7 ms·

When you read posts like this, and also the previous, linked one [1], you can clearly see that Ron is a smart and humble guy. I really dislike the fan mob that

When you read posts like this, and also the previous, linked one [1], you can clearly see that Ron is a smart and humble guy. I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game. > Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of- the-art tech and art. This is SO true, and as much as I loved those games, as much as I stopped playing modern videogames and as much as I love the style of Thimbleweed Park, going forward for an artist like Ron is what _defines_ an artist. If you like MI1 and Mi2, just play MI1 and MI2 again as I do from time to time. Just like you would watch again a movie from the '70s or listen to the Beatles. But you cannot ask an artist to stay always the same because you loved their first works.

soneca 5y ago
I am glad Ron thinks like that. I didn’t know there was this rage against not being pixel art (but I should have suspected). I am glad it isn’t. I backed and loved Thimbleweed Park (even the ending), but that project was all around nostalgia. The gameplay, the X-Files-y story, it made sense for that game to be pixel art. Now Monkey Island is exactly what Ron said, state of the art. I liked even the 3D one. I am even more excited for this new one after reading the post.
rob74 5y ago
What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. I mean, just look at this screenshot: https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1/screens/image002.jpg https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1... Parts 1 and 2 had this effect on me, with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. If Return to Monkey Island manages to recapture some of that, I don't care if it's pixel art or whatever else...
- windmaster 5y ago
  That! Monkey Island was all about the atmosphere. It brought the caribbean to my living room.
- ykonstant 5y ago
  Oh! I am glad to see the atmosphere aspect of MI emphasized! I played these games as a preteen, and much of the humor went above my head (non-native speaker). It was the atmosphere, the setting and the characters that made me love the games, especially the first one. I spent so much time on Melee Island; the eerie forest, the voodoo lady, the jail, the docks... these places and people made a tremendous impression on young me. EDIT: Oh, and how can I forget the music!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - technovader 5y ago
    Fortunately Michael Land has made the music for every Monkey Island game yet, and is also onboard to do the music for this one
- interpol_p 5y ago
  I don't think the atmosphere is quite there in this new one, here's Melee Island from The Verge's screenshot. The art doesn't sit well with me: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dQbYIfWFh5WfWwby87FoHyI8uog=/0x0:2560x1440/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2560x1440):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23389447/return_to_monkey_island_02.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dQbYIfWFh5WfWwby87FoHyI8uog=... In the modern version the town is no longer twinkling and glittering. It appears smaller due to the large buildings. The strong purple tints (especially on the horizon) gives the scene an uneasy feeling. And the lookout point is no longer forlorn, it appears close to the town due to the way the whole island appears downscaled because of the larger town elements. We have also lost the reflection of the lights in the water, making the island appear to sit on the ground rather than in the waves I'm still going to play the game and hope to love it. But the art style seems to feature very strong colours and intense gradients. When animated the motion seems too fluid, with characters deforming like in a Flash animation
  - practice9 5y ago
    The old art feels, in a way, more realistic. One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals, and you feel more immersed. (suspension is disbelief has a positive effect here) When graphics become HD or closer to photorealistic they are starting to trigger an uncanny valley effect.
    - the_af 5y ago
      > One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics. That said, my mind also interpolates the newer version of Melee Island, because it's cartoony and "abstract" enough, and so I also like it.
      - practice9 5y ago
        > Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics. Exactly! I forgot about reading this book, but it was very insightful.
- Biganon 5y ago
  I've been thinking about that quite a lot, but with Zelda games. I've come to the conclusion that the old games feel beautiful and mysterious and nostalgic because I played them as a child. I'm no longer a child, life is no longer the same. It's not necessarily worse, it's just fundamentally different. I will never blame Shigeru Miyamoto for that, it would be absurd.
  - ncann 5y ago
    Yeah, it's a sad fact that I've realized myself as well. No matter how good a game is, I'll never be able to experience again that magical feeling when I played Pokemon for the first time on the GB.
    - sigg3 5y ago
      But you can experience it with new things! If you approach stuff with positivity, openness and wonder you'll have a blast! This is my current experience with learning Go, having learned Python previously. I don my explorer's hat and force myself to live into the text, subject or code (Herder's Einfühlung). Personally it makes the journey so much more entertaining than merely as a tools to an end.
      - ncann 5y ago
