5 ms·

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized in your eyes. However, you're really old now, your prefrontal cortex should be fully developed, so get over it.

the_only_law 4y ago
I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  In the other thread about this, someone brought up the colloquially named "Zelda Effect". It is most evident when reviewing Wind Waker, which used cartoony cell-shaded graphics: contemporary comments featured quite a lot of vitriol over that decision, but the game is now fondly remembered as one of the best entrants in the series.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Deep down almost everyone is "conservative" - they want what they had yesterday again today, so any change to art style, etc, is already on a back-foot. But in the end, the good things stand out. The reason the CD-i Zelda games are not remembered fondly is not really because of the art style, that's just an easy way to rip on them.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      The game developer is basically taking all the hate that people are really directing at a society that doesn't value the same things they do anymore. I thought SNES Zelda and Final Fantasy were the best, but I didn't threaten the developers when they moved to 3d.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        It's also a side-effect of being involved in the community as a creator; if you were pissed at the 3D Zelda what were you going to do, fly to Japan and track down Shigeru Miyamoto? Send him a nasty letter? But here we have someone who posted something on his own site, and not only allowed comments, but cleary was reading them, and people just attacked him. It's sad.
  - troon-lover 4y ago
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    I don't think that's exactly true. Nintendo did give people what they wanted with Twilight Princess. Both of those games had around 9.5 - 9.6 ratings, and the realistic Twilight Princess was the best selling Zelda until Breath of the Wild came out. I think a very loud minority likes Wind Waker, but sales show something a bit different.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      That analysis discounts that the GameCube[0], on which WW was released exclusively until the Wii U[1] HD remake, had vastly lower user count than the incredibly popular Wii[2], which had a Twilight Princess release simultaneously with the GCN. [0] 21.4M units sold [1] Even lower, only 13.5M units [2] 101.6M units
      - stuckinhell 4y ago
        http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda-global-sales.html http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda... year platform title sales 2002 GC Wind Waker 4,430,000 2013 Wii U The Wind Waker HD 2,310,000 2006 Wii/GC Twilight Princess 8,850,000 2016 Wii U Twilight Princess HD 1,130,000 Twilight princess is still more popular if you look at sales.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
        I don't see how this contradicts what I'm saying: it sold more because it had a (significantly) larger user base to sell to in the first place. If Twilight Princess is so much more popular, why did its HD remake sell less than half of Wind Waker's?
        stuckinhell 4y ago
        Because most people who wanted to play it, already played it.
        djur 4y ago
  - rideontime 4y ago
    Fun, if barely relevant, fact: Miyamoto himself wanted to change the art style during development, according to recently-translated interviews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
    Fun fact: even series creator Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't thrilled with that art style at first.[0] Makes me wonder if Twilight Princess was more his push than the widely-assumed theory that its direction was "for the fans" still disappointed from Spaceworld 2000. [0] https://kotaku.com/the-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker-graphics-shigeru-miyamot-1849112926 https://kotaku.com/the-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker-graphics-s...
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  I loved the art direction, but can't stand the micromanagement. Every time I look at it, I want to play it again, but I just don't like the city districts thing. It's too hard to keep my happiness up.
- acheron 4y ago
  I don’t think that’s true about Civ 6. A lot of people who only ever played Civ 5 might have been “pissed” and didn’t bother to try it, because they didn’t realize that the Civ games change every time, but any actual “series veteran” was fine with it.
