The MONKEY ISLAND and other Adventure Games thread

[Jay 37,353]

Looks like the game is just about out now

I encourage anyone playing right away to share your thoughts, but put anything spoiler-y inside a spoiler-block.  Hopefully I'll be able to play soonish and engage in the conversation

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Yes, I trust we can each play at our own pace and read each other's comments here without running into spoilers. I imagine I can probably start playing on Wednesday.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Finished Tales yesterday (apparently almost exactly 11 years after I first played it), so here's a quick bunch of comments before I fire up Return.

 

(Warning: Minor spoilers for those unfortunate few who haven't played through the series yet)

 

As I mentioned before, this was my first time playing the SE-based talkie versions of the first two games - I'm not a fan of the new art style for the remakes, but luckily some clever people on the internet managed to integrate the voice assets (and a couple of the necessary mods) with the original SCUMM versions. I've probably replayed these more than any other game, so there's a certain been there done that factor these days (i.e. I must not play them too frequently anymore), but the voices freshened them up a lot. Can't help but make sure I listen to every item description by Dominic Armato in full. It also revivified Insult Swordfighting™. There's not much else to say other than these first games still hold up tremendously well (a bit more on that below). There were a few moments when I was temporarily stuck in the first game, but I think I could play through the second one in my sleep.

 

Curse was a bit of a surprise, because I'm pretty sure I played it almost as often as MI2 (the one I originally started with), but there were a couple of sequences I could barely remember, and a few times when I was stuck I let a fellow MI fan nudge me slightly into the right direction. The third game also holds up very well, the refashioned interface makes sense and is easy to use, the music is some of the best in the series (and the Barbery Coast is second only to Woodtick in iMuse goodness) - and the voice acting (the first in the series) is of course top notch. A few of the puzzles seem awfully random - it took me ages to remember that you just have to push Cutthroat Bill to get his jawbreaker, and I actually had to look up how to get rid of the cabana boy (using wet towels twice for two different puzzles in close proximity is rather counter-intuitive, and I still don't understand *why* that gets rid of him). But mostly they make sense, and you're guided reasonably well through most of the game. I'd welcome a modern remaster in the style of Double Fine's outstanding remasters of various Lucas Arts point & clicks - in fact, CMI is easily the best suited game in the series for that, because the style would look just perfect in a straight, smooth high res upgrade, the sampled music could be freshly recorded to replace the original assets, and everything else is fine as it is anyway.

 

Escape… oh boy. Ever the "bad" one in the series, and it turns out it's really mostly bad. Badly designed (technically) to begin with, badly designed (graphically) - and badly aged. The new GrimE engine worked very well in Grim Fandango, for which it was designed, because that game used it very well. The calaca-based character design actually looks good with the early 3D technology available at the time, and the location layouts mostly make it clear where you can (and should) go, and make navigation relatively comfortable. But EMI tries to use the same engine for an entirely different style that just falls flat on its face right from the first frame (not that the character design itself is anything to write home about), and the locations are nothing but a confusing mess. Half the time is spent just running around and trying to get Guybrush to go where you want him, or trying to figure out *if* he can go where you think he should go, or trying to figure out *where* you can go in the first place - the free roam pirate towns have so few clear boundaries that there's hardly anything to guide you (unlike the location layouts in Grim). And just to make things more confusing, the camera perspective changes all the time, sometimes putting Guybrush almost off screen. And when you're not struggling with the navigation, you're struggling with the puzzles - I actually got so annoyed so quickly that I started using a walkthrough quite early on, and still got frustrated a lot. Some of the puzzles I didn't understand even when I read the solution (not just how to figure them out, but why the solution is a solution in the first place). And to make sure that you're frustrated even if you manage to not be bothered by all that, the game is absolutely loaded with red herrings. Most of the dialogue isn't very funny either. That said, there are clear quality shifts. Much of the Lucre Island section is quite fun, and I actually played much of that without the walkthrough (until I got stuck because I didn't see that there's a can of glue hidden in the background on Stan's screen for no clear reason). But even there, many puzzles feel rather lightweight once you find the right items, and not substantial enough to support such a big location. The Monkey Kombat is nothing but frustrating, barely makes sense from a story POV, and takes forever to get through. There's some good new music, but the highlight (almost the only one) is again the voice acting - Dominic Armato, Earl Boen, and Nick Tate's Ozzie Mandrill are first rate (Charity James isn't bad, but seems quite miscast as Elaine). Armato's comments about Mandrill's taxidermy collection are some of the best in the entire series. But the game was never good, and its insistence to join the early 3D craze no matter what makes most of its design choices seem horribly misguided, from a modern POV and probably even back then.

 

With EMI being such an ordeal to get through, I was running short on time before the release of Return. In fact, I only finished EMI late last week, and spent the entire weekend and Monday and Tuesday evening going through Tales as quickly as possible - with*out* a walkthrough though. The difference to EMI is staggering - although ToMI is far more similar to that in design than to any other game in the series, it actually plays well and looks nice. The looks can be (largely) attributed to the roughly 10 years of 3D technology advancements since between the games, but the controls are mostly just a matter of getting things right (in ToMI) vs getting them horribly wrong (in EMI). They're still not ideal - on PC, walking around with just the mouse is horribly awkward (less so in the later chapters; I think the location design in those works in the mouse controls' favour - probably deliberately), but overall it's rarely more than a minor annoyance, and often fine enough. The quality of the chapters varies - the first one is a solid entry, the second one is good (with some awkward puzzles that had me running around aimlessly for ages). The third and fourth (mainly the first half) chapter are glorious and absolutely worthy entries for the series. The fifth and final chapter is ambitious (the story certainly leaves a mark - I'd only played the series once before, but had such strong (if vague) memories of the ferryman that I was convinced he must have been from the third game), though more frustrating again, and the showdown tries hard, but is mostly a failure as far as gameplay goes. I probably spent an hour just trying to figure out the right combination of moves in what is essentially and endless interactive movie sequence - and the last ten minutes of that getting either the timing right or clicking on just the right pixel (I still don't know *what* exactly I did differently when it finally worked out) for the final part of the puzzle. The story is very satisfying, and some characters (Morgan!) are truly memorable. The entire manatee segment is perhaps the most hilariously disgusting thing ever put in a major video game, and putting an extended court room sequence in a point and click game was a stroke of genius. First rate voice acting as usual, and it's good to have the original British Elaine back. Nice themes for the Narwhal and Morgan. Ultimately, the puzzles are a bit hit and miss - or rather, their execution is, because I loved most of them, including several that I found rather frustrating. It's not so much the puzzle design itself that sometimes goes astray as the hints and feedback the game gives you, which can sometimes be horribly misleading. The voodoo menu puzzle in the second half of chapter 4 is conceptually brilliant, but sometimes it was really hard to figure out what the game wanted me to do (some nudges from the above mentioned friend helped again, but nothing I would consider cheating).

