Adventure Gamers - Forums

I wish le chucks revenge hadnt ended the way it did. I actually think that a game should just be a game and not try to be too smart with its ending. A game is just really a story that we move along with solving puzzles.It should have a beginning and middle and end without trying to be too smart. I would have been happy to see guybrush stories in the monkey island world without having to know his “reason to be”

Here we are…

DM81 - 03 July 2023 03:34 AM

Here we are…

Wait. What is this? It looks absolutely gorgeous.

I would tell more, but I don’t know! It just pop us some days ago on my youtube page.
Anyway, I really hope that one day will be released something more, it totally looks as the “Monkey 3” I always dreamt of.

I’m getting a little bit tired of being gaslight and told that the only reason that I don’t like this game is because I had to higher expectations (not that anyone upon this forum did so, I hasten to add).  I don’t like this game because it’s not a very good game.  Simple as.

Return to Monkey Island got voted as one of the top 100 PC games of all time and the greatest Monkey Island game of all time.  Are ya kidding me?!  Absurdity. I have zero issue for those whom love the game.  I wish that I did too.  However; the best of the series?!  Come on, man!  WTF!

If it literally is your favourite Monkey Island game, then fair play. I don’t care to pee on your chips.  I merely feel that it’s a bit crazy to say that it’s the highlight of the series.

St_Eddie, I must say thank you, as you are one who helped open my eyes to RTMI. While everyone praised it (perhaps more to conform to expectations than out of real appreciation) you had the mind clarity to keep your judgment balanced, effectively assessing that RTMI is just…bad.

Now, the question we’re all asking ourselves is…why?

Since Ron had demonstrated with Timbelweed Park that he was still capable of making a very good graphic adventure, why this meltdown?

I have my idea: (understandably) scared by the pressure of the job, Ron calls Dave Grossman. Together they have that famous brainstorming weekend.

Ron gives out his ideas, but without much conviction: he feels too much responsibility and fear of failing. This is why he lets himself be persuaded by Grossman to abandon everything he had thought of and to bet - according to him - on the safe side: “let’s make Monkey 1 combined with Monkey 2, without worrying too much about setting up a plot, without giving it too much depth, and without, above all, that is perceived as a “throwback” game.

Pay attention, in the various interviews this point returns constantly, almost feverishly. The fear of being classified as “old” emerges (there is also a dialogue with the pirate leaders that expresses the same concept). Which is demeaning, given that great developers like them are expected to SET the trend, not follow it.

And so… little by little, the pieces start to fall apart: Pixel art? For heaven’s sake, too old school (it would be enough to understand the concept that pixel art is a style and that in art there is no threshold of non-reversibility, but oh well…), Guybrush goes to hell? No, no, never mind, we don’t want that the newcomers don’t understand the narrative connections…, “At least Dave let’s make it difficult, at least that…” “Uh, but you know, now gamers want everything right away, we can’t do something too complex, let’s simplify, trivialize…” And so on.
Then, as if this dramatic self-censorship weren’t enough, Disney arrives with its monstrous corporate policies: forced inclusion, rampant infantilism, brutal reductionism of any narrative ambiguity…

Now, this might seem like an hasty reconstruction, but for those who can read between the lines it is quite clear and evident: Grossman recently stated that 85% of the game’s writing is by him. It’s more of a Grossman game than a Gilbert game. And Ron has permanently deactivated his blog comments, as if to protect himself from exposure to a popular truth that is not the sweetened and compliant one of the sector magazines.

And above all I remember a tweet from Ron - then immediately corrected - in which he wrote (I’m going by heart, but that was the gist): “Because of Dave Grossman RTMI is a soulless game”.
Without bothering Freud, but often our true sensations or thoughts emerge from small mistakes like this…

Oh well, patience.

Ron will have the opportunity to make up for it with Timbelweed Park 2.

It’s really a pity, anyway, because it was so simple to make it right…

@DM81 - I’m reluctant to say that RTMI’s failing were mainly down to Dave Grossman.  I would have been inclined to say that Ron Gilbert simply doesn’t remember how to make a great adventure game any more, but as you correctly pointed out; Thimbleweed park proves otherwise.

