Adventure Gamers - Forums

fiksdal - 30 June 2022 04:40 AM

Aren’t you guys just setting up an opposing gate? Anyone who disagrees with you does so due to some weird religious feelings rather than forming a independent opinion on a work of art?

Not at all.  I take absolutely no umbrage with anyone who likes the art style and waxes lyrical about it.  If anything, I envy that position.  My ire is directed at those who try to tar anyone and everyone who has a critical opinion of it with the same brush of toxicity.  I would just as quickly jump to the defense of anyone who likes the art style getting unfairly attacked for doing so.

fiksdal - 30 June 2022 04:40 AM

...weird religious feelings…

My prior comment about a cult like mentality derives from the inherent oddness of people acting as though Ron Gilbert’s works ought to be shielded from criticism and that we should all just stare in awe and express eternal, unwavering gratitude towards him, as though he’s the figurehead for a charity, as opposed to, you know… a professional videogame developer who’s making a commercial game with a team of 40 or so other professionals.  My comment was made in regards to a sector of fans rallying together to protect their sacred cow and to dismiss any and all criticism as toxic.

I don’t think that Ron Gilbert is a deity.  I think that, like anybody else, he can be fallible and sometimes make questionable creative choices (the monkey wrench puzzle, for example).  I don’t think that any artist’s works ought to be treated as sacrament and beyond the reproach of critical engagement.

I love The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge.  I consider Thimbleweed Park to be one of the greatest adventure games of the 21st Century and I am looking forward to playing Return to Monkey Island more than I have anticipated any other game from within my 39 years upon this Earth.  I still have to be intellectually honest with myself though and acknowledge when I don’t personally care for a creative choice.  It’s not fair that I and others should get lumped in with the vocal minority of toxic people, which is absolutely what some people have been doing.  Criticism in of itself ought not to be a synonym for toxicity.

You might not like it (yet) but Crowle’s style will probably age better than the rest, alongside with TSOMI’s EGA version. You could give the game a chance. If there isn’t something completely wrong (like screwed up controls & movement with annoying animations, a bad adventure, ideological abuse) it might grow on you, at least to such a degree, that you can enjoy the game. I think some scenes are looking pretty good and offer a nice mood already, even without music, sound, animations, characters talking and your own actions. If you then still don’t like it, fair enough.

@grumpy
Currently a number of his domains are offline. I guess he once said, that he owns many domains. Somehow I’m glad that YouTube isn’t amongst them. The Return To Monkey Island site is online. I’ve never experienced something like this before.

meteor - 30 June 2022 06:06 AM

You could give the game a chance.

Did I ever state that I wouldn’t?  I’ll be there for the game, with a day one purchase.

Okay. If it’s inappropriate for you, it might be a helpful suggestion for others.

Ja. But it’s not just people who don’t like the game and express this in inappropriate ways. There was a bunch of evangelists around, fueling the fire, trying to tell others what to think. It doesn’t take much imagination to know how this might end. It’s a facet of the divided society we’ve ended up with.

seething wolf - 30 June 2022 09:21 AM

I agree with those (respectfully) sneering at the offbeat art style but, even if it looked like the first 2 classics, I still wouldn’t understand why this even exists at all. Like Psychonauts 2, it’ll just be treading old and moldy ground or as the youngins say: sovlless.

I don’t know about that.  A third Monkey Island game by Ron Gilbert has always felt like unfinished business, ever since he departed LucasArts after making Monkey Island 2.  For better or worse, I absolutely am thrilled to see what Ron and co have up their sleeves.

I will confess that I’m not overly keen on the sheer volume of ‘member berries spied throughout the promotional material thus far (Melee Island, the Lookout, Otis, Carla etc.) and I’m hopeful that they don’t double down with that sort of thing in the full game.  Hopefully those moments were chosen for the trailer, explicitly in order to evoke nostalgia tears in the sort of people who are susceptible to a bit of the old morale masturbation of the mind.  Personally, I’m hoping that the game will largely focus on new characters and new islands.  I want the game to create new iconic moments, not coast by on the goodwill of games of yore.

Still, like I say; a third Ron Gilbert Monkey Island game feels like something that was destined to happen and I’m elated that it is indeed finally happening.  If nothing else, we seem set to have the Secret™ revealed and that’s exciting in of itself (even if it’s almost inevitably going to be a disappointment after decades of fan conjecture).

I’m not looking forward to play MI6 for the reveal of a secret but for the adventure, solving puzzles, listening to music, the exploration, enjoying a story.

What I like about this game engine is how the marionette upgrade to the 2d sprite allows for more animations much like 3d models do. It’s an honest attempt at bridging all the art styles thus far. It makes me reminisce about all the interesting ways 2d and 3d interacted over the history of gaming. 3d models too complex to run smoothly in real time? Rotate that tank around, push for render, screenshot it 8 times and you’ve got some great RTS gaming.
I do wish the honest attempt would present as having had more effort put in, aside from the crew’s assurances.

