Thyroid

Monkey Island 2: SE

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That trailer was done by a completely different studio for promotional purposes only.

Just like Jesus would've wanted it. :/

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Now that you mention it, it did have a somewhat extensive amount of religious references compared to your typical video game trailer.

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Anybody else grab it yet? The developer commentary is good stuff. I've been defending the art style, and still think it looks good overall, but the first pirate you see is of terrible proportions.

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I got it on iPad and am having a good time so far. Haven't gotten too far, mind. The graphics are well done, the voices are mostly good (Largo is a bit off from my internal voiceover, but the main characters are ace, Wally especially.) The developer commentary is good, but it's kind of annoying that you can't go back and replay any of the commentary you missed.

Mo

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Is the Steam version out now? I preordered it and will play through tonight if I have the option...

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I just bought it, haven't played it yet. I didn't realize that steam was offering the first game free and so now I have two copies of the first one.

If anyone would like to have a steam version of the special edition of the first game, post a reply and I'll gift it to you.

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Yes please! My Steam ID is MisterMo86

Cheers,

Mo

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I need you to accept my friend invite. Seems to me, I can only gift it to someone on my friend's list.

Either that or someone who's already on my list and wants the game send me a PM.

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Sent it to you last night. You should get an email with the confirmation/acceptance link soon.

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This game is so fucking good. The developer commentaries are forcing me to stay up all night and be late for work just to hear the next one.

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I picked up the iPhone game and am now about 30% of the way through it. So far, I'm enjoying it immensely. I will most likely pick up the PC version eventually simply to hear the commentary and encourage more Monkey Island stuff to be produced.

I didn't particularly care for the new "Direct Input" control interface in the iPhone version. Sometimes it was a bit tough to find and tap stuff on the screen with it. I'm glad they allowed to switch back to the old scheme.

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Sat down with it and cleared the whole game. It's really good. I probably would have got the "under 3 hours" achievement if it hadn't been for the developer commentary. May go through it again next week to get it, as the only achievements I didn't get were "let Guybrush die" and "beat it in under 3 hours." I was so close, too. I wish they'd done more with the commentary, but what is there is very good. I really enjoyed this game, despite having played MI2 vanilla not too long ago. My only real beef is a couple of the voices. Largo's is terrible, and Cate's, while not that bad, is so far from what I always imagined. I'd much rather have the kind of voice that the woman guarding the gate to Elaine's mansion had. Oh well.

Still, well worth the $10. I hope DoTT is next.

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Still, well worth the $10. I hope DoTT is next.
Nah, I really, really hope they leave DoTT as it is and just rerelease it.

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Nah, I really, really hope they leave DoTT as it is and just rerelease it.

I agree - I think there's just a few of these games that they could justify remaking - Curse of Monkey Island SE or DoTT SE would be clutching at straws, as those games remain really presentable and are full talkie. (For the record, I think the first two Monkey games are beautiful, but I can see how some gamers of today could only get into them via the Special Editions).

They should certainly release a few more of the Steam packs to get games like Full Throttle and DoTT available again, thoough.

I'd be interested to see this LucasArts team making another original game next...

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Yeah, really all I meant was I really wanted a re-release of DoTT. I don't care so much about an SE of it. If they did, I hope all they'd do would be to up-rez pretty much everything in the game but not actually change it that much. I just want to finally play that game to see why it's so revered. It's the only LucasArts adventure that I've never played. It's just never been available to me legally so I haven't gotten to try it.

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You're telling me you're not interested in developer commentary, updated contextual UI and voice acting for DotT? The more advanced the artwork, the less the SE art team would depart from the original. You can see in the concept art sections that the team was faithful whenever they had something to build off of, but had to get creative when only dealing with pixelated characters.

I think DotT would be fantastic as a special edition.

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You're telling me you're not interested in developer commentary, updated contextual UI and voice acting for DotT? The more advanced the artwork, the less the SE art team would depart from the original. You can see in the concept art sections that the team was faithful whenever they had something to build off of, but had to get creative when only dealing with pixelated characters.

