Return To Monkey Island - MI2 sequel from Ron Gilbert

[WallaceChambers]

Interview with Ron & Dave on adventure gamers + screenshots

 

[Tramboi]

EMI was the first betrayal. Hence it was the worse. I stand by my point, ToMI at least has the tone right.

 

[Boleskine]

The problem with ToMI (at least the first episode which I played) is the same problem with Telltale's Sam & Max games. They're boring.

The Sam & Max games especially felt like a slog at times. Back to the Future had the same feeling. They weren't bad games by any means, but once you get over the novelty of "It's a new ___ game!" it feels like a pale imitation of the original thing.

Again, I only played the first episode of ToMI but I remember being bored out of my mind and not feeling the charm and wit of the original games. I had the same feeling with the Sam & Max games.

 

[WallaceChambers]

First episode of Tales is solid, the 2nd is the weakest in the season, but after that it's some of my favorite Monkey Island and overall the game is great IMO.

 

[MRY]

Interview with Ron & Dave on adventure gamers + screenshots

Single biggest news is that they promise a 2022 release, barring "catastrophe." I hadn't seen that before, though probably I just wasn't paying enough attention.

That said, they seem to be coy about just how much of an adventure it will be:

Evolving things, evolving the franchise, embracing new audiences—all these things, those are the big questions that we needed to ask ourselves.

It’s going to be a pirate adventure?

Dave: It is a game about pirates.

Point-and-click?

Ron: There is pointing and clicking. That is true. [laughs] Interface-wise, this one does other things, you know—[we’re] having fun and advancing things. It’s obviously not the seven- or nine-verb interface .... An important part of this, in some ways, is keeping and evolving the genre. Not letting it get static, saying, “Well, that’s what we did thirty years ago, so that’s exactly how we’re going to do it these days.”

I'm not sure the sentiment is wrong, but it pairs oddly with a product that exists solely because of nostalgia. Thimbleweed Park had pixel art and its UI because, as a non-franchise game, if it hadn't been explicitly imitative of the look of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, no one would've recognized it as important. Here, the Monkey Island brand is sufficiently strong that they can vary from the visual style and interface and still sell it as "relive your childhood even though you're a weary old man." But the predicate reason for making Return to Monkey Island -- "the real sequel to a game that came out in 1991" -- is to sell what is old, rather than letting it make way for something new, because it's easier to sell what is old. (As a retro-guy myself, that certainly makes me glad!) Anyway, given the Return to Monkey Island's raison d'être, it seems weird to hear them talking about the need to evolve and embrace -- that's well and good for Broken Age, but less so (I think) for RMI. It seems like a better goal would be (as with Thimbleweed Park) to figure out how to capture the delight of the old game for the core audience while recognizing that the core audience itself has evolved; they don't want a game from 1991 so much as a game that feels to them like what they remember it was like to play a game in 1991 (if that makes any sense).

Semi-relatedly, I'm also a little disappointed by Dave's line "pixel art just didn’t stack up for us, and we’ve got to do what’s best for the game." The screenshots look fine, but certainly worse than any Lucas Arts MI game other than EMI. Ron's explanation (that pixel art would get the game labeled as a throwback and hurt it commercially) is more convincing.

It's also a little surreal reading them talk about what is "canon" in the series in terms of the post-MI2 games. The idea that the series has sacrosanct lore and setting seems antithetical to the games themselves, which were goofy, contradictory, and all over the place.

Anyway, I'll probably play it, although I never bothered with EMI or TOMI.

 

[Keshik]

Not a fan of the art in those screenshots, but eh.

 

[Strig]

These screenshots are hideous. They're the absolute bottom of the grog barrel, because the artist had to be plastered.

 

[Rincewind]

Anyway, given the Return to Monkey Island's raison d'être, it seems weird to hear them talking about the need to evolve and embrace -- that's well and good for Broken Age, but less so (I think) for RMI. It seems like a better goal would be (as with Thimbleweed Park) to figure out how to capture the delight of the old game for the core audience while recognizing that the core audience itself has evolved; they don't want a game from 1991 so much as a game that feels to them like what they remember it was like to play a game in 1991 (if that makes any sense).

Yeah, their approach strikes me a tad schizophrenic too. The vast majority of people who are going to play this are/were fans of the originals.

Semi-relatedly, I'm also a little disappointed by Dave's line "pixel art just didn’t stack up for us, and we’ve got to do what’s best for the game." The screenshots look fine, but certainly worse than any Lucas Arts MI game other than EMI. Ron's explanation (that pixel art would get the game labeled as a throwback and hurt it commercially) is more convincing.

I get all the reasons why they don't want to do "pixel art" (and I liked the looks of TP a lot). Back in the day, they did "just art" with whatever technological limitations they had to work with, so I think it makes sense they don't want to emulate the past anymore.

But this looks like cubist garbage to me. I would be perfectly happy with Broken Age style graphics (never played it but the screenshots look quite nice), or something hand-draw like Machinarium would be even better. I get the feeling that they're putting way more emphasis on trying to be unique rather than simply producing something that's pleasant to look at. I strongly dislike it when an artist does that, style over substance, shock value and all.

