Return to Monkey Island (2022) - Ron Gilbert onboard!

[gone fishin]

I dunno, it’s kind of pathetic that Ron Gilbert goes in a great big baby huff because the audience that’s buying the game doesn’t like the art style?
 

Aaahh, well I guess taking Microsoft’s money means he doesn’t have to actually do what his audience would want, unlike the days when that same audience essentially crowdfunded all of his games….Maybe the creative freedom given by being bought out by Microsoft is the ability to have really crappy graphic design? Who would have thought.

[Captain Kelsten]

On 01/07/2022 at 21:48, Keyboard Koala said:

 

This guy is going to save us all

 

Be interesting to see if he will actually make his old school version.

Having watched that vs the actual trailer I have to say no. I watched the pixel one first and couldn’t really distinguish some key things, such as the skeleton was playing a violin, the skeleton knocked Murray into the water etc. until I’d watched the new version and gone back to watch the pixel on again. the new version is lovely and crisp and you can see everything. The pixel one, whilst cool, is very difficult to distinguish imo. 

[Captain Kelsten]

2 minutes ago, gone fishin said:

I dunno, it’s kind of pathetic that Ron Gilbert goes in a great big baby huff because the audience that’s buying the game doesn’t like the art style?
 

Aaahh, well I guess taking Microsoft’s money means he doesn’t have to actually do what his audience would want, unlike the days when that same audience essentially crowdfunded all of his games….

If I’m the creator of a beloved franchise and I’m finally, finally bringing it back on my own terms then hell no am I going to pander to what people “want”. I’m going to make what I want. Good on him. 

[gone fishin]

18 minutes ago, Doctor Shark said:

If I’m the creator of a beloved franchise and I’m finally, finally bringing it back on my own terms then hell no am I going to pander to what people “want”. I’m going to make what I want. Good on him. 

[Captain Kelsten]

That was made by people who didn’t give a shit about sonic and marketing people. Big difference. 

[Festoon]

Holy shit the complaining about the art style. Big, entitled, babies.

[thesnwmn]

40 minutes ago, Doctor Shark said:

If I’m the creator of a beloved franchise and I’m finally, finally bringing it back on my own terms then hell no am I going to pander to what people “want”. I’m going to make what I want. Good on him. 

 

Of course he should make exactly what he wants given this opportunity. But to expect people not to comment is naive.

 

Again the extreme trolls are horrid though

[Captain Kelsten]

Oh totally, he’s definitely gone for a distinctive and therefore divisive style and yes, there are going to be people who like or loathe it. Monkey Island hasn’t exactly been consistent in style across the numerous games, though, so it’s not like it’s a massive departure. We had two pixel art games, one that looked like a Don Bluth animation, a horrible looking early 3D one, an ugly telltale one, some remakes where some strange stylistic liberties were taken and now this. 

[schmojo]

Oh god. One of them has broken the perimeter.

[Stevie]

24 minutes ago, Festoon said:

Holy shit the complaining about the art style. Big, entitled, babies.

 

I dont like the art style, but I'll still be buying it because its not THAT bad. I might warm up to it after having played it. 

 

That said, its perfectly acceptable to have an opinion on a thing such as art style. I mean, the style looks very...flat? Le Chuck looks like something out of Plant Vs Zombies. Is he a "monster" or is he the ghost of a dead (human) pirate?  Of course, people getting nasty about it can sit down and shut up. I had look at some screenshots from his message board/blog, and it was so extreme it almost looked like a coordinated trolling campaign. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Re: pixel art

 

The Adventures of the Black Hawk is an upcoming indie game, and it does the classic LucasArts style. It looks lovely, and I'll be getting that as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

France, 1789. Revolution is in the air in the Burgundy region, where the figure of The Black Hawk appears, a masked man who threatens the rich, stealing their excessive belongings and returning to the people what is theirs. Surprisingly, the Black Hawk turns out to be Jean-Pierre de Saint Cove, a nobleman who uses his status to carry out his own reckoning. During one of his thefts, the Black Hawk’s face is cut, leaving Jean-Pierre unable to show himself without causing great suspicion. Will our protagonist be able to complete his mission without being discovered?

 

[Cyhwuhx]

2 hours ago, gone fishin said:

I dunno, it’s kind of pathetic that Ron Gilbert goes in a great big baby huff because the audience that’s buying the game doesn’t like the art style?
 

Aaahh, well I guess taking Microsoft’s money means he doesn’t have to actually do what his audience would want, unlike the days when that same audience essentially crowdfunded all of his games….Maybe the creative freedom given by being bought out by Microsoft is the ability to have really crappy graphic design? Who would have thought.

