The MONKEY ISLAND and other Adventure Games thread

[Jay 37,372]

Hmm could be

 

And yea, this news is epic. 

 

And honestly? I'm glad they kept it a secret until now, the release year. If we had been told about this 2 years ago, it wouldn't be the same. 

 

I'm going through a similar wait for another highly anticipated sequel (Hollow Knight Silksong) and it's rough. 

 

That game was announced February 2019, and then had a playable demo at E3 3019, and released two soundtrack cuts in December 2019.  All of 2020 came and went with no further news. Then all of 2021 came and went with no further news. We don't even have a release window, nothing. Every new Nintendo Direct, I get hyped they might reveal more, then bummer that they never do. 

 

I'm much happier knowing this has anywhere from 0 to 8 months to go until it's out. Can't wait! 

[Romão 2,274]

Looking at the screenshots again, I think he's just the ship's cook. My bad

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

9 hours ago, Romão said:

Looking at the screenshots again, I think he's just the ship's cook. My bad

 

 

9 hours ago, Jay said:

I'm going through a similar wait for another highly anticipated sequel (Hollow Knight Silksong) and it's rough. 

 

That game was announced February 2019, and then had a playable demo at E3 3019, and released two soundtrack cuts in December 2019.  All of 2020 came and went with no further news. Then all of 2021 came and went with no further news. We don't even have a release window, nothing. Every new Nintendo Direct, I get hyped they might reveal more, then bummer that they never do. 

 

I'm much happier knowing this has anywhere from 0 to 8 months to go until it's out. Can't wait! 

 

Have you seen Indie Game: The Movie? I recently rewatched it and was surprised about all the "has been in development for 3 years"-type messages when I've been working (off and on) on my own, simpler game, for much longer.

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

That LeChuck's Theme arrangement from the trailer is just...

 

[Jay 37,372]

I like the way the 3 little thunks of Murray approaching sound like it could be a percussion element in the music

[Romão 2,274]

2 hours ago, Muad'Dib said:

That LeChuck's Theme arrangement from the trailer is just...

 

 

 Peter McConnell himself playing the violin

[Romão 2,274]

It's really good timing, as I have been working in the last few weeks on another Monkey Island related LEGO project. My idea was to try to create 3D LEGO sculptures  of some of the main characters from The Secret of Monkey Island and Le Chuck's Revenge (and Day of the Tentacle too), whilst at the same time remain as faithful as possible to their pixel sprites look. In order to keep them at a reasonable size and still be able to retain the square pixel look, I used a studs-out technique for the front and back view, and this is the preliminary result:

[Jay 37,372]

Woah, those are great!! 

[Jay 37,372]

Clean Melee Island image from the website:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/spehg3p8t26b5fz/monkey island.png?dl=0

 

"Created by full-screening the website, deleting html elements through web inspector, and taking a screenshot of the screen"

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/MonkeyIsland/comments/txkhdb/return_to_monkey_island_clean_image/i3nhxb7/

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

 

[Romão 2,274]

Ah, that looks awesome  

 

Thimbleweed Park did fuse these two worlds, to an extent

[Jay 37,372]

WOW!

Two new interviews with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman!

 

https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/ron-gilbert-dave-grossman-return-to-monkey-island

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/23021974/return-to-monkey-island-ron-gilbert-dave-grossman-interview-screenshots

 

Both articles include the same pics!

 

 

 

[Romão 2,274]

Love that shot of Melee Town. Faithful to the original, while still feeling new and fresh

[Jay 37,372]

I'm not a huge fan of this new art style, but I don't hate it.

 

I wouldn't want something so retro looking as Thimbleweed Park or anything, but something that felt like how a late 90s Ron Gilbert directed MI3 would have looked would have been my preference.  Or even the COMI style, which I always loved

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

I was just coming here to post these two articles…

 

Also, is it just me, or does this game deserve to have its own thread?

 

My two main takeaways from these interviews are:

• It's really based on the (extended) Thimbleweed Park engine
• It was developed without crunch (and this is important enough for them to actively bring it up in the interview)

32 minutes ago, Jay said:

I'm not a huge fan of this new art style, but I don't hate it.

 

That's what I've been thinking, but I'm sure I'll get to like it more (I did with Thimbleweed Park, which on a technical level - like subpixel scrolling and 2D lighting - had some really beautiful stuff, even if I'm not a fan of the character design). Gilbert saying how it came about and how he really likes it also makes me feel more positive about it.

 

32 minutes ago, Jay said:

I wouldn't want something so retro looking as Thimbleweed Park or anything, but something that felt like how a late 90s Ron Gilbert directed MI3 would have looked would have been my preference.  Or even the COMI style, which I always loved

 

I *hate* the COMI style - and I love everything about Grim Fandango, which originated it, but then that was deliberately designed around the blocky polygon style and its similarity to calaca figures. But Guybrush just looks like somebody poorly put his texture on a quad because that's all the system was capable of.