By the way, I think console people playing games on TVs from a distance and mobile users are their target audience; if I view the posted art at 50-60% fullscreen, suddenly they look a *lot* better. At fullscreen I need to lean back in my chair because everything is just too big from a normal viewing distance.

 

[Viata]

Interview with Ron & Dave on adventure gamers + screenshots

That is it. I hope you guys enjoy this game, but it's clearly not for me.

 

[MRY]

I get the feeling that they're putting way more emphasis on trying to be unique rather than simply producing something that's pleasant to look at. I strongly dislike it when an artists does that, style over substance, shock value and all.

It's funny, to me the art doesn't look particularly unique; it feels like pretty standard fare for contemporary animation styles, maybe with a flavor of declined DOTT to boot.

 

[Rincewind]

I get the feeling that they're putting way more emphasis on trying to be unique rather than simply producing something that's pleasant to look at. I strongly dislike it when an artists does that, style over substance, shock value and all.

It's funny, to me the art doesn't look particularly unique; it feels like pretty standard fare for contemporary animation styles, maybe with a flavor of declined DOTT to boot.

I don't watch contemporary animation, so I wouldn't know But yeah, it's a more cubist DOTT, basically. Of the cartoony style adventures, I really liked the first Discworld -- something like that in high-res would be much better.

 

[MRY]

Neither do I, but looking at this, my brain doesn't say "this is something new and different" so much as "this is more of the same I've been seeing in many media for the past decade."

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Yeah, their approach strikes me a tad schizophrenic too. The vast majority of people who are going to play this are/were fans of the originals.

I feel like more old-school developers need to figure out that what people want from projects like these is the idealization they have in their head of the original game. A good chunk of people who will play this new game probably haven't played a Monkey Island game in years, some possibly even 30 years. To a certain extent, that is something the developer would do without the limitations of the past, but it still requires keeping close to some of the original conventions, and requires keeping very close to the original ideas. I feel like of the three developers who have recently gotten into capitalizing on the nostalgia surrounding them, this is the game that understands that the least.

 

[Rincewind]

Yeah, I think what they're doing is the worst of both worlds: antagonising their old fan base on one hand, and on the other hand people unfamiliar with the series wouldn't give much fucks about it.

I feel like of the three developers who have recently gotten into capitalizing on the nostalgia surrounding them

Who's the other two you were thinking of?

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Who's the other two you were thinking of?

Pierre Gilhodes and Ken+Roberta Williams. In the latter's case, outside of trying to remake a fairly lofty title, they do seem to be going in the right direction.

 

[Viata]

In the case of Williams couple, they are remaking a text-only game, so they have a lot of freedoms on how to approach it.

 

[Rincewind]

Uh, this is what some guy had to say about the announcement in some random forum:

But what I never want to go back to, is having to read all that conversation on screen. Voice-Over please

 

[MRY]

If I made another Monkey Island...

It would be a retro game that harkened back to Monkey Island 1 and 2. I'd do it as "enhanced low-res". Nice crisp retro art, but augmented by the hardware we have today: parallaxing, depth of field, warm glows, etc. All the stuff we wanted to do back in 1990 but couldn't. Monkey Island deserves that. It's authentic. It doesn't need 3D. Yes, I've seen the video, it's very cool, but Monkey Island wants to be what it is. I would want the game to be how we all remember Monkey Island.

It would be a hardcore adventure game driven by what made that era so great. No tutorials or hint systems or pansy-assed puzzles or catering to the mass-market or modernizing. It would be an adventure game for the hardcore. You're going to get stuck. You're going to be frustrated. Some puzzles will be hard, but all the puzzles will be fair. It's one aspect of Monkey Island I am very proud of.

Full-on inventory. Nice big juicy icons full of pixels. The first version of Monkey Island 1 had text for inventory, a later release and Monkey Island 2 had huge inventory icons and it was nirvana. They will be so nice you'll want to lick them. That's a bullet-point for the box.

There would be dialog puzzles. They weren't really puzzles, but that's what we called them. Being able to tell four jokes at once and meander and getting lost in the humor of a conversation is the staple of Monkey Island. No one has done it better since. Just my opinion.

The game would be the game I wanted to make.

https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland

You really look at these [Monkey Island] games, and there have been more non-pixel games than there have been pixel games, at this point in time. And I wanted to embrace something new, and to try something new for the art style, and kind of continue that tradition, almost, of reexamining what the art was for [Monkey Island]. ... For a lot of people, pixel art does feel like a dated thing. ... Pixel art just didn’t stack up for us, and we’ve got to do what’s best for the game.

"What do we need to do? What is the right thing we need to do for this?" Evolving things, evolving the franchise, embracing new audiences—all these things, those are the big questions that we needed to ask ourselves.

We're having fun and advancing things. It’s obviously not the seven- or nine-verb interface from Thimbleweed or back in the day. With interface and stuff, we just kept looking and evolving. An important part of this, in some ways, is keeping and evolving the genre. Not letting it get static, saying, “Well, that’s what we did thirty years ago, so that’s exactly how we’re going to do it these days.” We really have looked at things we can do that are going to be different and better and more streamlined.

