> 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.
EDIT: Oh, and how can I forget the music!
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
On the other hand, the story, and the subtle humor from 1 and 2 was lacking or different.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Certain types of games exist and thrive due to what's technically feasible at the time they're created, just like any other form of art.
An example, Cuphead isn't radically different from something like Metroid in terms of gameplay and yet Cuphead was technically impossible when Metroid was all the rage. Similarly Metroid's asthetic is a product of it's era and wouldn't be received today in the same way.
Games are art, they simultaneously drive the medium while being limited by it.
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.
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".*
The characters weren't interesting, or even worse, were universally reviled like Jar Jar. The main character (both as a kid and as a teenager) was annoying as hell. The story didn't mesh well with the established Star Wars movies, like that thing with midichlorians that was thankfully played down in subsequent movies. For some reason, Lucas moved The Phantom Menace from "Young Adult" territory (as was the Original Trilogy) to "kid's movie", but halfway and inconsistently, so you get Jar Jar and "yipeee!" but also Trade Federation taxation routes -- what the hell?
To be fair, the visuals were also abused by Lucas. I think there's a legitimate criticism to be made of George Lucas and his "horror of the void": when he didn't have the tech/budget, he had to live with vast empty spaces, and the movies got that "Spaghetti Western" barren look that actually made them better. When CGI became cheaper and easier to use, George Lucas decided to fill every bit of empty screen with some gizmo or cute alien screaming at the screen, and his movies suffered because of this.
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.
I tried watching it with my kids as a marathon of Star Wars for May the Fourth, and they became bored with the trade federation and Senate, and were annoyed by Jar Jar. The pod racing was the saving grace, in their eyes, but even it was only mildly amusing.
I turned it off when they left the room when the pod racing finished.
Putting out a retro version could be seen as a greedy activity that tarnishes the original that could get a different mob after you.
I am not saying devs shouldn't get feedback, I just don't think they should be taking feedback from EVERYONE.
Personally if I ever wanted to release a game I would never have a public discord where people could contact me. Would I have a private discord where some other indie devs I know are invited for feedback and play testing? Absolutely. But, I wouldn't just let anyone in there.
As a kid in the 80s/early 90s, games and series like these caught my imagination. They were fun. Probably fun, interesting and inspiring in different ways to different people.
Agree if we listened to everyone's refined version, we'd end up with a different game for everyone. In the end it's only meant to be entertainment.
Return to Monkey Island comes across like the former (so far), various Trek and Wars continue-spinning-off-quels more like the latter.
that seems unfair. I think players (especially the kind who follow developers and make spend time posting online about games) do know what makes a good game. They know because they play title after title and see what works for them and what doesn't. The issue is that asking "What makes a good game" is much like asking what makes a good movie, or book, or romantic partner, or vacation. People are going to have very different ideas of what a good game is, but gamers are pretty damn savvy about what they love and about games in general.
That said, I agree with you that creators often go too far with player feedback. I think it's best for creators to make the games they would love, and if that doesn't lead to mainstream success that's fine, if real passion and love are put into a project there'll pretty much always be an audience out there who will appreciate it.
The art style for his new game is rather ironically nostalgia-laden in probably an unintentional way: it's deep nineties pop art, ala "Xtreme", etc.
<edit> This interview article has a number of screenshots that demo this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/23021974/return-to-monkey...
Here's the very first place Guybrush is controllable in:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...
https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...
Look at those walls. Not a vertical one in sight. They're all leaning.
Deeper in town:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...
https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...
Lots of straight lines, but no two buildings are in the same perspective. It's cartoon cubism, filtered through a 640x480 grid. Maurice Noble's work with Chuck Jones looms large over the backgrounds but so does the realities of what cheap shacks slapped together by pirates on constantly-sinking ground would look like.
I suspect the "Chuck Jones" art style of DOTT he's referring to is the character design. Which was so Jones-influenced that I recall hearing that when Lucasfilm had a chance to show it to Chuck, he did the most flattering thing possible: he tried to hire the animators to work at the new studio he was opening up.
I played Day of the Tentacle last night (remastered version on iPad, but the pixel art not the new art). My impression is it's kinda like monkey island except more extreme. Like someone took monkey island and added loads more vortex art tool.
320x200. We could only dream of 640x480 with 256 colors in those days!
I always thought this is used mostly out of convenience since it is cheaper/faster to animate with tools like Spine or Dragon Bones.
1: https://www.drinkboxstudios.com/games/guacamelee-super-turbo...