 

Ultimately, what astounds me most (although I already knew it) is how well the original point & click design still works today, especially compared to later approaches. From the very first game (Maniac Mansion) to the MI2, the only real changes to the interface were the (essential) switch from joystick to mouse (which didn't alter the controls at all), a slight reduction in verbs, auto hover feedback (without having to specifically click on every item), and the ability to use a right click for an item's default action (mostly "look") - and a slight reduction in verbs, but I consider that only streamlining. And MI2 still plays perfectly today. CoMI works fine as well, and the 3 verb popup interface allows the cartoon graphics to use the full screen, but essentially it's still the same. EMI does almost everything wrong that it could, but even the much more comfortable ToMI isn't half as comfortable to play as the first three games in the series. The single click interface at times makes figuring out what your options are really confusing, and even with ToMI's much improved movement controls, you spend a lot of your time and energy just on running around - when in the earlier games, you simply had to click to get Guybrush going exactly where you wanted him to go. Perhaps the original SCUMM style interface was so much ahead of its time that it was close to being perfect almost right from the start, when later games (not just in the series) struggled to stay technologically relevant (a mostly irrelevant exercise, in my opinion) and struggled to develop a satisfying UX that worked with all the changes. Even if they had figured out the perfect interface for the 3D incarnations, I don't see how it could rival the original 2D style. It may not be modern, but it's just the perfect interface for these kinds of games. Even ToMI's frustrating showdown would have been much easier to handle with SCUMM controls.

 

Anyway, writing all this has kept me from Return for long enough. Allons-y!

[Jay 37,353]

Thanks for that, I really enjoyed reading it!

 

At this point I'll probably only replay 1 and 2 and then go straight into Return.  I wonder how many references Return will make to what happened in 3, 4, and 5?

[Romão 2,274]

That was a fantastic read, @Marian Schedenig, and I must I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with your assessment of the games.

 

I do think the SE for MI2 works really well as is, though

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

2 hours ago, Jay said:

At this point I'll probably only replay 1 and 2 and then go straight into Return.  I wonder how many references Return will make to what happened in 3, 4, and 5?

 

There's a scrapbook in the main menu that gets you up to date on the major events (I guess those most relevant to Return). I've played the prologue and explored the beginning of the first chapter for now, and it's obviously both a direct continuation of MI2 and the series as a whole.

 

It runs perfectly smoothly on Linux (via Proton… Gilbert has already announced a native version coming soon) and the Steam Deck - except that for some reasons, the mouse buttons don't work. I spent quite a while trying to figure out why until I gave up and started playing with a gamepad for now.

 

One thing I can say so far: The game oozes love out of every pixel. The graphic style works brilliantly I think. And I feel confirmed in what I say above and like eating my own words at the same time: It's absolutely the old, original SCUMM interface at the core, but what Gilbert, Fox, & Co built out of that old system on a technical/UX level is just as touching as the game itself. It plays really well with the gamepad, and I'm sure it's even better with a mouse.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

On 22/09/2022 at 1:01 AM, Marian Schedenig said:

It runs perfectly smoothly on Linux (via Proton… Gilbert has already announced a native version coming soon) and the Steam Deck - except that for some reasons, the mouse buttons don't work. I spent quite a while trying to figure out why until I gave up and started playing with a gamepad for now.

 

An update the day after I posted this fixed this issue by the way. It runs flawlessly with mouse control now.

[Jay 37,353]

I finally started my replay of Monkey Island 1

 

I'm playing the PC CD-Rom version, which I don't think I ever actually played through; It's got the same graphics I remember, just with newly drawn inventory item graphics and probably some other small improvements (and no floppy disc joke).  It's also got recorded music instead of imuse, which has pros and cons.  The new arrangements they recorded are really nice, no complaints there, even though its not the exact music I remember.  But they don't loop endlessly like the original imuse music did, instead the piece plays, then stops, there's a pause, then it starts up again.  That's OK though.

 

Man, I had forgotten that some screens just literally have no music or background ambient noise at all.  Walk into town and you just hear nothing except for certain interactions.  Kinda weird!  I wonder if the SE version of the game changes this?

 

I found it remarkable how easily I recalled what to do in the early game here.  I already got the buried treasure, followed the shopkeeper to the Swordmaster's house, talked to Meathook, and got inside the mansion.  Stopped for the night when I was getting sleepy but I'm sure I'll complete the Three Trials tonight; Hopefully I can remember what I gotta do to distract the bird to get the fish to give it to the troll!

Strangely, I thought there was a cutscene with LeChuck after you complete each trial, but after I talked to the pirates after I got the treasure, nothing triggered?

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

I'm around 3/4 of the way through Return and I have to say I'm very much enjoying myself. Got some thoughts here, nothing spoilery about the story but if you want to go in blind I'll put it in spoiler tags.

Spoiler

The care and love put into the game is clear from every frame and interaction, and it's great to be back in this world. I was curious to know if we would "feel" Gilbert's presence in the game, and to an extent, I think yes we do. There's a confidence to it that I think the series has lacked since Curse, due partly to the fact that it's very straightforward and simple in its scope and design. While references to prior adventures are there it's surprisingly accessible to a new audience and doesn't lean as heavily into the meta territory as its predecessors did. There's a playful irreverence towards its own convoluted past, but never oversteps into bitterness or resentment over what became of the franchise after Gilbert left, something that I'd feared might come across in the game.

 

Also the new hint system is excellent, and, as I predicted, modelled on the Universal Hint System (UHS) website which parses out the hints gradually without completely spoiling things. I've only used it a couple of times, and only in situations where I already knew what I needed to be doing but was missing some small element, and it works really well. It's an elegant solution to keep the game accessible to players who may not be familiar with adventure game playing and their infamous frustrations. Overall though I'd say so far the difficulty is almost a little too generous (I'm on the harder play style); there hasn't been much that has had be scratching my head for more than a few minutes, but maybe I'm just a veteran at these games and have hardwired my brain to expect the logic of the puzzles.