        I mean yes, the joy is still there when trying new things for the first time, I would be lying if I said otherwise. But it's just not the same. You know that feeling of total absorption/encompassment when you played your favorite game for the first time in your childhood? There's nothing like it. I went to dinner thinking about the game. I went to sleep thinking about the game. I went to school thinking about the game. The joy when my starter Pokemon evolved was indescribable. The game was the only thing that was on my mind. What's even more amazing is that I'm not a native English speaker, and I did not understand a single word in the game back then, yet somehow that did not impede me at all, in fact I think it even added to the joy of exploration.
        mlyle 5y ago
- 867-5309 5y ago
  you'd be hard pushed to recreate that in mspaint!
- aidenn0 5y ago
  The first MI is almost not believable that it is an EGA game. Then Loom came out and looks even better. These games pushed the limits of what graphical hardware of the time was capable of.
- simulate-me 5y ago
  Without having context of when this was made and that it was part of a game, this looks like a fairly generic picture of a mountain. You regularly see images with far more atmosphere on r/PixelArt.
  - auselen 5y ago
    It was clearly something better for me, and I think I played it around ‘94, it was better than what was on tv or video. And it was why we were playing video games, because with each one they kept getting better.
  - AdvancedCarrot 5y ago
    I think a big part of it as well is the music that comes in when you're first presented with this scene. I genuinely think this game (which I didn't discover until years later following its release) has the impact that it has for me because of the brilliant soundtrack.
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      That music on tinny computer speakers (if you didn't have Soundblasters at the time) was something else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ I think it was here on HN that I previously read a comment breaking down how the PC speaker could only play one tone at a time, but the team managed to simulate two overlapping melodies
      - mdpye 5y ago
        While that sounds like an amazing technical accomplishment, I can tell you that discovering it on an amiga with a hifi separates amp and speakers[1] was definitely better. I was very lucky, but I'm not sorry! ;) The soundtrack is sensational. 1. To be fair, the speakers were intended for the back shelf of a car. It was cobbled together from castoffs found in the loft...
        darkwater 5y ago
- hhlevnjak3 5y ago
  I could never say part 3 doesn't have atmosphere. The music, the art, the overall feel was different, but great on it's own. On the other hand, the story, and the subtle humor from 1 and 2 was lacking or different.
  - wenc 5y ago
    In MI1, there was a sense of questing as Guybrush Threepwood goes through training to become a swordfighter (the classic training trope like in Rocky and in martial arts movies), plus there was also the will-they-won't-they romantic tension with Elaine. MI1 was an origin story so it had the advantage of being able to use these well-loved tropes. Stan was a great character. MI2 took it a little further with the unresolved tension with LeChuck. MI3 didn't really have that same sense of tension or urgency because Guybrush is already in a relationship with Elaine and he's just trying to break the curse. MI3 (or CMI) was a great game, but it just didn't leave you wanting more.
- Razengan 5y ago
  > What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations. It was unexplained and unmentioned (though an easy headcanon might be that everything you do there takes place during a single night) but it has a huge effect on the aesthetic feel of the game world. The other thing that evoked the sense of adventure was the balance between the Civilized and Unexplored parts of its world, a common theme in pirate settings. > with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. Curse certainly felt a bit “off” to me (I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t made by the same people but I could feel it) but it still had some charm, except for the abrupt final episode.
  - a_e_k 5y ago
    > Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations. Playing it as a tween, it evoked this feeling of one of those rare special nights where I got to stay up way past my bedtime on a warm summer night at an amusement park, fair, circus, camping, etc. (Where the twilight and temperature is perfect after the day's brightness and the heat has broken.)
- babyshake 5y ago
  If you look at the screenshots and art released, they are definitely at least attempting an atmospheric feeling. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For me the thing I really love most is the MIDI music. Occasionally I'll put on the score from MI2, Loom or another game and it brings me back.
RajT88 5y ago
Ron Gilbert making a modern MI is like Metallica cutting their hair for these fans.
jeffwask 5y ago
Fan culture in the age of twitter is so polluted with loud minorities.
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game. That is the same blow-back that George Lucas caught when he made the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas made the original Star Wars he set out to make a state-of-art sci-fi movie, and in fact he pushed the state-of-art ahead by a huge leap in that movie. A decade or two later, with the evolution of cinema effects, the original trilogy stopped being seen as state-of-art, but kept its cultural influence now under a new lens, it started being seen as a type of retro-futurism. So when George Lucas set out to make the prequels, he again intended to make state-of-art sci-fi movies*, as is his right, and as he should, but many of the fans instead wanted the new trilogy to match the retro-futurism feel they now assigned to the original ones, hence the many complaints at the time. Interestingly enough, later when Disney made the sequels they went the other way completely, and bet heavily on the retro-futurism feel (down even to the story arcs), so they got blow-back from the fans that instead wanted a state-of-art sci-fi. * If he achieved that state-of-art goal is debatable, my personal opinion he did, but just barely, failing to leap forward like the original did on its time, so they do feel a bit like "generic late 90s/early 00s sci-fi".*
