My extremely bad memory completely forgot what I wrote here in 2017:
1 Like
Now it’s clear! You are always trying to be at peace with whatever you think is going to happen 
When you believed Monkey 3a wasn’t going to happen, you were convincing yourself it was for the best.
Then you realized the secret could let you down, and you tell yourself you are OK with anything, even that it’s all a computer simulation.
Then you saw the art, and you say “It’s ok, I already knew that, I was prepared”.
But this way I’m afraid you will have a crackdown and be either in jail or in asylum by the time RTMI comes out.
my strategy is better, I direct my rage at 30 year old games.
2 Likes
Only here. On Reddit and on Ron’s blog, I use my secret username “Rageofthemonkey” to let the steam out and inundate the developers with out-of-this-world vulgar threats to their life.
No, really, I’ve simply reached the conclusion a long time ago: it’s impossible to get from other people exactly what you want, so it makes sense to distance yourself from what you hope and appreciate only the good parts of what you’ll get.
5 Likes
While maybe elsewhere people is raging against the RMI new art style, we are very polite. Maybe we developed a peculiar “TWP forum style”, maybe we are very respectful since we are guests at Ron’s place, but… As far as I can see, no one among us didn’t have at least some reservations about that style. Ok, maybe we’re the wrong people to ask, but - hey- we are the MI people. In Italy we say “after all you can’t get everybody to agree”. But my impression is that such a style got everybody to agree, in a negative way. No matter if we’re nice and polite and we say “I’m ok with it”, “I’ll take it for what it is”, “I just care it’s Ron’s”. We all have reservations, and that’s a fact.
EDIT
I read this only after posting:
I’m not the only one who feels this place moderates people’s low instincts
1 Like
I guess that is because today’s computers and consoles are not really limited any longer by practical limitations. You want to have photorealism? You got it!
Back when MI2 appeared, I remember the grafix (yes that is the correct time-appropriate spelling) looked so much more realistic than the first game and anything that came before. It still had a cartoon feel, but that was actually what all games tried to approach. The limited color palette and memory constraints probably helped to choose a style befitting to the bright and contrasting colors. But still: no dithering! In ‘92 no one said “MI2 is pixel art / has large pixels”. Rather: “wow, those backgrounds look real!”
A couple of years later CoMI topped the real cartoon perfect grafix delivered by DOTT. (The remastered version is how I remember it : not pixelated at all.) In 1997, most games had high resolution bitmaps on 3D. And everyone was about increasing number of polygons to go for photorealism. In 2D games, photorealism was already possible. FMV games. So to whoever doesn’t like CoMI: imagine what it could have looked like if it went the route of Sierra-on-line at the time (GK2, phantasmagoria…)
Even in it’s 3D incarnations, Monkey Island always had a style that approached cartoons to its best and to the fashion of that time period.
Flat colors and geometric shapes is something that is one of the most popular styles the last years (or 2 decades perhaps).
Remember the Simpsons movie? Exact same style… except they added more shading and depth… totally put off half of the fans. The other half were let down by the script. Anyway, I digress. Every single adventure game by Lucasfilm/arts had a different style. We embraced it every time without complaining (except if we needed more RAM or a more capable video card or something to run it. Hey, I even upgraded to be able to play the Special Edition of MI). And whatever that style is, becomes nostalgia in a couple of years (except for eye watering 3D)
Exactly! If you play an old game on any new screen today, you will note it’s blocky pixels. But imagine playing it on a brand new 14” curved CRT screen instead of a 4K TV screen that is longer than yourself (some people do have those to play their PS5 games… I don’t). Or even your smartphone screen. Instead of pinching and stretching with your fingers to zoom in and complain that the art is too clean, you should zoom out, hold the screen at least at arm’s length and pinch your eyes a bit. Practice on the four map pieces there. Once it looks beautiful without pixels, do the same with the new art. You’ll see a bunch of things that are not in the scene, but filled in by your brain.
Indeed, those people who should read my post here are probably not on this forum anyway. But I am going to post it anyway, and keep ignoring you on Twitter or Facebook
1 Like
You fight like a dairy farmer!
I’m rubber, you’re beeping glue.
1 Like
It’s not such an effort, since I’m not on there 
I knew that, it was just a cheesy joke.
If only you didn’t ignore me on social networks, you’d recognize my peculiar sense of humor.
1 Like
Oh, and it just hit me that doing so highlights all the foreground objects in the scene, which were so omnipresent in MI2. So to me the style feels closest to MI2. Of course it is different. Otherwise it would feel like a fan game that recycles the art assets, with Melee island and other locations making a return.
Wow. Now I finally noticed what TWP and MI2 have in common, speaking about the art.
I think that most of the people who have remained here have developed a respect not just for Ron but also for his artistic freedom.
These people accepted what Ron did with the story of TWP, even if they didn’t fully appreciate its ending. Today, those people are more inclined to respect the kind of art style that Ron has chosen for his new game, despite the reservations.
I understand that for Ron it was important to make his game, not our game nor a game to satisfy the taste of the “MI people”.
Once you accept this premise, it’s inevitable to just accept whatever Ron will do.
3 Likes
Since even a typical DVD has a higher resolution. Let alone any HD content.
Played some PAL Amiga games, I guess. A typical CGA/EGA/VGA game only used 320x200 pixel in a 4:3 aspect ratio. All the SCUMM adventures up to The Dig certainly do.
Some games like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken in their original versions rendered their graphics in even less than that resolution.
1 Like
Regarding continuity in the series and how it falls with Curse and the other post MI2 games, I could not possibly care. This applies to movies, games, short stories, books. All I want or need is that the major symbology is there. The characters feel more or less like the same characters. It’s all mythology and I’m not losing sleep over the old Greek texts contradicting one another or that the Mad Max movies play fast and loose like they are legends.
New Monkey Island? Fun. Creators, take what you want from the other games. Leave others behind. If the story within this game is fun and the puzzles themselves are fun, I can enjoy it on its own merits without creating alternate timelines, or deciding “this part must now become a dream” or any of that. It can all exist even with contradictions. Why would I care? To me that’s just getting lost in things that do not matter, adding needless burdens to storytellers that keep them from telling the story they want to tell without interference from other chapters that they need to contend with in their current work.
5 Likes
I understand, to be frank.
Even though I shared some of my theories, I honestly just want the game to be a faithful sequel to Ron’s games, at least in tone.
And build on MI2’s ending, which I love.
Besides that, I just want the game to be good - and I’m sure RG and DG will deliver.
2 Likes
I’m quite manichaeist regarding resolution. If I’m supposed to watch a movie, a DVD resolution is super lo-res, to me (while in the nineties I was perfectly OK with VHS on a cathod tube).
But if I’m looking for pixel art, 640x480 isn’t lo-res. Or maybe I should say it’s not hi-res and both it’s not pixel art. BTW, back then 640x480 was super hi-res to me. When COMI came out I was excited for it, but disappointed they didn’t take advantage of purcell’s and chan’s art.
1 Like
Indeed. I would say, lo-res pixel art is something not more than 400x288, which is roughly what a PAL C64 is capable of when using the full border.
On those 8 bit home computers, 320x200 was considered hi-res. That was retconned lo-res when the 16 bit machines came along.