 

One small note is that, while the music is as fun as ever, I haven't really been grabbed by anything new or memorable. The lack of real instruments is a slight drawback as well.

 

Look forward to hearing others' thoughts.

[Romão 2,274]

I finished the game a couple of days and I'm still thinking about it. It deeply moved me, maybe for some reasons that are very close to my heart. Hope to discuss it a bit more when others have also finished it

 

6 hours ago, Jay said:

 

 

Man, I had forgotten that some screens just literally have no music or background ambient noise at all.  Walk into town and you just hear nothing except for certain interactions.  Kinda weird!  I wonder if the SE version of the game changes this?

 

 

The SE adds some subtle ambient noises and the sound of the ticking clock when you're in Low Street, but no music

 

6 hours ago, Jay said:

Strangely, I thought there was a cutscene with LeChuck after you complete each trial, but after I talked to the pirates after I got the treasure, nothing triggered?

 

 

I think you might be misremembering it with Monkey Island 2, where you get a Lechuck cutscene every time you find one of the 4 map pieces to Big Whoop

[Jay 37,353]

19 hours ago, Romão said:

The SE adds some subtle ambient noises and the sound of the ticking clock when you're in Low Street, but no music

 

That makes sense!

 

19 hours ago, Romão said:

I think you might be misremembering it with Monkey Island 2, where you get a Lechuck cutscene every time you find one of the 4 map pieces to Big Whoop

 

Ah yup, that must be it, nice call.

 

I finished the three trials last night - man, the sword fighting is fun!  It really holds up as a clever way to integrate something nice and piratey like that into a point-and-click adventure game.  What doesn't hold up though, is how long it takes; It's quite annoying to have an encounter with someone and use all the ones you don't have responses to yet on him, and he doesn't know them, or use any new ones on you, wasting the whole encounter.  Likewise, at one point one of them told me I was ready to take on the Sword Master, and so I went there, but I clearly wasn't!  It must be programmed to tell you that if you have all correct responses against a guy, instead of once you've learned everything.  I think I learned 3-4 more insults after going back out!

 

Other than that, everything has been so great in the arly game, I love the parts where you go behind the wall in the governor's mansion and you get all the on-screen sound effects, actual sound effects, and automatic command-making and inventory items, super fun and funny.

 

I ended the night after getting the line of credit out of the safe, should be off to the next island tonight!

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

23 hours ago, Jay said:

It's also got recorded music instead of imuse, which has pros and cons.  The new arrangements they recorded are really nice, no complaints there, even though its not the exact music I remember.  But they don't loop endlessly like the original imuse music did, instead the piece plays, then stops, there's a pause, then it starts up again.  That's OK though.

 

For Monkey 2, no iMuse is a deal breaker, but for the first game, it's probably ok.

 

I don't know how far into Return I am because I don't know how long it is, but I started chapter 4 yesterday. I hope David B. Fox (lead programmer) will post some info about the new music system on Twitter someday, because there are a lot of lovely seamless iMuse-style transitions in the game.

[Romão 2,274]

It's almost like the whole game is in iMuse. It's quite remarkable

[Jay 37,353]

Yea I definitely want to play Monkey Island 2 with the original music, for sure.

[Romão 2,274]

The iMuse transitions in Woodtick might not be perfect in the SE, but apart from that, I really do think they did a stellar job in rearranging the soundtrack for live instruments. I listen to version of the MI2 soundtrack very often

[Jay 37,353]

Yea that's kind of what I meant to say; while the rerecorded music sounds great, especially when listening as an album, when playing the game itself again, I want the full imuse experience. I can always play the album after I finish the game! 

[Jay 37,353]

Wow last night I finished Part 1... AND Part 2... and I think I'm most of the way through Part 3.

 

It's kind of interesting that Part 1 is so long; it's not just about the titular Three Trials, but you also then have to go assemble your crew before the Part is over.  That was fun; I had all these grog mugs in my inventory but couldn't remember why, then luckily Otto mentions dissolving the lock and it all came back to me.  The moment on the dock with Stan where he has second thoughts (briefly) was really funny

 

In Part 2, I love that you have to make a magic soup to navigate to Monkey Island, just like Part 1 took the piratey thing of sword-fighting and worked it into a point and click game, Part 2 does the same thing with sailing - it's so clever.

 

In Part 3, I got stuck for a while because I missed the freaking tiny group of pixels that represents the fort!  I am glad these types of things eventually went away in these kinds of games (from what I recall).  I made my way into LeChuck's ship and got as far as the ghostly tools before I was too sleepy to continue. 

 

Hopefully I can beat the game tonight and begin Return tomorrow; In retrospect, I think a lot of what really cemented this series as being one of my favorites of all time really comes from that game, as I am finding the first game to be surprisingly light on dialogue, and music, and plot developments.  It's still enjoyable and I am having a good time, but damn, there's also a ton of back-tracking, and time spent just getting from place to place that gets old pretty quick

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

Loved the double click that made guybrush run but still…

[Jay 37,353]

Yea even when he moves quickly, you just have to do so much of it, there's a lot of just sitting and waiting when playing the game.  And it's really amplified if you don't remember everything you have to do so you have to keep going back and forth a lot

[Romão 2,274]

They really streamlined the backtracking in the new game

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

23 minutes ago, Romão said:

They really streamlined the backtracking in the new game

 

Yes, you still have to run around a lot of you don't know what you're supposed to do, but the running around itself is pretty optimised now. Also no more pixel hunting, because you can highlight all available hotspots using the tab key.

[Jay 37,353]

Sounds like great improvements

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

 

Well, I'm done.

On 29/09/2022 at 1:29 AM, Docteur Qui said:

The lack of real instruments is a slight drawback as well.