1. Flash and its status in the 2000's as the tool every animator cut their teeth on. Flash makes it easy to paperdoll things with scenegraph relationships, though it has no skeleton system per se; if you animated the doll by hand and set up your assets proportionately you were good to go on making games with character creation, visible equipment etc.
2. Texture memory limitations imposing limits on keyframe animation in mobile games. This led the larger mobile companies circa 2010 to build out proprietary systems that would get the most out of relatively small textures and make them modular assets for everything - UI, animations, backgrounds, collision bounds, FX etc.
Spine, Spriter, and Dragon Bones basically followed up as third-party versions of those proprietary tools. Now it's taken root as a definite style; even modern TV cartoons are using these setups, although they have more complex dolls with more keyframes. "Puppet" animation basically does the things that animators used to do by tracing model sheet drawings and it lets them go a lot faster, hence you can pull off 2D shows with detailed characters and still have it look crisp and polished.
For Monkey Islane I'm pretty sad that he's gone with the art style he has, looking at the photos they just seem claustrophobic, lacking in charm or character to me.
I've played Thimbleweed Park and loved it, brought back a lot of memories.
Pirates of the Caribbean had a similar spirit.
I'll likely be handing over cash for this version. If the new game has the same banter and half decent puzzles, it'll be a winner, for me. Something to get my daughter to play with me if she has the patience of walking about the place!
The film? Did you see the (at least one) Monkey Island reference in it?
> Facts are so 2015
-- Ron Gilbert, Fall 2020
but i totally get what ron means -- art style is 100% personal preference.
This is how it should have been all along. The only reason modern GPUs are in such demand is because we forgot to apply art before shiny tech. I don't know why things like polygon count and texture resolution turned into a metric for fun.
To this day I can have way more fun in older games like Minecraft than super polished AAA titles like RDR2 or Cyberpunk 2077. The graphics used to get me interested back when we thought photorealism was going to make shit way more fun, but the reality of artistic expression turned out to be much more complex than this...
Shiny tech means there's much less fighting with the technology that's needed. You can take advantage of that today you don't need to optimize every clock cycle and spend the time polishing up the gameplay.
Also, some stories require a fair amount of tech. Superman 64 should have happened in a bustling Metropolis, just like Cyberpunk 2077 does. But it was impossible with the technology of the time.
Growing up in Soviet Union and getting 100% games pirated through floppies, I played Monkey Island (funny), DoTT (funny ^2), Gobli[i|ii]ns, Space Quest (!star trek?), Gabriel Knight (scary!) and many other adventure games with fervor only lightly diluted by doing other things like programming.
My command of English wasn't so good. And being behind a (slowly falling apart) iron curtain, the cultural references were often completely over my head. I didn't understand half of the jokes in Monkey Island, I didn't get all the Star Trek references in Space Quest although I do now, and I was completely unsure what was the deal with the Cherry tree and Franklin (oh wait was it Washington) joke in the Day of the Tentacle, but I rolled with it. Doing it all made my english so much better, and so profit!
But those games were still amazingly awesome and I'll be getting the return of Monkey Island sight unseen!
Monkey Island 2 is a masterpiece. The 2D hand drawn style and animation are a huge part of it.
I'll take any Monkey Island sequel, but if you take a closer look at say the Tales of Monkey Island sequels, you'll see what people are worried about.
Monkey Island 4 was TERRIBLE. Fully 3D and tank controls. Tales of Monkey Island was great but completely ruined by terrible tank controls.
A proper Monkey Island games needs to be 1. Point and Click 2. Have excellent puzzle design and structure 3. Ideally 2D hand drawn art and animation 4. Least important, Pixelated style like MI2 or Loom
People who are critizing the trailer are worried we're getting another Tales of Monkey Island or Monkey Island 4.
As long as you nail #1 (proper point and click controls) I think you will still make a better Monkey Island sequel since Curse of Monkey Island
I don't read anything Ron said as "bashing". He explains why he is not interested in making pixel art games. He is also promising you this is the best possible Monkey Island game he can make, one he is proud of.
It's a legitimate criticism about the art style. No one is "hating"
Unless we're at a point where saying anything negative is "hating"
My mileage certainly differs. I loved how it looked, but to me it is by far the weakest of the lucasarts games I played (and I played all but the first Maniac Mansion and Zac McKraken). It is far too difficult! Far too many locations and items, you just get overwhelmed in the middle part of the game.
MI1 was a much better game in this regard.
Also, while Escape was absolutely atrocious, Tales wasn't so bad. It wasn't point'n'click, but unlike Escape it actually had reasonable controls.
But it still feels like a major downgrade to Curse of Monkey Island or the originals.
It looks like every other game, very generic style. It's lost the charm of the original games IMO.
