I didn't even catch the crew represented LeChuck in his different incarnations until you said something. Say what you will about the art style (And possibly the ending), the small details in this game show that they definitely cared.
I got the absolute pleasure of meeting Dominic Armato at a con just a couple weeks before Return came out. He seemed genuinely pumped to be playing Guybrush again (And flattered when I freaked out and pulled my dad over to meet him.)
I’m really glad you loved the game, and that I’m not the only one who loved how the game is a story about stories. I’m really look forward to hearing your full thoughts on the ending once it’s not too much of a spoiler to do so.
Play it! The game has a hint system and doesn't punish you for using it if you need a helping hand now and then. That being said, the game does follow Ron's idea of "Clear Objectives" and "Clear Subgoals". To the point I would say play it on hard to experience all the puzzles and content the game has to offer, if you are feeling brave, and don't feel ashamed to use that hint book if you need it.
A month later: all of the puzzles are logical and not "just use a monkey lol", and like Scarf said, you arent never wondering what to do, especially with the "to do" -list, even if its kinda vague at times. I never used it because I didn't feel the need, but I am a veteran of adventure games.
I LOVE the princess bride angle on storytelling in this game. It's such a lovely, thoughtful and mature way to also honor the MI-games that did not follow Gilberts own ideas. The healthy relationship between Guybrush and Elaine is also a highlight for me. And the art style is very fitting, especially when you realize how it's used as part of the fluent animation that gives the game a lot of dynamic. All in all: i'm VERY happy with how this turned out.
If feels so weird that it seemed to have divided fans of the series. Like, I love this game, and if others don't that's fine. But some people just complain about it like it's Ron and co didn't care about the series, when that isn't true. There is a lot of love put into this. I feel like over time people will come to understand what the game is going for, and appreciate more. Terrible Toybox did a good job. There are some stuff I feel could've made it better, but it's still a good Monkey Island game. Also 13:39, after recently played Full Throttle, I discovered the Loom Seagul Statue is a reference to that game. R.I.P LOOM-ing Seagul 1990-1995
I genuinely loved this game. Just seeing Guybrush sitting on that bench and realizing he was happy--it made my heart swell, as I now also have a family. I completely disagree with the haters.
The fact that these are framed as tall tales, so to speak, is also - in a roundabout but interesting way - true to the culture and mythos surrounding the age of piracy. After all, isn't the allure of being a mighty pirate wrapped up in impossible, fantastical stories about exploits that may never have happened?
I can confidently say this spoiler free video further excited me for playing this game myself. I knew it was going to be special, but now I know it's going to be MAGICAL! Thankyou for this little braindump/gush video Scarf. ❤️
3:48 "We haven't had closeups like this since the first game" The fisherman on the dock from Monkey 2, and the FMV cutscenes from Curse would like a word with you.
@Scarfulhu is it really gonna,take years before ur return to monkey Island retrospective? How,did u interpret the ending? Did guybrush really go on all those adventures or in his head in an,asmusment park?
I'm glad this franchise is still alive and well in this day and age. We may not be in the golden era of point and click adventure games anymore, but their time hasn't passed yet 😊
I honestly believe the present day is the best era for Adventure Games. The mixture of late-career devs and new voices is beautiful. And while I love point and clicks, the rise of new formulas for adventure games has been exciting, and given us some greats. I'm personally a big fan of visual novel hybrids, and walking simulators. I would never go back to the golden age of point and clicks in the 80s and 90s. But for people who want them, there's still the old ones and also some new ones. Even the point and click formula has some odd and unique new twists. I think the right now is the best time.
Loved this! You hit on a lot of the same points I put in my review video. This was an amazing return to the series and it's exactly what I wanted from a new entry! I can't wait to see more.
For those who haven't warmed to the art style... someday you may not mind so much. Also 5:50.. oh no you've really screwed up now! Hope you saved the game!
Love the game, really like the art style! All the details, the animations in the background. You can feel the passion and love the creators puts in! It has that good old atmosphere and charme of the classic games in a modern way and everything what a real Monkey Island need.