 

What do you mean? The credits list the orchestra contractors and all the instrumentalists.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

A few thoughts after some reflection, spoilery and not-really-spoilery-but-maybe-could-be-considered-so:

Spoiler

I loved the game. It's not perfect, and curiously, the weak spot is the game itself, i.e. the puzzles. A couple of them I found quite frustrating, because I just couldn't figure out what the game wanted from me. Every game in the series had its share of those, of course (and my recent playthrough surprised be when I decided that the infamous monkey wrench debacle isn't necessarily the worst of them by far), but I know they've been playtesting a lot, and in some cases I wonder if my own problems shouldn't have been obvious from the tests. One I remember was when the Voodoo Lady wanted an item she described only vaguely, and I couldn't figure out that I had to go to the forest and cut off one of those flesh eating plants - for two reasons: 1) I was already done with the forest, there didn't seem to be anything else to do there, and I thought the various plants served only as landmarks for the mop tree map; and 2) from Guybrush's comment when clicking on the plant I always thought there's nothing else I could do with it other than look at it anyway. Re-thinking your own assumptions is of course a major part of playing adventure games, but the combination of these two points meant that I didn't even think of the plants or come across them again when running around. I ended up using the built-in hint book, and it told me pretty much directly to go and get one of the plants. It just seems to me like this would have been solved immediately by having some character give me some other vague hint to make me think of the plants in the first place. That was one of only two times I used the hint system - I forget what the other one was, but again it was just something where I didn't know what I needed, so again the hint was pretty direct. I stopped using the hints for fear of spoilers, although from what I've heard it's usually much more gradual. There were a few other instances where I was stuck and a friend, who played it in parallel, gave me the slight nudges I needed to get unstuck.

 

Aside from those bits where I was stuck, most of the puzzles seemed a bit straightforward and simple. Perhaps coming off ToMI makes me extra critical in this case, because that game really exceeds in making you figure out a multi-step puzzle bit by bit only to surprise you with two extra steps when you think you've finally figured it out. Still, I more than once felt like I'd clicked the "easy version, fewer puzzles" at the beginning of the game, and I really wonder how much easier the easy version can be. So in that regard, I guess RMI isn't as successful as the rather complex Thimbleweed Park, and reminds me a bit of the first half of Broken Age, which received much criticism for its too easy puzzles.

 

The thing is, the puzzles don't really matter that much. I've played the first three games in the series so often not because I forget the puzzles and have to figure them out again every time, but because I love entering the world of Monkey Island. And the world is absolutely back - you can see that the game was clearly a labour of love by everyone involved, and the characters are brought back with much care. The framing story does a brilliant job of setting the game up as both a direct continuation of MI2 and the series as a whole, and also of making it clear that this is the same world and the same characters, but from a perspective 20 years removed. It also makes sure that the ending, which isn't any easier to swallow than MI2's, is perfectly set up and sufficiently open for interpretation. The ending (which I'm not yet entirely sure about, though I think it's probably as good as it can be all things considered, and done well enough for me to accept it) also cleverly drops many hints that can be interpreted as either in-world "the story goes on" comments or actual teasers for one or more sequels - surely deliberately, to allow them to easily continue the series if they want without forcing them to commit to it no matter what.

 

I did laugh out loudly twice: First when Guybrush destroys the idyllic Disney mop tree (possibly the funniest moment in the entire series), and at the end when he discovers the secret and it turns out to be exactly the thing that Ron Gilbert wore on his sleeve (literally!) at PAX just a few weeks ago, without (I assume) anybody realising that it was a massive spoiler:

 

Voice acting is excellent as usual. Dominic Armato as Guybrush is always outstanding, even if he sounds older here. Appropriate of course, and in fact most of the other characters sound much more older than Guybrush. Jess Harnell is no Earl Boen, but still a fine LeChuck. The music perhaps isn't quite as gripping as in the first three games, mostly because it's less in your face (perhaps partly because games these days, like films, don't have to rely on music as much as they used to), but it brings back all the classic themes (and a few lovely new ones), mostly with live instruments, and the arrangements (often very different from the original ones, e.g. Stan's theme) are sublime. The iMuse-style blending of cues works very well - so well in fact that you often hardly even notice it.

 

The UX is easily the best I've seen in the genre, and a tangible improvement over the previous 2D entries (which themselves still hold up better than most alternative approaches ever have). I love the trivia card idea, which also adds replay value. The achievement system also adds a (small) extra dimension. Associating each item with just one primary and one (optional) secondary action and using the tooltips to show individual descriptions for each is a brilliant innovation that's easier to use than CoMI's 3-verb-coin and more fun at the same time. One thing that's missing is a mouse button shortcut for opening the inventory - there's a keyboard shortcut but none for the mouse, and I kept intuitively clicking the middle button to try and bring up the inventory even late in the game. It's such a simple thing that I wonder why it was (presumably) overlooked, but for the same reason I could imagine it just getting added with some minor update later on.

 

I'm looking forward to eventually re-playing the game with the writer's cut option. It seems like some achievements may even require that for getting 100%, though I don't expect the puzzles themselves will differ.

 

One thing I wonder: Is Guybrush officially a Disney princess now, or does going straight to being a queen not count?

 

For those who have played Thimbleweed Park and its spin-off Delores and are interested in the background details: David B. Fox and Ron Gilbert have responded to my Twitter comments and revealed that Delores was in fact made as a test for the new Dinky engine.

 

[Jay 37,353]

Well, I finished the first game last night.  Man, I hadn't realized when I quite the night before, I was only 10 minutes away from the end!  All I had left to do was use the tools on the crate and use the root beer on LeChuck, with some walking and dialogue in between, and that was it!  Ha!

 

I love that the fourth part is called "Last Part", and boy, is it full of great animations!  LeChuck winding up for his punches; Him, Guybrush, and Stan flying out over the island; Guybrush spraying the ghosts and the way they disappear, etc.  The last part of the game may be short but it's super fun.  It's kind of funny in retrospect how long the first Part is; It probably takes about as long as the whole rest of the game combined! 

 

I was kind of surprised by how short this whole game actually is;  Obviously, part of that is due to me having played it through multiple times before and remembering how to solve a lot of the puzzles.  But it also just isn't super long, really - I am pretty sure I recall LeChuck's Revenge being much longer.  I actually had been planning to re-play all of LucasArts adventure games sometime soon, in order; The announcement of Return to MI changed my plans to jumping right into those 2 games so I can play that new one, but I do still plan on replaying the rest and I wonder how I'll feel about the lengths of them then.

 

Another thing I found funny on this playthrough that I don't think I ever noticed before is how randomly and quickly Guybrush and Elaine fall in love; In the early game, Guybrush has an instant infatuation with her, which is cute and funny.  And in the end game, there isn't necessarily a strong indication that they are going to be any kind of grand couple or anything - I loved that she was completely capable of saving herself from LeChuck, and Guybrush actually interfered with that.  But in the middle game, when they meet on the dock, the dialogue is such that they've both instantly fallen madly in love with each other, which is kind of at odds with everything else.  I imagine they were trying to play on some old tropes or something, but it just seemed a bit odd to me now.

