When you read posts like this, and also the previous, linked one [1], you can clearly see that Ron is a smart and humble guy. I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game.
> Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-
the-art tech and art.
This is SO true, and as much as I loved those games, as much as I stopped playing modern videogames and as much as I love the style of Thimbleweed Park, going forward for an artist like Ron is what _defines_ an artist. If you like MI1 and Mi2, just play MI1 and MI2 again as I do from time to time. Just like you would watch again a movie from the '70s or listen to the Beatles. But you cannot ask an artist to stay always the same because you loved their first works.
What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. I mean, just look at this screenshot: https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1... Parts 1 and 2 had this effect on me, with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. If Return to Monkey Island manages to recapture some of that, I don't care if it's pixel art or whatever else...
I've been thinking about that quite a lot, but with Zelda games. I've come to the conclusion that the old games feel beautiful and mysterious and nostalgic because I played them as a child. I'm no longer a child, life is no longer the same. It's not necessarily worse, it's just fundamentally different. I will never blame Shigeru Miyamoto for that, it would be absurd.
I think this is a big part of why I still enjoy playing Morrowind more than pretty much all newer open world games.
It felt like you were really in a place, and the lack of HUD directing you to "points of interest" made it that much more exciting and interesting when you discovered something new.
> It felt like you were really in a place, and the lack of HUD [...]
In a word - immersion. The vast majority of RPG games suck at it. In-your-face tutorial pop-ups, GPS quest trackers, complex HUDs, full-screen menus, etc.
For a taste of what properly immersive RPGs are play the Gothic series.
"Other games of this era, and even a lot of modern games, are content to resort to more video-gamey designs that remind you you're playing a video game. Gothic 1 and 2 took the extra steps to ensure that everything was as immersive as they could possibly be." [1]
Videos that give a good overview of the immersive design of the games: [2], [3].
Guide on what exactly to play:
1. Gothic 1
2. Gothic 2 Gold Edition
3. The chronicles of Myrtana Archolos - a fan-made total conversion mod for Gothic 2 that follows in the spirit of the past two games. It's as high in quality as a professional production would be. Seriously. See [4] for a preliminary review.
“Their minds ranged far and wide inside dreamscapes Daphne wove for them, for she knew all the secrets of that art, and many of the techniques of false-life sculpting, and story-crafting, which, to her, were trite and worn, to him, were new; and she found pleasure in his delight.”
I was thinking about this quite a bit replaying ocarina of time. It's now very apparent to me that a lot of the world is giant sheets of 2d textures, with some scattered doors as 3d objects, like castletown. Then I started to notice some things that were... surprisingly good? My favorite: Link had IK foot placement! His feet would land on individual steps as you went up stairs.
Yeah, it's a sad fact that I've realized myself as well. No matter how good a game is, I'll never be able to experience again that magical feeling when I played Pokemon for the first time on the GB.
If you approach stuff with positivity, openness and wonder you'll have a blast! This is my current experience with learning Go, having learned Python previously.
I don my explorer's hat and force myself to live into the text, subject or code (Herder's Einfühlung). Personally it makes the journey so much more entertaining than merely as a tools to an end.
I mean yes, the joy is still there when trying new things for the first time, I would be lying if I said otherwise. But it's just not the same. You know that feeling of total absorption/encompassment when you played your favorite game for the first time in your childhood? There's nothing like it. I went to dinner thinking about the game. I went to sleep thinking about the game. I went to school thinking about the game. The joy when my starter Pokemon evolved was indescribable. The game was the only thing that was on my mind. What's even more amazing is that I'm not a native English speaker, and I did not understand a single word in the game back then, yet somehow that did not impede me at all, in fact I think it even added to the joy of exploration.
I think it's something you have to work harder to find, and perhaps find less often as you grow up.
It's joyful to obsess over stuff; to try and get better; to try and understand.
There's two things, IMO, that get in the way as an adult:
* The crush of ordinary responsibility can not leave enough time for exploration and wonder.
* Related: We just get used to following a routine and not completely losing ourselves in something new. Maybe we tell ourselves we can't get good at new things anymore like we used to.
Revisiting old stuff, like Monkey Island, is fun; but it's not nearly as intense as something new. I'm looking forward to it and it will be entertaining to share with my family. It's been awhile since I've found this kind of pure fun and intensity in video games, but I'm sure it'll happen again.
I've had this feeling not so long ago when playing horizon zero dawn. I don't know why but I loved this game so much that it reminded me of the feeling of playing secret of mana as a kid.
One of the few games I've played in my 30s. I really liked the story actually, until the final chapter where Max is navigating some weird Dreamscape that goes on a bit too long.
Oh! I am glad to see the atmosphere aspect of MI emphasized! I played these games as a preteen, and much of the humor went above my head (non-native speaker). It was the atmosphere, the setting and the characters that made me love the games, especially the first one. I spent so much time on Melee Island; the eerie forest, the voodoo lady, the jail, the docks... these places and people made a tremendous impression on young me.
In the modern version the town is no longer twinkling and glittering. It appears smaller due to the large buildings. The strong purple tints (especially on the horizon) gives the scene an uneasy feeling. And the lookout point is no longer forlorn, it appears close to the town due to the way the whole island appears downscaled because of the larger town elements. We have also lost the reflection of the lights in the water, making the island appear to sit on the ground rather than in the waves
I'm still going to play the game and hope to love it. But the art style seems to feature very strong colours and intense gradients. When animated the motion seems too fluid, with characters deforming like in a Flash animation
One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals, and you feel more immersed. (suspension is disbelief has a positive effect here)
When graphics become HD or closer to photorealistic they are starting to trigger an uncanny valley effect.
In MI1, there was a sense of questing as Guybrush Threepwood goes through training to become a swordfighter (the classic training trope like in Rocky and in martial arts movies), plus there was also the will-they-won't-they romantic tension with Elaine. MI1 was an origin story so it had the advantage of being able to use these well-loved tropes. Stan was a great character.
MI2 took it a little further with the unresolved tension with LeChuck.
MI3 didn't really have that same sense of tension or urgency because Guybrush is already in a relationship with Elaine and he's just trying to break the curse. MI3 (or CMI) was a great game, but it just didn't leave you wanting more.
If you look at the screenshots and art released, they are definitely at least attempting an atmospheric feeling. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For me the thing I really love most is the MIDI music. Occasionally I'll put on the score from MI2, Loom or another game and it brings me back.
