Sea Of Thieves' Legend of Monkey Island spoiler-filled discussion

[Didero]

To keep the other LoMI thread spoiler free, let's keep spoilers in here.

 

I've finished the first chapter yesterday evening. I can see the developers really like Monkey Island, it all seems made very lovingly. And it's good to hear the familiar voices again.

 

But it does feel a bit too reverential at times. For instance, there's no good reason for the Lookout to be in this chapter, but he's here seemingly only because he's in Secret. Maybe he'll get a bigger role in future chapters, but they should've locked the area off like they did with the circus. But then maybe this chapter would've felt too small...

I also feel the dialogue could've done with some stricter editing and cutting down all the talk. I hadn't even left the Scumm Bar before I got kind of tired of hearing the phrase 'Legend Of Monkey Island'. It's probably partially my own fault for wanting to talk to everybody, but hey, that's what you do in adventure games. And I agree with Remi's impressions here, a lot of the other dialogue is verbatim from Secret. A Scumm Bar without being able to ask about Loom feels empty, but they could've done more with the character than a carbon copy.

 

The premise is interesting though, in that it's apparently Guybrush's imagined ideal of Melee Island and how other pirates see him. It calls back to the Guybrush of the first two games, and especially MI 2, where he's mainly focussed on getting fame and fortune, at the cost of everything else. It feels like Curse's Guybrush had less of that impulse though, but maybe he just needed to recover from the Carnival Of The Damned before that part of him returned.

They also managed to give Murray a bigger role than just fan-service, which I appreciate. Kind of worrying that he has a body now though, and that he disappeared when the ghost pirates attacked. I wonder where he went, maybe he even joined LeChuck's crew...

 

As far as the puzzles are concerned, they're not difficult at all, mainly because of Sea Of Thieves not having an item inventory so you can only hold one item at a time. Plus they probably wanted to keep it accessible. I only got stuck once, when in typical adventure game fashion I overlooked an interaction spot

 

There's some good other opinions in the comments to the news post about Remi's impressions too.

 

So, what did the rest of you think?

[Threepwood4life]

I really enjoyed it, it was simple, felt a like nice tribute to the series and shows they know their Monkey Island well. I liked all the little references in there especially under the dock they had all the tools still in the water that are around Guybrush when hes tied to the idol lol.

 

I look forward to the next 2 parts, although i wish we had more places to visit other than Melee and Monkey.

 

One thing that puzzled me was the fact that Voodoo Lady is called Corina even though in canonical terms we didnt find that out until Return.

[Remi]

14 minutes ago, Threepwood4life said:

One thing that puzzled me was the fact that Voodoo Lady is called Corina even though in canonical terms we didnt find that out until Return.

 

Same thing with Wally’s map shop.

 

[Didero]

Another small thing that irked me was that the Men Of Low Moral Fiber call themselves 'pirates' so easily, whereas in MI 1 and 2 they deny that, if I remember correctly, or at least avoid confirming it. But I realise that's probably nitpicking.

 

36 minutes ago, Remi said:

Same thing with Wally’s map shop.

This does take place after Curse, so Wally stopped being a pirate, and there's technically no reason he couldn't have immediately started his map shop on Melee. I forget if he says how long the shop has existed in Return, but I get the feeling it's been there a while by then.

 

57 minutes ago, Threepwood4life said:

One thing that puzzled me was the fact that Voodoo Lady is called Corina even though in canonical terms we didnt find that out until Return.

Presumably her name has been Corina all this time, and Guybrush just never asked until Return. No reason Elaine can't have known it earlier.

[Remi]

2 hours ago, Didero said:

This does take place after Curse, so Wally stopped being a pirate, and there's technically no reason he couldn't have immediately started his map shop on Melee. I forget if he says how long the shop has existed in Return, but I get the feeling it's been there a while by then.

 

I'm fairly certain Guybrush says it’s the first time he’s seen the place in ReMI and that it’s implied he has been to Mêlée after CMI.

[Jake]

8 hours ago, Remi said:

it’s implied he has been to Mêlée after CMI.