Dave and I really tried to have the situations either be explained to people while they’re playing it, so they understood the context to what they were jumping into, but not in a way that talked down to them. Just very naturally explain the context of what’s going on. Or if there was stuff that was going to go over their head, just because it’s kind of an inside joke or inside information, just to make sure that they didn’t feel like they were losing out on something. So that was what we were really trying to do, serve those two audiences well.

A lot of that for us was taking a step back and really looking at what’s going on. How much of it is just cruft? How much of it is just nostalgia? And being able to look at everything from how puzzles are constructed, how dialogues happen, and how the user interface works or how movement works. All of these things. And really, being able to re-examine all that stuff.

If you look at people who play games today, a lot of games are played on consoles. There’s a lot of excellent players — PlayStation players and Switch players and all this stuff. One of the things we really wanted to do is understand how these people would play a point-and-click adventure ... Because it’s different. There’s a different mindset to it. There’s just a different way about how it engages your gameplay brain.

https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/ron-gilbert-dave-grossman-return-to-monkey-island
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/...n-gilbert-dave-grossman-interview-screenshots

To me, the lesson here is really that people change -- when you talk abstractly about what kind of game you want to make vs. when you can feel the big money from a major license in your grasp. Thankfully, I'm tied to the mast of low-selling original IP, or I'm sure I'd been preaching the gospel of generously making the game 2021 players expect, rather than selfishly pursuing your own vision of truth and beauty.

 

[Rincewind]

We're having fun and advancing things. It’s obviously not the seven- or nine-verb interface from Thimbleweed or back in the day. With interface and stuff, we just kept looking and evolving. An important part of this, in some ways, is keeping and evolving the genre.

Why aren't people just tired of making money already? What the fuck are they going to do with all that money anyway? I personally see zero reason to "rise above" my nice average suburban existence, I just prefer to just keep doing what I like doing and that's the end of it. I doubt Ron is starving either.

What can it be? Heroin addiction?

 

[MRY]

We're having fun and advancing things. It’s obviously not the seven- or nine-verb interface from Thimbleweed or back in the day. With interface and stuff, we just kept looking and evolving. An important part of this, in some ways, is keeping and evolving the genre.

Why aren't people just tired of making money already? What the fuck are they going to do with all that money anyway? I personally see zero reason to "rise above" my nice average suburban existence, I just prefer to just keep doing what I like doing and that's the end of it. I doubt Ron is starving either.

According to the internet, he lives in a modest home in a Seattle. He doesn't seem particularly rich as game developers go. Compare his degree of glamorous living to Fargo, Avellone, Schafer, etc., let alone the folks at the very top. He was just a salaried employee at Lucas Arts. Hard to begrudge him wanting to keep up with inflation.

 

[Rincewind]

We're having fun and advancing things. It’s obviously not the seven- or nine-verb interface from Thimbleweed or back in the day. With interface and stuff, we just kept looking and evolving. An important part of this, in some ways, is keeping and evolving the genre.

Why aren't people just tired of making money already? What the fuck are they going to do with all that money anyway? I personally see zero reason to "rise above" my nice average suburban existence, I just prefer to just keep doing what I like doing and that's the end of it. I doubt Ron is starving either.

According to the internet, he lives in a modest home in a Seattle. He doesn't seem particularly rich as game developers go. Compare his degree of glamorous living to Fargo, Avellone, Schafer, etc., let alone the folks at the very top. He was just a salaried employee at Lucas Arts. Hard to begrudge him wanting to keep up with inflation.

Yeah okay, I was under the impression he was quite well-off and doesn't really need the money. I guess that explains it then. Maybe I'm confusing him with Schafer.

 

[Darkozric]

What the fuck are they going to do with all that money anyway

It's simple. He will pay the woke idiots that he hired. After reading his bad interview, now I have doubts about the gameplay too.

And if the game tanks guess whose fault it will be? The patriarchy or the bad Boomers!!! (No wait, he is the boomer)

Fuck it, I don't expect anything from it.

 

[negator2vc]

Yeah, I think what they're doing is the worst of both worlds: antagonising their old fan base on one hand, and on the other hand people unfamiliar with the series wouldn't give much fucks about it.

It's not the first time they did this. Remember the Dolores system requirements.
For some reason a pixelart game needed suddenly DirectX 12 so at the time could only be run in Windows 10 and of course no linux version in site.
And all the gave were lame excuses!

 

[negator2vc]

I am starting to believe that antagonizing old fans of old IP is done on purpose for some reason (whole media landscape not just this game or games in general).
After all it's Disney IP and despite what Gilbert say we all know who have final say about all creative choices.

 

[Darkozric]

That is it. I hope you guys enjoy this game, but it's clearly not for me.

This "art" looks like a placeholder art or if it was made by an 8 year old child. Unacceptable for the budget they have.
But fuck the art, the interview has many red flags about the gameplay too. He was working with the Dolores engine to dumb down the interface and gameplay for the modern switch retardos.