> What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere.
Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations.
It was unexplained and unmentioned (though an easy headcanon might be that everything you do there takes place during a single night) but it has a huge effect on the aesthetic feel of the game world.
The other thing that evoked the sense of adventure was the balance between the Civilized and Unexplored parts of its world, a common theme in pirate settings.
> with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately.
Curse certainly felt a bit “off” to me (I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t made by the same people but I could feel it) but it still had some charm, except for the abrupt final episode.
> Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations.
Playing it as a tween, it evoked this feeling of one of those rare special nights where I got to stay up way past my bedtime on a warm summer night at an amusement park, fair, circus, camping, etc. (Where the twilight and temperature is perfect after the day's brightness and the heat has broken.)
The first MI is almost not believable that it is an EGA game. Then Loom came out and looks even better. These games pushed the limits of what graphical hardware of the time was capable of.
Without having context of when this was made and that it was part of a game, this looks like a fairly generic picture of a mountain. You regularly see images with far more atmosphere on r/PixelArt.
I think a big part of it as well is the music that comes in when you're first presented with this scene.
I genuinely think this game (which I didn't discover until years later following its release) has the impact that it has for me because of the brilliant soundtrack.
I think it was here on HN that I previously read a comment breaking down how the PC speaker could only play one tone at a time, but the team managed to simulate two overlapping melodies
While that sounds like an amazing technical accomplishment, I can tell you that discovering it on an amiga with a hifi separates amp and speakers[1] was definitely better. I was very lucky, but I'm not sorry! ;) The soundtrack is sensational.
1. To be fair, the speakers were intended for the back shelf of a car. It was cobbled together from castoffs found in the loft...
But you lost the amazing moment when you install a Soundblaster (compatible) card in the PC, start Monkey Island and you are blown away by the new musical experience, after months of PC speaker.
It was clearly something better for me, and I think I played it around ‘94, it was better than what was on tv or video. And it was why we were playing video games, because with each one they kept getting better.
> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate
I looked into responses to the announcement (on YouTube, Reddit, various forums), and didn't find any example of a "fan mob that it's starting the hate." Just about all of the top responses were extremely positive. I only found a small minority of comments saying they don't like the art style, and they're all pretty tame. For example, sorting by controversial on Reddit brings up this:
> I want to be excited but I'm not thrilled about that art and I haven't liked a Monkey Island thing since Curse of Monkey Island.
There can be a tendency to exaggerate any criticism in an effort to dismiss it. Ron is certainly free to make whatever game he likes. But at the same time, people are free to dislike whatever game he makes. It doesn't make them hateful or a mob, simply people with different opinions.
I like the look, and I think it's better than, say, Monkey Island HD. I do see why someone might not like it. The new art style is extremely contemporary and basically looks exactly like every cartoon show of the last five years.
Youtube has definitely been running sentiment analysis and down ranking any critical comments. Go to any music video and read the comments, it’s like everyone was given a lobotomy.
It’s scary tech censorship. I would take the wild go f yourself days of YouTube comments over this v1 matrix toxic positivity world any day.
I didn’t know there was this rage against not being pixel art (but I should have suspected). I am glad it isn’t. I backed and loved Thimbleweed Park (even the ending), but that project was all around nostalgia. The gameplay, the X-Files-y story, it made sense for that game to be pixel art. Now Monkey Island is exactly what Ron said, state of the art. I liked even the 3D one.
I am even more excited for this new one after reading the post.
The interesting bit about this kind of games is that you don't need state-of-the-art tech, and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post.
I mean, for an 2D adventure game, you are basically animating characters. The objective is to create something like an animation movie, in whatever art style you want. It doesn't need to push the tech in the same style that the first games where.
Which is great! I want them to be spending their efforts in the game, artwork, narrative, puzzles, jokes, etc, not on how to create a background that looks OK if you have an EGA screen and a recognisable melody in a PC speaker.
Whether is pixel art or not is irrelevant to me, as long as it's well drawn and animated. I just hope that they end with a fantastic result. I'll sure buy it and play it when it's out.
> The interesting bit about this kind of games is that you don't need state-of-the-art tech, and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible.
Certain types of games exist and thrive due to what's technically feasible at the time they're created, just like any other form of art.
An example, Cuphead isn't radically different from something like Metroid in terms of gameplay and yet Cuphead was technically impossible when Metroid was all the rage. Similarly Metroid's asthetic is a product of it's era and wouldn't be received today in the same way.
Games are art, they simultaneously drive the medium while being limited by it.
> and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post.
Usage of real recorded instruments can still be technically challenging today if you want to do what Monkey Island 2 did with its audio via iMuse - synchronization between music and in-game events (easier) and smooth background music transitions between rooms (harder). MI2 Special Edition recorded its soundtrack with real instruments and while it did a pretty good job at it, it still noticeably simplified some transitions the original version had, because they were much easier to achieve back when it was using MIDI.
One interesting innovation is in Octopath traveller. It has set up the music before the boss fights where it is ready to jump into the boss theme at any point you finish the dialog boxes.
That's one of the things Monkey Island 2 did. It also had the track seamlessly changing cues and adding/removing layers as you entered various sections of a location, had multiple transitions between the same tracks that were chosen depending on when did you trigger them and in-game events were often timed to wait for the beat to synchronize them with music. Later games with similarly dynamic sampled music that I'm aware about (The Curse of Monkey Island, MI2:SE, Portal 2 and now Octopath Traveler) did some of these things, but none of them came close to the level of complexity in the original Monkey Island 2.
Although one reason for that (other than the obvious MIDI vs. sampled one) could be that in MI2, a lot of effort went into this music system which ended up working great, but... not many people actually noticed ;)
> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game.
That is the same blow-back that George Lucas caught when he made the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas made the original Star Wars he set out to make a state-of-art sci-fi movie, and in fact he pushed the state-of-art ahead by a huge leap in that movie. A decade or two later, with the evolution of cinema effects, the original trilogy stopped being seen as state-of-art, but kept its cultural influence now under a new lens, it started being seen as a type of retro-futurism. So when George Lucas set out to make the prequels, he again intended to make state-of-art sci-fi movies*, as is his right, and as he should, but many of the fans instead wanted the new trilogy to match the retro-futurism feel they now assigned to the original ones, hence the many complaints at the time.
