Ron Gilbert's Return to Monkey Island

[Denzil Quixode]

https://returntomonkeyisland.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sahskKAxSCY

[Babar]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!


Aaa....I'm not a fan of the art style. I don't see Mark Ferrari's name anywhere.

(and it's not even a heart-ripping April 1st update!)

[stu]

edit:

Interesting it's been called a follow up to LeChuck's Revenge yet still includes Murray. Is Ron taking all the bits he liked from CMI, then ignoring its existence?

I know CMI isn't a RG game, but I still feel it earned a place in the "proper" line-up. Escape from MI and Tales of MI I don't include in that.

[Retro Wolf]

Awesome!

[Danvzare]

I honestly can't believe it's finally happening.
Is it going to be the next game in the overall series, or is it a game that takes place between the 2nd and 3rd game, or is it a partial reboot like some of those Halloween moves (particularly Halloween H20)?
Whatever the case, it should be in good hands with Devolver Digital.

I know CMI isn't a RG game, but I still feel it earned a place in the "proper" line-up. Escape from MI and Tales of MI I don't include in that.

Tales of Monkey Island was pretty decent! Sure it was simple in terms of puzzles. And the constantly reused character models was tiresome. But it was a fun game with a fun story. Definitely leagues better than Escape from Monkey Island.
Buuuuuuuuuuut if we're going to remove EMI from from the "proper" line-up, then of course you also have to remove TMI in the process, simply because it's a direct sequel to it.
CMI is an absolutely brilliant game though, and easily my favourite in the series, with MI2 taking a close second. (Sorry Ron.)

[stu]

CMI is not out of canon apparently, which is nice.

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1511022135191384067

[WiseFrog]

This is so cool I feel like a child again hahaha

I read that the Guybrush's voice will be the same as CMI, that's cool because I liked the voice

Aaa....I'm not a fan of the art style. I don't see Mark Ferrari's name anywhere.

(and it's not even a heart-ripping April 1st update!)

Well I saw that David Fox and Dave Grossman are working on this so it's cool

[ukz530]

Cool! I thought I couldn't play the New Monkey Island series for the rest of my life.

still can't believe this!

[eri0o]

Hey, does anyone knows what software people use to make these smooth animations like in this trailer? I am curious if there's something that is kinda engine agnostic... Just for research purposes at the moment.

[WHAM]

I feel pretty conflicted. The art style seems weird to me, and appears to take the style of the MI remakes and then exaggerate it even further. The fact the game is stated to also pick up in between the existing games, potentially retconning or just cutting out some of the old story (which may not have been perfect, but I still have warm memories of it, dammit!) strikes me as odd, too.

Still, always curious to see what happens when the old guard steps back up to pick up where they left off. So far I can't recall a single case where this has succeeded so far... (Phoenix Point, Star Citizen, Peter Molyneux's entire existence, Double Fine for an alarmingly long time)

Let's hope this one breaks the mould! Would be nice to see the three-headed monkey again.

[Danvzare]

I feel pretty conflicted. The art style seems weird to me, and appears to take the style of the MI remakes and then exaggerate it even further.

Meh, as long as they don't draw the games in the CalArts style, I'm fine with however they decide to make it look. But maybe that's just me. As long as it's got a good story and good gameplay, it doesn't matter what it looks like to me.

Still, always curious to see what happens when the old guard steps back up to pick up where they left off. So far I can't recall a single case where this has succeeded so far... (Phoenix Point, Star Citizen, Peter Molyneux's entire existence, Double Fine for an alarmingly long time)

Well I mean, Thimbleweed Park was pretty decent, so there you go. A single case where that's succeeded. 
And if you want a better case, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night only ever got praise.
If I sat here and thought about it long enough, I could probably come up with many more examples, especially if I included TV shows and movies.

Overall though, I think we need to keep things in perspective. This game isn't going to be as good as the Monkey Island games in our heads. It'll only be as good as the actual Monkey Island games. Because let's face it, we've probably all got rose-tinted glasses on over here. 

[WHAM]

Good point, and I really need to finally get to playing Thimbleweed Park. Heck, I might even make that my next stream game after I finish Tunic. Bloodstained I gave up on after a few hours, as it just got kind of boring.

Not all of these "old master returns to beloved franchise" projects are bad, but there are enough bad examples that I tend toward scepticism rather than optimism. Funny thing is I just recently played through MI1 and MI2 with a friend of mine. A lot still holds up nicely, though especially to non-native english speakers some of the puzzles can seem a bit confusing.

[Danvzare]

Not all of these "old master returns to beloved franchise" projects are bad, but there are enough bad examples that I tend toward scepticism rather than optimism. Funny thing is I just recently played through MI1 and MI2 with a friend of mine. A lot still holds up nicely, though especially to non-native english speakers some of the puzzles can seem a bit confusing.