 

I loved how many dialogue options are presented, and how very often when you pick one, you never get a chance to say the others, making you want to replay to see a widely different set of dialogue the second time around.

 

Overall I'd say this game is great, with absolutely terrific music, character designs, dialogue, humor, animation, backgrounds, and just atmosphere and playing experience.  The only cons are more cons from a modern perspective that probably weren't seen as much of an issue at the time; There isn't enough music, there's some annoying pixel-hunting parts, and there's too much backtracking that takes too long.  I'm sure when I was an 11 year old experiencing it for the first time and was only getting a new game occasionally, and not sitting on a backlog of a hundred unplayed games like I am not none of those things mattered one bit.  (On a side how: How is this game THIRTY TWO YEARS OLD?  Damn!)

 

Oh yea: Oh this playthrough I destroyed my ship with my crew on it with the catapult, and you see the crew at the end in the cannibal's hut; Do you get a different scene there if you didn't destroy the boat? I seem to remember that being the case.

 

I was also reminded via the end credits that Orson Scott Card wrote the sword fighting insults; How did that come to happen again?

 

I was also amused that after the end credits finished, the screen repeatedly blinked TURN YOUR COMPUTER OFF AND GO TO SLEEP, which was so apt for me because it was very late and I did need to go to sleep!

 

On to game 2!

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

The announcement of Return to MI changed my plans to jumping right into those 2 games so I can play that new one, but I do still plan on replaying the rest and I wonder how I'll feel about the lengths of them then.

 

Looking forward to what you'll be thinking about that. EMI feels horribly long perhaps only because most of it isn't really fun to play. ToMI really *is* long - 5 separate chapters, each of which was much longer than I was expecting.

 

I finished Return in some 17 odd hours, and about one of them was the game just running in the background while I was distracted by work stuff, and probably another hour or so just in the menu trying to get mouse buttons working on the first day (I'm getting the number from Steam, which just measures how long the game executable has been running).

 

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

Another thing I found funny on this playthrough that I don't think I ever noticed before is how randomly and quickly Guybrush and Elaine fall in love; In the early game, Guybrush has an instant infatuation with her, which is cute and funny.  And in the end game, there isn't necessarily a strong indication that they are going to be any kind of grand couple or anything - I loved that she was completely capable of saving herself from LeChuck, and Guybrush actually interfered with that.  But in the middle game, when they meet on the dock, the dialogue is such that they've both instantly fallen madly in love with each other, which is kind of at odds with everything else.  I imagine they were trying to play on some old tropes or something, but it just seemed a bit odd to me now.

 

I figure it's a mix of just doing what every game was doing at the time plus consciously using tropes and undermining them. Note also how the writers pretty much commit do nothing with Guybrush and Elaine being somewhat estranged in the second game, and her hardly playing a role (other than that of the MacGuffin) in Curse. They probably figured they couldn't draw that out any longer after that and had them marry in Escape, which thankfully made her a more active and interesting character in the later games.

 

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

There isn't enough music,

 

A memory issue, I suspect? MI2 is pretty much wall to wall scored. The new one is as well, but much of the score is more subtle, which can feel a little disappointing (though the more delicate variations on the classic themes are wonderful). But (as I mentioned in my spoiler block above), modern games are a bit like modern films in that they don't *need* constant music as much as those from the last century did.

 

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

Oh yea: Oh this playthrough I destroyed my ship with my crew on it with the catapult, and you see the crew at the end in the cannibal's hut; Do you get a different scene there if you didn't destroy the boat? I seem to remember that being the case.

 

There's a slightly different cutscene, though I never remember what exactly it shows, because I also usually destroy the ship. Sadly it makes no difference for Escape…

 

45 minutes ago, Jay said:

I was also reminded via the end credits that Orson Scott Card wrote the sword fighting insults; How did that come to happen again?

 

I don't know about that specifically, but I recently read The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games (highly recommended!), which features interviews with all the major contributors to the series (Gilbert, Grossman, Fox, Schafer). Remember that until sometime in the 90s, Lucasfilm Games was situated on Skywalker Ranch - they had everyday interactions with the other departments, could visit the other buildings, ate in the same hall (though not on the same table) as Lucas & Co, and frequently met whatever celebrities visited the Ranch. It really must have been an amazing time to work their, creatively, especially for a bunch of people in their (mostly) mid 20s just starting out in the game development world. They all mention that they had an unrivalled amount of creative freedom, and that they didn't realise at the time how special that was. For most of them it was the best time in their professional career.

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

On 1/10/2022 at 10:15 AM, Marian Schedenig said:

What do you mean? The credits list the orchestra contractors and all the instrumentalists.

After a few more hours of playing with a decent sound system I did notice a lot more of the recorded instruments. I think my main disappointment is that the main title theme is largely MIDI, and feels a little flat. I recall the Monkey 1 and 2 special editions had very lush recordings of the theme.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Here's a mostly spoiler free* follow up interview with Armato:

*) mostly in that it's accompanied by gameplay footage from somewhere a bit into chapter 1, and talks about the prologue.

 

Here's a relevant Ron Gilbert tweet:

 

And here's an excellent extended comment over at the Mojo forums on the ending and overall meaning of it all by @Romão.

[Romão 2,274]

4 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

And here's an excellent extended comment over at the Mojo forums on the ending and overall meaning of it all by @Romão.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read that thing and for your comments. I must say I'm also in almost 100% agreement with you in your assessment of the game.

 

I did find it fairly easy (I don't think I was ever stuck for more that 20 minutes or so), but as the game is still quite long, it still took me 15 hours to finish it. I do wonder how long it would take me to get through the old games if I were playing them for the first time nowadays. After years of playing point and click adventure games, one does become accustomed and attuned to the peculiar logic behind certain puzzles.

 

ROTM might not be the best Monkey Island game when judged solely as a game per se, but thematically, it's probably the best and most consistent of the bunch. Its ideas and overall story (not necessarily its "plot") pervade the whole fabric of the game

 

As for the music, it's like every island or large location is a big-scale Woodtick suite all on its own. You don't really get, for the most part, instantly recognizable "room specific" themes, but rather, each room has music that is a variation on the musical identity of the larger location, so nearly all the locations within an island, for example, will be a part of a larger musical whole. It does give each island a very distinctive and strong musical identity, albeit at the expense of greater variation of color and mood in the soundtrack.