Interestingly enough, later when Disney made the sequels they went the other way completely, and bet heavily on the retro-futurism feel (down even to the story arcs), so they got blow-back from the fans that instead wanted a state-of-art sci-fi.
* If he achieved that state-of-art goal is debatable, my personal opinion he did, but just barely, failing to leap forward like the original did on its time, so they do feel a bit like "generic late 90s/early 00s sci-fi".*
The Star Wars prequels simply weren't good for storytelling/plot reasons, not just visuals.
The characters weren't interesting, or even worse, were universally reviled like Jar Jar. The main character (both as a kid and as a teenager) was annoying as hell. The story didn't mesh well with the established Star Wars movies, like that thing with midichlorians that was thankfully played down in subsequent movies. For some reason, Lucas moved The Phantom Menace from "Young Adult" territory (as was the Original Trilogy) to "kid's movie", but halfway and inconsistently, so you get Jar Jar and "yipeee!" but also Trade Federation taxation routes -- what the hell?
To be fair, the visuals were also abused by Lucas. I think there's a legitimate criticism to be made of George Lucas and his "horror of the void": when he didn't have the tech/budget, he had to live with vast empty spaces, and the movies got that "Spaghetti Western" barren look that actually made them better. When CGI became cheaper and easier to use, George Lucas decided to fill every bit of empty screen with some gizmo or cute alien screaming at the screen, and his movies suffered because of this.
I’m still disappointed that Darth Jar Jar didn’t come to fruition. It would have been perfect. In episode VII, Yoda is introduced as this ridiculous character that turned out to be a Jedi master, with the moral of the story being that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Even with this seed planted in the original tribology, everyone saw Jar Jar as this clown who shouldn’t be taken serious. It would have brilliant to reveal that it was all a charade that no one could see through, not even the viewers who already had seen one such reveal taking place in the past.
Agree 100%, would have taken resolve to push through the criticism and pull that off but it feels like he became too influenced by the criticism then ended up shipping milquetoast rubbish.
Imagine how fun it would have been watching Ep1 and getting annoyed by Jar Jar once you know he ends up super evil.
Lucas planned Jar Jar to be revealed as the Sith Lord in the second movie, that's why the character is unlikeable, but it would have been an interesting plot twist and would have made the first movie rewatchable since he place many little clues. Authors shouldn't be scared to develop their vision, and then create something to please them that will suck anyway.
I think Darth Jar Jar is an amusing fan theory, but fan theory nonetheless. Yes, Ahmed Best (the actor) said it wasn't out of the question, but there's no official confirmation this was even considered. All there is, is fan based theories speculating about circumstantial evdience.
I'm pretty sure that Darth Jar Jar is only a fan theory, without any commentary from Lucas confirming it. (We can speculate, but I dislike saying it so confidently.)
The prequels weren't exactly full of shocking plot twists that weren't clearly telegraphed or just shown on the movie poster (young Anakin with the Darth Vader shadow). I don't think Jar Jar was ever going to be evil.
I'm not sure a major problem with the prequels was the aesthetic.
It never bothered me that it felt more "modern" than the original trilogy, it bothered me (and plenty of others) that the story wasn't good. For something that was in his head for such a long time, it came out half-baked.
It's the same with the sequels, they're making big jumps in the established lore, and they made the huge mistake of not actually fleshing out the story beforehand (like e.g. the MCU), leading to three disconnected movies full of attempted nostalgia and pushing merchandise; they made fanservice instead of good films.
Actually from what I heard they DID flesh out things.
But then they made the serious error of hiring Rian Johnson AND giving him free rein with the direction of the movie.
Rian Johnson already stated himself, he likes making divisive films.
He also stated he doens`t like Star Wars...
So he proceeded to ignore the plans that they had, and just do whatever he wanted.
1. He ignored several planned story arcs and just shoved things.
2. He ignored past movies and create a lot of non-sense.
3. He ignored the Extended Universe but in a bad way, Extended Universe books had a look of technical information and whatnot that circulated back into canon, with movies and canon TV series using that information, RJ just ignored that information.
I fully expected Lucasfilm to just give up and not even attempt to make Film 9, that is how bad Film 8 fucked up the plans... But seemly they made an honest attempt to save the franchise in Film 9 by making it fanservice on top of fanservice and hope fans forget all the continuity errors and non-sense the plot became riddled with in Star Wars 8...
I find Ep 7 to be mostly unwatchable because it’s almost all fan service without a real story to be found. There was no plot for Ep 8 to hang itself on, just a few coathooks widely spread.
Ep 8 had some really interesting character arcs, but also made some basic errors. As a movie, I think that it’s the strongest of the three sequels. Given a lack of plot points to really hang off, Johnson seems to have done something interesting, but left even fewer plot points to hang off than Abrams left him. Let’s be clear: if Lucasfilm had disagreed with his direction, they would have taken him off the project.
Ep 9 was more fan service (who can we throw into this scene?) with an even more inexplicable plot hook (if the Emperor was coming back in any way, there should have been hints of that in Ep 7).
I do not understand the fascination with J J Abrams. He claims to be a fan of various media, but IMO he is the shallowest type of fan out there, appreciating only certain aesthetics without looking any deeper. His Star Trek films are the absolute worst of all the Star Trek films, even worse than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Why are they the worst? Because they have become Generic Action Films with a Star Trek veneer. (This is more or less my complaint with Picard.) I dread the idea of seeing J J Abrams touch any more science fiction properties because he just doesn’t get them and turns them into Michael Bay films (but with lens flares instead of explosions).
Abrams was an interesting (read: poor) choice for the final film, because he's famous for setting up compelling plots and not sticking the landing. See: Lost. His whole "mystery box" thing is great at pulling in viewers, but he's never been able to come up with something that works when he's forced to finally open the box.
Abrams stated in more than one interview that he didn't know Star Trek much beyond Wrath of Khan and wasn't much interested in Star Trek. Star Trek to JJ was always just the audition for Star Wars.
He proved he was great at nailing the aesthetic even if so many other qualities of the franchise like writing and plot take a back seat.
That's basically his Star Wars movies in a nutshell too: he absolutely nails the aesthetic 100% and everything else suffers. I think that's why they feel so much like fan service rather than standalone efforts because of that uncanny valley effect where they feel so much like old Star Wars movies and don't have great ideas but to ape old Star Wars plots, but still aren't "Old Star Wars". A lot of what was new in the films added greatly to the aesthetic of the franchise and pushed that, at least, in new directions.