That skepticism is definitely well earned. I can think of many more bad examples than good ones. But I suppose I'm an optimist. 

Also agreed, MI1 and MI2 do still hold up. I mean, I should know. I may have played CoMI back when it first came out, but I didn't get to play MI1 and MI2 until around 2008.
To think, there used to be a time when you couldn't play the games you wanted unless you were fortunate enough to find a store that stocked them. Such a privileged time we live in now. 
(It didn't help that I didn't know an MI1 and MI2 even existed back when I played CoMI.  )

[LimpingFish]

Yeah, Thimbleweed Park was decent enough, The Cave and Deathspank less so. But I'm old and cynical, so I'm probably not the best person to comment. Whenever I see an original creator return to a series and say that they're going to ignore certain entries, most likely because they didn't work on them, it kind of rubs me the wrong way; kind of like Kojima poking fun at every Metal Gear he wasn't involved in (see Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes).

But...we shall see.

[Ali]

Hey, does anyone knows what software people use to make these smooth animations like in this trailer? I am curious if there's something that is kinda engine agnostic... Just for research purposes at the moment.

There's a range of skeleton-based animation software. Spine and the open source Dragonbones both plug into Unity (or similar). For pre-rendered skeleton animation, there's Moho, Adobe Animator, probably Toonboom and (increasingly) Blender. You might well be able to export 2D animations from Blender to your game engine of choice, I just don't know.

I'm a little frustrated by the RMI screenshots, the scenes are full of nice details but the overall effect is very... unrelaxing. It does feel pretty faithful to MI1... but I never particularly cared for the Melee Island art. That said, having seen some of the art director's other work, they are obviously talented. So I'll wait to see how it works in-game. I don't want to be a doomsayer or a fanboy.

[eri0o]

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

[Babar]

I'm slightly assuaged by those screenshots that it isn't going the special editions' route, but while it is hard to make such a judgement from still images, I'm not really getting a Monkey Island vibe from screenshots like this:

[ThatDude]

Not a fan of the "cubist" style honestly but as long as the story's good, I don't mind (I mean, I played MI on an amber Hercules). I'm mildly hyped, let's see how it pans out.

[AndreasBlack]

If you can't get the game you want, you try to make it yourself with AGS (hint, it's me!). 

The joke i said to an IRL friend some days ago apply here. Lucasarts did the same mistake in the late 90's. Didn't those guys learn anything? 3D graphics and point & click it was an failed experiment at best. Yes, Grim Fandango were so praised in magazines and bla bla, i never knew anybody personally that liked that game's graphics, or the game itself, neither Monkey Island 4 with their clunky keyboard movement controlling. Destroyed the genre. Since Ron Gilbert liked Monkey Island 3 i only wished he would have continued that art style for the new game, since it was fantastic! Imagine that handdrawn style! But with highresolution and no limitations as they still had back then! Well well....Back to uninspired "3D graphics" done by an Evil Tron Machine 3000 AI, i guess  .

To be fair i had the same feelings about Streets Of Rage 4's graphics but i ended up liking the game anyway, it's "just graphics".....
As for the gameplay itself i hope it will be a decent game, but Thimbleweed Park or something along the line of Day Of The Tentacle is where they should have stuck their guns imo totally 100% expert not at all humble opinion  .

But whatever floats Guybrush Boat, i guess.

[Danvzare]

While I'm not a huge fan of the graphics myself, I do feel as though people are being a bit too judgmental on them.
They're just graphics, and hey, they're not THAT bad. Just as long as we don't get creepy Guybrush like in the first special edition game, or bean shaped heads like every modern cartoon, then we should be fine.

[Creamy]

Although I prefer CMI style, I think it doesn't look too bad. It reminds me a bit of Guacamelee.

Whenever I see an original creator return to a series and say that they're going to ignore certain entries, most likely because they didn't work on them, it kind of rubs me the wrong way; kind of like Kojima poking fun at every Metal Gear he wasn't involved in (see Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes).

They will take the other entries into consideration according to their interview on Adventure Gamers:

Like Murray, can we expect to see nods to Escape from Monkey Island and Tales of Monkey Island in this game?

Ron: We very purposefully don’t do anything to invalidate any of the canon that’s happened in those games. We’re not saying any of those things didn’t happen, we don’t talk down to them at all. We embrace a lot of the things we liked in those games. So we were very, very careful about that. I remember some of those conversations Dave and I had, there was this kind of tendency to just throw everything out, let’s just start over. But the thing we finally came around to is, these are very beloved games. We didn’t make them, but there are still a lot of good things in those games, and we wanted to embrace those, not whisk them away.

