I’m just curious about the resolution. Whenever the actors are scaled, they’re not scaled in the low resolution that they’re created in (like Guybrush was, getting smaller but also more simplified and pixelated). They rather scale away like the pixels are being down sized (making the actors just as detailed, only smaller).
Some other objects, like the birds flying looks like pixel art resolution that have been downsized.
How does this work? Is the image actually a normal modern high res and the game is just scaled up to fill the screen?
Yes, it is. Pixels are “drawn”. I mean, they’re made out from smaller pixels. The effective resolution is constant, but the images displayed are at a lower resolution which isn’t constant. Ron said somewhere (@Nor_Treblig) that this was needed in order to avoid that the downscaling of characters “looked like crap” as in MI1. Anyway he thought about a “pixel perfect” mode for the purists (and the masochists), but it was never implemented, as far as I know.