Honestly, I think "the Emperor has returned somehow" is pure 100% Star Wars aesthetic, too. Weird cloning nonsense: very Star Wars. Evil villains returning at surprise hours after being silently behind the curtain for movies: very Star Wars. Absolutely the writing could have done better of foreshadowing that than by doing it in Fortnite of all places (!), but it's still very Star Wars to just "oh, here's the Emperor now". The new trilogy "rhymes" with the original trilogy: Snoke like Vader is clearly a Lieutenant of someone else (and turning out to be a broken clone of the Emperor, very Star Wars) and then Vader/Snoke are revealed to be less important and we fight the Emperor directly. The only missing is the "I am your father" bit for Snoke, but we all know how corny Rian Johnson thought that was, despite being the exact sort of soap opera (well, pulp serial) plotting that made Star Wars what it was/is.
I do agree with you that Disney mismanaged the whole trilogy, and the fault lies with them. They very clearly went into it without any sort of plan or even a particular vision, deferring completely to whatever each director wanted to do. With minimal imposition of a plot outline, the whole thing could have gone much better, even while still leaving the individual directors to mostly decide how they got there.
To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc. If they'd carried on with what 8 was setting up we'd have had ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "resolution"], and instead we were left with ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "ignore that! more nostalgia"]. The former could have worked out and won over those who disliked the Last Jedi twists, the latter just flopped unsatisfyingly. (A second-movie twist was always in the cards, given general fan sentiment about Empire.)
Disclaimer: I personally liked episode 8 the most of that trilogy, and it's the only one I'd bother to go rewatch. It has the best direction by far, along with the most striking visuals of the lot and most of the quotable lines. That said, I think my take on this holds up regardless of which side of the Last Jedi divide you fall on. :D
Yep, management sins abound. It made sense to me that some people would be picking at Ryan Johnson's film as defiling the saga or whatever because it was divisive, but obviously if you're trying to tell a good story - and it isn't like Johnson forced Disney to produce his film - you'll find a way to work with that and honour the world you're creating. Instead, they threw fuel on the fire, practically breaking the fourth wall as they do everything they can to reverse the thing with Episode 9. People shouldn't be talking about how the writers disagreed with each other, but here we are; the lasting legacy of the last three Star Wars movies is not the movies themselves, but the story of how they were politicked and focus-grouped into existence. Nobody involved here had even the slightest concept of artistic creation.
And to be fair, I liked Episode 8. Flawed, stupid casino planet bit, the ending was silly. But Star Wars isn't known for its plot and logical consistency anyway; the series is 99% retcons and fan theories. What's important is the atmosphere and the characters, and what the meagre plot means for those characters. And there was actually some genuine effort being made.
> To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc.
Abrams was an Executive Producer on Ep 8 still and was supposedly in the room for all of the plot development. He personally could have avoided most of that swerve had he been paying attention. Admittedly, he thought at the time it was Trevorrow's problem because Disney didn't fire Trevorrow from Ep 9 until the "last minute", but there's a lot of interesting questions left about what Abrams even thought the "resolution" could possibly be even with Trevorrow at the helm. He was still an Executive Producer in a role that should have been preparing for the trilogy as a whole to succeed.
It takes a village to make a movie and all that, and I'm not personally blaming Abrams, though it sounds like it, I think Disney management should have been more involved too. The whole Trevorrow thing reeks of Disney management failure and bad contract planning. (Between that and the shenanigans with Lord/Miller over Solo…)
I think Abrams made the best movie for Ep 9 that he could have given the time, budget, and resources he had to meet a "set in stone" holiday release date. I think he did the best he could with what Johnson left him, and honestly I don't think anyone could have resolved Johnson's plot twists well and still have felt like Star Wars. He had good ideas in absentia, but they weren't "Star Wars".
(Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics. I also had a big issue with the "Three Billboards problem" of Poe in Ep 8. In my eyes he's unreedemably the villain of the film, and the character is entirely broken beyond repair in Ep 8. But also, admittedly, I haven't liked any of Rian Johnson's films that I've watched [inc. Knives Out; and I especially hated Looper].)
> Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics.
Ah, but Star Wars has always been a Vietnam metaphor filtered through WW2 aesthetics. Specifically, with the Rebels being the Viet Cong -- they're a small group using asymmetric warfare tactics against a vast military machine that's exerting cultural hegemony over even the territory it doesn't control. Lucas has actually been pretty explicit about this being his intention in interviews.
That's a fair point, though in practical terms I think Lucas just took the roundabout way to arrive a metaphor involving the real world Maquis (as opposed to Star Trek's odder counterpart): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquis_(World_War_II)
There's still a lot fewer "shades of grey" in "French rebels versus Nazis" than in all the complicated geopolitics of Viet Cong versus US military. Lucas may have used the idea from the Vietnam War, but he didn't just filter it through a WW2 aesthetic, he entirely embedded it in it.
To my mind Star Wars isn't exactly the franchise for "maybe the Empire are the good guys in the story" shades of grey. (Though admittedly I also find it appalling how many people cosplay the Empire and how much merch there is and seeming adulation the Empire gets. Though it is seemingly great for Disney's bottom line if people don't think of the First Order as a Nazi Regime that exploded entire planets worth of people like the text tells us they are.)
And Disney could have said "no" to any of his ideas at any point. He's become a scapegoat for bitter fans who can't see that Disney didn't know what to do after the first movie.
My first impression was the same, but later I came to the conclusion that it was just way more deep.
The first star wars was glorifying rebellious david against goliath setting and fun adventures. A young nobody becomes a hero for the good side. People identified with luke skywalker.
The later was way more about politics, intrigues and corruption of power. Not a bad story, but much more heavy (and depressing). A young nobody becomes a dark lord. Identifying with a dark lord? A bit harder.
(And the disney movies try to be simple again, but are too shallow for my taste, but are well shot)
I tried watching it with my kids as a marathon of Star Wars for May the Fourth, and they became bored with the trade federation and Senate, and were annoyed by Jar Jar. The pod racing was the saving grace, in their eyes, but even it was only mildly amusing.
I turned it off when they left the room when the pod racing finished.
Live by the mob die by the mob. When a mob is attacking your idea it might have some merits or not but it has reached a popularity breakthrough. A mob attacks when they feel threatened. A mob can be used as a tool. Followers are a pre-mob description of a group.