They made a whole game about it 

[Remi]

56 minutes ago, Jake said:

They made a whole game about it 

Oh yeeeah. Forgot about that one. 

[Thrik]

Ahh… now that’s PROPER Mêlée Island.

 

[Didero]

7 hours ago, Thrik said:

Ahh… now that’s PROPER Mêlée Island.

 

 

Just as I was prepared to be a bit more mild towards Escape after listening to the soundtracks for Heardle, you had to remind me of this...

[Sopabuena]

After the first two puzzles I was fairly dissapointed, but I think thing take off after that. Once you get the chef's clothes and access to the items in the kitchen the game gets a little bit more adventure like. I had a hard time with the controls, the items wheel, etc, but overall I really enjoyed the experience. 

[Didero]

1 hour ago, Sopabuena said:

After the first two puzzles I was fairly dissapointed, but I think thing take off after that. Once you get the chef's clothes and access to the items in the kitchen the game gets a little bit more adventure like. I had a hard time with the controls, the items wheel, etc, but overall I really enjoyed the experience. 

 

Yeah, I'd been playing Sea Of Thieves since I bought it at the start of the Steam Summer Sale, and I don't think I would've enjoyed this Tall Tale as much if I hadn't already been familiar with the controls. Luckily for the people new to SoT this Tall Tale doesn't require any sailing, because that took me a while to figure out (and I still crash into most Outpost docks )

[sparklecloud]

Played it through in one go tonight.  Some of the gameplay took a bit of getting used to (I kept falling in the sea fighting those skeletons and died a couple of times) but I thought it was a lot of fun.  Would like to have another go (if the game lets you?) as I missed some of the commendations.

 

I did the Sea of Thieves tutorial and a quest or two a couple of nights ago - glad I did just so I had a better idea of how to interact with stuff.

 

Looking forward to the next part.

[Mintopia]

I also did the tutorial Wednesday night in preparation - meant I didn't have much of an issue with the mechanics of Sea of Thieves, like sailing my boat. I thought the puzzle design was pretty good. Definitely made by a team that cared for the original.

[Didero]

11 hours ago, sparklecloud said:

Would like to have another go (if the game lets you?) as I missed some of the commendations.

 

Yeah, you can play it as often as you want.

[JacquesSparkyTail]

This was exactly what i wanted it to be. A more immersive Melee island that feels like a real place rather than a collection of screens. Don’t get me wrong that works perfectly in a p&c game but it is nice to actually be able to climb around to see all the nooks and crannies and to view the places i’ve loved visiting in the past from all different angles.  Minor gripe but locke smith’s locksmith should definitely have been present at this point in time and wallys map shop definitely shouldn’t have. 
 

Off the top of my head i can’t think of anybody that felt mischaracterised (apart from guybrush but that’s kind of the point.) Everybody felt like they’d just stepped out of the amiga and into the xbox. Here’s hoping that stan, carla, meathook and smirk all get similar treatment next month.
 

The puzzles felt closer to a p&c game then i assumed they would. The limitations of the game being built on an engine not designed for this sort of thing were obvious but i think this is as good as we could have hoped for and while very VERY easy, (in some cases i’d figured out what a puzzle was going to be and solved it before it even presented itself) it was still fun. 

 

The story isn’t much yet but it has potential and there’s enough there that i really want to know where it’s going. Guybrush living in his own idealised version of reality but somehow becoming a reclusive nutcase because of it works for me as a set up and needing to snap him out of it so he can take us to monkey island is a fun cliffhanger for part 2. 
 

Everything just came together to make a fun, charming, relaxed experience. I obviously wouldn’t advocate for future games to use this formula but i’m very glad we have this as a side experience. Roll on part 2

[JacquesSparkyTail]

On 7/21/2023 at 3:16 PM, Didero said:

This does take place after Curse, so Wally stopped being a pirate, and there's technically no reason he couldn't have immediately started his map shop on Melee. I forget if he says how long the shop has existed in Return, but I get the feeling it's been there a while by then.