I haven’t looked into which toxicity Ron is upset about, but professionals this late into the existence of the internet should know better than to feed the trolls. People online spout shit ‘cause anonymity, and even after Trump it feels so strange for a public figure to engage on the same level.

What’s most baffling to me is learning that the art style is based on a fan art reimagining the upscaled MI3 Guybrush as a boxier MI3 self, as if the MI1 pixelated sprite would keep those sharp edges and giant head if you kept zooming in, entirely ignoring the style of the “cutscene” Guybrush, who still hasn’t gotten to star in a game. The graphics we got for MI? are a disgruntled fan’s response to MI3 that Ron agreed with. His extreme reaction whiffs to me of regret, or hurt that people didn’t want the game’s direction to be based on “Let’s take a final shit on the franchise.”

seething wolf - 30 June 2022 10:13 AM

See? You’re already perfectly aware of how it’ll turn out. After 31 years, the only thing that grants a mystery its power is the fact that it remains a mystery. As much as I loved Anachronox which ended on a cliffhanger after a heartbreaking plot twist 21 years ago, no sequel would ever do it justice nor be worth the retreading. Same for a Half-Life 3. It gets to a point where it being unfinished is the best thing it has going for it.

This being said, I hope I’m wrong and you’ll get to enjoy the Return.

That’s a valid concern and one which has occurred to me in regards to the game.  One of my all time favourite movies is Ridley Scott’s Alien and for decades I wished for and dreamed that one day Ridley Scott may return to the series and tell the tale of the mysterious Space Jockey from the 1979 classic.  Then in 2010, Ridley announced that he was doing just that via his prequel titled Prometheus.  I had never been more excited for a movie in my entire life.  It was a dream come true!

Only it wasn’t.  It was a Monkey’s Paw wish gone bad because when I finally watched the movie at the cinema, the experience was so dishearteningly disappointing.  Not only was the movie’s script a terrible mess, but it retroactively ruined the mystery of the Space Jockey.  For decades I dreamt of what the backstory for that species was and in the span of 2 hours and a bucket of popcorn, that dream crumbled to reveal a pasty, albino buff dude behind the curtain.  Prometheus remains my single biggest cinematic disappointment in life and I rue the day I ever willed for it to be made.

So absolutely, I can see how Return to Monkey Island has the potential to be a game best left to the imagination, along with the much fabled Secret™ itself.  Expectations and decades worth of imagination and dreaming has a way of setting one’s self up for a bitter disappointment.  On the other hand, maybe the game will be great.  We can but hope.

Ron has decided to shut down the comment section and has said he won’t release any more details about the game until it comes out. Nobody should personally attack a developer but at the same time I’m about to say something hugely unpopular, but i feel its true.

Everybody talks about toxic fandoms and they are most definitely real but nobody ever talks about toxic developers and they are also extremely real. look at someone the toxicity that’s been spewed on here from the Saint kotar people alone. A lot cant handle criticism, they either deflect or attack others themselves. My favorite passive aggressive statement is a “small vocal minority,” talk about coping much. At the very least it’s a 50-50 split on the art style. That has been said by creative people now for 10 years and it’s plainly not true. Is usually a strong large contingent never a vocal minority.

Blogga - 30 June 2022 11:33 AM

Jdawg445 - 30 June 2022 11:19 AM

Ron has decided to shut down the comment section and has said he won’t release any more details about the game until it comes out. Nobody should personally attack a developer but at the same time I’m about to say something hugely unpopular, but i feel its true.

Everybody talks about toxic fandoms and they are most definitely real but nobody ever talks about toxic developers and they are also extremely real. look at someone the toxicity that’s been spewed on here from the Saint kotar people alone. A lot cant handle criticism, they either deflect or attack others themselves. My favorite passive aggressive statement is a “small vocal minority,” talk about coping much. At the very least it’s a 50-50 split on the art style. That has been said by creative people now for 10 years and it’s plainly not true. Is usually a strong large contingent never a vocal minority.

Not sure this is justified, still. He’s respected in the industry and some need to get a grip.

I’m not sure the point you’re trying to make some of that is ridiculously stupid of course, but most of it’s just boils down to I think the art is ugly and shitty. Is there is a better way to put it yes, but that’s not overly mean or toxic at least to me. Immature yes. His response to me is also immature of just let the people who like it enjoy it and those that dont be quiet. It seems he wants an echo chamber of positivity and praise.

I will say when a Legacy property is handled right it comes across pretty positive look at Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2 those are decades apart. Game was resurrected by the original creator and I would say number 2 is as well received as the original.