New "old-school" LucasArts game announced tomorrow

[lobotomy42]

Argh... I know I'm going to sound like an ungrateful whiney uber fanboi... and maybe that's what I am, but I don't like it. I hope I'm in a massive minority and I suspect that it's only because I know the original so well. But...

1. The new artwork looks a little shoddy in places (why couldn't they line up the cliff face, for example, so that, when Guybrush follows the original walk path, it looks semi-decent?!). There's weird white lines around things that haven't been cut-out properly. Some of the artwork literally looks unfinished.

2. There's irritating pauses between dialogue... for no good reason! This is just unbelievably bad. There MUST be a way to fix it.

3. Some of the line-readings are sometimes incredibly off. Even the excellent Dominic Armato and the fantastic Earl Boen seen to have been given some bad direction on occasions. But other characters suffer much worse... Estvan's "You could wait for the cook to notice you, but that could take all day. Just find a mug and sneak into the kitchen. That's what we all do." Nooo.

4. The characterizations, for the most part, seem terrible. Like they've tried to inject "more humour" at every available opportunity and failed miserably... Random characters speak with the most outrageous voices for no good reason. Cobb, the rat guy ("I thought it was rats"). No other MI game does this, why did they do it here?

5. The music seems to suffer from the same problem as above: "Let's try and make EVERYTHING funny!" Even LeChuck's theme is played for laughs... it's supposed to be somewhat menacing, not sad trombone.

6. The control system is ABOMINABLE. I have to press a key to get the verbs up? I have to press a key to get the inventory up? I have to press TWO KEYS simultaneously to get them both up? It's horrendous! It's beyond horrendous. New players will miss out on mouse wandering and experimentation...

7. My mouse clicks were not always responded to... Click, click, click, CLICK - ah it worked.

8. Finally, you all know this one: The new Guybrush isn't loveable.

If anything, my overall complaint would be that they've tried to ram as much "comedy" into MI as they possibly could... But that ISN'T Monkey Island. LeChuck is supposed to be SCARY, not funny. The relationship between Guybrush and Elaine, while a little shallow, admittedly, is supposed to feel genuine.

Dave Grossman said it best, except I can't find the quote. It was something like "Monkey Island is a balance between silly dialogue and serious storyline". It's NOT a camp game!

And the control system... Oh man, it's terrible. TOMI's inventory system seems like a masterpiece in comparison.

I just CANNOT believe that the people who made the SE are thinking to themselves "THIS is how I always imagined Monkey Island!"... it's like they've tried to think what the fans would want instead of trusting what THEY would want.

Anyways, as I said at the beginning, I STRONGLY believe that most of my reaction comes from the fact that I know the game so incredibly well. A return to it will probably lessen my reaction But this was my first reaction... I'll probably change my mind next time I play it.

Apologies to the devs. Glad to see I'm in a minority on this one.

Fanboi mode: OFF

I don't remember the original game that well, but I still mostly agree with you. The controls, at least on XBLA, are awful. The design decisions - making everything cartoony (a bit like CMI) and the voices ridiculous - completely mar the experience. The first two MI games worked because they were so deadpan serious, that the ridiculous dialogue stuck out like a sore thumb. It could all ostensibly be serious, except for the absurd item descriptions and titles. Adding a layer of "wackiness paint" makes me expect everything to be funny, and as a result...it all falls flat, like some sort of awful Saturday morning cartoon show.

I think some of the problem comes from wanting to do the "hybrid" thing instead of a proper remake. The control scheme does not lend itself well to an Xbox controller, and many of the gags are hindered by voice acting, not helped. The pauses in the dialogue, the awkward hotspots, etc, might all be better if they had just started from scratch. (Then again, if they had just started from scratch, why not just make a new game?)

This is painful. The worst part for me is that this will probably outsell Telltale's new series.