 

I love the styles of MI3 and especially the "painted"-looking MI2 (well, it was in fact painted and scanned). But it's also hard to tell how much of its effect it would really retain in modern resolutions - the pixelated look may well have made it feel like there was even more to it than there actually was in the raw assets.

[Jay 37,372]

Woah woah woah there - COMI IS MI3!  That's what I'm saying  - MI3 (COMI) looks good!

 

Of course EFMI (MI4) looks bad!

[Romão 2,274]

I've been planning for a while a large size, minifig scale, LEGO model of Melee Town, so I'm very intrigued on how they will reinterpret this locale in the new game

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

9 minutes ago, Jay said:

Woah woah woah there - COMI IS MI3!  That's what I'm saying  - MI3 (COMI) looks good!

 

Of course EFMI (MI4) looks bad!

 

Ha! I don't know why I always keep mixing up the titles of the two. In this case it was I guess because you used MI3 in once sentence and then COMI in the next, though I now see why you did. I love that style. And it probably had a strong influence on Dominic Armato's interpretation of Mr. Brush.

[Jay 37,372]

Absolutely!  As disappointing as it was that COMI had no Ron Gilbert involvement, the wonderful voice casting and the really cool art style made it quite easy to get into the game anyway.  Even though I will always be disappointed it didn't REALLY follow-up on MI2's ending the way I wanted, it wasn't a bad game.  And it gave us Murray, which is great.

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

I like it just as much as the other two, and we're getting Ron Gilbert's proper resolution now, so all's well that ends well.

 

So how about moving the Monkey business to a dedicated thread?

[Jay 37,372]

I don't really think there's going to be any other adventure game relating news or discussion that's going to occur between now and when this game comes out, it's fine

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

I was thinking more along the lines of it "deserving" to be discussed in a thread with its name in the title.  But never mind.

 

But there may be some other adventure gaming news when the long overdue 3 Minutes to Midnight hopefully creeps closer to a release date. It seemed to be going really well until news got sparse - but a two year delay is not unusual for Kickstarter projects, so I still have hope.

[Jay 37,372]

True Story: This thread used to be called "The Monkey Island Thread" (just check the main post), then years later became "The Adventure Game Thread" when the MI series died

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

A couple of new insights in this Ars Technica article.

 

Also, Ron Gilbert (@grumpygamer) has changed his Twitter name to Ronbrush. Befitting the updated title of this thread.

[KittBash 282]

With this coming down the pipe (Return to Monkey Island) I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy these again for my PC... I kinda refused to buy them once again since the first two special editions were taken away for iOS...  It was really nice to have these on an iPad and felt a little pissed when I couldn't add them to my new devices when the old ones died. 

[Jay 37,372]

You can just play them with ScummVM and a downloaded ROM.  I mean, you've already legally paid for them

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

I'll try to play the classic ScummVM version with the SE sound and dialogue (I've got a patch for that backed up somewhere). I'll probably re-buy TOMI because I only have that on the PS3.

[Jay 37,372]

I still have in my closet my original floppy discs of SOMI and MI2, and my original CD-Roms of SOMI, MI2, COMI, and EFMI!

 

I bought Tales when it came out, but never got around to playing it!  Luckily I recently made sure I still had access to my TellTale account and can re-download it I think

[KittBash 282]

16 hours ago, Jay said:

I still have in my closet my original floppy discs of SOMI and MI2, and my original CD-Roms of SOMI, MI2, COMI, and EFMI!

 

I bought Tales when it came out, but never got around to playing it!  Luckily I recently made sure I still had access to my TellTale account and can re-download it I think

 

I've lost my originals of all but one of the games and of course it's EFMI lol I do however still have my original of Grim Fandango so at least one good one survived

[Jay 37,372]

Nice, I have that one on CD too

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

20 hours ago, Jay said:

I bought Tales when it came out, but never got around to playing it!

 

It's good! The first chapter starts off slowly, and the EMI-like art style isn't reassuring at first, but I remember it being a perfectly worthy entry to the series once it gets going.

 

And getting a courtroom drama segment into a point & click adventure is worth bonus points.

[KittBash 282]

I had tried Tales back when it came out... couldn't get into it. Though I should give it another go especially after enjoying the Back to the Future Game they made...

 

OK broke down and bought the first 3 games again on gog.com... currently waiting for them to install on my mac with Porting Kit so I can fire these gems back up again. 

[Jay 37,372]

Another interview! 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/in-rare-interview-monkey-island-designers-tell-ars-about-long-awaited-return/

[Romão 2,274]

30 minutes ago, Jay said:

Another interview! 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/in-rare-interview-monkey-island-designers-tell-ars-about-long-awaited-return/

 

Marian posted that very same interview a few days ago :

On 23/04/2022 at 3:30 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

A couple of new insights in this Ars Technica article.

