if it was just a bad segue from LeChuck's Revenge to Return to Monkey Island.

This! I mean, he literally said that Ron and Dave did something with interactive storytelling that "he couldn't believe possible".

It's a very big thing to say from someone who's among the greatest, and for sure RMI doesn't need advertisement at all. He seemed genuinely impressed, and now I'm much more hyped than ever!

[Thrik]

Christ, the meme has hit Twitter!!!!!

 

 

[demone]

Voice recording is officially complete. 

 

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1536502578967547906?s=20&t=YALbs_jbJkdWdnBJt5H0Yw

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by demone

[OzzieMonkey]

1 hour ago, demone said:

Voice recording is officially complete. 

 

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1536502578967547906?s=20&t=YALbs_jbJkdWdnBJt5H0Yw

 

Interesting that this comes AFTER voices have been mastered. I guess the process is done in chunks?

[Niemandswasser]

He had said previously that 13,000+ lines had been sent off for mastering, but I don't think he specified that was ALL the dialogue. Must have still been some stuff that needed recording.

[Vainamoinen]

Or re-recording.

 

Subversive thought: What if Alexandra spent just an hour in the studio, total, and Elaine's role in Return to Monkey Island is more or less as much as in LeChuck's revenge?

[Lagomorph01]

2 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

Or re-recording.

 

Subversive thought: What if Alexandra spent just an hour in the studio, total, and Elaine's role in Return to Monkey Island is more or less as much as in LeChuck's revenge?

At least that's more than in CoMi!

[Goury1]

2 hours ago, Lagomorph01 said:

At least that's more than in CoMi!

 

CoMI and onwards turned Elaine into a stereotypical damsel in distress... I hope for a come back of a strong and resourceful Elaine in RtMI!

[MurraySchull]

I think Alexandra recorded over Skype for the Special Editions since she was in the UK. If she had that small a role in this one, I feel like they could’ve just done the same again. But Ron’s tweet makes it sound like they did fly her in to record in person. Plus at one point, there was a consideration to make Elaine playable in ReMI, so if the story is still similar, I’d imagine she’ll at least have a fairly significant role.

 

Also, voice recording is done and no mention of the Voodoo Lady so far. Am going to take a guess and say that she’s the character from Ron’s “character lineup” tweet that’s not returning. Maybe Tales already pretty much covered what his original plans were for her, so he’s decided to sidestep her for this game.

[Kroms]

13 minutes ago, Goury1 said:

 

CoMI and onwards turned Elaine into a stereotypical damsel in distress... I hope for a come back of a strong and resourceful Elaine in RtMI!

I've never agreed with that view. In Curse, she escapes LeChuck and reroutes the Carnival of the Damned, rescues herself in Escape, and masterminds everything in Tales. 

[KestrelPi]

2 minutes ago, Kroms said:

I've never agreed with that view. In Curse, she escapes LeChuck and reroutes the Carnival of the Damned, rescues herself in Escape, and masterminds everything in Tales. 

It's true she's not portrayed as -useless- but I do think they undercook her capabilities especially in Curse. Like you have to be paying attention to notice the rerouting of the rollercoaster, it's a blink-and-you-miss-it throwaway line of dialogue and happens off screen, and so you could be forgiven to think she's fairly damselly in that one. She spends most of the game as an inanimate object and literally -can't- help herself, which arguably isn't the best use of Elaine as a character.

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah, and for some reason she's completely enamoured with Guybrush, which doesn't make much sense. She's a capable, no nonsense, tri-island governor and he's a bumbling idiot. I wonder how Ron and Dave are going to reconcile his Elaine from MI2 with the one from CMI?

 

Like someone else said elsewhere, CMI is a fantastic game (which I love), but it's definitely a departure from the first two in several ways.

[Vainamoinen]

I don't really remember EMI-Elaine, and I'm pretty okay with ToMI-Elaine (where she enters some kind of berserker mode due to the Pox), but the more I thought about Curse, the ickier it got.

 

So after an unconditional confession of love to the protagonist (that is in no relation to the predecessor's ending), she is turned into a statue. Which is its own damsel trope for a reason. And it's a gold statue, pretty much a trophy, a prize, a treasure that gets stolen and redistributed over the course of the game. Objectification doesn't get more obvious even though the sexualization might be missing for a bit. When the curse is lifted, we get seconds before we see her tied up and gagged. And if you click through all the LeChuck dialog, you can watch her react to LeChuck's confession that he killed her dad. That's literally torture (and not particularly funny). Last scene, wedding dress.

 

I like Curse of Monkey Island, a lot, but to quote somebody who really figured this sh*t out, it’s entirely possible to be critical of some aspects of a piece of media while still finding other parts valuable or enjoyable.

[OzzieMonkey]

52 minutes ago, fentongames said:

I think Alexandra recorded over Skype for the Special Editions since she was in the UK. If she had that small a role in this one, I feel like they could’ve just done the same again. But Ron’s tweet makes it sound like they did fly her in to record in person. Plus at one point, there was a consideration to make Elaine playable in ReMI, so if the story is still similar, I’d imagine she’ll at least have a fairly significant role.

 

Also, voice recording is done and no mention of the Voodoo Lady so far. Am going to take a guess and say that she’s the character from Ron’s “character lineup” tweet that’s not returning. Maybe Tales already pretty much covered what his original plans were for her, so he’s decided to sidestep her for this game.