Putting out a retro version could be seen as a greedy activity that tarnishes the original that could get a different mob after you.
I agree with the import of this, but there is an economy to games, and if it turns out that the gamers really do just want another installment in the old style, you're missing out on that significant segment of the market until you do just that. Art is only art if it gets made, and at least frequently, someone has to pay the artist for the art to get made.
I love this post. I know a decent amount of indie devs, I also have done some hobby game development myself. I see this alarming trend of devs and small studios that are, what I would call, hyper engaging with their players. I get it, the players are important, you want to sell the game, you want people to play it. But, the entitlement and feedback I have seen from some players is just ridiculous. Most players don't have the fist clue as to what makes a good game, or just how hard it actually is to make games. I feel like this post was very elegant way of basically saying "Shut the hell up, it's my game, I don't care what you want, I am making this game primarily for me. This is my art, and my way of expressing myself and sharing it with the world, this is not a collaboration. If you like it great, if you don't, oh well.", but in a much more palatable and acceptable manner.
I don't think the level of engagement is helpful, in the end it makes a terrible hodgepodge product that no one really wants, especially the dev who had an idea for a game that has been co-opted into something very different by their "customers".
I am not saying devs shouldn't get feedback, I just don't think they should be taking feedback from EVERYONE.
Personally if I ever wanted to release a game I would never have a public discord where people could contact me. Would I have a private discord where some other indie devs I know are invited for feedback and play testing? Absolutely. But, I wouldn't just let anyone in there.
Game devs can engage and have a back-and-forth, without incorporating anything into the game. It's socializing and information-sharing to grow an audience, not a collaborative effort.
Seems to be the case with many resurrected franchises, Star Trek coming to mind.
As a kid in the 80s/early 90s, games and series like these caught my imagination. They were fun. Probably fun, interesting and inspiring in different ways to different people.
Agree if we listened to everyone's refined version, we'd end up with a different game for everyone. In the end it's only meant to be entertainment.
In all fairness: there is a difference between the original creator coming up with his/her own beloved continuation of a beloved project, and a soulless money grab by leveraging name recognition with an existing fan base. Irrespective of who is doing the soulless money grabbing (corporation, original creator, etc).
Return to Monkey Island comes across like the former (so far), various Trek and Wars continue-spinning-off-quels more like the latter.
> Most players don't have the fist clue as to what makes a good game
that seems unfair. I think players (especially the kind who follow developers and make spend time posting online about games) do know what makes a good game. They know because they play title after title and see what works for them and what doesn't. The issue is that asking "What makes a good game" is much like asking what makes a good movie, or book, or romantic partner, or vacation. People are going to have very different ideas of what a good game is, but gamers are pretty damn savvy about what they love and about games in general.
That said, I agree with you that creators often go too far with player feedback. I think it's best for creators to make the games they would love, and if that doesn't lead to mainstream success that's fine, if real passion and love are put into a project there'll pretty much always be an audience out there who will appreciate it.
It's a bit ironic that he says he was not really a fan of Day of the Tentacle's "Chuck Jones" art style, when the screenshots for his upcoming Return to Monkey Island are all very specifically that 90's-infused Chuck Jones style - multiple skewed perspective lines in a scene, extreme avoidance of curves (rendered instead as polygonal outlines, so to speak).
The art style for his new game is rather ironically nostalgia-laden in probably an unintentional way: it's deep nineties pop art, ala "Xtreme", etc.
I replayed Secret of Monkey Island this weekend and was really struck by what a ramshackle, distorted place Melee Island is. It is an accurate cartoon caricature of slapdash architecture on sinking ground.
Here's the very first place Guybrush is controllable in:
Lots of straight lines, but no two buildings are in the same perspective. It's cartoon cubism, filtered through a 640x480 grid. Maurice Noble's work with Chuck Jones looms large over the backgrounds but so does the realities of what cheap shacks slapped together by pirates on constantly-sinking ground would look like.
I suspect the "Chuck Jones" art style of DOTT he's referring to is the character design. Which was so Jones-influenced that I recall hearing that when Lucasfilm had a chance to show it to Chuck, he did the most flattering thing possible: he tried to hire the animators to work at the new studio he was opening up.
> I suspect the "Chuck Jones" art style of DOTT he's referring to is the character design.
I played Day of the Tentacle last night (remastered version on iPad, but the pixel art not the new art). My impression is it's kinda like monkey island except more extreme. Like someone took monkey island and added loads more vortex art tool.
Originally the style in gaming came about through two related influences:
1. Flash and its status in the 2000's as the tool every animator cut their teeth on. Flash makes it easy to paperdoll things with scenegraph relationships, though it has no skeleton system per se; if you animated the doll by hand and set up your assets proportionately you were good to go on making games with character creation, visible equipment etc.
2. Texture memory limitations imposing limits on keyframe animation in mobile games. This led the larger mobile companies circa 2010 to build out proprietary systems that would get the most out of relatively small textures and make them modular assets for everything - UI, animations, backgrounds, collision bounds, FX etc.
Spine, Spriter, and Dragon Bones basically followed up as third-party versions of those proprietary tools. Now it's taken root as a definite style; even modern TV cartoons are using these setups, although they have more complex dolls with more keyframes. "Puppet" animation basically does the things that animators used to do by tracing model sheet drawings and it lets them go a lot faster, hence you can pull off 2D shows with detailed characters and still have it look crisp and polished.
Yeah, I just played DotT remastered (iPad) last night. I wasn't a fan of the art style /in general/. Something to note though, I played it entirely in the "old" pixel format not the new style (you can change between the two with a gesture at any point). I really did try to like the new art, but just couldn't, I genuinely preferred the pixel style.
For Monkey Islane I'm pretty sad that he's gone with the art style he has, looking at the photos they just seem claustrophobic, lacking in charm or character to me.
I have incredible memories of playing MI1, and to a lesser extent, MI2 (never finished - no Internet back then and these games were tricky). I think it is very cool he is getting to make the game he wants, and I do the same with my development work (it is always for me, if someone else likes it...bonus). I'll reserve judgement until release, but I personally don't like the art style...but who cares, I'm probably not his audience anyway (I stopped gaming years ago, but would probably pick up a copy if it was retro style - and then never play it anyway).
Cool indeed. I think MI caught the spirit of gameplay for me, alongside iconic titles like Elite and Civ.
Pirates of the Caribbean had a similar spirit.
