Ron announced Return to MI one year ago

[Gins]

I wonder if he will make a tradition of it? Although, with the way it ended for him last time, I think he won't be interested in such a thing ever again 😢

 

Let's take a step back and reminisce about this day and time after, a year ago.

 

For me, my excitement was through the roof. I believe it was just the verbal announcement, but Ron-fans knew there was no joke on his blog.

 

The violin trailer dropped and it was the beginning of the end. But I hadn't yet realized how far some fans would take it. I was excited and happy. I told my pregnant girlfriend what this game series meant to me, and what it means to me that a new one comes out, and that it's made by no other than Ron himself, tying up loose ends that have been loose for 30 years.

 

This was my cross of Coronado. A lot of who I am today comes from these games putting their "hat" on my head when I was a kid. I have grown up with this series and now there was closure in sight. And what a closure it was.

 

Thanks Ron and team, for having done this.

 

How did you feel a year ago?

How about now?

Let's return to Return together!

Edited April 1, 2023 by Gins
defoolsified

[neoncolor8]

When I saw the trailer and the first screenshots of Mêlée, I imagined to dive into this run-down island, overtaken by ghost- and zombie-pirates. That you couldn't just walk around freely anymore, but have to be very careful, because Lechuck's henchmen were in control. 

 

I imagined a much slower-paced gameplay and a more sinister atmosphere overall. Feeling lost and exploring an abandoned island,

occasionally finding someone who's still in hiding.

 

I lost a bit interest when I saw the fast-paced walking animations of the later gameplay material they released in the summer, but was still very excited to finally play it.

When it got released, I cancelled all my relevant YouTube subscriptions to avoid spoilers.

I played through it in a couple of days and found it very emotional, but also was a bit disappointed because I didn't get what I wanted: A world that I'd enjoy being in, just wandering around, visiting places and listening to the soundtrack, like I did so many times with the first three games. 

But I digress...

 

I was pretty convinced that the announcement was real. When Ron finished TWP and said he was working on an improved engine for future games, I knew on some level that I'd have to play the waiting game from now on, just forget about it for some years and things will happen. 

And they did!

 

 

[MurraySchull]

Has it been a year already?!

 

I gave the initial April 1st post next to no thought at all. The last MI game was 12 years ago (13 if you don’t count the special editions) and Ron didn’t have the license, so I put no stock into the idea that it might be real. Then April 4th came, and I had one of those “the world has stopped turning” moments as the trailer launched, the reactions poured in, the community reassembled, and key players that we hadn’t heard from in a decade or so all “revealing the secret” that they’d kept from us all this time.

 

The announcement was a wonderful moment, and seeing the trailer on Devolver’s YouTube account reaching the #5 trending video on the entire site that day (not just in gaming, in general) really felt like something special was happening.

 

 

I’ve played the game twice since launch, and while I can’t quite say I can call it my favourite for a few reasons (lack of Earl Boen and a few other recast actors, etc.) the good moments in the game really stand out, and really elevated the series to a new level in terms of storytelling. Even though I think the ending could’ve been executed better on a technical level (I.e. I think it could’ve really benefited from some Telltale-style dynamic camera work to better sell the emotions and set the scene of the reveal) after sitting with it for six months or so, I accept what it did for the series in terms of recontextualising it and giving us plenty to theorise about, even if I don’t fully follow it. (That being said, I like it MUCH better than the YouTube crowd at the time. OOF you should’ve seen their reactions!!)

 

EDIT: Not to mention that Noah Falstein, Dom, etc. really weren’t joking about the opening scenes of the game and how it deals with the end of MI2. The reveal made my jaw hit the floor in a way that very few pieces of media have in a long time. Absolutely brilliant storytelling.

Edited April 1, 2023 by fentongames

[Staple Remover]

I had just finished a playthrough of all 5 monkey island games in March of last year and I remember saying to myself “it would never happen, but one more game would make this feel complete”. When the announcement dropped I was completely floored, it was the first good news in what felt like forever. 
 

The game was everything I hoped it would be. This makes me want to replay it right now. 

[Vainamoinen]

I invoked Ron's name today already when my gaming website of choice tried to tell me that Elon Musk would be buying Steam. ☠️

In that vein, we ... could probably make the thread title a little lighter on the clickbait.
 

My excitement is pretty well documented in the respective Mix'n'Mojo thread. I tried to discuss the game elsewhere, but was appalled at the level of negativity. That feeling persisted for much of the nearly eight months that passed until I could play the game. I drew a lot of fan art, vowed to never touch any spoilers and then of course consumed all of them two dozen times, minutes after they were tweeted. The community interaction was really great, just as I remember it from the Telltale forums back before (and while!) Tales released. It was wholesome to see that this kind of collective community hyping still works in these dark times of the net.

 

When I finally played Return, almost three months had passed and the Mix'n'Mojo forum had become a barren landscape again. But my best friend, who had played it with the original PC release, has jotted down all the things she wanted to talk to me about while playing the game. And then, back in December, we started re-playing it via Discord. Thank god for technology. We're having great fun, but we seldom find the time for those sessions (which, in retrospect, makes those recap things pretty swell). We'll probably finish the game next time.

 

Monkey Island is an old franchise right now, it's in its sixth instalment, and it still felt fresh and exciting for me to sail the seas again. Of course I have some quarrels with how the story was going, and the ending, but Dave and Ron have definitely woven an intriguing story. The first sharp shock was of course the tree scene. That one froze me for a minute or two as I was slowly understanding what it means when a protagonist never changes. Guybrush was back, and it was the old Guybrush without a care or consideration in the world. A certain Dominic told us that this game would have 'a depth to it'. And it does, I think it contains some fundamental truths about life that can hurt sometimes. But in that moment, I had to get over the fact that the protagonist of this series might not be as likeable as I made him to be in my mind. And that was difficult.

 

Of course when Elaine found out about Guybrush's shenannigans, I thought that she would leave him. Which tore me in two. On the one hand, Guybrush would definitely have deserved that. On the other, we knew from the framing story that any break up would not last forever. And how odd would it be if Monkey Island 'ended' on that note. Eventually, the game ended in a bizarre way. Bizarre, maybe in a good sense, because while some layers of the game world's reality have been torn down while others, like setting and era are very much intact.

 

The graphics shine and the details - hearing the criticism, you'd think no detail exists - are amusing my friend and me to no end. The twitching kid caught in the climbing frame back on the playground had us rolling on the floor laughing. Dee's ridiculous anchor lesson became a favorite of ours. The music was everything that I hoped for and even more. It didn't at all feel like a re-hash to me, especially since many new musical motifs have been added to my personal MI canon. The engine is, hands down, the best 2D adventure game engine I have yet seen, and I would love to see it used not just for one game.

 

Bottom line, I'm desperately waiting for another true point & click adventure game of this magnitude. Not necessarily from Dave and Ron (I would of course be on board with that!), not necessarily a LucasArts franchise (I'd be over the moon and halfway on my way to Mars about a Fate of Atlantis Reboot/episodic five parter), but very similar in the approach to user interface, interactive story elements, dialog heavy, musical collossus, smooth movements of the protagonist, closeups of faces and important actions in the story.

[Gins]

55 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

In that vein, we ... could probably make the thread title a little lighter on the clickbait.

 

Sorry, I couldn't resist, it being April 1st and the game having this connection to this special day and the tradition 😁

 

Now that everyone had a good laugh (maybe someone at least :p) I'll change it 😁

[MurraySchull]

If my calculations are correct, we would’ve found out about Return one year ago exactly. What a day that was, huh?

 

Happy anniversary!