[uxcolumbo]

A shame they didn't stick to the pixelated art. In my mind it was responsible for the immersive gameplay - since your mind had to work harder to 'imagine' things - filling in those missing details.

They could have used a more modernized pixel art version - like in this game

The Last Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXeQJnbc9bA

Appreciate it would have been more expensive to produce to use this modern pixel art style.

[dietrichepp]

Ron Gilbert directly addresses the use of pixel art in a blog post.

Pixel art is what they used due the time and circumstances of the original games, not because they like pixel art better than other media.

https://grumpygamer.com/when_i_made_another_monkeyisland

> Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art.

> When Dave and I first started brainstorming Return to Monkey Island we talked about pixel art, but it didn't feel right. We didn't want to make a retro game. You can't read an article about Thimbleweed Park without it being called a "throwback game". I didn't want Return to Monkey Island to be just a throwback game, I wanted to keep moving Monkey Island forward because it's interesting, fun, and exciting. It's what the Monkey Island games have always done.

There's also a talk by (I think) Mark Ferrari, where he talks about how they hired artists for these classic pixel art games. Artists were hired on the strength of their art skills, and they had to adapt to the pixel medium in order to make those classic games. Easier to hire an artist and train them to make pixel art, rather than hire a pixel pusher and teach them to make art.

[grumbel]

On top of that, Monkey Island 2 was never a real pixel-art game to begin with, all the backgrounds were hand painted[1] and scanned. Only the character sprites and objects were still pixel-art.

[1] https://mixnmojo.com/media/galleries/Monkey-Island-2-LeChuck...

[dialogbox]

wow. That's really cool collection. Thank you for sharing.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I totally get his point and, of course, it's entirely up to him to do whatever he wants with it. However, I think the point about pixel art making a game a "throwback" is a little unfair. I, for one, would love to see a modern pixel art Monkey Island game with a much higher res and a wider palette of colours than was available at the time. I don't think that would make it a "throwback"; pixel art is simply a different style, not just a graphical limitation.

[dietrichepp]

> However, I think the point about pixel art making a game a "throwback" is a little unfair.

I agree, but that’s also not what Gilbert is saying. The problem is not whether it “is” a throwback, but whether it is perceived as a throwback by the general public. That kind of perception drives conversations about Thimbleweed Park and shapes people’s perceptions about it.

Pixel art is, unfortunately, perceived to be low effort. All I really mean by this is that there’s a discrepancy between how hard people think pixel art is to make, and how hard it actually is to make. This makes it more challenging to actually sell games that have pixel art.

[uxcolumbo]

I get what Ron Gilbert said by wanting to move Monkey Island forward. As a creator / designer you want to try out new things - because you might be bored with the old ways of doing things.

But as a designer - you're not just creating for yourself. More importantly - with a property like Monkey Island - you're creating for your audience that spans decades,. This loyal audience might have fallen in love with the original style.

It would have been better to move that old style forward - build on it and not completely shift direction.

This new style just looks 'cheap'. Cheap is probably not a fair description - it looks too 'childish'?

Maybe he's targeting the new generation / children and not so much us old timers?

I'm sure the game will be fun though.

If he'd stuck to his principle of using 'state-of-the-art tech and art' - he'd use the art style of 'The Last Night' or similar.

But again - The Last Night is not cheap to produce and you'd need a much bigger team.

Here are more pixelated art games[0] - which to me feel richer than the clean & wonky lines and flat and over-polished feel of this latest MI game.

[0] Check out the games by Wadjeteye Games

https://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/blackwell-deception/

[johannes1234321]

Ron Gilbert covers that in this blog post: https://www.grumpygamer.com/when_i_made_another_monkeyisland

> I have made one pixel art game in my entire career and that was Thimbleweed Park. Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art. ...