I think people have been grossly overthinking Ron's tweet about this. It's a joke about there being no monkey wrench puzzles in the game. I can think of no story reasons to bring Jojo back but a heck of a lot to keep the Voodoo Lady around. As for Tales, they were just getting started with that turn, this game could do a LOT with her.

[Goury1]

47 minutes ago, Kroms said:

...and masterminds everything in Tales. 

 

I see your point, but the "Elaine had it all figured from the start" in Tales, always felt way too farfetched to me...

[KestrelPi]

In its defense, I do think there is so much subtle stuff Curse gets right about the tone of the first two games. I never understood the view that it's not funny or it feels tonally too different. The biggest tonal departures were it backing away from some of the mysteriousness of the first two games (which I can sort of understand because MI2 really went whole hog on that, so it felt like a conscious decision to not try to out-weird MI2), the relationship between Guybrush and Elaine, and LeChuck's drift from scary to silly. These aren't insignificant issues, but I really do think that it largely feels like a Monkey Island game in its writing.

The most impressive thing about CMI to me was how well it understood the style of humourous dialogue in the first two games. The jokes felt similar to me. Guybrush's attitude in dialogues felt right to me. The use of dialogue choices to tell jokes felt really on point.

 

Something I felt that later games, even Tales got a bit weird about guybrush is that they made him into a bit of a dithering, rambling sort of character in speech. I like the dialogue in Tales but there are some parts, like say in the intro sequence. 'This ship is dry as a bone. And I'm not talking about one of those wet bones either. I'm talking a dry, dry bone.' That's not a Guybrush line to me.  He's a bit weedy and inept at times but his jokes are mostly witty and pithy. I think CMI mostly understands this, and I think it's an impressive aspect of the dialogue in CMI that isn't often talked about.

'

[KestrelPi]

33 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

I don't really remember EMI-Elaine

My prevailing memory of EMI Elaine is that they seemed keen on bringing back a more capable Elaine with a more active role in the story, but mainly that comes over in the dialogue as being really bossy, rather than actually clever and capable. Her main role seems to be telling Guybrush what to do, rather than doing any of it. Mind you I haven't played it lately so this might be me misremembering - but I have watched parts of it recently, and it seems to bear out.

[Lagomorph01]

13 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

My prevailing memory of EMI Elaine is that they seemed keen on bringing back a more capable Elaine with a more active role in the story, but mainly that comes over in the dialogue as being really bossy, rather than actually clever and capable. Her main role seems to be telling Guybrush what to do, rather than doing any of it. Mind you I haven't played it lately so this might be me misremembering - but I have watched parts of it recently, and it seems to bear out.

They wanted to go for a more capable Elaine, and they end up with husband beater Elaine. Why does she beat him relentlessly FOUR times in the intro alone???

[madmardi]

21 hours ago, Jake said:

 

Love it!

 

[madmardi]

18 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

I hope this topic isn't drowned out by delivery ghost memes. 😅

 

Of course Noah will exaggerate a bit and who would blame him, but I'm confident that he wouldn't draw this much attention to the beginning part if it was just a bad segue from LeChuck's Revenge to Return to Monkey Island. We actually have a rather clear idea what those first ten minutes are about: We're starting off at the Carnival of the Damned, Ron always wanted to, and we're resolving a situation that's been left unresolved for over 30 years. But they can't just render a solution, they also immediately have to hook us onto a new story arc. The first and the latter are difficult, but both at the same time especially so.

 

I'm so excited to see what they have cooked up!

 

I watched Noah's interview last night and I couldn't believe how excited I got! Just hearing him talk about the first few minutes... my goodness, I can't wait!

[Vainamoinen]

If Ron observes canon, that's indeed the central roadblock to bringing his version of Elaine back. He previously commented on how marriage is the central thing he would have never done. That is completely understandable.

 

Elaine likes Guybrush. But Guybrush isn't ready for a relationship, and that was the central takeaway of LeChuck's Revenge. Most of us have probably tried to worm their way back into Elaine's heart back in that infamous party scene. Which was a game of trial and error, one that always ended in failure. Eventually, Guybrush would choose Big Whoop over Elaine for us and in spite of us. It was a line in the sand that we could not cross. Sure, he'd take Elaine AND Big Whoop, but if he only got ONE, well ... sorry Elaine, pirate here. 🏴‍☠️

 

I'm pretty convinced now that Ron and Dave have cooked up something really special with the story and the segue from MI2:LCR. But I'm not convinced they can fix Elaine as a character.

[Laserschwert]

Edited June 14, 2022 by Laserschwert

[Scummbuddy]

1 hour ago, Goury1 said:

 

I see your point, but the "Elaine had it all figured from the start" in Tales, always felt way too farfetched to me...

She had it all figured out in the first Monkey Island ending too, until Guybrush fumbled it up with his good intentions.

[Thrik]

2 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Yeah, and for some reason she's completely enamoured with Guybrush, which doesn't make much sense. She's a capable, no nonsense, tri-island governor and he's a bumbling idiot. I wonder how Ron and Dave are going to reconcile his Elaine from MI2 with the one from CMI?

 

Like someone else said elsewhere, CMI is a fantastic game (which I love), but it's definitely a departure from the first two in several ways.

It’s worth noting that MI1 is where we first saw Elaine doting on Guybrush with very little reason to do so. She almost immediately flips from being quite standoffish to wanting his clothes off and inviting him back to her place.

 

 

The hot/cold nature of the relationship was established in those two games, so it doesn’t seem a crazy stretch to me that she’d be feeling loved up again months/years after losing him to Big Whoop (I forget if the game said how long).