 

[Wiper]

1 hour ago, Cyhwuhx said:

 

No, you don't understand, by not just welcoming the coordinated harassment campaign filling up the comments section on his personal blog, it is clearly Ron who is the great big baby, and not the tsunami of people who decided that if they didn't get what they want they were going to they were going to go and harangue him en masse.

 

For anyone who didn't see the shit that was filling up the comments, it wasn't discussion like we were seeing here. It was stuff like this: 

 

 

Spoiler

 

(a "curious" thing to note is the repeated mentioning not only of the art style, but also of "leftist bs", which of course the trailer(?) was full of (???). So, you know, no hints that this was a pile-on from the worst dregs of the internet here!)

[Benny]

It seems apparently including non white people in your game is "leftist bs" now. These people almost certainly didn't play the original games if that gets their goat. I would argue most of these posts by "fans" actually have no idea about the games, but if there is a pile on to be had in the internet, the sewer dwellers will be drawn to it like flies to shite.

[Lying Cat]

I quite like the art on this one, but something about it feels a little strange in motion; the closest I can get to putting my finger on it is that the torsos sort of glide when they're walking, as though they're the fixed points and the legs are arms are just going through the motions. But when the characters aren't walking it looks pretty great as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely nothing to get angry or upset about at all.

Which sort of makes the response to Ron Gilbert feel a touch manufactured. Some of the stuff that got written on his blog was utterly hateful; this isn't an artist being unable to take criticism of his work, this is a guy who just didn't want to deal with people being straight up nasty. And I don't actually get it. Especially all the "leftist" stuff - Monkey Island has always had people of colour and while they did sometimes fall into stereotypes (the Voodoo Lady on Melee Island for instance), there was always a sense of winking at the camera and playing into it while the character herself seemed half bored with the charade she was putting on.

But I can't for the life of me puzzle out why over this one? Have I completely missed out on Monkey Island being help up as beacon in the videogaming world for oppressed white people? Threepwood has always been about somebody who's sort of a bit useless and stereotypically unmasculine (hopeless with women, didn't drink grog) so it's not like people can be concerned that this eidolon of the penis is going to be drained of all his testosterone-heavy blood and turned into a limp, flaccid, uh... cuck? I dunno. Usually I can get a handle on this sort of thing, but this once eludes me.

Monkey Island has been out of the zeitgeist for so long that I can only assume that the backlash has been born out of either people being fearful of a writer like Gilbert who's jokes and humour have always required some wits, or they've literally just seen people of colour on screen and are shitting the bed, because they have no idea about how the original Gilbert era stuff was.

 

Still. Good to know that The Gamers™ are still out there and targeting literally anything if it looks like it's outside of their pandered-to safe zone. After all, we all know that if the game trailer had shown Guybrush winning sword fights with pro-white insults and Elaine Marley had fallen off that rope onto her massive tits with a comedic honking noise and us soy-soaked leftist cucks were saying "hang on, this ain't it" they'd be the first to be berating us over the sanctity of the artist's vision.

 

Fuck.

[layten]

5 hours ago, gone fishin said:

I dunno, it’s kind of pathetic that Ron Gilbert goes in a great big baby huff because the audience that’s buying the game doesn’t like the art style?
 

Aaahh, well I guess taking Microsoft’s money means he doesn’t have to actually do what his audience would want, unlike the days when that same audience essentially crowdfunded all of his games….Maybe the creative freedom given by being bought out by Microsoft is the ability to have really crappy graphic design? Who would have thought.

A small audience of dick heads, who also seem to have mixed up Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.

[Captain Kelsten]

5 hours ago, schmojo said:

Oh god. One of them has broken the perimeter.

 

Who, me? I don't understand what you mean.

[Anne Summers]

Is it sacrilege to say I really hope this is coming out on Android/iOS? 

These days, I much prefer playing adventure games on tablets or even phones. Thimbleweed Park worked great on mobile OS. I just don't really want to sit in front of my PC at my desk for a prolonged period of pixel-hunting and dialogue-reading. I really enjoyed Disco Elysium recently but kept finding myself wishing I'd bought it on Switch rather than PC, even though it's twice the price, just so I could play it in bed. 

[Lorfarius]

5 minutes ago, Anne Summers said:

Is it sacrilege to say I really hope this is coming out on Android/iOS? 

These days, I much prefer playing adventure games on tablets or even phones. Thimbleweed Park worked great on mobile OS. I just don't really want to sit in front of my PC at my desk for a prolonged period of pixel-hunting and dialogue-reading. I really enjoyed Disco Elysium recently but kept finding myself wishing I'd bought it on Switch rather than PC, even though it's twice the price, just so I could play it in bed. 