In the best way possible, this game makes me sleepy. The whole atmosphere of being a story to “little brush” makes this feel like the best swashbuckling bed time story I’ve played in a long time
the storybook artstyle might work if when hey cut away to guybrush telling the story to his kid it was in a different style, but I dont think redesigning all the characters to look like NFTs was the best move regardless
I dunno', something still feels off about the artstyle. Stan and Murray look absolutely fine, since the animation actually works really well with Murray as all he does is bounce around on his jaw, and Stan has kind of always been like that. But everyone else? I dunno', they kind of all look stiff and they don't seem to have much in the way of unique body language [or at least what the animation allows] I think this is why Stan and Murray work so well, since -as I said, Stan was always that weirdly exaggerated, and Murray hopping on his jaw is really hard to get wrong, so they both actually translate really well into the new style. But Guybrush and everyone else? Well, in what ways does Guybrush move that other characters don't, that is unique to him? Sure, the dialogue and writing is great, but I don't think that really helps the animation translate better, just distracts from it. Maybe it would've all gone over better if it were a spinoff game staring Stan and Murray
Literally just finished playing and I'm still pondering the ending. Won't post spoilers, but it was certainly a thinker. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the subject one of these days!
It’s not a thinker. We already had the same ending at the end of the second game in 1991. It’s just a rehash of that. There’s nothing new here at all unfortunately.
An excellent video! I would very much like to hear your thoughts about the ending and share my own thoughts about it, but since you are planning to make a longer RtMI analysis video in the future, I will refrain from talking about spoilery things here. Let me just say that I loved the ending and the game as a whole! As you said it, it is a game about the art of telling stories, and the ending really made me think about stuff... Indeed, it is a love letter to the adventure genre. A modern classic if you ask me...
Please do well enough to get the same treatment for the humongous games. Guybrush was always the best but I'd love to see Spy Fox and Pajama Sam again. Return was pretty great on Steam Deck for anyone who's wondering.
I have discovered your channel just recently after I was looking for some MI retrospective videos and I am so glad I did. Such a good content about some of my fave old games 👍🏻 I really wanna play this new installment soon. Graphics is not really the style I would like for MI game but what can we do. Oh and I miss the original Le Chucks voice 🥲
It's interesting to me how you compared this game to Princess Bride. Funny enough, I didn't see the movie until after I played Escape from Monkey Island as a kid and Wesley's humor and personality reminded me a lot of Guybrush. I feel like that's not a coincidence. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the book or film helped inspire a lot of elements in the games.
I feel Elaines character has been messed up till tales kinda did a thing at the end saying it was her plan all along. I think it was kinda cheap but okay. Good to see her not beating guybrush up or being dumb.
What a great video about a great game. I can't wait to see the full review when it eventually comes out. I loved this game so much, and I legit feel like it was a return to form. Not that Curse, Escape, and Tales were bad or anything, I love those (especially Tales). But it's clear that this one was made by Gilbert, and that he wanted to make a Monkey Island game that's just silly and straight to the point, like the first 2.
Return to Monkey Island is fine as a point and click. Given how the direction of entertainment has the real world bled through, more ways than one, is where I have issue, and probably with the timing of it all. Logically, there puzzles, and pacing the game from how much to explore and options can be worked in different ways, at that is satisfied. +At the Emotional level I think where most people are not liking the the game(including me, though my approach to Monkey Island would be Mephisto-Faust romanticism). The ending is probably what made me almost hate it, but then there were some other good parts before hand, but ending....well, without spoiling, I just felt like Ron&Co. gave up, and won't look good in time the reason why in the scrapbook(everyone had to deal with that). You could have the same exact story, but better executed if it was done not without the disaster of 2020, like even released in the year of 2015. The real world crept in with its stresses, and definitely Ron&Co. would have the vigor in the execution of the story- I just feel like Ron Gilbert is in retirement at least some part. -To bring up George RR Martin, he has not made another mainline entry to The Song of Ice and Fire AKA Game of Thrones since 2011, and yet the HBO show has ended with a draft of Martin''s notes, and now has a spinoff show. Martin has, in a sense let the real world effect him, a good portion of fans don't believe he will live to where the HBO show ended, having a unfinished "season 8" book(or gasp a new season 8) +Ron Gilbert probably had a plan to Monkey Island actual 3, but he's not the same person now, and the view of the world certainly has turned worse. Pretty sure the making of this one, as compiled as a scrap book are just various adventures told Tall, but never definite. If they can make another Monkey Island with new perspective(new developers guided by Ron), well, I'll take it.