[DoctorKevs]

The only real hotspot problem I had playing the XBLA version was (should I even spoiler this?)

the Rope laying next to the skeleton on Monkey Island

but I think that was more me not realizing where to click. Once I got into the swing of things I really didn't have a problem with it, except for the safe combination puzzle at the beginning. Then again it could either be the fact that for the most part I used Classic Mode, the giddyness of being able to buy and actually own SoMI, or both- I'm not entirely sure.

Honestly I can't win in a debate for this game- and as I didn't grow up with it, and have no real attachment except that I like it a whole lot. My question for you guys that did is this:

What about the new audience (like myself) who couldn't have the opportunity to buy the original in the first place? Especially for XBLA gamers who might not even know what Monkey Island is. Shouldn't these games be avaliable to as many people as possible?

[syntheticgerbil]

What about the new audience (like myself) who couldn't have the opportunity to buy the original in the first place? Especially for XBLA gamers who might not even know what Monkey Island is. Shouldn't these games be avaliable to as many people as possible?

Well no one is going to answer "no" to your question. Of course they should be available, but do they need a shoddy remade version on top of the original game? Will buyers be put off from buying any early Monkey Island because it lacks HD graphics, full voice, and live music? I have no idea, but classic games in their original format are being sold in online channels all the time, both for consoles and PC. I get the feeling this whole Monkey Island Special Edition was an exercise in futility.

The thing about original LucasArts adventures is that for about 90% of them, the craftsmanship was impeccable. This is what pretty much made LucasArts the top dog in the adventure world in the first place. When you add a cheap, rushed remake over the top of an originally high budget and well made game, it sort of defeats the purpose.

Monkey Island 2 is the next target on the remake list, considering on Steam they just released the rest of the earlier games before art was scanned and voices a regular thing. If they can't match the great art, distinctiveness, and tone of the original version of Monkey Island 2, I would just rather have them not bother. Monkey Island 2 seems to be the one that really has a cult following and it would upset a lot more people if it were screwed up, I'm sure.

Now rereleasing it in it's original form again would be a great idea though. That would not be an exercise in futility.

[Chris]

What about the new audience (like myself) who couldn't have the opportunity to buy the original in the first place? Especially for XBLA gamers who might not even know what Monkey Island is. Shouldn't these games be avaliable to as many people as possible?

I did sort of address this in my post. Yes, they should be available. No, they should not be available like this. This game should be released either in its original form, or, to put it bluntly, in a revised form that's actually good rather than just acceptable or mediocre.

To me, the main problem with this remake isn't for the people who have already played Monkey Island. The bigger problem is for the people who haven't, and will from now on have this crap as their mental image for the first game. That's the real shame. I'm not blaming newcomers for playing with the supposed "enhancements" -- as I said, the draw to use the new stuff is extremely strong, even if it's not actually good. That's exactly the problem. Newcomers WILL use the new stuff, and that new stuff really changes the game in a way that I think unfortunately detracts from it.

I've seen plenty of posts from people who have played the Steam releases of Loom, Fate of Atlantis, and The Dig who never played those games when they were released, and that's great. I wish this game had been given that treatment instead. Those games still feature smoothing, and that filter is handled MUCH better than I've seen it done in some cases. They certainly look a lot better than the Monkey Island SE does.

Granted, those games aren't on XBLA, and that's too bad, but I still think they're much better releases.

[DoctorKevs]

I did sort of address this in my post. Yes, they should be available. No, they should not be available like this. This game should be released either in its original form, or, to put it bluntly, in a revised form that's actually good rather than just acceptable or mediocre.

To me, the main problem with this remake isn't for the people who have already played Monkey Island. The bigger problem is for the people who haven't, and will from now on have this crap as their mental image for the first game. That's the real shame. I'm not blaming newcomers for playing with the supposed "enhancements" -- as I said, the draw to use the new stuff is extremely strong, even if it's not actually good. That's exactly the problem. Newcomers WILL use the new stuff, and that new stuff really changes the game in a way that I think unfortunately detracts from it.