 

In that sense, I reckon the listening experience of the soundtrack might be best served by long suites, combining all the different "room" variations of each location into a single track (something like Melee Island Suite, Monkey Island Suite, etc.), rather that having a bunch 2 minute tracks playing in sequence.

[Jay 37,353]

On 01/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

Looking forward to what you'll be thinking about that. EMI feels horribly long perhaps only because most of it isn't really fun to play. ToMI really *is* long - 5 separate chapters, each of which was much longer than I was expecting.

 

I think you misunderstood me - I had been planning on playing through Lucasfilm Games / LucasArts series of adventure games so (Maniac Mansion ->Zak McKracken -> Last Crusade -> SOMI -> Loom -> SOMI 2 -> Fate of Atlantis -> DOTT -> Sam & Max -> Full Throttle -> The Dig -> COMI -> Grim Fandango.... and I guess EFMI too).  Tales is not a LucasArts game.

 

 

On 01/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

I figure it's a mix of just doing what every game was doing at the time plus consciously using tropes and undermining them. Note also how the writers pretty much commit do nothing with Guybrush and Elaine being somewhat estranged in the second game, and her hardly playing a role (other than that of the MacGuffin) in Curse. They probably figured they couldn't draw that out any longer after that and had them marry in Escape, which thankfully made her a more active and interesting character in the later games.

 

Yea, the dialogue in that cutscene where they do fall in love with each other in pretty on the nose funny

 

On 01/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

A memory issue, I suspect? MI2 is pretty much wall to wall scored. The new one is as well, but much of the score is more subtle, which can feel a little disappointing (though the more delicate variations on the classic themes are wonderful). But (as I mentioned in my spoiler block above), modern games are a bit like modern films in that they don't *need* constant music as much as those from the last century did.

 

I think we just don't remember how little score these games actually had back in the day.  As an 10-11 year old playing these early adventure games, I was so amazed by everything the game was throwing at me, I literally wasn't concerned or even noticing that some screens had no music, the entire experience was just magical.  Now replaying as a adult used to where the genre ended up, the silent screens stood out more.

 

On 01/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

There's a slightly different cutscene, though I never remember what exactly it shows, because I also usually destroy the ship.

 

I seem to vaguely recall a cutscene of the crew still sunbathing on the ship, wondering where you are or something.  Maybe I'll hunt it down on youtube

 

 

On 01/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

I don't know about that specifically, but I recently read The Art of Point-and-Click Adventure Games (highly recommended!), which features interviews with all the major contributors to the series (Gilbert, Grossman, Fox, Schafer). Remember that until sometime in the 90s, Lucasfilm Games was situated on Skywalker Ranch - they had everyday interactions with the other departments, could visit the other buildings, ate in the same hall (though not on the same table) as Lucas & Co, and frequently met whatever celebrities visited the Ranch. It really must have been an amazing time to work their, creatively, especially for a bunch of people in their (mostly) mid 20s just starting out in the game development world. They all mention that they had an unrivalled amount of creative freedom, and that they didn't realise at the time how special that was. For most of them it was the best time in their professional career.

 

What a fantastic convergence of circumstances for everyone involved.  There will never be anything like that again

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

2 hours ago, Jay said:

I think you misunderstood me - I had been planning on playing through Lucasfilm Games / LucasArts series of adventure games so (Maniac Mansion ->Zak McKracken -> Last Crusade -> SOMI -> Loom -> SOMI 2 -> Fate of Atlantis -> DOTT -> Sam & Max -> Full Throttle -> The Dig -> COMI -> Grim Fandango.... and I guess EFMI too).  Tales is not a LucasArts game.

 

Well, not technically. It is a Monkey Island game though - more properly than EMI.

 

I really have to play through Zak McKracken someday soon. It's the only one of the classic SCUMM games I never finished, plus David B. Fox is a really cool guy on Twitter. I think I've never actually played Loom at all, and I never got too far into The Dig or Sam & Max. The latter one especially is very tempting, but whenever I tried it I was so frustrated by the dialogue system that I had to stop.

 

The Dig has a truly awful production history. I think it used up at least three entire teams before it finally got made (and I believe most of the key people on those teams had left the company by the time it was released).

 

In hindsight, it probably makes more sense to play the first two Monkeys *after* Return. I thought I was done with them for a while after my recent playthrough, but now that I've experienced Return, I figure I'll have to re-play them again when I revisit Return (then with the writer's cut option).

 

2 hours ago, Jay said:

I think we just don't remember how little score these games actually had back in the day.  As an 10-11 year old playing these early adventure games, I was so amazed by everything the game was throwing at me, I literally wasn't concerned or even noticing that some screens had no music, the entire experience was just magical.  Now replaying as a adult used to where the genre ended up, the silent screens stood out more.

 

Back in the 90s, most games had either no music at all (often because of memory issues, or because all the sound channels were used up by the SFX), or wall to wall music. But if there was a lot of music, most of it was made up of rather short loops, again for memory issues.

 

I think silence in a "properly" scored game is something that didn't become a thing until the 2000s at the earliest, when games became more cinematic and the soundscapes more detailed.

 

2 hours ago, Jay said:

I seem to vaguely recall a cutscene of the crew still sunbathing on the ship, wondering where you are or something.  Maybe I'll hunt it down on youtube

 

That does sound familiar.

 

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

The dig is very nice and sam & max is fun… but the puzzles are crazy

[Romão 2,274]

Yeah, Sam & Max has its fair share of Moon Logic. It's a great game, but it's just unforgiving at times

[Jay 37,353]

I started playing Monkey Island 2 last night!

 

Boy, this game is GORGEOUS!  The backgrounds are just exquisite - that was my biggest takeaway out of everything so far.  I love the art style.  The character designs are also quite interesting; They've really changed Guybrush a lot from how he looked in the first game, though one piece of dialogue did suggest that we pick things up "years" later, so I guess that's more understandable; I also really like all the early jokes about his beard   Strangely, the men of low moral fiber don't look all that different, nor did Elaine from what I remember of that opening bit.