Dave: We talked all about canon and these other games, and the fact that we liked them, and the audience liked them, and so we made it our point of philosophy to adhere to canon wherever possible, but with two caveats. One of which is, it’s actually kind of hard to keep track of everything that’s canon, and some of these other games don’t even agree with each other. So a little bit of paradox is necessary and probably healthy for us as creators and as human beings. And the other caveat is that too much canon can get in the way of the story you’re trying to tell, so we decided that we would adhere to canon unless it was going to get in the way, and we would ignore some minor details if we needed to.

Ron: Which I think the other games did as well. You have to be a little flexible in that stuff.

Not that I care very much anyway as long as it's fun.

[CaptainD]

While I'm not a huge fan of the graphics myself, I do feel as though people are being a bit too judgmental on them.
They're just graphics, and hey, they're not THAT bad. Just as long as we don't get creepy Guybrush like in the first special edition game, or bean shaped heads like every modern cartoon, then we should be fine.

I get what you're saying but my feeling is that as soon as we hear the music, for which they have the original composers back, our minds will be transported to the wonderful world of Monkey Island again. The graphic styles in 1-2 / 3 / 4 were drastically different anyway and apart from the 3D in Escape being a bit clunky it still felt like Monkey Island (it was mainly the change of UI that people didn't like IIRC?). Tales also introduced its own graphic style and successfully captured the feeling of monkeys and islands (pity about the terrible movement interface but I still enjoyed those games). So I'm not convinced graphic style is really that important, we've seen 3 very distinct graphic styles across the MI games already, 4 if you include the Special Editions of 1 & 2. The backgrounds for those were gorgeous, the character art less so, that's really the only thing I would be worried about seeing repeated in this game.

[Ali]

Back to uninspired "3D graphics" done by an Evil Tron Machine 3000 AI, i guess  .

Am I confused? The new graphics aren't 3D? They're distinctly 2D, with their flattened perspective. As I said, they haven't won my heart, but I prefer them to the Special Edition backgrounds because they aren't fuzzy and rushed.

We can keep begging for Curse of Monkey Island style graphics, but surely we have to accept that (by and large) it's just too expensive for the indie-sphere.

[Mandle]

Yahtzee just released a pretty thoughtful take on the prematurely announced "death" of click-and-point games centering around the upcoming Monkey Island release. For those who don't like his Zero Punctuation style this is his new series "Extra Punctuation". A lot less machinegun swearing and crude jokes and more actual commentary at a normally spoken pace:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0gQ0ed8R6A

[AndreasBlack]

Am I confused? The new graphics aren't 3D? They're distinctly 2D, with their flattened perspective. As I said, they haven't won my heart, but I prefer them to the Special Edition backgrounds because they aren't fuzzy and rushed.

We can keep begging for Curse of Monkey Island style graphics, but surely we have to accept that (by and large) it's just too expensive for the indie-sphere.

The reason i wrote "3D Graphics" is because the figures are clearly not done in a 2D based program like drawn frame by frame in Photoshop, or such. It's been rigged in a 3d program 100%. The Violin Player (I guess LeChuck, looks nothing like him, except the hat tho) does not look all flat too me. Does that count as 3D? probably no, but It doesn't look 2D either. It's something "inbetween", which was what i was trying to say, hence i wrote "3d Graphics"  . Anyways i'm not sure it's a cost thing either. It's not like a full on Disney animation after all. Some walkcycles, some figures probably could stand still and just have idle views/talkviews, etc. It can't be THAT expensive, but what do i know.  Wasn't there a graph of the various costs for Thimbleweed Park somewhere? Art, voiceacting, etc.

Let's just hope the game will be a good one, no matter how disatisifed one might be with the Graphics.

[Babar]

The reason i wrote "3D Graphics" is because the figures are clearly not done in a 2D based program like drawn frame by frame in Photoshop, or such. It's been rigged in a 3d program 100%.

I think it is simply vector art with bones, set up in a vector art animation program like what Ali suggested: something like Moho or Toonboom. Or it could be using the 2D functionalities of Blender too, I guess. I wouldn't really call it 3D.
I'm happy that it's a much better done iteration of the same style used in the Special editions. Would I have been happier with pixel art? Maybe. I never really cared for the CMI art (or feel, or voices, or story), so it doesn't bother me that they didn't go that way.

[Ali]

The reason i wrote "3D Graphics" is because the figures are clearly not done in a 2D based program like drawn frame by frame in Photoshop, or such. It's been rigged in a 3d program 100%.

I don't want to disrupt the thread with pedantry, but like Babar says, skeleton-based 2D animation is still 2D animation. Almost every modern 2D game is made up of 2D sprites in 3D space. Just not the ones made in AGS...

I do want to emphasise HOW expensive traditional cel animation is. Apart from Broken Sword, I can't think of a 90s adventure game with that quality of animation where the developers got to make a second game in the same style. Curse of Monkey Island, Discworld II, Toonstruck... I can't help but wonder if the mega-budget 2D adventure game was ever really financially viable.