I thought about it a bit and went back and played a little more (I haven't had much time since I played through on Wednesday). I have to say the whole "You've bought this, it is for sale" magic is wearing off on me a bit, and I'm starting to agree with you on this point. As I said, I used classic mode pretty much the whole time, creating the ideal you want- my own mental image of the game. I have no idea yet what everything sounds like, or how the music was changed, or what some character sound like, except at random intervals- the Stan voice is totally off to me (aparrantly the same actor plays Stan in CoMI? I haven't played that so I wouldn't know) and the head cannibal is hilarious to listen to, as I had pictured them as more menacing than that. It's sad to think that people will ignore the Classic Mode altogether.

Monkey Island 2 is the next target on the remake list, considering on Steam they just released the rest of the earlier games before art was scanned and voices a regular thing. If they can't match the great art, distinctiveness, and tone of the original version of Monkey Island 2, I would just rather have them not bother. Monkey Island 2 seems to be the one that really has a cult following and it would upset a lot more people if it were screwed up, I'm sure.

Now rereleasing it in it's original form again would be a great idea though. That would not be an exercise in futility.

At first I figured the "No MI2 at all" had meant that it not be rereleased ever or something dumb like that. Thanks for the clarification.

The question I asked was kind of skewed, as you pointed out, and I'll admit my opinions were kind of grey going into this thread. I should probably stand my final ground on a potential MI2SE here: while I think they should go ahead and put it on XBLA and PC like the first one (this is my main concern, to have it on XBLA), they should either actually try at it (looking at screenshots, they have some work ahead of them, this thing looks gorgeous) or just dump it on there for $5. Hell, I'd buy it at $10.

Also, they better keep their fucking hands off of Curse.

[kit_wilco]

I looked up two of the three artists that worked on the special edition and there is no reason these two people should have been drawing over 3D models for reference. Neither of the two artists I found work in 3D at all and are perfectly capable of drawing strong poses and figuring out anatomy without having to draw over a 3D models. I don't know why this decision was made, since it seems like more effort than it's worth, as they already had reference in the first place with the original animations.

But looking through these two artists' websites, their stuff is pretty amazing and makes me very envious, so why is the game so ugly? I don't understand. It doesn't make sense to me.

Links:

www.longfish.blogspot.com

www.katiecandraw.com

katie cook (katiecandraw.com) is me! someone e-mailed me this thread saying "wait, you worked on MI?!" so i thought i'd clarify.

though i do love monkey island, i didn't work on this game at all :/ the only lucasfilm work i do is for the starwars.com webcomics.

[syntheticgerbil]

At first I figured the "No MI2 at all" had meant that it not be rereleased ever or something dumb like that. Thanks for the clarification.

In my opinion all of these games should have been constantly in print sitting in the $10 jewelcase-with-PDF-manual budget rack for the last 10 years even before digital downloads of old games started to get big. The LA adventure games have been almost constantly rereleased in Europe in multiple game packs, but I guess they weren't financially viable in the US anymore. To me though, it would make me sense to get the product out for cheap if it's impossible to sell at full price instead of sitting on it for years, but what do I know, I don't work at LucasArts.

Also, they better keep their fucking hands off of Curse.

They probably won't do Curse, as that would be an insane amount of work unless you could get someone to rescan every background and drawn characters and have the digital paint over it scale to an HD resolution. I think that would be a lot of work too though. Bill Tiller said in the recent Secret History interview at mixnmojo.com that it was all colored at 640x480, so that might create a huge problem. Also none of the backgrounds besides the scrolling ones fit widescreen.

katie cook (katiecandraw.com) is me! someone e-mailed me this thread saying "wait, you worked on MI?!" so i thought i'd clarify.

though i do love monkey island, i didn't work on this game at all :/ the only lucasfilm work i do is for the starwars.com webcomics.