I'll likely be handing over cash for this version. If the new game has the same banter and half decent puzzles, it'll be a winner, for me. Something to get my daughter to play with me if she has the patience of walking about the place!
This reminded me of the amusing way the leas character (Guybrush) was named. Obligatory wiki linkage [1] but basically due to a Deluxe Paint filename convention.
I love his Day of the Tentacle critique, it's basically what my grandma would say if she reviewed games.... "I'm sure what you've created might be good, but it's not my cup of tea at all... In fact..."
it was my first real adventure game (i couldn't even progress through it because i didn't speak a single word of english -- it was trial and error until i understood what "open", "push", "pull", "pick up" were) so i absolutely LOVE the art style.
but i totally get what ron means -- art style is 100% personal preference.
Your grandma is a wise person - but of course it's the only way to critique a game made by people that you respect and that you worked with for a long time...
About the art, I think another perfect example is Grim Fandango. It was the first Lucasarts 3D adventure, at a time when the 3D (late '90) was a graphically inferior solution to 2D. However, they exploited the low polygon number, to give a special character to the models, like paper dolls. So the heresy of moving from 2D was instead a conscious artistic choice, strictly linked to the then-modern technologies.
To me, Grim Fandango looked fantastic. What made it difficult to play were the cursed keyboard controls. I still did beat it, but never wanted to come back to it because of those controls. A couple of years ago, I replayed the modern remaster, and boy does the good old mouse pointer improve the game immensely.
It's hard to remember how much controls for 3D games were a wild west for so long, especially on PC. (The original Tomb Raider controls are pretty bad, too, for instance.) People act like modern WASD+Mouse Look is an "ancient" standard passed down for centuries but a lot of that was hard work in 1990s and a lot of failed control schemes that never quite worked right, even in their time. (Similarly too how relatively "ancient" the modern two-stick controller flow feels, but isn't all that old actually. Remember how the N64 named the weird yellow D-Pad the "C-buttons" in part because they thought that might be more natural for "C is for" Camera control than the dual stick position?)
> So the heresy of moving from 2D was instead a conscious artistic choice, strictly linked to the then-modern technologies.
This is how it should have been all along. The only reason modern GPUs are in such demand is because we forgot to apply art before shiny tech. I don't know why things like polygon count and texture resolution turned into a metric for fun.
To this day I can have way more fun in older games like Minecraft than super polished AAA titles like RDR2 or Cyberpunk 2077. The graphics used to get me interested back when we thought photorealism was going to make shit way more fun, but the reality of artistic expression turned out to be much more complex than this...
Plenty games went the other way. For every stylish Grim Fandango there's been dozen of Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D, where the developers spent so much time trying to get graphics to work that they had no time left for gameplay or story.
Shiny tech means there's much less fighting with the technology that's needed. You can take advantage of that today you don't need to optimize every clock cycle and spend the time polishing up the gameplay.
Also, some stories require a fair amount of tech. Superman 64 should have happened in a bustling Metropolis, just like Cyberpunk 2077 does. But it was impossible with the technology of the time.
Another great example of choosing an art style that worked with the limitations of early 3D is Interstate '76, from 1997: https://i.imgur.com/ro5k82Z.png
...and then Escape from Monkey Island utilized the same tech as Grim Fandango, but without those stylistic choices that made Grim Fandango's graphics work so well :)
Wait there is a new Monkey Island game (<googles furiously>)...
Growing up in Soviet Union and getting 100% games pirated through floppies, I played Monkey Island (funny), DoTT (funny ^2), Gobli[i|ii]ns, Space Quest (!star trek?), Gabriel Knight (scary!) and many other adventure games with fervor only lightly diluted by doing other things like programming.
My command of English wasn't so good. And being behind a (slowly falling apart) iron curtain, the cultural references were often completely over my head. I didn't understand half of the jokes in Monkey Island, I didn't get all the Star Trek references in Space Quest although I do now, and I was completely unsure what was the deal with the Cherry tree and Franklin (oh wait was it Washington) joke in the Day of the Tentacle, but I rolled with it. Doing it all made my english so much better, and so profit!
But those games were still amazingly awesome and I'll be getting the return of Monkey Island sight unseen!
Ron you really should not be bashing your oldest most hard core fans.
Monkey Island 2 is a masterpiece. The 2D hand drawn style and animation are a huge part of it.
I'll take any Monkey Island sequel, but if you take a closer look at say the Tales of Monkey Island sequels, you'll see what people are worried about.
Monkey Island 4 was TERRIBLE. Fully 3D and tank controls. Tales of Monkey Island was great but completely ruined by terrible tank controls.
A proper Monkey Island games needs to be
1. Point and Click
2. Have excellent puzzle design and structure
3. Ideally 2D hand drawn art and animation
4. Least important, Pixelated style like MI2 or Loom
People who are critizing the trailer are worried we're getting another Tales of Monkey Island or Monkey Island 4.
As long as you nail #1 (proper point and click controls) I think you will still make a better Monkey Island sequel since Curse of Monkey Island
> Ron you really should not be bashing your oldest most hard core fans.
I don't read anything Ron said as "bashing". He explains why he is not interested in making pixel art games. He is also promising you this is the best possible Monkey Island game he can make, one he is proud of.
CTRL+F of "hate" and "hating" gives zero results in that page. This is what Ron actually says about some fans:
> "It's ironic that the people who don't want me to make the game I want to make are some of the hard core Monkey Island fans. And that is what makes me sad about all the comments."
And that's it. He's not "bashing" all fans, not even some fans. He's just explaining his vision and what his goal is for this Monkey Island game, and also expressing disappointment that some fans don't want him to make the game he wants.
I think his points are solid. Monkey Island I & II weren't retrogames, and so it makes sense he won't try to turn this Monkey Island into a retrogame either.
My mileage certainly differs. I loved how it looked, but to me it is by far the weakest of the lucasarts games I played (and I played all but the first Maniac Mansion and Zac McKraken). It is far too difficult! Far too many locations and items, you just get overwhelmed in the middle part of the game.
The new game isn't 3D, you're right. At least from the trailer I can assume so. But I wouldn't rule it out completely. Let's see when we actually get some gameplay.
But it still feels like a major downgrade to Curse of Monkey Island or the originals.
It looks like every other game, very generic style. It's lost the charm of the original games IMO.
I think Ron has an opportunity to differentiate his game from all the bad sequels we got before it.