I think DotT would be fantastic as a special edition.

Developer commentary would be great, yes (even if I seem to sense antagonism between Grossman and Schafer -- am I imagining it?). But...

A contextual UI would be nice, but it's not essential, and the developers seem to be keen on moving backwards in terms of UI design (although the MI2: SE has a much better interface than the first, they don't seem to want to use the obvious choice: CMI's).

Voice acting is, of course, already 100% there for DOTT. Not sure why that would need to be changed.

As with the "updated artwork", I don't think anyone would be happy with DOTT's wonderful, deliberate and controlled style being possibly being sullied by LucasArts Singapore. Your assertion that it's only the lower-quality pixel work that was ruined by the new LucasArts doesn't really hold any water when you look at their cover artwork they've made so far.

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You're telling me you're not interested in developer commentary, updated contextual UI and voice acting for DotT? The more advanced the artwork, the less the SE art team would depart from the original. You can see in the concept art sections that the team was faithful whenever they had something to build off of, but had to get creative when only dealing with pixelated characters.

I think DotT would be fantastic as a special edition.

That's way easier said than done. Even this time around, they had a hard time dealing with pixelated character animations still. They couldn't animate the Rapp Scallion animation in it's full glory even though all of the frames were there. Instead they cut frames and made do with what they redrew.

Character animation is the hardest animation you can do, even upping the resolution and redrawing everything takes some understanding of traditional character animation. So far the ONLY time these guys have been capable of adding frames and smoothing the characters out is by making a 3D model of the character first. It looks smoother sure, but the poses are stilted.

I would hate to see them using 3D models as their basis for Day of the Tentacle characters. As I've said many times before, the original LucasArts guys were working with a plethora of frames for many of their animations, most counts are still more than suitable enough for today. So to redraw all of those so they work good together takes time and major skill. A rushjob and an amateur just can't handle that work.

To recreate all of the frames in DOTT faithful to the original characters and keep the animation smooth is a bit more monumental than some here may think.

Also they weren't always completely true to all of the original backgrounds even this time around, because many of them are still made much more silly than the original Peter Chan art. Just looking at the mansions for both Phatt and Marley and comparing them should show just how much liberty they took with making "wonky" backgrounds. What's the point of making the architecture in a completely different manner? Part of this could be just them taking the easy way out of dealing with perspective, and luckily this time around they didn't use the approach of the first SE where they took the approach that "straight lines are stupid" since no one of the art team for the backgrounds of that one seemed to know when it was important to just draw the line straight. Luckily most of the backgrounds of the MI2 remake aren't like the mansion ones and are much more true to the originals, so that's great.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Developer commentary would be great, yes (even if I seem to sense antagonism between Grossman and Schafer -- am I imagining it?). But...

A contextual UI would be nice, but it's not essential, and the developers seem to be keen on moving backwards in terms of UI design (although the MI2: SE has a much better interface than the first, they don't seem to want to use the obvious choice: CMI's).

Voice acting is, of course, already 100% there for DOTT. Not sure why that would need to be changed.

As with the "updated artwork", I don't think anyone would be happy with DOTT's wonderful, deliberate and controlled style being possibly being sullied by LucasArts Singapore. Your assertion that it's only the lower-quality pixel work that was ruined by the new LucasArts doesn't really hold any water when you look at their cover artwork they've made so far.

Agreed, the later Lucasarts adventures should stay as they are (Full Throttle, Sam and Max, etc)

EDIT: I wouldn't mind a redone Grim Fandango though.

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EDIT: I wouldn't mind a redone Grim Fandango though.

Definitely, smoothing out those models and adding maybe some detail to the backgrounds and rerendering everything in a higher resolution would do the game great justice.

I said on the Mojo forums I would be perfectly okay with them still keeping the texture swap style for the vocals. I think Glottis would look the best with more polys.

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