- smudgy 5y ago
  I'm not sure a major problem with the prequels was the aesthetic. It never bothered me that it felt more "modern" than the original trilogy, it bothered me (and plenty of others) that the story wasn't good. For something that was in his head for such a long time, it came out half-baked.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    It's the same with the sequels, they're making big jumps in the established lore, and they made the huge mistake of not actually fleshing out the story beforehand (like e.g. the MCU), leading to three disconnected movies full of attempted nostalgia and pushing merchandise; they made fanservice instead of good films.
    - speeder 5y ago
jaimebuelta 5y ago
The interesting bit about this kind of games is that you don't need state-of-the-art tech, and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post. I mean, for an 2D adventure game, you are basically animating characters. The objective is to create something like an animation movie, in whatever art style you want. It doesn't need to push the tech in the same style that the first games where. Which is great! I want them to be spending their efforts in the game, artwork, narrative, puzzles, jokes, etc, not on how to create a background that looks OK if you have an EGA screen and a recognisable melody in a PC speaker. Whether is pixel art or not is irrelevant to me, as long as it's well drawn and animated. I just hope that they end with a fantastic result. I'll sure buy it and play it when it's out.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  > and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post. Usage of real recorded instruments can still be technically challenging today if you want to do what Monkey Island 2 did with its audio via iMuse - synchronization between music and in-game events (easier) and smooth background music transitions between rooms (harder). MI2 Special Edition recorded its soundtrack with real instruments and while it did a pretty good job at it, it still noticeably simplified some transitions the original version had, because they were much easier to achieve back when it was using MIDI.
  - Tyr42 5y ago
    One interesting innovation is in Octopath traveller. It has set up the music before the boss fights where it is ready to jump into the boss theme at any point you finish the dialog boxes. https://youtu.be/b7Zc3f8cPnU?t=215 https://youtu.be/b7Zc3f8cPnU?t=215
    - seba_dos1 5y ago
      That's one of the things Monkey Island 2 did. It also had the track seamlessly changing cues and adding/removing layers as you entered various sections of a location, had multiple transitions between the same tracks that were chosen depending on when did you trigger them and in-game events were often timed to wait for the beat to synchronize them with music. Later games with similarly dynamic sampled music that I'm aware about (The Curse of Monkey Island, MI2:SE, Portal 2 and now Octopath Traveler) did some of these things, but none of them came close to the level of complexity in the original Monkey Island 2. Although one reason for that (other than the obvious MIDI vs. sampled one) could be that in MI2, a lot of effort went into this music system which ended up working great, but... not many people actually noticed ;)
bnralt 5y ago
> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate I looked into responses to the announcement (on YouTube, Reddit, various forums), and didn't find any example of a "fan mob that it's starting the hate." Just about all of the top responses were extremely positive. I only found a small minority of comments saying they don't like the art style, and they're all pretty tame. For example, sorting by controversial on Reddit brings up this: > I want to be excited but I'm not thrilled about that art and I haven't liked a Monkey Island thing since Curse of Monkey Island. There can be a tendency to exaggerate any criticism in an effort to dismiss it. Ron is certainly free to make whatever game he likes. But at the same time, people are free to dislike whatever game he makes. It doesn't make them hateful or a mob, simply people with different opinions.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Youtube has definitely been running sentiment analysis and down ranking any critical comments. Go to any music video and read the comments, it’s like everyone was given a lobotomy. It’s scary tech censorship. I would take the wild go f yourself days of YouTube comments over this v1 matrix toxic positivity world any day.
  - rideontime 5y ago
    Maybe people just don't respond to music videos with a lot of negativity? Not every comment section needs to be "balanced."
    - aunty_helen 5y ago
      Luckily I can remember back more than 6 months to know this isn't the case, so I don't need to sit here wondering.
- causi 5y ago
  I like the look, and I think it's better than, say, Monkey Island HD. I do see why someone might not like it. The new art style is extremely contemporary and basically looks exactly like every cartoon show of the last five years.
ipaddr 5y ago
Live by the mob die by the mob. When a mob is attacking your idea it might have some merits or not but it has reached a popularity breakthrough. A mob attacks when they feel threatened. A mob can be used as a tool. Followers are a pre-mob description of a group. Putting out a retro version could be seen as a greedy activity that tarnishes the original that could get a different mob after you.
sam0x17 5y ago
I agree with the import of this, but there is an economy to games, and if it turns out that the gamers really do just want another installment in the old style, you're missing out on that significant segment of the market until you do just that. Art is only art if it gets made, and at least frequently, someone has to pay the artist for the art to get made.