 

 

[Jay 37,372]

Ah, my bad, I never had a chance to read that

 

I think it's interesting that the new game will have an easy mode;  It was kind of an interesting idea for MI2, since they were making games for kids in those days of course (well I mean for all ages, but hoping kids would be interested), and also the easy mode had some funny jokes that weren't in the normal mode

 

But it seems odd to go through the effort to write in an easy mode now, since I doubt many young people will be interested in this game in the slightest, and I assume almost its entire audience is middle aged people who played the original two games when they were young

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

9 hours ago, Jay said:

But it seems odd to go through the effort to write in an easy mode now, since I doubt many young people will be interested in this game in the slightest, and I assume almost its entire audience is middle aged people who played the original two games when they were young

 

I think their hope is that they're *not* merely appealing to retro gamers, especially when they mention how they try to keep advancing the concept, how they deliberately didn't choose a retro art style, and how they're introducing their kids to the classic games. I can't claim to know anything about the current gamer demographics, or what young ("serious") gamers do or do not play these days, but overall, adventure games don't seem to be doing so badly these days, and in retrospect, even reports of their demise 20 years ago were probably exaggerated, since they've always had their audience, even when it wasn't served by the big studios.

 

But if anything can revivify, at least to an extent, the genre on the mass market, it's probably a new Monkey Island that's reasonably modern in style and concept/interface and reasonably approachable for people who aren't die-hard fans that are used to cracking their heads for days over the most obscure puzzles. And certainly better for us than the alternative way to serving these players, which would be to make all puzzles easier. (And I'd rather have another monkey wrench puzzle than no tricky puzzles at all.  Besides, even Thimbleweed Park had an easy mode)

[Jay 37,372]

Nice thoughts! 

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

I just hope it really *is* successful with different audiences.  Adventure games have long been walking a fine line between appealing to hardcore gamers and trying not to be super niche by design, and Monkey Island with its ultra high expectations probably has a finer line than most.

[Jay 37,372]

Here's some new, fascinating insights by Ron Gilbert!

 

https://grumpygamer.com/when_i_made_another_monkeyisland

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

Another new article/interview, again with the same pictures and mostly the same info, but some new details:

https://www.ign.com/articles/return-to-monkey-island-ron-gilbert-dave-grossman-how-it-became-reality-monkey-island-3

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

I'm on board with a hint system. It's not just age that plays into accessibility - there's also cognitive factors. I have always had issues with adventure game puzzles and always resorted to the fantastic UHS website to get through them, including the MI games. It was much more rewarding than just using a walkthrough. It's not from a lack of intelligence, it's more the frustration that comes out of not knowing what to do next and having zero clues as to what's next. I get that some people get satisfaction out of that but I'm not really one of them, and it's little wonder adventure games are so niche now when that's how they operated. The big issue with easy modes that a lot of these games have is that rather than accommodating with a hint system in the vein of UHS (which still requires you to think) they just take out half the puzzles and call it a day. I'd love a good middle ground.

 

I thought that the MI2 easy mode just had some puzzles removed (or steps to puzzles) but was otherwise not significantly different in terms of the writing. I might be remembering wrong though. I know Curse's easy mode was like that.

[Muad'Dib 1,802]

I just discovered this arrangement and it's so freaking good

 

 

Ahhh yes can you feel that MI hype flowing through your veins? Can't wait for the new installment!

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

On the subject of hint systems, here's what Jonathan Ackley (one of the COMI project leads/directors/writers/designers/programmers) recently posted about adventure game design:

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

On the subject of appealing to different audiences, here's an Austrian newspaper article (in German) that argues that the mere idea of making a new Monkey Island adventure game is doomed to fail:

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000135503352/return-to-monkey-island-steht-vor-einem-unloesbaren-problem

 

Essentially, the author seems to claim that he's a big fan of the franchise (although he mostly describes that he *was* a big fan), but that new games cannot be the biggest hit of the year if they're just an excellent but conceptually minor update to a previous great game, because a completely different and more revolutionary game will come along and steal its thunder, and therefore everything else will be worthless, and also he hasn't had the motivation to finish an adventure game in years, and also people expect a retro game, so no matter if the new game will be retro or modern or something in between, it's already worthless.

 

I disagree, of course. I neither expect the new game to be specifically retro (I loved Thimbleweed Park, but the one thing that never completely won me over was the too rigid character design) nor to be anything revolutionary or decidedly "modern". As long as it succeeds in telling a new MI story and is comfortable to play, I'll be happy. I don't want 3D VR Guybrush graphics and I don't want Junkie XL to remix the Land/McConnell/Bajakian score, so why would I want the game play to be ultra modern just for the sake (or non-sake) of being ultra modern?

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

Another interview:
https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/19/ron-gilbert-and-dave-grossman-are-ready-to-return-to-monkey-island/

 

Gilbert and Grossman say it's different because they say different things in it, but to me it seemed like it's mostly the same as the other interviews in that each of them differs slightly from the others in one or two bits.

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

Website is up! Including an in-browser sales talk with Stan and a trailer that got me a little teary-eyed:

https://returntomonkeyisland.com/

 

[Jay 37,372]

Wow!

 

 

[Romão 2,274]

That art style really shines when seen in motion. I'm loving it

[Marian Schedenig 8,207]

And Stan's jacket pattern is still fixed to screen coordinates, just as it should be.

[Jay 37,372]

Don't have time to check - is this trailer any different?