Oops, I really messed that up, sorry about that. I'm not even sure how I thought you worked on the game in the first place now. I'll fix my post so I don't confuse any more people.

It seems Dela Longfish really did though, right? Were the rest really in Singapore like the original press release said? I'm probably not supposed to ask all of that, right?

Edited July 17, 2009 by syntheticgerbil

[kit_wilco]

Oops, I really messed that up, sorry about that. I'm not even sure how I thought you worked on the game in the first place now. I'll fix my post so I don't confuse any more people.

It seems Dela Longfish really did though, right? Were the rest really in Singapore like the original press release said? I'm probably not supposed to ask all of that, right?

it's okay

and i wish i knew! i'm not to familiar with the game's development. but if i knew, i'd tell ya'!

[lobotomy42]

For a completely different consensus on the game:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25123

Choice Quote:

"I honestly tried to play MI 1 and 2 ages ago, but the graphics were so bad that I couldn't tell what I was looking at half the time."

[syntheticgerbil]

Choice Quote:

"I honestly tried to play MI 1 and 2 ages ago, but the graphics were so bad that I couldn't tell what I was looking at half the time."

Ah... good ol' AdventureGamers.

Another Choice Quote:

Guybrush is asking the SCUMM Bar cook why he should sail after Elaine in order to rescue her... I was expecting to see the word "Love" written on his face as it was in the original, not Guybrush turning to the camera and actually saying "Love!"... Was that supposed to be part of the speech?

Er...

And one more:

Why buy the damn thing in remake form, if you're not going to use it? I'm sure that LucasArts only left the old-school graphics in as a novelty, and probably didn't plan on insane people actually PREFERRING them to the latest technology.

It never ceases to baffle me how this community is so besotted with outdated graphics and gameplay. I hope the adventure game developing community doesn't take this to heart too much, and keeps producing adventures with the latest graphical quality and control capabilities, for those of us who aren't old fogies.

...

I still think, in general, this community (particularly the more prominent members of this forum) has an aversion to technical progress in adventure games. I can't tell whether it's an irrational dependence on nostalgia or a lack of skill in playing modern video games.

YEAAHHHH YOU BASTARDS!

Edited July 17, 2009 by syntheticgerbil

[Chris]

I would still think The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition looks like garbage, whether or not it was a remake of an existing game. It's called taste. That particular opinion has nothing to do with outdated technology.

Katie: thanks for stopping by and clarifying!

[Noyb]

It feels really weird to hear a bad knockoff of the King's Quest narrator play the role of the announcer in MI:SE. Like, Mario vs. Sonic at the Olympics weird. Did they hire him solely for the

rubber tree

gag?

Edit: Wait, they didn't even have him do that gag. And they completely removed any semblance of Sierra death screen in the SE graphics.

Edit2: Wait, that was Danny Delk, he-who-voiced-Murray-in-COMI-and-Hogie-and-both-tentacles-in-DOTT? Guess the voice was intentional.

Edited July 19, 2009 by Noyb

[Jake]

And Christ, those Guybrush and Elaine closeups. I know Ron Gilbert regretted the realistic portrait style they used in the original game, and I completely see where he's coming from, but this is NOT an improvement.

I thought his complaint was the EGA to VGA conversion, not the presence of the closeups in general.

etc, which looks like maybe Purcell drew them, or presided over their creation? Guybrush definitely looks closer to his box art version (general structural similarities Steve's original line art drawing of the cover)... versus

Which has a surprising amount of reinterpretation going on, when compared to the original shipping version. The 256 color version of MI is kind of secretly the first Special Edition.

[BooJaka]

Ha. When you put them side by side I actually prefer the original EGA version. Maybe that close ups just got worse as time went on...

[vimes]

Nice! The EGA version is totally new to me : is there any record of how the port to VGA went down and how the artists felt when offered the squared number of colors they previously had ?