I hear a few people say they'd like to see a sequel. But I have trouble imagining how. Would a sequel just ignore the meta parts of this game, similar to the way Curse went as a sequel to Revenge? Or would it keep the same framing device and just be... another story?
I think another sequel could do almost anything and ignore whatever it liked. I mean Return ignores a lot of Escape's big reveals for example. Another one could ignore this game too, and I think that's fine. It's easy to wipe the slate clean and tell another story about the ongoing battles between Guybrush and LeChuck.
Scarfulhu, have you ever played Ron Gilbert's The Cave? A lot of people don't like it, but it's my favorite Ron Gilbert game and possibly my favorite video game in general. People know that Thimbleweed Park has similar tone and themes to RMI, but I don't hear many people point out that The Cave has a similar setup toward the end. It's just... a little different, because there's no spoiler involved. If you've tried The Cave and don't like it, then oh well. But if you haven't tried The Cave, I recommend it.
Just finished this game and it was one of the absolute best adventure games I've played in quite a while. I'm unfortunately not at all surprised about all the angry people who didn't care to read between the lines, people often just want more of the same, they wanted a nice pirate fantasy to bring them into the comfort zone of nostalgic days gone by, and were instead given a deeply personal story about the anxiety of growing older, the futility of grasping at the past, the impossiblity of living up to expectations and so much more. I'm happy they've gone this route of pushing the artistic envelope and told a story that was meaningful to them instead of catering to the people who prefer to shut down their brains and consume
the only thing i question about the art style is why did nobody say anything when the first teaser was shown with the same art style? that one teaser of the undead pirate stacking crates on a harbor with the dev names and whatnot. when i first saw that i was like "what could this be?" and then when it was revealed to be a new Monkey Island game i was like "oh, i could not have guess that with this art style." just as well i could not have guessed that a lot of people were going to not like it so much.😬
i can'T get my head arround the fuzz with the Artstyle. Yeah, it looks... "not that great" but it's not even the ugliest MI title to look at? Remember Escape anyone?
I've heard a lot about the story and everything else on the game, and I have to say every part turned me away from the game, even as a long-time fan of the series. Maybe it was me starting with 3 or any inkling towards original creator prestige being already wrung out from me but Ron Gilbert returning is not a selling point to me. Or maybe it's the ending being exactly the sort of thing I hate in stories. I'm inclined to go with the latter, really.
My thoughts exactly, though I started with Secret and skipped 2 for Curse. I knew from the moment Return was announced Gilbert would pull the same disappointing non-ending he's used before in both MI2 and Thimbleweed Park, but being proved right was still heartbreaking. I so wanted to love everything about this game, and yet it stopped short of a satisfying conclusion to instead make a point of stomping all over my lifelong love for this series.
@@unicornfoal That sort of ending is, like, one of those common tropes that people think is smart but is really hollow. I don't want to say more unprompted but it's never something I can get on board with.
I think those two styles have their charms but the character models definitely haven't aged well. I think you're right about Return aging well too. Time will tell.
Escape was my first Monkey Island game and I really love it, but there's a certain argument to be made for its models being some of the ugliest of all time.
@@NickLysander nah definitely not, obviously they haven't aged well but compared to other 3d adventures of the time like GK3 or Simon 3D, the models in Escape are fairly decent
I really do not like this more cartoony wired style but what is most important is is it still funny and good to play that is the most important You say that its like the movie the whole him telling a child his story but you seem to have forgotten about Kings quest game that had the King in bed tell his story to his grandchild The music is always so good in this games This is not a 1 hour or 2 hours long video this is to short after some time passed i hope you do a proper long video like the previous videos
**Potential spoilers?** . . . . . Isn't the part with the "young lad" actually Guybrush's son Boybrush he had with Elaine? Or is that a spoiler from later on too? I heard that in a synopsis.
They should bring the art team from Curse of Monkey island back, new story, 4k, voilà. This new art style really did not work for me. It feels like a reinterpretation of the bad 3d games instead of a new take on 2d art.
Art style is fine. But take the nostalgia goggles off and it’s a crap game. There are no new ideas here at all, the puzzles are rehashes of old ones (the skull instrument is straight out of Lucasarts Indy3), half of the game is just a rehash of the first one without any of the great puzzles and new ideas etc. Wasted opportunity, he’s had 30 years to do a proper MI3. The new characters are all unpleasant and unlikeable.