 

There's also so much great animation so far.  from little things like Guybrush pointing his thumb backwards when asking someone about this Largo guy, to medium things like the way his eyes open wide the first time he climbs out of The Bloody Lip's kitchen window, to bigger things like the way the pirate's eyes and jaw open wide when he realizes his peg leg is gone, it's all really great.

 

I played all of Part 1 last night, and even started hopping around islands a bit in Part 2 before I was getting too sleepy to continue.  Another big noticeable improvement is EVERYTHING is faster now.  Guybrush just walks around the screen faster, and on the big island views, he gets from place to place faster, so none of that waiting around that was an issue in the first game is here at all; Even when I was doing some backtracking, I didn't mind it at all because it took so much less time - and also, there's great music running the entire time that makes everything feel like its moving along, too!

 

And man, is the music great!  I love how much effort they put into Woodtick, where each different store or place you go into weaves different melodies in or out of the same basic rhythm, and the way Largo's theme weaves in when he appears is great too.  Overall, I don't think the iMuse experience is quite as smooth and perfect as my childhood brain remembered, though; In my mind it was this imperceptible addition or subtraction of different instrument lines as things changed, but in reality, it's often just that they let the current music get to the end of a certain bar before switching to another midi to made the transition less jarring; Sometimes it's really smooth and sometimes you're really just switching to an entirely different composition.  I can only imagine that the SE game with recorded music must just fade things down quickly to switch to another track?

 

Really in every way I can think of, this is an improvement over the first game.  There's more music, more dialogue, more characters, more comedy, more animation, more detailed backgrounds..... it's all really great!

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

28 minutes ago, Jay said:

There's also so much great animation so far.  from little things like Guybrush pointing his thumb backwards when asking someone about this Largo guy, to medium things like the way his eyes open wide the first time he climbs out of The Bloody Lip's kitchen window, to bigger things like the way the pirate's eyes and jaw open wide when he realizes his peg leg is gone, it's all really great.

 

That's always been one of my favourite things about MI2 and Fate of Atlantis: How they really beefed up the dialogue scenes with mostly just a few predefined standard animations. It's very economic and effectively turns the sprites into real characters.

 

28 minutes ago, Jay said:

And man, is the music great!  I love how much effort they put into Woodtick, where each different store or place you go into weaves different melodies in or out of the same basic rhythm, and the way Largo's theme weaves in when he appears is great too.  Overall, I don't think the iMuse experience is quite as smooth and perfect as my childhood brain remembered, though; In my mind it was this imperceptible addition or subtraction of different instrument lines as things changed, but in reality, it's often just that they let the current music get to the end of a certain bar before switching to another midi to made the transition less jarring; Sometimes it's really smooth and sometimes you're really just switching to an entirely different composition.

 

Maybe it also defends on the chosen MIDI driver? I do think there's some blending of individual MIDI channels going on, or at least I always thought some of the transitions sounded a bit messy when stuck halfway in. In any case, I'm with Dominic Armato in that the Woodtick suite with all the variations is probably my favourite bit of music from the entire series.

[Jay 37,353]

I'm sure it's no better or worse than it was at the time, it's just that my nostagic memory of playing it when I was 12 or whatever is that the transitions were always smooth and perfect, but they likely never always were

 

Another thing to point out is that as gorgeous as the background art is, it's like everything else from the era designed to be seen on a CRT monitor, so on our modern high def flatscreen displays the individual pixels are all really apparent.   I also feel like I should play in a window instead of fullscreen maybe...

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

1 minute ago, Jay said:

Another thing to point out is that as gorgeous as the background art is, it's like everything else from the era designed to be seen on a CRT monitor, so on our modern high def flatscreen displays the individual pixels are all really apparent.   I also feel like I should play in a window instead of fullscreen maybe...

 

It looked fine for me scaled to fullscreen with very slight smoothing. Better than CoMI I'd say, because MI2 has always been very pixelated with lots of busy dithering in the backgrounds, while CoMI's clean line cartoon style I think could look amazing with a high res remaster. MI2's sprites I can't imagine in high res, but I think the painted backgrounds should look amazing with less pixelation.

[Jay 37,353]

It made me wish that for the SE version they made new high def art that matched the look of the original game as close a possible, instead of drastically changing the art design

[Jay 37,353]

Finished Part 2 last night.  Phew!  There's a lot to do there!  I wonder if just Part 2 of this game is as long as the entirety of the first game?

 

What I really liked about it was that it wasn't siloed off like the Monkey 1 parts were; Scabb Island isn't someplace you start at then move on from, unable to go back; it's fully integrated into Part 2, and you realize some of the stuff you can find there in Part 1 doesn't pay off until Part 2.

 

I liked having this goal of finding 4 map pieces, because whenever you get stuck along one clue line, you can work towards any of the others.  It's kind of like the Three Trials in the first game, but better.  The reunion between Guybrush and Elaine was funny, especially when the babytalk came back in, and the great theme from the first game!  I like how it quickly yadda-yaddas over the reasons for them not being together and the years that have passed between games (which is kind of funny because the whole thing about needing an ID to get the drinks from the bar implies Guybrush is only 19 in this game!?)

 

I also have enjoyed in this game how much groundwork they are already laying for the ending, which I'm sure I didn't pick up on as a kid playing for the first time.  The voodoo lady all but tells you what's really going on, when you first step on the broken oar and have the vision on your parents they are the modern day looking people from the end of the game, the underground tunnels to get to the cottage with the map piece are right from the end of the game, etc.  Cool stuff.

 

It's funny that I complained about having to do some backtracking in the first game and how annoying it was; In this Part of this game, alllll you do is constantly go back and forth among the same places as you keep triggering new possibilities at those locations. And yet, it was never once annoying or felt like the game was wasting my time, because the travel is so much faster (hopping islands is a breeze!) and the music is great the whole time.

 

I love how many more characters this game has than the first, everywhere you go there is someone to talk do, the whole world really feels more alive.  Also I liked that most of the times, you get to run through all the dialogue options with people, instead of many of them going away forever after picking one option.

Really great game so far!

[Jay 37,353]

Haha, I finished the game last night!  Boy is Part 3 really short, and Part 4 is really not that long either.  I'm pretty sure Part 2 is as long as Parts 1, 3, and 4 put together!