 

Doesn't like it will at launch but will most likely be ported over to them later. Easier way to make money these days.

[Rex Grossman]

On 06/07/2022 at 08:35, Doctor Shark said:

That was made by people who didn’t give a shit about sonic and marketing people. Big difference. 

 

No one gives a shit about Sonic and marketing people.

[thesnwmn]

[Stevie]

This thread got me so fired up I've decided to play M1 and M2. As I'm playing, I'm curious about the choice of art style in Return to Monkey Island. 

 

 

 

Lets compare The Secret of Monkey Island special edition with The Return to Monkey Island

 

 

 

In the latter, Guybrush looks like a marionette, a bobblehead. Everything else is fine, but the characters themselves look horrible. Its something I would expect from a mobile game. 

[PikaStu]

I’ll take new Guybrush over remake Guybrush any day of the week.

 

It’s a shame they haven’t used the Curse of Monkey Island style, that game is beautiful.

[Nick R]

29 minutes ago, Stevie said:

In the latter, Guybrush looks like a marionette, a bobblehead. Everything else is fine, but the characters themselves look horrible. Its something I would expect from a mobile game. 

 

If you want to properly compare the art styles, you have to judge them in motion. IMO Special Edition's art looks fine in stills, but when playing, it's undermined by the awkward mismatch between HD artwork overlaid onto scaling and movement intended for 1990 pixel art.

 

I'm not a huge fan of what I've seen so far of the animations in Return to Monkey Island. But at least in this case, the character designs and animations have been designed together, rather than having characters awkwardly grafted onto animations intended for an entirely different art style.

[Mr. Gerbik]

On 06/07/2022 at 08:57, gone fishin said:

I dunno, it’s kind of pathetic that Ron Gilbert goes in a great big baby huff because the audience that’s buying the game doesn’t like the art style?
 

Aaahh, well I guess taking Microsoft’s money means he doesn’t have to actually do what his audience would want, unlike the days when that same audience essentially crowdfunded all of his games….Maybe the creative freedom given by being bought out by Microsoft is the ability to have really crappy graphic design? Who would have thought.

Nice. First you accuse the person being harassed of being a big baby, implying that anyone should put up and shut up when faced with outright harassment. Then you bring some console warz nonsense into it because I dunno, did Phil Spencer have his way with your mom or something? Because it sounds like it's personal for you. 

 

I'm not sure why you thought it was okay to post 4chan level bs like this here.

 

At the end of the day, if someone dislikes the visuals of the new Monkey Island then you decide not to buy it and walk away from it. End of story. Personally attacking someone working on this game is NOT OKAY.  Try and act your age 

[schmojo]

I've never finished Escape because I couldn't get over the controls, even though I've finished Grim Fandango a couple of times. The art style in Escape wasn't my favourite, but it absolutely wouldn't have stopped me enjoying the game. Hell, I played all the Tales ones, and they didn't look great to me. Still enjoyable though.

 

I think Curse is my favourite art style, but this new one looks like an evolution of the DOTT style, and I'm a big fan of that. For me, it had the most visual personality of any Lucas game.

 

Bring on Return. Even though it'll make me slightly sad if it's truly the end of the franchise. I've just realised I'd fucking love a VR experience where I can hang out on Melee Island.

[Benny]

14 hours ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

Nice. First you accuse the person being harassed of being a big baby, implying that anyone should put up and shut up when faced with outright harassment. Then you bring some console warz nonsense into it because I dunno, did Phil Spencer have his way with your mom or something? Because it sounds like it's personal for you. 

 

I'm not sure why you thought it was okay to post 4chan level bs like this here.

 

At the end of the day, if someone dislikes the visuals of the new Monkey Island then you decide not to buy it and walk away from it. End of story. Personally attacking someone working on this game is NOT OKAY.  Try and act your age 

 

I assumed the post was a satire, what with the seemingly deliberately confused mixing up of Tim Shafer with Ron Gilbert.

[Mr. Gerbik]

1 hour ago, Benny said:

 

I assumed the post was a satire, what with the seemingly deliberately confused mixing up of Tim Shafer with Ron Gilbert.

If it was, then I apologize 😂

[thesnwmn]

 

[Rex Grossman]

I still don't like the Knight and Bikes-style graphics. Even though I quite liked the style in Knights and Bikes.

[joffocakes]

This is looking so great. Really need to replay the older games. Maybe even the "Tales of" ones for the first time.