[googlryas]

I guess if that's how he wants to describe it, but the fact is that this new game is not using state-of-the-art tech and art. So it isn't similar to Monkey Island 1 & 2.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Some of us lived through that time and despise pixel-art. It didn't even look like pixel art back then because the monitors were blurry. [1]

You're welcome to like pixel art if you want. I don't actually like the new aesthetic either, but I respect the choice--and I do like similar approaches where it's not high-res painting or 3d rendering and instead is abstract art.

[1] https://weareludicrous.com/blog/2018/pixel-sharp-graphics-at...

[ndiddy]

> Some of us lived through that time and despise pixel-art. It didn't even look like pixel art back then because the monitors were blurry.

That’s true for console games like the article you linked uses as examples, but PC games did have sharp pixels because they used RGB monitors rather than consumer television sets.

[bzzzt]

That's not entirely true: my first Monkey Island was the EGA version which was rendered in 320x200 resolution which used 200 scanlines on a real EGA monitor which certainly caused blurring and horizontal lines like on TV. On VGA hardware the 320x200 resolutions were 'scanline doubled' so you got 2x2 'square'-ish pixels and less shadowlines.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Ron Gilbert himself developed [Thimbleweed Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimbleweed_Park) a few years back, which was very much in the classic Monkey Island style.

[aloukissas]

Monkey Island 3 wasn't pixelated and was epic!

[eps]

Ditto for MI Special Edition from few years back but you could switch between pixelated and vector versions on the fly. Pixelated version, as nostalgic as it was, is clearly inferior. At least as far the gameplay is concerned.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_spec...

[uxcolumbo]

The special edition art style is much better than this new style.

The special edition is basically a step up from the original pixel art version, so to me it still maintains that original 'feel'.

This new style distorts the faces for some reason - as others have already pointed out.

[bzzzt]

I don't like the bland faces from the special edition, especially the close-ups which are almost 'chibi' style and feel out of place.

The new style at least has a bit of character of its own instead of trying to copy the intention of a pixel art original.

[enneff]

A bigger factor was probably the age at which you played the original.

[feanaro]

I don't think so. Thimbleweed Park was released just a few years ago and it does produce the same feeling due to the atmosphere and art style.

[trashcan]

The Last Night looks great in the trailer, but it has also been in development since 2017 and still has no release date. I'm not sure if that style of art scales poorly, or there is some other reason. What do you think of the art of Dead Cells? https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ra1_wvRXZkI

[uxcolumbo]

They are still working on it. Release is some time 2023 I think. You should check their Twitter account from time to time: https://twitter.com/oddtalesgames

I think they had to figure out a lot of stuff that hasn't been done before and they have a small team. Check this interview snippet [0].

The art of dead cells looks good!

-----

[0] Tim Soret in reply to a question: "-Hello Tim, I was wondering how you balance the pixel art and the visual effects in The Last Night. What steps do you guys take to decide which aspects should be pixel art and what needs to be real life looking? And how do you make sure the pixel art of the game is still prominent when viewed? Is a scene considered complete when everyone else in the team agrees to it?"

"Very good question. As the game is getting more & more 3D, for sure it looks less like a parallaxing 2D illustration, and more like a little pixel art movie set with cute props. I wish I could have continued the game like shown in 2017, but relying only on pixel artists to illustrate everything manually became impossible given the surface to cover - and we would have missed all the dynamism offered by our current tech."

"As we're a small team, we prototype using a lot of bought 3D assets (buildings, trees), and even by swapping all the shaders & textures with ours, they don't look exactly like we need them to be."

[mushbino]

This reminds me of Space Quest. I'd love to have a sequel to that. It felt a lot like monkey island. I really miss those pixel games.

[unixhero]

I could never get anywhere as I kept getting killed. It sure looked like a fun series.

[COMMENT___]

Dying is fun in adventure games made by Sierra. Just remember to save often.

PS Try Sierra’s Quest for Glory series (VGA versions).

[madmoose]

As Ron has said, Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't made in a pixel art style.

They were just the best art they could do at the time.

[wazoox]

I really like the vibe!