I really can’t fathom what exactly went wrong with RTMI (though you do raise a compelling hypothesis - one which is likely at least partially true), but it would surely be a lot easier for us all to get to the root of the game’s core behind the scenes problems, if only the vast majority of fans would take their sycophantic blinkers off and actually acknowledge the game’s design issues.  As it is, the majority are still too fearful to call out the Emperor for being butt naked.

DM81 - 06 August 2023 03:37 AM

St_Eddie, I must say thank you, as you are one who helped open my eyes to RTMI.

You’re quite welcome.  I live to dampen people’s enjoyment of games and other media.

DM81 - 06 August 2023 03:37 AM

And so… little by little, the pieces start to fall apart: Pixel art? For heaven’s sake, too old school (it would be enough to understand the concept that pixel art is a style and that in art there is no threshold of non-reversibility, but oh well…)

I will say that I don’t think that the game necessarily ought to have had a pixel art aesthetic.  Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed one, but The Curse of Monkey Island shows how gorgeous a higher resolution aesthetic can look within a Monkey Island game.  I guess that I would have simply preferred pretty much any other art style to the one they ultimately went with, which I personally find to be pig ugly and amateurish in terms of scene focal points and perspective.

DM81 - 06 August 2023 03:37 AM

“At least Dave let’s make it difficult, at least that…” “Uh, but you know, now gamers want everything right away, we can’t do something too complex, let’s simplify, trivialize…”

I think that you may be on to something here.  I will never forget a quote from Dave Grossman, from back when he was working at Telltale Games; he said that his philosophy towards adventure game design going forwards (this was around the time of The Walking Dead) was that an adventure game should be something that non-gamers can enjoy and that a grandmother ought to be able to pick up a Telltale game and play it through to completion.  Basically, Grossman was stating that the design and puzzles need to be extremely streamlined and simplified.

That quote always rubbed me up the wrong way.  Firstly because, honestly, how many grandmothers are itching to play a game based around The Walking Dead, Jurassic Park or The Wolf Among Us?  Secondly, because such a philosophy ignores the face that your core audience and key demographic is comprised of people who have a brain.  Did the deviously ingenious puzzles within Valve’s Portal games act as a barrier to financial success?  No, they did not.  Whether it’s a game, a film, a TV series or a novel; I loathe it when creatives treat their audience as mentally challenged.

The worst part of all of this in regards to RTMI is that the game has a casual mode and a hard mode, so there was an opportunity to cater to both demographics, but for reasons known only to Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman, they opted to make the “hard” mode ridiculously easy too.  In fact, not only easy but puzzles which seemed entirely devoid of creative inspiration.  Seriously, how many of the “puzzles” required the player to read a lock code or use their knife on an object?!

DM81 - 06 August 2023 03:37 AM

Then, as if this dramatic self-censorship weren’t enough, Disney arrives with its monstrous corporate policies: forced inclusion, rampant infantilism, brutal reductionism of any narrative ambiguity…

I’m glad you said it because I’ve been horribly afraid of speaking up about this aspect of the game.  I’ve learned the hard way that whenever one is critical of Disney’s forced political agenda in games, one is instantly and unjustly dismissed as a far right-wing bigot.  As I played RTMI, I couldn’t help but notice some oddities, such as all of the people in power being women, or the greeter at the Scumm Bar quite clearly being a male character sprite (with a 5 o’clock shadow and everything), yet inexplicably having a female voice.

Then once I had completed the game (later that same day, due to the aforementioned ridiculously easy puzzles) and I watched the end credits,  I saw the entry for the Disney employees who worked on the game; which comprised of a whole bunch of ‘Franchise Content and Strategy’ employees and one Queen Denchukwu - whom is Disney’s Director for Diversity and Inclusion.  Suddenly, it all made sense.  That greeter at the Scumm Bar was never meant to be a women.  The character sprite was drawn as a male but Denchukwu told Gilbert and Grossman that X number of NPCs need to be women and given that voice recording is one of the very last aspects of production, they retroactively gave male characters female voices.  I will further bet that the Ice Queen was originally the Ice King (check out that masculine square jawline).