"All the bad sequels"? From all Monkey Island games, I'd say only Escape could be considered somewhat bad. It felt rather uninspired compared to others, control scheme was awful and it aged the worst way of all MI games. All the rest are really great.
Monkey Island series has been drastically changing the art style in its every single installment. When it comes to this new style, I find it hard to judge from still unpopulated screenshots, as they feel way too static to me. The trailer looks nice though.
If you ignore the awful controls and equally awful minigames, I think Escape is still a fun pirate tale with a lot of things to love about it. I think the plot's overall is pretty inspired about the gentrification of the pirate islands, and it's the natural progression from Curse's exploration of the same themes (which in turn those themes going all the back to things like Secret's used boat sales lot). A lot of Escape is extremely funny, too. It just has that huge grind in the middle made worse by awful controls and environments that were both too big and too densely packed with sight gags and too empty all at once.
"Somewhat bad", sure, given those qualifications of pretend the controls and their grind don't exist. But also, more inspired than many give it credit for and still "worst Monkey Island" is a relatively high bar compared to other franchises we could mention.
To me, Escape felt a lot like a fan fiction story. A pretty good one, sure, but it still hatched onto the themes that you mention (which used to be more or less background gags in previous installments without much relevance to the actual story) the way fans usually do when writing their own stories. So you got bombarded with callbacks to previous games, characters you already knew, jokes you already heard, and stories that didn't really feel like natural progression of the lore but more like "what if?" scenarios. Ozzie, Herman, your old crew, LeChuck's role in the whole conspiracy, Giant Monkey Head, Planet Threepwood... compare that to Curse, which genuinely moved the series forward into a new and fresh adventure. It also called back to previous games - it even started with Wally right in the first scene who didn't really need to be there - but it always felt like an addition to the game's story, or a glue that makes a Monkey Island game a Monkey Island game, rather than something it relies on to be funny or interesting (after all, we meet Murray right after meeting Wally in Curse, and I don't think any character introduced in Escape is even close to how strong Murray is as a character).
Escape would be a great spin-off - it's still a genuinely fun and engaging adventure game if you can look past its shortcomings. However, as an entry in the main series, it feels a bit wrong, and definitely the weakest. It's not "a pirate tale with good share of silliness" anymore, but rather "a silly tale with good share of pirates". I bet that most of the stuff in the new game that will end up contradicting older games' canon will be stuff that goes at odds with Escape in particular, mostly thanks to its plot twists for the sake of plot twists and taking previous games' gags way too seriously :P
I know Schafer wasn't involved in EMI and so had no direct interest in doing it but with the huge underlying similarities in the engine it would have been nice to get an EMI remaster side-by-side the Grim Fandango remaster with similar controls improvements.
One of these days maybe SCUMMVM will finally get around to gifting us the right controls for EMI to make it truly fun to experience.
Yes we did. MI1 and 2 was great because they were pushing the technological limitations, trying to be the best puzzle games they could, and were made by a great, talented, and enthusiastic team. Not because it was catering to entitled fans with rose tinted glasses.
Awesome then! I could not remember that single thing I forgot to collect for that puzzle, maybe it was the gum? I dunno but I enjoyed it a lot. Fun memories.
It's cool and amazing that you still remember this. I mean last time I played this game was over 20 years ago ha! Ah yes the Helium balloon and this is the also the part Guybrush needs to shoot the dart right?
The game looks stunning, and I'm happy about the direction they have chosen graphically.
What I am most excited about is what new game design and mechanics we might get to see. I'm hoping it will be more than raw point and click, and hopefully will involve more mechanics for puzzle solving.
The way my mind understands this as actions across the passage of time:
1. Ron created the games back then
2. People played the games back then. Some people absolutely loved the games and had a profound impact on them
3. 20+ years of life happened to Ron and those who played and loved the games. During that time, great distortions occur: nostalgia, rose-coloured glasses, older memories become shinier memories
4. Ron decides to make sequel based on who he is now
5. Step 3 causes fear of the ruin of a legacy and tainting of protected childhood memories (cough Star Wars cough). This is the present.
6a. Game is released
6b. Some hardcore fans love it, some hardcore fans hate it. As it ever was.
And specifically to this comment:
>There's a proper way to take criticism from a passionate fanbase of 20+ years.
There's some kind of ridiculous level of entitlement in dictating how an artist should take criticism. Were I to have any say in it, I'd dictate this:
Fucking ignore it and be true to your own creative vision. After all, that's the same way the magic has been created previously.
His response seems entirely reasonable, and some grumpiness is definitely expected from someone whose domain is literally grumpygamer.com. As a fan of the originals, I also see nothing wrong with the art style of the new game.
“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.
Fun games but did anyone read the footer on Ron's page? death by dismemberment!
"Unless otherwise noted, all content is Copyright 2004-2022 Ron Gilbert. Unauthorized use under penalty of death by dismemberment and/or fine not less than one million dollars. (v4.1)"
I just played thimbleweed park, and yikes what a horrible ending.
I'm very worried about Monkey Island now. Some authors NEED editors. I think Ron Gilbert needs the original team to help him on what works and what doesn't.
Even the original Chrono Trigger was going to be super depressing, if the original writer had his way on everything. I would have hated his version of it.
This is partly why I think Dave Grossman's deep involvement is so important to Return to Monkey Island. Ron seems best with a larger writers room and Dave by all accounts is one of the best influences he can have that is also a Known Quantity from the rest of the franchise.
Thimbleweed Park was imvho a "meh" game. I hope the new monkey island can improve on that.
OTOH I am now playing "The Captain" which is a modern take on point&click with beautiful pixel art and a few new things, and I feel it filled my need for a good monkey island already.
Yeah for me it was pretty meh also, main problem being too many puzzles that required items from all around the map to be used in another location that might have been on the other corner of the map where you got the item from.
Also just too much plot, so many characters and their background stories, how can you care about all of them..
Still very excited about the new Monkey Island, hopefully they don't over trick all the things in it ..
I have a lot of fondness for Monkey Island, but more often than not - giving a creative person complete creative controls is less likely to produce something good.
old 2d scumm is my favorite engine.
with all its weird stuff going on, the amount of imagination it has unleashed is next to magical. its like the amiga500 or c64. there is something about being limited as a creative person which sparks imagination. certain "things" do it better or worse. scumm should be seen as an instrument, not a tool.
