You liked the realistic cover art but not the in-game portraits?
Yes, I hadn’t been prepared for them to pop up with such a high level of detail. Also, I was quite a picky boy and didn’t like the faces, independent from the high artistic effort.
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The closeup portraits and covers have no bearing on what I think of the characters as. I spend 99% of the time looking at them in the main view. This is the reality of their version of the world to me.
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Seeing these two images next to each other, just imagine the “Special Edition” had updated the graphics in such a way that the non-closeup characters would have had the look & resolution of those original character closeups.
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Melee=close combat at arm’s length with hand held weapons. The opposite of shooting arrows, guns, catapults or canons. So, very fitting for the island where you need to learn about sword fighting!
Scabb= a skin disease (spelled with one B at the end) You could google some pictures, but best not just before (or after) eating.
Booty: To this day I still doubt which of the two meanings you mentioned is the intended one. I guess both… as to not offend some and score points with others.
My theory on the picture-book/scrap-book style is that Guybrush is telling the story to his (grand?)kids. Although that sounds a lot like the latest King’s Quest. Or perhaps he is reading through this book he made as a kid after the ending on MI2 and notices something in there that makes him have to return 30 years later. OK, they did that in Hook too. At least they have pirates in common.
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Same here, I always found them feeling a bit off. Especially the ones of Guybrush. At the same time other characters like Meathook, Otis, Stan, Fester, Herman and Hernando did not have any close-ups, despite having more lines than most other characters with close-ups. As a result those characters felt more cartoon-y.
As the close-up of Cob(b) was almost copy and paste from Loom, I wonder if the other close ups were a deal of “because we can” rather than “because we should”. I can’t remember where I read or heard it, but iirc, opinions about including close-ups were different among the developers at the time.**
The very first (cut) closeup of Elaine resembled another character from Loom, Fleece Firmflanks, right down to the color of the shirt and the leather gilet.
A good read that mentions Hook and Terminator 2 (you know that movie with Earl “LeChuck” Boen in it)
** [edit: Found it. It was Ron himself: (at the end of the blog post)]
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I’ve said this elsewhere, forgive me if I’ve already said it here: my impression that Secret of Monkey Island was meant to depict realistic art is connected both to the art of that game itself (with realistic closeups and proportional bodies) and also to Indy 3 and Loom. I experienced these three games close to each other, they were developed close to each other (sharing a demo together and several in-jokes in youngest sibling Secret), and it shows.
The cartoony big heads are gone from Maniac and Zak, with more proportional characters. Indy 3 is arguably a cornerstone for the realism, since it is linked to a live action movie and arguably bound. We see the Indy sprite and know it is trying its technological best to show us Harrison Ford.
Move to Loom, with a similar character sprite style and closeups that match contemporary games that were aiming for a realistic style. Some silly antics happen that might make us think cartoon, such as the dragon catching her tail on fire or Bobbin being thrown by a waterspout, but you definitely feel the realism vibe as Bishop Mandible is torn apart.
And then there’s Secret. Secret, whose Guybrush sprite looks no more cartoonish than what we saw in Indy 3 or Loom. Secret, whose closeup of Cobb is identical to Loom’s and whose other closeup shots are the most realistic images the MI franchise has given us to this day (and probably ever will). And the gore, even… Indy 3 had the wrong Grail choice exploding him, Loom had Mandible, and Secret had LeChuck shedding his Fester skin… which has a red coloration that always had me convinced an actual body was used.
But yes, there are obviously cartoonish art moments like Stan’s jaw, or putting the monkey key away, or the talking cannibal masks, or LeChuck uppercutting Stan and Guybrush. These existed too. But I guess, to me, they were the odd moments. Some of you felt odd to see Elaine zoomed in and looking like a person, while I felt odd seeing Red Skull talk - trying to figure out if it was makeup or a mask that was way more elaborate than needed!
When I started this post, it was supposed to be about the common realism depicted across Indy 3, Loom, and Secret. But some rambling happened.
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None of those are puns though. They’re merely aptly named pirate islands. A pun requires there to be a double meaning. So, Brrr-Muda is very much a pun, given it’s an ice based play on words for Bermuda.
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Yeah, it was a little unnerving when I learned this year that the first thing to make me fall in love with Secret (its beautiful VGA closeups) was something done after Ron’s time, which he was never comfortable with.
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If not a pun, a mere play of words then. Saint Vincent would be an aptly named Caribbean pirate island.
In the same category of discovering years later: one of the places where pirates were hanged on your dial-a-pirate is Nebraska.
They’d take up precious space though?
Another theory, I don’t know if someone said it…
Guybrush and Chuckie go back home after the amusement park. They found an old storybook about a pirate adventure. They read it together. After reading a couple pages, they fight because they disagree about how the story should evolve. This is reflected in the story by Guybrush and LeChuck fighting.
I feel like this would be an innovative way to tell the story - it would even justify the storybook look.
But again, I don’t know. Maybe it’s also just going to be a pirate adventure, with no meta commentary - knowing Ron, I doubt it, but who knows?
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I’m tired of all these people who give opinions based on nothing instead of hard evidence. All the fuzz about how good or bad RtMI might be, has led to 3553 people following/wishlisting the game on Steam. Based on scientific comparisons with other similar games in the same time frame, it implies with 100% certainty that I think I’ll have fried chicken for dinner.
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One with a pulley in the middle, I hope.
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Yes, the pulley is a great iron supplement.
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I laughed more than necessary. Thank you. 
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You’re welcome.
I’ve eaten cheese, eventually, so my 100% figure might not have been entirely correct and I apologize for not having provided a margin of error.
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From the internet
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Somebody on Reddit has pointed out a detail that I find interesting: why RtMI has been classified as PEGI 16 while the previous games were PEGI 12?
Does anybody know what PEGI 16 implies and if the difference of rating with the previous games means that the tones or the contents of RtMI will actually be more “mature”?
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