Now, I hasten to add that there’s nothing wrong with having female characters in positions of power (heck, the very first game had Elaine Marley as the Governor of Melee Island).  That pretty much goes without saying.  However, I do find it insidious when a corporation forces creatives to to include an arbitrary number of such characters, to the point where men become the underdogs, ruled by a matriarchal society, in a story which never narratively acknowledges that status quo, especially when the fictional universe in question is one of a pirate inhabited world (not exactly a setting known for being a matriarchal led society).

I hope I’m making sense with what I’m saying because again; I absolutely fear speaking up about this kind of thing, knowing how quick people can be to ascribe bigotry to those who do so.  I simply find that this mandatory inclusion and diversity quota is often in opposition to creative freewill.

A relevant link.

Classic films such as John Carpenter’s The Thing would never be made today, under such constraints.  An arbitrary number of female characters would be required to be included among the cast and in doing so, the entire dynamic of the characters would be changed.  Part of what makes The Thing such a compelling narrative is that it’s an isolated outpost within the Antarctic, comprised solely of testosterone filled men, trying to cope with extreme paranoia and a life an death situation. Were one to include a few women into that mix, it would fundamentally alter the character dynamics and I would argue that it would be to the movie’s detriment.

A story ought to be told organically, not via a checklist of race and genders which absolutely have to be included and within positions of power, no matter what.  That’s the antithesis of creativity.  Organic diversity and inclusion is something to be encouraged and championed.  Enforced and mandatory diversity and inclusion, significantly less so.

Speaking only of my feelings, since the first teaser with the violinist I had feel several red flags.
At first glance I immediately thought “it looks like a flash game”. Then the first photos came out and, after all the criticisms and attacks on Gilbert’s blog, I had softened my positions.
I also defended the game several times, trying to persuade the skeptics that, if it had been made in 1992, the game it still wouldn’t have had the same look as Monkey 2 but probably would have followed the trend of DOTT.
I tried to persuade myself first, of course,  but inside me there was always something that didn’t add up, I felt that not everything was in its right place.
Then the trailer comes out… and it was another punch in the stomach. I didn’t like it at all. But… I kept lying to myself, with an huge cognitive dissonance: “I have to like it, since I’ve waited so long”.
Then when the game finally comes out all the “mental tricks” that I had built for myself collapse once again: the thing that had annoyed me the most, besides the terrible retcon that abandoned everything that had been established with Monkey2, it was that horrible childish atmosphere, very different from that disturbing feeling that was a fundamental part of Monkey 1 and 2.
The graphics, in addition to the objectively ugly art style, have some technical problems, given that there are several screens that seem to have remained in a primitive state of production. I don’t want to believe that no one has noticed. They run out of money?
This could also be another problem to add to the list of “What did get wrong with RTMI” , that may have affected the final result (Cogg Island was cut, 2/3 of parts on Monkey Island were cut…but why?)
The only thing that, for me, worked mysteriously perfectly was the ending: on me “turning off the lights” had such an intense emotional impact that retroactively I re-evaluated the whole experience.
But this leight of hand that didn’t last long: after a few weeks the problems with the game emerged more and more clearly and I could no longer lie to myself.

St_Eddie - 06 August 2023 08:31 AM

A story ought to be told organically, not via a checklist of race and genders which absolutely have to be included and within positions of power, no matter what.  That’s the antithesis of creativity.  Organic diversity and inclusion is something to be encouraged and championed.  Enforced and mandatory diversity and inclusion, significantly less so.

100% agree with you.

I think its 50/50, i think ron had 0 issue if disney requested anything to be added.

Ps. I think thimbleweed park is also not good. It is full of all of ron’s design decisions that, i can not stand. Even though I think Broken Age also was not a very well-made gam,e I prefer that hand over fist then thimbleweed park.

DM81 - 07 August 2023 06:19 AM

...all the criticisms and attacks on Gilbert’s blog…

I’ve mentioned this before but the “attacks” on Ron Gilbert’s blog literally amounted to a dozen or so posts, among many hundreds of overall comments.  You know, just like there are ALWAYS going to be a few nasty comments within any popular forum upon the Internet.  Of course, that didn’t stop the media from running with a bit of the ol’ fake news by claiming that there was a targeted campaign of hatred being directed at Ron Gilbert by an amassed legion of haters, which predictably in turn resulted in defensive fans calling absolutely anyone who was critical of the art style as being a hateful troll.