Ron says "I never liked the art in DotT...never liked the wacky Chuck Jones style" but the first screens of RTMI looks exactly like that!
Not that I don't like that style, but I don't think it's a surprise for Lucas Art fans. Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Fullthrottle weren't that far away (except with a lower resolution)
Relative to those others, sure, but it was still such an interesting mishmash of biker/tattoo art, heavy metal art, and dystopian imagery that doesn't exist just about anywhere else in games. (The next closest is probably Brütal Legend, for obvious reasons.)
lucasarts had a string of hits that are timeless, dig, day of the tentacle, sam and max[had own tv show], and full throttle. great single player games that didn't require fast user clicks. you can go at your own pace.
Sam and Max was a 80s-90s comic by Steve Purcell[0], who was also a LucasArts employee at the time. You will recognize his art style in several Monkey Island scenes.
Anyway the point is that the tv show was not based on the videogame which you seem to be implying, but on the comic instead.
The comic series is artistically amazing. Purcell is a master of setting an atmosphere. It's also meant to be comedic but the humor is mainly cartoon violent slapstick mixed with pop culture references (of the time). It's dated by now.
When he talks about pushing the art forward, I wonder if he is also talking about the art of game design. Is he going to show us a futuristic vision of the classic point & click gameplay, or is this part still stuck in the past?
> It's ironic that the people who don't want me to make the game I want to make are some of the hard core Monkey Island fans. And that is what makes me sad about all the comments.
I don't know. I can probably still finish monkey 1 and 2 without a walkthrough because I've played them many times. That makes me a fan right?
You probably do know. If you've read the reactions online, you'll probably know some vocal fans are disappointed with the new art style. This is Ron's reply to them.
There will be exceptions. You are one. I am another. But it doesn't invalidate Ron's point, because it's easy to fact-check it by going online and looking for opinions, even in Ron's own blog.
Yeah, read it a couple of times now. Seems you're actually agreeing with the author, while your comment reads like your disagreeing, but again, probably just me misunderstanding your comment.
All is good, I probably just need a break from the computer :)
They are very good! Obviously the style is out of fashion and some puzzles can be a bit frustrating (though not as much as old Sierra adventures), but they are amazing games...
Honestly, I have the special edition and after about ten minutes of playing I switched to the original graphics and music and didn't really look back. They really have aged quite well, even though of course they look much blockier on a 24" TFT compared to the original 15"ish CRT experience...
Which is kinda strange because the "pixel" art of those days was never intended to be rendered as blocky pixels, but designed to make use of the CRT's softness.
Arguably true for the EGA versions (when played on real EGA hardware), but the VGA versions used a 320x200 resolution, which was line-doubled to 320x400, and displayed on monitors sharp enough to be usable at 640x480. The pixels were obviously blocky.
Indeed, you could see the pixels, but that was all it was. Advanced games used antialiasing to lessen the blocky effect. You only could dream of a future where graphics are "paper like" without pixels. At that moment, it didn't fill like low-res, at all. 320x200 256 colors was the bleeding edge of computer graphics. Later on, some games started appearing with 640x480.
That's also why I can't stand some of the modern pixel-games. They are too blocky and doesn't work well on modern screens. Using blocky graphics is not "retro" at all. It's more an artistic impression of how they think old games looked like.
I bought the special editions of 1 and 2 over the weekend with the sole intent of extracting the original game files and playing them via scummvm. Didn’t even try to play the special editions. And getting them working in scummvm was as much fun as getting to play the original games themselves!
The Verbs menu taking a third of the screen is the original SCUMM UI. The "verb coin" idea didn't come along until Full Throttle/Curse of Monkey Island years after Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck's Revenge.
The only tiny "original UI" subtlety in play with Secret of Monkey Island was that the floppy version used a text inventory menu and the CD version added the inventory icons. I can't say I've met anyone that prefers the text inventory over the icons.
The second game is really good. I think it's a lot funnier than the first and has more colourful areas and dialogue (although some puzzles are ridiculous).
I also see Monkey 2 as by far the superior game. The first is excellent and charming, but the second is a great work of literature. (I played Monkey 2 first though, so I'm inherently biased.)
Well, I played the first one first, and I liked that one better. Especially once you get to Monkey Island, it's one gag after the other: the three-headed monkey, the head of the navigator (which you trade in for a leaflet called "how to get ahead in navigating"), ShishKeBob and his pals ShishKeJoe and ShishKeLarry, ...
I played the LeChuck's Revenge first and later tried the first one. It didn't have quite the impact.
Also, I replayed the games like 10 years ago and found them very short and the humor being quite outdated. A bit like watching all the Star Wars movies in one go. The pacing in the first triology is pretty crappy.
You should really play them both; I have the remastered versions on steam and enjoy playing the hell out of them. I often switch backward and forward from new to original graphics and music for nostalgia reasons though.
I find it interesting that sequels in gaming are way easier than in movie business: game designers don't have to deal that much with stars ageing or dying, and voice actors are far easier to replace than on-screen ones. Though with deepfake technology this might be changing.
I feel like monkey island one and two was basically a very advanced "book" with basic animated illustrations. But you could still fill in a lot with your own imagination with the graphics of that time. Skip forward to any of todays games and they are way way closer to a movie then a book. Just like when any book is made into a movie there is a lot of hardcore fans that have a different mental model of their book and don't want it overshadowed by a movie. It is easy to avoid and not watch the "movie". I will be very happy to see a new game by Ron based on what he feels is his vision and not what the public wants.
Something amazing can happen (such as a new Monkey Island game) and there will always be an angry mob with pitchforks that will be very vocal about it on social media.
This probably was always the case, but the internet now serves as an amplifier of some sort of hype-based social feedback mechanism for ideas and opinions. This mechanism probably made sense 200,000+ years ago when groups were very small and it helped survival by promoting social cohesion. But today the internet connects billions of humans and it's a pretty toxic behavior.
I'd love the new design and i love the old games. I dont really see the point of doing a new game with the old tech. Its better to make a new game with new tech that brings it into 2022.
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> Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of- the-art tech and art.
This is SO true, and as much as I loved those games, as much as I stopped playing modern videogames and as much as I love the style of Thimbleweed Park, going forward for an artist like Ron is what _defines_ an artist. If you like MI1 and Mi2, just play MI1 and MI2 again as I do from time to time. Just like you would watch again a movie from the '70s or listen to the Beatles. But you cannot ask an artist to stay always the same because you loved their first works.