The team behind Gibbous managed traditional 2D, and Daedelic seemed to have found a half way house between skeleton-based and cel animation. In the case of Gibbous, the fact that 2 of the devs are also the animators, and they're based in Romania is a significant factor.

[AndreasBlack]

I think it is simply vector art with bones, set up in a vector art animation program like what Ali suggested: something like Moho or Toonboom. Or it could be using the 2D functionalities of Blender too, I guess. I wouldn't really call it 3D.
I'm happy that it's a much better done iteration of the same style used in the Special editions. Would I have been happier with pixel art? Maybe. I never really cared for the CMI art (or feel, or voices, or story), so it doesn't bother me that they didn't go that way.

Yeah, that's probably the word i was looking for actually. Vector art.  I don't care how it's done. Bottom line is, it's graphics 2d 3d or vector or whatever it is, looks bland. End of discussion.

[Danvzare]

I think it is simply vector art with bones, set up in a vector art animation program like what Ali suggested: something like Moho or Toonboom. Or it could be using the 2D functionalities of Blender too, I guess. I wouldn't really call it 3D.
I'm happy that it's a much better done iteration of the same style used in the Special editions. Would I have been happier with pixel art? Maybe. I never really cared for the CMI art (or feel, or voices, or story), so it doesn't bother me that they didn't go that way.

Yeah, that's probably the word i was looking for actually. Vector art.  I don't care how it's done. Bottom line is, it's graphics 2d 3d or vector or whatever it is, looks bland. End of discussion.

Bland, yes. But having played through and completed Super Neptunia RPG, which really overuses that 2D Bone-Structure Vector Art animation style, I can safely say that it does grow on you. It's got a sort of charm to it. Then again, that could just be my nostalgia for Flash animation talking.

I think Guybrush on the Special Edition of Secret of Monkey Island was a 3D model that was rendered in 2D. It certainly looks like it to me. I'm not sure about the other characters, but he looked like it to me. Either way, he looked horrible in that game. 
And don't get me started on the Broken Sword remakes. I couldn't even play the remakes of those two games because of that. 

Still, I think we can all agree that we'd prefer proper traditional cel animation, in any form.
It's such a shame that the only modern day example I can think of where it's been done, is Cuphead.

[Nr. 2698]

Like many others, I was just as disappointed when I saw the new graphics.

For me, Monkey Island ends with the second part anyway, where two boys are brought back to reality from playing in the amusement park.

I don't think it's pixelated or not. The art itself is important.

And that's where Peter Chang had a decisive influence with his background paintings. If you look at the concept art, you can see how masterfully he did it.

The problem is simply that today's artists can use many tools but can no longer draw and paint properly.

For animation. Yes, traditional cel by cel animation would have been far too expensive. Digitally, a frame by frame animation would certainly have been possible.

[Ali]

I think Guybrush on the Special Edition of Secret of Monkey Island was a 3D model that was rendered in 2D. It certainly looks like it to me. I'm not sure about the other characters, but he looked like it to me. Either way, he looked horrible in that game. 

We agree on the last part, but I think it's all 2D.

For animation. Yes, traditional cel by cel animation would have been far too expensive. Digitally, a frame by frame animation would certainly have been possible.

Just to be clear, when I said cel animation, I didn't mean literally scanning painted cels. I doubt any adventure games did that. (Maybe Dragon's Lair did?) But really, I can't emphasise enough how big a difference there is between high-quality frame-by-frame animation and (much, much faster) skeletal / pixelart animation.

It's rare because it's difficult and expensive, not because game devs or animators are lazy.

To keep this on topic: I hope the recent disappearance of Ron Gilbert's website isn't a bad omen. While I'm not won over by the new art, I hardly think it warrants a backlash.

[Danvzare]

To keep this on topic: I hope the recent disappearance of Ron Gilbert's website isn't a bad omen. While I'm not won over by the new art, I hardly think it warrants a backlash.

Wait, what? People are throwing that much of a hissy-fit over the graphics!?
I mean, yeah, sure, I'm not a huge fan of the graphics either. But seriously? I thought everyone was just talking about it peacefully like we're doing here on this thread. (Looking at the website on the wayback machine, I can't see anything too heated. But then again, it only goes up to the 8th of April.)
After all, despite what anyone may think about the art style, it's not like it's "Sonic the Movie" levels of bad. It's definitely reasonable in my opinion.

But with all of that said, of course everyone's going to be talking about the graphics. The graphics are basically the only thing we know about the game at this point. There's really not much else TO discuss.
...
I really hope it isn't a bad omen as well. I'd hate to see a game get marred by developers who don't understand fan reactions.

[Denzil Quixode]

Ron shares some thoughts: "When I Made Another Monkey Island"