So after burying lechuck in ice, guybrush rescued wally who then made his intentions to open a map shop on melee known to guybrush. Guybrush then sails to blood island and gets married there for some reason while wally sails to melee.
 

That way despite the fact that the world in SoT is made of guybrush’s memories, it still makes sense that wally has a shop there. And also still makes sense that guybrush sees it for the first time in return. On a side note the shop already existed in escape, he just hadn’t put up a sign yet. 
 

it all makes perfect sense. 

[Didero]

Yeah, this being Guybrush's memory of Melee mixed with how he wants it to be makes it easy to explain away any inconsistencies.

It helps that we've got 30 years of experience in fan-theorizing away story oddities

[demone]

I'm curious to see if there will be more connections between these tales and others. We already know LeChuck was the imposter Pirate Lord from the tale last month to obtain the sword he intends to use to take over the sea, so I wonder if there will be further ties to the overall lore or even the Pirate's Life tales. 

 

Would be insane to see LeChuck interact with Flameheart, but I have a feeling LeChuck's actions will serve as a catalyst for Flameheart's eventual return, but LeChuck will be defeated and banished from Sea of Thieves before that event truly occurs. 

 

There's a lot of potential for really interesting story dynamics for both worlds and I wouldn't mind if Monkey Island has a second home in Sea of Thieves every now and then. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by demone

[Didero]

Turns out that there are tools that can dig into the packed files of Unreal Engine games, and Sea Of Thieves is made in Unreal. So I've been digging around a bit! (Don't worry, I won't spoil anything unreleased)

There's quite a lot of voice lines in there that weren't used in Episode 1, that refer to things that don't happen in Episode 1. So apparently they just added all the voicelines in the latest patch? Seems exciting.

But the main reason I wanted to dig into the files was to find the menu music, and I think I've found it, even though the packed files are just named with random numbers. I also found some other good renditions of the main theme. I've uploaded them here for anybody interested (that link expires in a week I think, sorry, I couldn't think of another upload service).

 

If you want to check out the files yourself, I used a program called FModel. It's slightly clumsy to use, but it works well enough. Make sure you extract it somewhere instead of running it from the downloaded zip, because it will create some files next to the executable.

When you open the program, it should show a popup where you can select a game, and it should list Sea Of Thieves if you have it installed. It may need an encryption key, I forget, but that's easy to find with Google, and can be added through 'Directory' -> 'AES'.

Then in the 'Archives' tab, scroll all the way down until you see the file 'wem-WindowsClient.pak' (the 'WindowsClient' part is probably different if you play on another platform). Double-click that, and it should switch to the 'Folders' tab. Expand the entries there until you get to 'Experimental' and 'Mojo'. The Monkey Island stuff is in the 'Mojo' subfolder.

Open that, and double-click the final entry in the tree, called 'Windows'. It should switch to the final tab and show a list of files each named a random number with the extension '.wem'. These are sound files. To play one, open the 'Packages' menu and make sure 'Auto Open Sounds' is enabled, and then double-click a random file in the list. A popup should open that plays the sound (on repeat, pause is in the topleft of the popup).

Double-clicking another '.wem'-file in the main window adds that file to the audio player windows' playlist. You can also select multiple files and quickly double-click to add the selection to the player's playlist.

You can also right-click the 'wem-WindowsClient.pak' file in the middle tab and select 'Extract Folder's Packages' to add all files to the Audio Player's playlist.

In the playlist, you can right-click an entry to save it, or click 'Save playlist' to save all of them. Not that this plays each file before saving it, so it'll take a LOOONG time.

A quicker way to get the soundfiles out, is to open the 'Packages' menu and disable 'Auto Open Sounds', and then in the 'Folders' tab right-click the 'Windows' item and select 'Extract Folder's Packages'. This creates a bunch of .wem files in the folder where you put the FModel executable, inside the 'Output' subfolder and some nested subfolders.

To play .wem audiofiles, the vgmstreamer project has some plugins for music players, and those can handle .wem files.

 

That's... a bit more text than I thought I was gonna type. Hopefully it's all clear, and if not, I'll try to make it clearer.