  - kroltan 4y ago
    Obligatory mention of the FMV "advisors" of Civ 2, including a roman "cool dude" with sunglasses. https://youtu.be/FlTIk80uBPg?t=269 https://youtu.be/FlTIk80uBPg?t=269
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Yah that last sentence was a bit of hyperbole and poor word choice. What I meant is that many people who had got into Civ 4 and Civ 5, etc. we're critical of the graphics. It wasn't as much about change as it was what exactly changed. There seems to be a trend in many games where certain design aspects suck as choosing brighter colors, or a more cartoons style will bring people comparing your game to a mobile game (also happened to a lesser extent with CK3 and certain total war games). While technically Civ6 runs on mobile, it's very much an outlier as far as mobile games go, I wish more mobile ames we're that good.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    I'm one of those series veterans who was really put off by Civ VI's design choices. I tried to get into it, and just couldn't. I've heard criticism that the aesthetics should not matter and that getting hung up on such a thing was immature. However, I just could not get past the dissonance of the cartoony style and how busy the UI was. Put simply, I found the game to be ugly.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      I feel like large percentage of game enjoyment comes from enjoyable UI. You have to feel right when you are operating a game.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  People old enough to have played old Civs but whose brain hasn't developed sufficiently to have switched to Europa Universalis 4 deserve to be pissed.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    If I only I could convince my friends to play EU4.
pyb 4y ago
Yeah, naively I would expect people whoever played the original games to be quite grown up by now. Are they really the ones leaving those comments?
lhorie 4y ago
Personally, as a consumer who could care less about who produced which game, the original Secret of Monkey Island - with all its pixel art glory - was a relatively hard game, like many of the games of the era, and was comparatively less enjoyable to me as a 80s/90s kid than the later Curse of Monkey Island, which had a more modern art style and much more interesting mechanics (IMHO) than just aimlessly clicking everywhere until you eventually found out the only way to move forward was to precisely time giving the bad guy a wedgie or whatever. I've also played other games with various degrees of pixelatedness, with later ones like Sam & Max and Indiana Jones being more enjoyable to me than older ones like the original Maniac Mansion, so I generally associate art style modernization in this particular genre as a good thing. But ironically, I feel the opposite way about the Pokemon franchise, which has gone through a similar progression, with a change in art style towards a more slick art style along with a barrage of new game mechanics that I personally didn't really care so much for. I think that ultimately people just want to consume more content that is similar to what they are already used to. It's why, I also think, bands w/ distinctly recognizable style like the Red Hot Chili Peppers did so well. The vitriol does seem completely unnecessary, though, I agree.
rasz 4y ago
Its ok if you are into vagina slits or pink penis noses on all characters.
- sph 4y ago
  That says more about you than the art style.
jamesgeck0 4y ago
> I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Oh, that's easy. It's reminiscent of free Flash games popular a couple decades ago. Vector graphics are somewhat less common in games these days, so my first impression was that the art style looked a bit cheap and dated.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
>> However, you're really old now, your prefrontal cortex should be fully developed, so get over it. I guess there could be an argument against playing too many games as a kid hiding in there.
nicolas_t 4y ago
The first reaction my wife who has never played Monkey Island had when looking at the trailer was "Oh the art style and animation is really nice". I have another friend who is a gamer but doesn't play point and clicks who was tempted in trying it after I showed her. So in my very tiny sample size of 2, people like it. Personally, I like it, but then, the only art style I've disliked of any Monkey Island games are the two Special Edition remakes.

