Who else is waiting to play MI2 again until they release a special edition of it?
I loaded up MI2 today, my favorite adventure game ever. It had been several, several years since I had played it so I didn't remember the dialog - just the puzzles. Then I got a little bit farther and I shut it off.
I was just thinking to myself over and over that'd I would enjoy this more if I was patient and waited for a remake with Dominic and Earl doing voice over. It's not bad or anything - it is still the best adventure game ever made in my opinion - but I don't want to ruin the SE experience.
If they announce something like DoTT or Grim Fandango as their next SE though I'll probably break in and wait the year out.
I was just thinking to myself over and over that'd I would enjoy this more if I was patient and waited for a remake with Dominic and Earl doing voice over. It's not bad or anything - it is still the best adventure game ever made in my opinion - but I don't want to ruin the SE experience.
If they announce something like DoTT or Grim Fandango as their next SE though I'll probably break in and wait the year out.
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I think I'll probably actually just skip to Curse and give that a run through.
Seriously though, after playing SOMI:SE I'm not as excited anymore as I would otherwise have been over a possible MI2 remake. I mean, they already had problems with the more cartoonish style of MI1 and if they applied that same style to MI2 it would be a disaster.
The interface needs some work too, but I'm absolutely waiting for MI2:SE, it's been well over ten years since I last played it and the puzzles are now a pleasantly vague and hazy memory.
Replaying it is going to be a true joy, moreso than SoMI:SE as I'd only finished replaying the classic version a few months ago.
On the other hand, as brilliant as Dominic is as Guybrush, he's very different from the voice I envisioned when I played the game back when it first came out. So I'm perfectly happy to play the original version, too.
So basically, it's a win/win situation for me.
A special edition of MI2? Would be fun!
But honestly, do DOTT and Grim Fandango really need to be remade? They both have voices, and they hold up fairly well; all I'd ask for is something like ScummVm to run Grim on Vista. I'd be more interested in seeing Maniac Mansion or one of the other ones without voices remade after MI2.
Here you go
Because I really like the art direction the second game had... it just needs to be hi-rez instead.
I hope they don't mess with the art direction either... the animations and the backgrounds are all really great--and I don't really want to see a Green and Purple Tentacle hanging in the costume shop instead of Sam and Max. Manny and Glottis might be acceptable, though... I guess some reimagining has to be done if they are going to re-draw everything in high-res, but I hope it doesn't come in the form of making Guybrush's blue jacket less oversized, or bleach-blonding his more dirty blonde/light brownish hair.
Seeing how they deal with the iMuse music will be interesting as well... just in Woodtick alone there's probably 4+ musical transitions between each room's music and the main boardwalk's music, depending on where you are in the track. (P.S. if Michael Land is reading this: I'm impressed!) Getting that to sound right with digital audio instead of MIDI could be a challenge.
The other thing bothering me in MI:SE is the lack of dramatic timing in the voiceovers. Since they just added them in over the original game, I think there's an equal amount of time between every line--I'm pretty sure even the first LucasArts talkies didn't slavishly adhere to a specific timing for every line, they adjusted things so the dialogue felt like it was timed more naturally. When you're reading everything to yourself this doesn't stick out as much, but when things are voiced it sounds weird to have these awkward pauses between lines. Hopefully they'll work on the timing a bit more for the talkie if they remake MI2, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.
Grim Fandango doesn't need to be remade. I'd be happy to see it ported to the XBLA, because it's a game that worked nicely with a controller rather than keyboard. Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle and others really only need a graphical upgrade, but it's hardly even necessary. Monkey Island 2 would be a time consuming project since there's voices to be recorded and stuff, so it'd be quite cool if they did put up some of the more recent games in the meantime.
But as for DOTT it is still a load of work to upate this game, unless the source material for the animation is either analog (hand drawn and then scanned) or high res, which I doubt.
The problem with the later games is the amount of animation, they went for 15fps-24fps full animation and instead of 1 frame per 3 seconds with 20-30 frames overall per character the first games did.
So redoing those either means, redraw the entire artstyle in cell shaded 3d and let 3d do the lifting or do a load of work in redrawing the animations frame per frame (including the videos)
which is exactly what broke the neck of 2d games, this means hire a lot of people to do the lifting.
I think the main problem anyone faces is what are you going to do with the few pixels a sprite had in those games. Guybrush in the first two games was limited by the sprite constraints of the home computers. He was 16x32 pixel or so. Besides the excellent still arts of purcell which however were out of the cartoony context of the game you dont really have a huge indication how guybrush should look like in high rez.
I think everyone has a vague understanding how guybrush can look, but giving the early pixel blobs if you want to translate that to high rez you will not hit it exactly like everyone wants it, because the everyone thinks different on how he has to look.
So if you follow the art direction, what art direction? I think they hit it perfectly in the remake with the backgrounds, the stills, well they moved away from the original, while Purcell tried to become as photo realistic as possible they went for a combined overall style which is cartoony as the rest of the game. The characters, hit and miss I must say. I am not sure if I like the new guybrush look, but anyway how does guybrush really look like?
The purcell stills are even out of scope for the original games and the original characters are pixel blobs within a cartoon context.
And the guybrush from CMI, is the most out of scope. I personally think guybrush 4 and TOMI guybrush come closest to a hd guybrush!
^ This. If Guybrush ever looked the SAME I'd be disappointed.
Hehe maybe he finally manages to grow a real beard...
:-) So far his biggest effort was a goatee, and that probably was better than what he had in part two (where everone made a mockery out of it, to bad the beard was only 5 pixels or so)
I'll be absolutely astounded if this happens. It's such a bigger project than MI1, with many times as many locations, animations, pieces of music (which will be a feat to recreate in itself) and characters who would need dialogue recorded.
I doubt they would undertake such a project without first assessing MI1:SE's success.
I have strong doubts about them working on MI2:SE before the release of MI:SE. The whole point of the re-releases, is to test if there is any value in re-releasing games from the old catalog. Not only would they be checking MI:SE sales before committing to MI2:SE, they would also be comparing the sales with the non-SE games released recently. If there is a greater possibility of profit from releasing non-SE MI2 instead, then they will likely go down that path instead.
While this is fairly true, I've always seemed to notice somewhat of a resemblance in the faces...
But!! They should definitely rework Guybrush's model. In MI1 SE he looks like he's got down's syndrome..and this is definitely not meant to insult persons concerned or anything by the way, but that's not how guybrush should be supposed to look..
also, they shouldn't be too militant on the whole switching-between-the-versions thing. Imo it would be totally sufficient if you stood in the same area with the same inventory etc. when switching, there's no need for perfectly synchronous animations. That way they could adapt the old animations to modern standards, too.
but I also agree that it seems unlikely that they would release it anytime soon, unless they've allready been working on it for a while. maybe they remade both games simultaneously, if they felt sure of its success? otherwise, my guess is that it will be released sometime in between of season one and two of tales..if there ever is one, to keep up interest in the franchise. and maybe, just maybe, they are planning a certain "secret revealed or your money back" *winkwink*
..wouldn't bet my money on it though
The MI2 Elaine sprite is almost identical to the MI1 Elaine.
My guess would be that, assuming MI:SE and TMI have decent sales, a MI2:SE could be made to go along with a TMI season 2 around the holidays or maybe into next year.
Later with the VGA remake they sure used the same model from MI2
I can wait. I'd prefer to wait than to see a rush job.
The later VGA version (it's not a remake) came out just a few months after the EGA version. The MI2 Elaine sprite is a very slightly modified version of this sprite.
But that line is from the original version of the game, it wasn't added to the SE. If they do make a MI 2 SE it won't come out for a long while.