I think Ron has an opportunity to differentiate his game from all the bad sequels we got before it.
We didn't wait 20 years for this.
I still remember the part of the game where Guybrush was stuck in a quicksand, I remember it took me days to figure the solution out.
What I am most excited about is what new game design and mechanics we might get to see. I'm hoping it will be more than raw point and click, and hopefully will involve more mechanics for puzzle solving.
There's a proper way to take criticism from a passionate fanbase of 20+ years.
IMO the criticism is absolutely justified, just from looking at the screenshots and trailer.
1. Ron created the games back then
2. People played the games back then. Some people absolutely loved the games and had a profound impact on them
3. 20+ years of life happened to Ron and those who played and loved the games. During that time, great distortions occur: nostalgia, rose-coloured glasses, older memories become shinier memories
4. Ron decides to make sequel based on who he is now
5. Step 3 causes fear of the ruin of a legacy and tainting of protected childhood memories (cough Star Wars cough). This is the present.
6a. Game is released
6b. Some hardcore fans love it, some hardcore fans hate it. As it ever was.
And specifically to this comment:
>There's a proper way to take criticism from a passionate fanbase of 20+ years.
There's some kind of ridiculous level of entitlement in dictating how an artist should take criticism. Were I to have any say in it, I'd dictate this:
Fucking ignore it and be true to your own creative vision. After all, that's the same way the magic has been created previously.
> "The muse visits during the act of creation, not before."
I'd never heard this before but this is an amazing quote.
BTW, easily one of the best books I've ever read.
"Unless otherwise noted, all content is Copyright 2004-2022 Ron Gilbert. Unauthorized use under penalty of death by dismemberment and/or fine not less than one million dollars. (v4.1)"
I'm very worried about Monkey Island now. Some authors NEED editors. I think Ron Gilbert needs the original team to help him on what works and what doesn't.
Even the original Chrono Trigger was going to be super depressing, if the original writer had his way on everything. I would have hated his version of it.
OTOH I am now playing "The Captain" which is a modern take on point&click with beautiful pixel art and a few new things, and I feel it filled my need for a good monkey island already.
Also just too much plot, so many characters and their background stories, how can you care about all of them..
Still very excited about the new Monkey Island, hopefully they don't over trick all the things in it ..
I have a lot of fondness for Monkey Island, but more often than not - giving a creative person complete creative controls is less likely to produce something good.
Not that I don't like that style, but I don't think it's a surprise for Lucas Art fans. Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Fullthrottle weren't that far away (except with a lower resolution)
it was like the studio Ghibli of the 90s
Sam and Max was a 80s-90s comic by Steve Purcell[0], who was also a LucasArts employee at the time. You will recognize his art style in several Monkey Island scenes.
Anyway the point is that the tv show was not based on the videogame which you seem to be implying, but on the comic instead.
The comic series is artistically amazing. Purcell is a master of setting an atmosphere. It's also meant to be comedic but the humor is mainly cartoon violent slapstick mixed with pop culture references (of the time). It's dated by now.
It absolutely did! Curse that seagull in MI1 tavern, ugh.
I don't know. I can probably still finish monkey 1 and 2 without a walkthrough because I've played them many times. That makes me a fan right?
And I find the fake modern pixel art... boring.
You probably do know. If you've read the reactions online, you'll probably know some vocal fans are disappointed with the new art style. This is Ron's reply to them.
There will be exceptions. You are one. I am another. But it doesn't invalidate Ron's point, because it's easy to fact-check it by going online and looking for opinions, even in Ron's own blog.
Monkey 1&2 are not pixel art, it's "state of the art" graphics. The new one will also not be pixel art, it'll try to move the graphics forward.
So if you think pixel art is boring, you should be happy with what was outlined in this blog post?
I am. Read again. Including what I quoted from the original article.
https://www.gog.com/en/games?query=monkey%20island&developer...
They are very good! Obviously the style is out of fashion and some puzzles can be a bit frustrating (though not as much as old Sierra adventures), but they are amazing games...
Also, I replayed the games like 10 years ago and found them very short and the humor being quite outdated. A bit like watching all the Star Wars movies in one go. The pacing in the first triology is pretty crappy.
At least the first trilogy had some pacing.
Something amazing can happen (such as a new Monkey Island game) and there will always be an angry mob with pitchforks that will be very vocal about it on social media.
This probably was always the case, but the internet now serves as an amplifier of some sort of hype-based social feedback mechanism for ideas and opinions. This mechanism probably made sense 200,000+ years ago when groups were very small and it helped survival by promoting social cohesion. But today the internet connects billions of humans and it's a pretty toxic behavior.
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