It's funny because, I always thought the style for MI close ups and cover was inspired by Howard Pyle/Wyeth and, to a far lesser extent, Rockwell ... and that it succeeded bloody well in getting these onscreen.

If I was melodramatic, I'd say that knowing it was not the original version feels like having based an opinion on some sort of a fraud. But I'm not melodramatic. Not that much anyway.

[Udvarnoky]

The issue with the VGA close-ups is not that they aren't great, but that they are stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the game, which is definitely a bit more whimsical (to the extent that the detail allows). I've always greatly approved of the VGA version overall (Bill Eaken!), but yeah if you purport to be the ultimate purist then the EGA version is the only true version of The Secret of Monkey Island.

I guess that's why I'm quite happy with Monkey Island: Special Edition. As Jake said, reinterpretation of the art is not new thing. Certainly, the SE takes it to a far greater level (which makes sense given that it was made 19 years later instead of the, what, year gap between the EGA and VGA MI1?), but I think there's a point where you have to just accept that a remake is what it is, and decide if you're in the audience for it. I for one would never consider the SE a replacement for the originals, and yes there are some pretty suspect stylistic decisions, but overall you have to give LucasArts credit for putting clearly legitimate love and effort into this project. I consider some of the choices made to be blasphemy, but then, some people were saying the same thing about the removed sunrise on the Melee Island docks for years. There's the original, and there's everything else, and we all have our preferences.

[Udvarnoky]

So, given the poor quality of this remake

Why is that a given, again?

[brkl]

Because everyone seems to agree?

[Chris]

Ack, sorry. I didn't mean for that post to be so completely, fundamentally contrary to yours. I just had a thought come to mind and decided to post about it. The incredibly stark, stab-you-in-the-eye contrast was not intentional.

Issues of art style aside, though, there's still the bare chunks of pixelly goodness and bugs that even a cursory QA process should have caught. That gives me a notion that the remake was rushed just to capitalize on the Tales of MI launch. I mean, if giving SoMI the care and attention it deserves was really the priority, you'd think they'd have held it back a couple weeks. But the sloppy handling makes me wonder about the whole "If you guys want to see more of this, make sure you buy it!" deal, like they're just looking for another cash cow.

That's a thought I had. I'm wondering if it's a credible interpretation.

I don't really doubt the team was trying to do something awesome that enhances the original, but I think they were probably given a fairly limited amount of time, and also quite simply didn't have very good taste when it came to art. I think in a lot of cases with games, the latter bit tends to be the real culprit more often than time or money or whatever else.

[Sergey]

I'm not sure I understand why everyone is reacting so negatively to this remake. I played it, I laughed at all the old jokes and I enjoyed the funny voice acting. The low frame rate animations, I think, added charm to the entire show. I thought the pirate leaders looked hilarious with higher resolution graphics, wobbling their heads and drinking down their grog.

I think it is very disrespectful to call this game garbage. I am a very big fan of the series, and the first game has always been my favorite. Sure, this isn't a flawless remake, but it's far more than I was expecting. The art style is different, but not necessarily bad. Personally, I liked it. I thought that the character designs were charming, Guybrush's face always has the perfect gullible expression on it to suit most hilarious moments in the game. Calling it "bad taste" is disrespectful not only to the designers, but to the people who actually enjoyed it. Sure, it's not what us old-time fans are used to, but that doesn't make it "bad taste."

I'm surprised that Chris was so taken by the graphics that he failed to mention controls, my biggest gripe about the remake. Having the actions bound to the mouse roller wasn't the most comfortable thing for my Apple mighty mouse. However, it only took me 5 mins. to get situated with the hotkeys and have equally good control with the remake as with the original. To an old fan, not having the inventory readily available was uncomfortable, but pressing an extra key really isn't all that difficult.

[Horticulture Tycoon]

Having the inventory on a secondary screen is the same system that Sam and Max, CMI, and Full Throttle all had. I thought that was a significant improvement over having the inventory take up half the screen.