[Remi]

Re: Soundtrack. I may or may not have put some of the tracks here. https://scummbar.com/resources/downloads/index.php?todo=MP3#semi

[Staple Remover]

Started it up - love it so far. Just curious if there is a method of saving the game. I got disconnected and lost all my progress. 

[Huz]

Checkpoints only happen at certain points as you make progress - you'll know when because it pops up at the bottom of the screen. Then you can resume next time by using the map table in your ship, or something.

 

Interesting stuff @Didero! I've only clicked on a few audio files near the top but I now know (I'll still keep it vague)

Spoiler

one of the upcoming game elements and I'll be interested to see how they implement it.  Exciting!

 

There's even a Winamp plugin for playing .wem files, for the true llama-whipping master race.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Huz

[Scummbuddy]

I completed an objective, signed off, and when I returned to the game using the book on my ships table, I had my progress still saved but none of the Pieces o Eight I had collected. So I'll have to do that but all over again and now I'll recommend anyone do a playthrough in one sitting.

 

Bringing my ship back to the island did let me see I could instead disembark at the Governor's Mansion as there is a spot to dock and two ladders to climb up there before you're supposed to be there. You can't enter the mansion or do much of anything. You also cannot walk past the guard as if you wanted to go back into town. Just thought it was interesting that you can even get over there by water.

[Didero]

14 hours ago, Huz said:

Interesting stuff @Didero! I've only clicked on a few audio files near the top but I now know (I'll still keep it vague)

  Reveal hidden contents

one of the upcoming game elements and I'll be interested to see how they implement it.  Exciting!

Spoiler

I'm kind of annoyed that they're making the same mistake Escape did (and Curse to a lesser extent) in apparently making Insult Sword Fighting too much of a thing in-universe. In my eyes in Secret it's meant to be actual swordfighting, but because everybody is equally good at it (maybe because they're all trained by the same person?), you need an extra edge to throw people off their guard. They're not doing a separate sport called Insult Sword Fighting.

Anyway, small pet peeve of mine >_>

 

 

14 hours ago, Huz said:

There's even a Winamp plugin for playing .wem files, for the true llama-whipping master race.

There's also a plugin for Foobar2000, which is a good music player in itself, but also has a Converter plugin, so it's a good way to pick a few interesting sounds and convert them to something more common like MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, without having to convert all 4210 files first.

But yeah, go Winamp! (The old version, the new version is... weird, and mainly seems to carry the Winamp name as a stolen badge for recognition)

[Huz]

Agreed @Didero! I hadn't really thought about it before, but it's true.

 

A few specific things came into my brain while playing SeMI (I already guffed some general thoughts into the void of a Mojo comment). Murray's characterisation seemed too downbeat when he was hanging on the wall, so at first I was worried that they'd directed Denny Delk to be too low-key. But he really came alive (so to speak) once we were able to pick him up, so I guess it was a deliberate choice! Nice touch that worked well.

 

Murray's observations about Melee Island were easily the best thing about the episode - if anything there were too many lines for us to trigger, because I ended up leaving and re-entering areas an unnatural number of times to hear them all. It's a shame he wasn't somehow with us during the boring pieces-of-eight hunting, because that would have been a better use of all those brilliant lines. As it was, there was no need to keep hold of him for long.

 

Come to think of it, how does it work if you're playing SeMI with friends? Does only one of you get to hold Murray and hear his dialogue? Because that kinda sucks.

 

A couple of disappointments that you'd think would have been easy to address: opening the empty prison cell first didn't free a rat, and it didn't piss Otis off. Come on, surely that's de rigueur? And as someone else mentioned (was it here, or in a cheese dream?), you can sail directly to the mansion, bypassing the guard, but then you can't do anything - you can't even interact with the guard from behind! That just seems really lazy in a game with an open map. Either close that route off or make it so that something happens, even if it's just getting thrown out. Trying to sail around the island results in you hitting an invisible barrier, which is more forgivable but still a little bit sad.

 

It's still good though, like.