soneca 5y ago

I am glad Ron thinks like that. I didn’t know there was this rage against not being pixel art (but I should have suspected). I am glad it isn’t. I backed and loved Thimbleweed Park (even the ending), but that project was all around nostalgia. The gameplay, the X-Files-y story, it made sense for that game to be pixel art. Now Monkey Island is exactly what Ron said, state of the art. I liked even the 3D one. I am even more excited for this new one after reading the post.

rob74 5y ago

What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. I mean, just look at this screenshot: https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1/screens/image002.jpg https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1... Parts 1 and 2 had this effect on me, with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. If Return to Monkey Island manages to recapture some of that, I don't care if it's pixel art or whatever else...

windmaster 5y ago
That! Monkey Island was all about the atmosphere. It brought the caribbean to my living room.
ykonstant 5y ago
Oh! I am glad to see the atmosphere aspect of MI emphasized! I played these games as a preteen, and much of the humor went above my head (non-native speaker). It was the atmosphere, the setting and the characters that made me love the games, especially the first one. I spent so much time on Melee Island; the eerie forest, the voodoo lady, the jail, the docks... these places and people made a tremendous impression on young me. EDIT: Oh, and how can I forget the music!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- technovader 5y ago
  Fortunately Michael Land has made the music for every Monkey Island game yet, and is also onboard to do the music for this one
interpol_p 5y ago
I don't think the atmosphere is quite there in this new one, here's Melee Island from The Verge's screenshot. The art doesn't sit well with me: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dQbYIfWFh5WfWwby87FoHyI8uog=/0x0:2560x1440/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2560x1440):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23389447/return_to_monkey_island_02.png https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dQbYIfWFh5WfWwby87FoHyI8uog=... In the modern version the town is no longer twinkling and glittering. It appears smaller due to the large buildings. The strong purple tints (especially on the horizon) gives the scene an uneasy feeling. And the lookout point is no longer forlorn, it appears close to the town due to the way the whole island appears downscaled because of the larger town elements. We have also lost the reflection of the lights in the water, making the island appear to sit on the ground rather than in the waves I'm still going to play the game and hope to love it. But the art style seems to feature very strong colours and intense gradients. When animated the motion seems too fluid, with characters deforming like in a Flash animation
- practice9 5y ago
  The old art feels, in a way, more realistic. One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals, and you feel more immersed. (suspension is disbelief has a positive effect here) When graphics become HD or closer to photorealistic they are starting to trigger an uncanny valley effect.
  - the_af 5y ago
    > One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics. That said, my mind also interpolates the newer version of Melee Island, because it's cartoony and "abstract" enough, and so I also like it.
    - practice9 5y ago
      > Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics. Exactly! I forgot about reading this book, but it was very insightful.
Biganon 5y ago
I've been thinking about that quite a lot, but with Zelda games. I've come to the conclusion that the old games feel beautiful and mysterious and nostalgic because I played them as a child. I'm no longer a child, life is no longer the same. It's not necessarily worse, it's just fundamentally different. I will never blame Shigeru Miyamoto for that, it would be absurd.
- ncann 5y ago
  Yeah, it's a sad fact that I've realized myself as well. No matter how good a game is, I'll never be able to experience again that magical feeling when I played Pokemon for the first time on the GB.
  - sigg3 5y ago
    But you can experience it with new things! If you approach stuff with positivity, openness and wonder you'll have a blast! This is my current experience with learning Go, having learned Python previously. I don my explorer's hat and force myself to live into the text, subject or code (Herder's Einfühlung). Personally it makes the journey so much more entertaining than merely as a tools to an end.
    - ncann 5y ago