DM81 - 07 August 2023 06:19 AM

The graphics, in addition to the objectively ugly art style, have some technical problems, given that there are several screens that seem to have remained in a primitive state of production. I don’t want to believe that no one has noticed. They run out of money?
This could also be another problem to add to the list of “What did get wrong with RTMI” , that may have affected the final result (Cogg Island was cut, 2/3 of parts on Monkey Island were cut…but why?)

Don’t forget Lime Island (or whatever it was called), where there are several hotspot locations on the overhead map, which were clearly meant to be visitable but in the released game, simply ended up with Guybrush making a brief comment about them when clicked upon (“That’s the lighthouse…” etc.).

Jdawg445 - 07 August 2023 07:10 AM

I think its 50/50, i think ron had 0 issue if disney requested anything to be added.

Oh, absolutely.  Ron Gilbert said as much himself; “Disney made a couple of suggestions and I was happy to oblige”, or words to that effect.  I think that it’s pretty clear and evident from playing the game and from the current forceful political climate of Disney what those suggestions were.

Then again, I don’t know that we can take Gilbert at his word any more, given the aforementioned blatantly ‘cut for time’ content (which Gilbert disingenuously claimed was merely cut for purely creative reasons) and the fact that he spent 3 decades claiming that there was a secret that he had yet to reveal within Monkey Island and that nobody had ever guessed it (only to finally reveal in RTMI that said secret is essentially a complete retread of the ending to MI2).

St_Eddie - 07 August 2023 06:21 PM

DM81 - 07 August 2023 06:19 AM

...all the criticisms and attacks on Gilbert’s blog…

I’ve mentioned this before but the “attacks” on Ron Gilbert’s blog literally amounted to a dozen or so posts, among many hundreds of overall comments.  You know, just like there are ALWAYS going to be a few nasty comments within any popular forum upon the Internet.  Of course, that didn’t stop the media from running with a bit of the ol’ fake news by claiming that there was a targeted campaign of hatred being directed at Ron Gilbert by an amassed legion of haters, which predictably in turn resulted in defensive fans calling all and anyone who was critical of the art style as being a hateful troll.

DM81 - 07 August 2023 06:19 AM

The graphics, in addition to the objectively ugly art style, have some technical problems, given that there are several screens that seem to have remained in a primitive state of production. I don’t want to believe that no one has noticed. They run out of money?
This could also be another problem to add to the list of “What did get wrong with RTMI” , that may have affected the final result (Cogg Island was cut, 2/3 of parts on Monkey Island were cut…but why?)

Don’t forget Lime Island (or whatever it was called), where there are several hotspot locations on the overhead map, which were clearly meant to be visitable but in the released game, simply ended up with Guybrush making a brief comment about them when clicked upon (“That’s the lighthouse…” etc.).

Jdawg445 - 07 August 2023 07:10 AM

I think its 50/50, i think ron had 0 issue if disney requested anything to be added.

Oh, absolutely.  Ron Gilbert said as much himself; “Disney made a couple of suggestions and I was happy to oblige”, or words to that effect.  I think that it’s pretty clear and evident from playing the game and from the current forceful political climate of Disney what those suggestions were.

Then again, I don’t know that we can take Gilbert at his word any more, given the aforementioned blatantly ‘cut for time’ content (which Gilbert disingenuously claimed was merely cut for purely creative reasons) and the fact that he spent 3 decades claiming that there was a secret that he had yet to reveal within Monkey Island and that nobody had ever guessed it (only to finally reveal in RTMI that said secret is essentially a complete retread of the ending to MI2).

Why not lol. He does the same meta im a genius thing, in every game, see thimbleweed park.

Jdawg445 - 07 August 2023 08:03 PM

Why not lol. He does the same meta im a genius thing, in every game, see thimbleweed park.

Touché.  It goes beyond that though because loads of people had suggested that the secret was that Guybrush was simply imagining his pirate adventures within a theme park and Ron Gilbert explicitly replied that that was categorically not the secret.  Turns out, that WAS in fact the secret..  I don’t know why he decided that lying to fans for three decades was an okay thing to do, nor do I understand why so many fans accepted being lied to for three decades and even went so far as to praise him for doing so.