the_only_law 4y ago

I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
In the other thread about this, someone brought up the colloquially named "Zelda Effect". It is most evident when reviewing Wind Waker, which used cartoony cell-shaded graphics: contemporary comments featured quite a lot of vitriol over that decision, but the game is now fondly remembered as one of the best entrants in the series.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Deep down almost everyone is "conservative" - they want what they had yesterday again today, so any change to art style, etc, is already on a back-foot. But in the end, the good things stand out. The reason the CD-i Zelda games are not remembered fondly is not really because of the art style, that's just an easy way to rip on them.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    The game developer is basically taking all the hate that people are really directing at a society that doesn't value the same things they do anymore. I thought SNES Zelda and Final Fantasy were the best, but I didn't threaten the developers when they moved to 3d.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      It's also a side-effect of being involved in the community as a creator; if you were pissed at the 3D Zelda what were you going to do, fly to Japan and track down Shigeru Miyamoto? Send him a nasty letter? But here we have someone who posted something on his own site, and not only allowed comments, but cleary was reading them, and people just attacked him. It's sad.
- troon-lover 4y ago
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  I don't think that's exactly true. Nintendo did give people what they wanted with Twilight Princess. Both of those games had around 9.5 - 9.6 ratings, and the realistic Twilight Princess was the best selling Zelda until Breath of the Wild came out. I think a very loud minority likes Wind Waker, but sales show something a bit different.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    That analysis discounts that the GameCube[0], on which WW was released exclusively until the Wii U[1] HD remake, had vastly lower user count than the incredibly popular Wii[2], which had a Twilight Princess release simultaneously with the GCN. [0] 21.4M units sold [1] Even lower, only 13.5M units [2] 101.6M units
    - stuckinhell 4y ago
      http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda-global-sales.html http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda... year platform title sales 2002 GC Wind Waker 4,430,000 2013 Wii U The Wind Waker HD 2,310,000 2006 Wii/GC Twilight Princess 8,850,000 2016 Wii U Twilight Princess HD 1,130,000 Twilight princess is still more popular if you look at sales.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
        I don't see how this contradicts what I'm saying: it sold more because it had a (significantly) larger user base to sell to in the first place. If Twilight Princess is so much more popular, why did its HD remake sell less than half of Wind Waker's?
        stuckinhell 4y ago
        Because most people who wanted to play it, already played it.
      - djur 4y ago
- rideontime 4y ago
  Fun, if barely relevant, fact: Miyamoto himself wanted to change the art style during development, according to recently-translated interviews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  Fun fact: even series creator Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't thrilled with that art style at first.[0] Makes me wonder if Twilight Princess was more his push than the widely-assumed theory that its direction was "for the fans" still disappointed from Spaceworld 2000. [0] https://kotaku.com/the-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker-graphics-shigeru-miyamot-1849112926 https://kotaku.com/the-legend-of-zelda-wind-waker-graphics-s...
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
I loved the art direction, but can't stand the micromanagement. Every time I look at it, I want to play it again, but I just don't like the city districts thing. It's too hard to keep my happiness up.
acheron 4y ago
I don’t think that’s true about Civ 6. A lot of people who only ever played Civ 5 might have been “pissed” and didn’t bother to try it, because they didn’t realize that the Civ games change every time, but any actual “series veteran” was fine with it.
- kroltan 4y ago
  Obligatory mention of the FMV "advisors" of Civ 2, including a roman "cool dude" with sunglasses. https://youtu.be/FlTIk80uBPg?t=269 https://youtu.be/FlTIk80uBPg?t=269
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Yah that last sentence was a bit of hyperbole and poor word choice. What I meant is that many people who had got into Civ 4 and Civ 5, etc. we're critical of the graphics. It wasn't as much about change as it was what exactly changed. There seems to be a trend in many games where certain design aspects suck as choosing brighter colors, or a more cartoons style will bring people comparing your game to a mobile game (also happened to a lesser extent with CK3 and certain total war games). While technically Civ6 runs on mobile, it's very much an outlier as far as mobile games go, I wish more mobile ames we're that good.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I'm one of those series veterans who was really put off by Civ VI's design choices. I tried to get into it, and just couldn't. I've heard criticism that the aesthetics should not matter and that getting hung up on such a thing was immature. However, I just could not get past the dissonance of the cartoony style and how busy the UI was. Put simply, I found the game to be ugly.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    I feel like large percentage of game enjoyment comes from enjoyable UI. You have to feel right when you are operating a game.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
People old enough to have played old Civs but whose brain hasn't developed sufficiently to have switched to Europa Universalis 4 deserve to be pissed.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  If I only I could convince my friends to play EU4.

pyb 4y ago

Yeah, naively I would expect people whoever played the original games to be quite grown up by now. Are they really the ones leaving those comments?

lhorie 4y ago

Personally, as a consumer who could care less about who produced which game, the original Secret of Monkey Island - with all its pixel art glory - was a relatively hard game, like many of the games of the era, and was comparatively less enjoyable to me as a 80s/90s kid than the later Curse of Monkey Island, which had a more modern art style and much more interesting mechanics (IMHO) than just aimlessly clicking everywhere until you eventually found out the only way to move forward was to precisely time giving the bad guy a wedgie or whatever. I've also played other games with various degrees of pixelatedness, with later ones like Sam & Max and Indiana Jones being more enjoyable to me than older ones like the original Maniac Mansion, so I generally associate art style modernization in this particular genre as a good thing. But ironically, I feel the opposite way about the Pokemon franchise, which has gone through a similar progression, with a change in art style towards a more slick art style along with a barrage of new game mechanics that I personally didn't really care so much for. I think that ultimately people just want to consume more content that is similar to what they are already used to. It's why, I also think, bands w/ distinctly recognizable style like the Red Hot Chili Peppers did so well. The vitriol does seem completely unnecessary, though, I agree.

rasz 4y ago

Its ok if you are into vagina slits or pink penis noses on all characters.

sph 4y ago
That says more about you than the art style.

jamesgeck0 4y ago

> I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Oh, that's easy. It's reminiscent of free Flash games popular a couple decades ago. Vector graphics are somewhat less common in games these days, so my first impression was that the art style looked a bit cheap and dated.

YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago

>> However, you're really old now, your prefrontal cortex should be fully developed, so get over it. I guess there could be an argument against playing too many games as a kid hiding in there.

nicolas_t 4y ago

The first reaction my wife who has never played Monkey Island had when looking at the trailer was "Oh the art style and animation is really nice". I have another friend who is a gamer but doesn't play point and clicks who was tempted in trying it after I showed her. So in my very tiny sample size of 2, people like it. Personally, I like it, but then, the only art style I've disliked of any Monkey Island games are the two Special Edition remakes.