 

LeChuck's Fortress in part 3 was pretty fun, because the aesthetic is so different from anything in either game.  It almost reminded me of something from like an Indiana Jones adventure game or something.  It's kind of a shame you don't really have to do much there, and quickly leave it. The explosion you cause to leave was pretty cool looking.  IS WALLY OK!?

 

Part 4 is so crazy!  It's like the game was in one gear up into this point, everything was building towards finding Dinky Island and the Big Whoop treasure there... and then once you get there, Gilbert wasn't interested in providing any kind of routine finale and ending, and really thought outside the box about what to do next.  it's so funny that after all the roaming around you do to find the X where Big Whoop is, you return to the game's opening scene (loved the Indiana Jones swing just before that), and then once you get underground, all bets are off.  The treasure chest containing an E-ticket, all the non-Pirate-y, modern-day stuff about everything underground, and then everything that happens once you make the voodoo doll... man.

 

I remember this ending utterly blowing me away as a kid.  Especially because its a double-whammy; First the reveal that everything was really just two kids playing pretend... and then the bonus last second reveal via LeChuck's look at the camera that it's.... not!?

 

I remember being so excited to see where the next game would go, my mind reeled with the possibilities!  Was it modern day? Was it pirate times?  Is it somehow both? What does it all mean?

 

I eventually got Curse and liked it for what it was, but I think even back then I was aware that this guy named Ron Gilbert had been in charge of the first two games, and wasn't involved with the third.

I'm very excited now to finally see his continuation, fully knowing that the game we are getting now is in no way the game we would have gotten in the mid 90s if he never left Lucasfilm.

 

I dunno if I'll get it this weekend or not, and I gotta decide what platform to get it on too!

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Whoa, this Twitter comment just made me realise something that's probably incredibly obvious, but hadn't occurred to me yet:

 

(RtMI spoiler):

Spoiler

In Return to Monkey Island, the final puzzle to reach the Secret is this giant stone wheel thingy, reminiscent of the stone dials in Fate of Atlantis, but of course also very much reminiscent of the Dial-a-Pirate^TM wheel. That much was clear to me the moment I saw it, and I thought it was a nice throwback. But it really goes much deeper in that classic Gilbert-Lynchian way: Dial-a-Pirate^TM was very much a means to ensure that the player wasn't a (software) pirate. And the Secret that's protected by this giant Dial-a-Pirate^TM wheel is that Guybrush… isn't a pirate!

 

[karelm 2,913]

On 06/10/2022 at 2:17 PM, Jay said:

Haha, I finished the game last night!  Boy is Part 3 really short, and Part 4 is really not that long either.  I'm pretty sure Part 2 is as long as Parts 1, 3, and 4 put together!

 

LeChuck's Fortress in part 3 was pretty fun, because the aesthetic is so different from anything in either game.  It almost reminded me of something from like an Indiana Jones adventure game or something.  It's kind of a shame you don't really have to do much there, and quickly leave it. The explosion you cause to leave was pretty cool looking.  IS WALLY OK!?

 

Part 4 is so crazy!  It's like the game was in one gear up into this point, everything was building towards finding Dinky Island and the Big Whoop treasure there... and then once you get there, Gilbert wasn't interested in providing any kind of routine finale and ending, and really thought outside the box about what to do next.  it's so funny that after all the roaming around you do to find the X where Big Whoop is, you return to the game's opening scene (loved the Indiana Jones swing just before that), and then once you get underground, all bets are off.  The treasure chest containing an E-ticket, all the non-Pirate-y, modern-day stuff about everything underground, and then everything that happens once you make the voodoo doll... man.

 

I remember this ending utterly blowing me away as a kid.  Especially because its a double-whammy; First the reveal that everything was really just two kids playing pretend... and then the bonus last second reveal via LeChuck's look at the camera that it's.... not!?

 

I remember being so excited to see where the next game would go, my mind reeled with the possibilities!  Was it modern day? Was it pirate times?  Is it somehow both? What does it all mean?

 

I eventually got Curse and liked it for what it was, but I think even back then I was aware that this guy named Ron Gilbert had been in charge of the first two games, and wasn't involved with the third.

I'm very excited now to finally see his continuation, fully knowing that the game we are getting now is in no way the game we would have gotten in the mid 90s if he never left Lucasfilm.

 

I dunno if I'll get it this weekend or not, and I gotta decide what platform to get it on too!

Jay, did you play Return yet?  If so, thoughts?

[Jay 37,353]

Not yet!

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Spoilerful (!) interview with Dave Grossman:

 

[Romão 2,274]

Austin Wintory interviews Ron Gilbert and David Grossman

 

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

This is nice, although after having seend a couple of other Gilbert and Grossman interviews (separately) recently, it's a bit disappointingly vanilla. Wintory is in full You Gotta Hear This! mode, only instead of being the guy with the background knowledge gushing to Troy Baker about his favourite music and giving lots of background context, this time he's the fanboy doing pretty much the same to the creators of the thing he's gushing about. His enthusiasm is admirable, and he uses it to set up all the right standard questions about the series, it's just that almost all of it has already been said recently elsewhere, and he doesn't really take advantage of having both Gilbert and Grossman on at the same time. I half expected him to delve deeper into the interactive music aspect, but perhaps he was discouraged by Gilbert emphasising that he knows nothing about music at all. Maybe David B. Fox would have been a better candidate for that question. Wintory does mention that he recently interviewed McConnell, I'll definitely have to find that one.

[karelm 2,913]

2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

This is nice, although after having seend a couple of other Gilbert and Grossman interviews (separately) recently, it's a bit disappointingly vanilla. Wintory is in full You Gotta Hear This! mode, only instead of being the guy with the background knowledge gushing to Troy Baker about his favourite music and giving lots of background context, this time he's the fanboy doing pretty much the same to the creators of the thing he's gushing about. His enthusiasm is admirable, and he uses it to set up all the right standard questions about the series, it's just that almost all of it has already been said recently elsewhere, and he doesn't really take advantage of having both Gilbert and Grossman on at the same time. I half expected him to delve deeper into the interactive music aspect, but perhaps he was discouraged by Gilbert emphasising that he knows nothing about music at all. Maybe David B. Fox would have been a better candidate for that question. Wintory does mention that he recently interviewed McConnell, I'll definitely have to find that one.

 

Yes, I found it very enjoyable.  I love how Austin isn't just a game professional but a huge fan too!

 

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

PC Game of the Year

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

[Jay 37,353]

I still haven't had a chance to start playing it