The fact that polite discourse is long gone makes me sad. To wit, I find the papercraft artstyle in general abysmal. I think its ugly as sin, and looks cheap. But that's the way it is, and there's nothing wrong if people do like it. We need to reintroduce "agree to disagree" to common terminology.
If you're looking for more of the same then you don't need something new. It's been so long and there's many different looks so what's the point of getting mad about a new look, I don't get it
I can understand being upset about the art style. I’m not nostalgic for the original game but it’s way better than this. I don’t think it has a particular “style”. It less of s storybook style but more of a it’s minimalistic modern art made of origami. It can have its place so long as the designs and artstyle are consistent, but like any modern art piece: that’s exactly what it’s missing, consistency. Everyone has very exaggerated facial structures, many characters animate in a jarring set of randomness. Seeing the original artstyle, the new style seems, frankly, disrespectful. Especially when you don’t give fans the option to opt for what they’d prefer. So I can see why they’re upset about it. It would be like if you remade Psychonauts with an anime aesthetic and forced people to play it with ONLY that artstyle, it would very insulting. As for what Bob said in his announcement about disabling comments, though? I think that’s the worst approach. I will commend him for boldly resolute and sticking to his vision for his product, but come on dude, you can’t just go and say “the game is amazing” right off the bat. A developer CANNOT claim their game is amazing. Okay, to who? That’s the equivalent of those work movies that people claim their racist or homophobic for not liking. It doesn’t work. It’s the equivalent of taking a dumb and looking at it and going “GENIUS!” The only ones who can say if your game is amazing is the players. They’re the end all and be all.
This game was a complete embarrassment. Ron Gilbert has no clue how to end a game in satisfying fashion. All he did was double down on the ending of Monkey 2. I have no idea how anyone gets any satisfaction out of or defends a game where the writers basically give up and don't bother to resolve anything that the player has invested themselves in. There's not a single new character that was remotely likable. And the art direction is rightfully maligned. It's horrific-looking. Every time that mass of jagged shapes that now constitutes Guybrush's face appears in closeup, I wanted to punch the computer screen.
I am extremely disapointed and dare i say even heartbroken over not just the art style, which , honestly i could have gotten over but what I can not just "get over" or look past is the absolute drab the scenes are. I just finished Curse again and EVERY. SINGLE. SCENE. is totally jam packed with details from the top left corner through every pixel down to the lower right corner is detail. Each scene almost looking like a yard sale full of, just, things. things you could touch or not touch, talk to or not talk to or just simply look at. This game here, "return", doesnt have any of that. not only is the art style hideously lacking in passion and love, it looks more like a cheap walmart knockoff of some dumb kids game. i respect that the team that worked on this game are proud of it, and it of itself could be a game worthy of anyones respect but for myself personally this game doesn't deserve the Monkey Island title due to the lack of passion, love, dedication to detail and comedy and everything else that makes Monkey Island, Monkey Island.
I`m very sorry for you that you can`t sense the passion and love Ron, Dave and their team put into this fantastic game! But i`m sure there are many other games you could enjoy ☺
Why does every single video have the same outlook on this game and have to preach about how good the art is... it's like they were all paid off. Don't get me wrong, hate towards Gilbert is totally unnecessary because the man's a genius and Thimbleweed park was the best point and click in the last 20 years but a hell of a lot of people including me think the art is poor at best yet not a single video has this point of view. Every one of these videos just pumps out the exact same message. It's not just the art style either but the classic adult sense of humour from the original 2 games seems to be missing in this game and it feels more like the later instalments.
@@Scarfulhu Wtf haha. That totally ignored my point that every video seems to have the exact same opinion. Could u send me a link to a video with a different point of view if there's plenty? Coz i cant seem to find them...
@@Jack-gv3mk Well I simply gave my opinion, I'm not sure what else I can tell you. Nobody was paid off. There's a video going around called 'Return to Monkey Island sucks'. Not watched it but it keeps appearing in my recommendations. Maybe that's something you'd enjoy.
Because creator worship. They can’t bring themselves to accept the idea that Ron Gilbert made a terrible MI game. So they need to come up with a million and one reasons why it’s your fault if you didn’t like the art or the game.