I think part of the problem with the art style is that they (almost literally) painted themselves into a corner by insisting that the new artwork be pasted over the old. Sure it's cool to switch back and forth and see everything line up with itself, but those backgrounds were laid out with a specific resolution and art style in mind, and here they were trying to paint an art style over animations and backgrounds that they weren't really designed for. Backgrounds that seemed perfectly acceptable in 320x200 now look crazy, with all kinds of scale and perspective problems. Low-framecount animations that looked fine on a 40-pixel-tall sprite now look jarring and incongruous.

It seems to me that the art problems might not be a lack of talent or poor taste on the part of the Special Edition team, but instead it might've actually been due in part to their slavish faithfulness to the original game. It goes to show that maybe when approaching a remake, being faithful to the spirit of the game is more important that recreating it down to every quirky detail.

Edited July 19, 2009 by Horticulture Tycoon

[lobotomy42]

I think part of the problem with the art style is that they (almost literally) painted themselves into a corner by insisting that the new artwork be pasted over the old. Sure it's cool to switch back and forth and see everything line up with itself, but those backgrounds were laid out with a specific resolution and art style in mind, and here they were trying to paint an art style over animations and backgrounds that they weren't really designed for. Backgrounds that seemed perfectly acceptable in 320x200 now look crazy, with all kinds of scale and perspective problems. Low-framecount animations that looked fine on a 40-pixel-tall sprite now look jarring and incongruous.

It seems to me that the art problems might not be a lack of talent or poor taste on the part of the Special Edition team, but instead it might've actually been due in part to their slavish faithfulness to the original game. It goes to show that maybe when approaching a remake, being faithful to the spirit of the game is more important that recreating it down to every quirky detail.

Pasting the remake on top of the original version seems to have added a bunch of problems - the awkward pauses in the voiceovers, the weirdly low framerate in the animations, the awkward controls (Did we need to preserve all nine verbs?) ,the static character portraits (while we can hear their voices talking, no less.) It's possible that the lesson here is that if you're going to remake something, you should really remake it.

It also occurs to me that, to some extent, the charm of the original MI1 and MI2 lies in the technology. The dryness of the humor that I perceive may actually depend on the dialogue being written out, rather than voiced, and the graphics being pixelated enough to be ambiguous - either serious or ridiculous, depending on the moment. It may that these games just don't translate to remake very well at all.

Then again, it's possible that this is...just not a very good remake.

Calling it "bad taste" is disrespectful not only to the designers, but to the people who actually enjoyed it. Sure, it's not what us old-time fans are used to, but that doesn't make it "bad taste."

It's not disrespectful; it's giving an honest assessment of how one perceives the piece. If there are no bad games, then there are no good games, either, since quality exists only on a comparative scale. So if it's disrespectful to say that one game is bad, then it's disrespectful to compare games to begin with. In any event, I don't think the claim was being made that the creators didn't believe in the project, or are untalented, or didn't work as hard as they could. Only that, for a variety of reasons - some constraints on time/budget, some "bad taste" - the end result was not very good.

[Chris]

Calling it "bad taste" is disrespectful not only to the designers, but to the people who actually enjoyed it. Sure, it's not what us old-time fans are used to, but that doesn't make it "bad taste."

I've discussed this too much to go into it point-by-point again, but I do take exception to this. Are you saying people shouldn't review games, or call them bad, or badly made? That seems both impractical and impossible. You clearly disagree with me on the matter, but I have my opinion and you have yours.

[toblix]

This isn't style, this is just sloppy shit. It's LucasArts saying to the artist: "stop your fucking drawing and deliver your files".

[Erkki]

This isn't style, this is just sloppy shit. It's LucasArts saying to the artist: "stop your fucking drawing and deliver your files".

Yes, some of the forest scenes are incredibly sloppy work. That one is probably the worst. I haven't noticed that in many other places though (just started sailing towards Monkey Island™.