      I mean yes, the joy is still there when trying new things for the first time, I would be lying if I said otherwise. But it's just not the same. You know that feeling of total absorption/encompassment when you played your favorite game for the first time in your childhood? There's nothing like it. I went to dinner thinking about the game. I went to sleep thinking about the game. I went to school thinking about the game. The joy when my starter Pokemon evolved was indescribable. The game was the only thing that was on my mind. What's even more amazing is that I'm not a native English speaker, and I did not understand a single word in the game back then, yet somehow that did not impede me at all, in fact I think it even added to the joy of exploration.
      - mlyle 5y ago
867-5309 5y ago
you'd be hard pushed to recreate that in mspaint!
aidenn0 5y ago
The first MI is almost not believable that it is an EGA game. Then Loom came out and looks even better. These games pushed the limits of what graphical hardware of the time was capable of.
simulate-me 5y ago
Without having context of when this was made and that it was part of a game, this looks like a fairly generic picture of a mountain. You regularly see images with far more atmosphere on r/PixelArt.
- auselen 5y ago
  It was clearly something better for me, and I think I played it around ‘94, it was better than what was on tv or video. And it was why we were playing video games, because with each one they kept getting better.
- AdvancedCarrot 5y ago
  I think a big part of it as well is the music that comes in when you're first presented with this scene. I genuinely think this game (which I didn't discover until years later following its release) has the impact that it has for me because of the brilliant soundtrack.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    That music on tinny computer speakers (if you didn't have Soundblasters at the time) was something else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ I think it was here on HN that I previously read a comment breaking down how the PC speaker could only play one tone at a time, but the team managed to simulate two overlapping melodies
    - mdpye 5y ago
      While that sounds like an amazing technical accomplishment, I can tell you that discovering it on an amiga with a hifi separates amp and speakers[1] was definitely better. I was very lucky, but I'm not sorry! ;) The soundtrack is sensational. 1. To be fair, the speakers were intended for the back shelf of a car. It was cobbled together from castoffs found in the loft...
      - darkwater 5y ago
hhlevnjak3 5y ago
I could never say part 3 doesn't have atmosphere. The music, the art, the overall feel was different, but great on it's own. On the other hand, the story, and the subtle humor from 1 and 2 was lacking or different.
- wenc 5y ago
  In MI1, there was a sense of questing as Guybrush Threepwood goes through training to become a swordfighter (the classic training trope like in Rocky and in martial arts movies), plus there was also the will-they-won't-they romantic tension with Elaine. MI1 was an origin story so it had the advantage of being able to use these well-loved tropes. Stan was a great character. MI2 took it a little further with the unresolved tension with LeChuck. MI3 didn't really have that same sense of tension or urgency because Guybrush is already in a relationship with Elaine and he's just trying to break the curse. MI3 (or CMI) was a great game, but it just didn't leave you wanting more.
Razengan 5y ago
> What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations. It was unexplained and unmentioned (though an easy headcanon might be that everything you do there takes place during a single night) but it has a huge effect on the aesthetic feel of the game world. The other thing that evoked the sense of adventure was the balance between the Civilized and Unexplored parts of its world, a common theme in pirate settings. > with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. Curse certainly felt a bit “off” to me (I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t made by the same people but I could feel it) but it still had some charm, except for the abrupt final episode.
- a_e_k 5y ago
  > Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations. Playing it as a tween, it evoked this feeling of one of those rare special nights where I got to stay up way past my bedtime on a warm summer night at an amusement park, fair, circus, camping, etc. (Where the twilight and temperature is perfect after the day's brightness and the heat has broken.)
babyshake 5y ago
If you look at the screenshots and art released, they are definitely at least attempting an atmospheric feeling. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For me the thing I really love most is the MIDI music. Occasionally I'll put on the score from MI2, Loom or another game and it brings me back.

