Well, let me preface this by saying that R.G. is as real-dealer* as they come. (A Quebecois law school buddy of mine once declared that the world could be divided into the "real dealers" and the "bullshitters," and he put almost all of humanity into the latter category.) I think Thimbleweed Park is probably the best adventure game, in the traditional sense, made since... I dunno, 1998? And his writing about adventure games always struck me as very thoughtful. I also think the artist on the project cares a lot about adventures. In my glee at online bickering, I no doubt overstated my criticisms! That said, I didn't mean to suggest that I think the first two MI games are perfect or the product of superhuman genius. They are not without flaws, just like any other human enterprise.
I think it's unprecedented: I know of no other adventure game that's been so criticized because a bunch of screenshots implied a change from what the series is supposed to represent, before the game's even released.
But... this happens all the time with games, including adventure games. People react to screenshots and early product descriptions. I remember it happening even back when I was a kid -- the paradigmatic case was when people saw the art change from King's Quest 6 to 7. Many adventure gamers went berserk, saying that it looked dumbed down and Disneyfied, and foretold inferior gameplay and narrative. (They were right.) In more recent years, Broken Age would be an example.
Moreover, it is no more rational to be exuberant about the game's announcement and to praise its art than it is to be dispirited and to criticize its art. If your position is that people should have no reaction at all to what we have seen about the game, then you should be criticizing the dev team for trying to elicit a reaction...
Ultimately if people want to feel miserable about a new MI -- directed by the original creators and retaining much of the creative talent -- coming out, it's their call to do so.
You've put your finger on the whole thing. This reaction would make no sense if it were a new game -- "Pirate Age" or whatever -- billed as "a new take on the themes that we explored decades ago in Monkey Island." But when you sell your game as the true sequel to a beloved franchise, you have to take the bitter with the sweet. You get instant fame and fortune, but you face inevitable comparisons to the prior games whose reputation you're trading on (as inXile learned).
Here, there is the added fact that when the lead developer wasn't aiming for fame and fortune but was instead in a prison cell writing his memoirs, he penned a very specific description of what a faithful sequel would be, and this game is a repudiation of what he wrote then. Thus, those who are inclined to "trust the plan, you love this developer," but have a memory of longer than one month, are likely to feel that this is a crazy divergence from a public plan, not a faithful execution of a hidden plan (as is typically what plan-trusters believe).
The first could be summed up in "the showed art of return... is shit".
It isn't. I find it ugly, but it's definitely not shit. The artist is technically talented and has a confident style. But it's not a style that draws me in to a sense of adventure.
And yes, okay, the style is totally different and does not suggest that adventurous realistic style of the first two MI. In that sense, although we cannot know exactly what tone the new MI will have, I do understand —and perhaps it is more likely— that the tone will change, and therefore it is an indicator that the sequel will be something quite different to the early games. The thing is I don't have a problem with this happening either. I don't care if the new MI respects those initial premises of "a pirate adventure" in the sense explained by jarlfrank or mry... as long as it's a good adventure.
Fair enough. But as I've written many times (including in criticism of my own games), something that is missing from a lot of contemporary adventure games is precisely this sense of adventure, and hence I'm sorry to see it gone.
"Realism" is not quite the right word, but I'm not sure what is -- maybe "naturalism" or even "heroic naturalism."
I remember that once, mry, you commented that you didn't really like either KQ6 or AGD Interactive's version of KQ2 because they precisely went against the premise of the other KQs, focused on a world of fairy tales and not so much on serious and dark fantasy world.
Correct. I consider KQ5 a distillation of the tone of the franchise. The next three games are all divergences in different ways -- KQ6 by being too epic and melodramatic; KQ7 by being too cartoony and disconnected from Grimm/HCA; KQ8 by being oriented around fantasy-style combat rather than fairy-tale-style cleverness.