RajT88 5y ago

Ron Gilbert making a modern MI is like Metallica cutting their hair for these fans.

jeffwask 5y ago

Fan culture in the age of twitter is so polluted with loud minorities.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago

> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game. That is the same blow-back that George Lucas caught when he made the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas made the original Star Wars he set out to make a state-of-art sci-fi movie, and in fact he pushed the state-of-art ahead by a huge leap in that movie. A decade or two later, with the evolution of cinema effects, the original trilogy stopped being seen as state-of-art, but kept its cultural influence now under a new lens, it started being seen as a type of retro-futurism. So when George Lucas set out to make the prequels, he again intended to make state-of-art sci-fi movies*, as is his right, and as he should, but many of the fans instead wanted the new trilogy to match the retro-futurism feel they now assigned to the original ones, hence the many complaints at the time. Interestingly enough, later when Disney made the sequels they went the other way completely, and bet heavily on the retro-futurism feel (down even to the story arcs), so they got blow-back from the fans that instead wanted a state-of-art sci-fi. * If he achieved that state-of-art goal is debatable, my personal opinion he did, but just barely, failing to leap forward like the original did on its time, so they do feel a bit like "generic late 90s/early 00s sci-fi".*

smudgy 5y ago
I'm not sure a major problem with the prequels was the aesthetic. It never bothered me that it felt more "modern" than the original trilogy, it bothered me (and plenty of others) that the story wasn't good. For something that was in his head for such a long time, it came out half-baked.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It's the same with the sequels, they're making big jumps in the established lore, and they made the huge mistake of not actually fleshing out the story beforehand (like e.g. the MCU), leading to three disconnected movies full of attempted nostalgia and pushing merchandise; they made fanservice instead of good films.
  - speeder 5y ago

jaimebuelta 5y ago

The interesting bit about this kind of games is that you don't need state-of-the-art tech, and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post. I mean, for an 2D adventure game, you are basically animating characters. The objective is to create something like an animation movie, in whatever art style you want. It doesn't need to push the tech in the same style that the first games where. Which is great! I want them to be spending their efforts in the game, artwork, narrative, puzzles, jokes, etc, not on how to create a background that looks OK if you have an EGA screen and a recognisable melody in a PC speaker. Whether is pixel art or not is irrelevant to me, as long as it's well drawn and animated. I just hope that they end with a fantastic result. I'll sure buy it and play it when it's out.

seba_dos1 5y ago
> and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post. Usage of real recorded instruments can still be technically challenging today if you want to do what Monkey Island 2 did with its audio via iMuse - synchronization between music and in-game events (easier) and smooth background music transitions between rooms (harder). MI2 Special Edition recorded its soundtrack with real instruments and while it did a pretty good job at it, it still noticeably simplified some transitions the original version had, because they were much easier to achieve back when it was using MIDI.
- Tyr42 5y ago
  One interesting innovation is in Octopath traveller. It has set up the music before the boss fights where it is ready to jump into the boss theme at any point you finish the dialog boxes. https://youtu.be/b7Zc3f8cPnU?t=215 https://youtu.be/b7Zc3f8cPnU?t=215
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    That's one of the things Monkey Island 2 did. It also had the track seamlessly changing cues and adding/removing layers as you entered various sections of a location, had multiple transitions between the same tracks that were chosen depending on when did you trigger them and in-game events were often timed to wait for the beat to synchronize them with music. Later games with similarly dynamic sampled music that I'm aware about (The Curse of Monkey Island, MI2:SE, Portal 2 and now Octopath Traveler) did some of these things, but none of them came close to the level of complexity in the original Monkey Island 2. Although one reason for that (other than the obvious MIDI vs. sampled one) could be that in MI2, a lot of effort went into this music system which ended up working great, but... not many people actually noticed ;)

bnralt 5y ago

> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate I looked into responses to the announcement (on YouTube, Reddit, various forums), and didn't find any example of a "fan mob that it's starting the hate." Just about all of the top responses were extremely positive. I only found a small minority of comments saying they don't like the art style, and they're all pretty tame. For example, sorting by controversial on Reddit brings up this: > I want to be excited but I'm not thrilled about that art and I haven't liked a Monkey Island thing since Curse of Monkey Island. There can be a tendency to exaggerate any criticism in an effort to dismiss it. Ron is certainly free to make whatever game he likes. But at the same time, people are free to dislike whatever game he makes. It doesn't make them hateful or a mob, simply people with different opinions.

aunty_helen 5y ago
Youtube has definitely been running sentiment analysis and down ranking any critical comments. Go to any music video and read the comments, it’s like everyone was given a lobotomy. It’s scary tech censorship. I would take the wild go f yourself days of YouTube comments over this v1 matrix toxic positivity world any day.
- rideontime 5y ago
  Maybe people just don't respond to music videos with a lot of negativity? Not every comment section needs to be "balanced."
  - aunty_helen 5y ago
    Luckily I can remember back more than 6 months to know this isn't the case, so I don't need to sit here wondering.
causi 5y ago
I like the look, and I think it's better than, say, Monkey Island HD. I do see why someone might not like it. The new art style is extremely contemporary and basically looks exactly like every cartoon show of the last five years.

ipaddr 5y ago

Live by the mob die by the mob. When a mob is attacking your idea it might have some merits or not but it has reached a popularity breakthrough. A mob attacks when they feel threatened. A mob can be used as a tool. Followers are a pre-mob description of a group. Putting out a retro version could be seen as a greedy activity that tarnishes the original that could get a different mob after you.

sam0x17 5y ago

I agree with the import of this, but there is an economy to games, and if it turns out that the gamers really do just want another installment in the old style, you're missing out on that significant segment of the market until you do just that. Art is only art if it gets made, and at least frequently, someone has to pay the artist for the art to get made.