Tales of Monkey Island Announced + Revamped Original

dreammaster · Post by **dreammaster** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:01 am

eriktorbjorn wrote:They'd probably have to do something creative about the Monty Python references though, where Rincewind complains about déjà vu. Unless the same comedian also dubbed Eric Idle's voice in the Monty Python movies and TV series.

I was also wondering how they handle English word jokes when translating to a foreign language. For examine, looking at the statue in Unseen University in Discworld 1, it gives a joke about a frog having wished to be a handsome 'plinth'. I can't really see how they'd be able to maintain that joke in a foreign language.

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:10 am

Jonatan wrote:I could never understand why someone wanted to dub something. French movies are best in french, and english games are best in english. I'm norwegian, but I would never ever want to play MI translated to my own language:P

The jokes wouldn't work and it would be, well, wrong.

Whether the majority of people want stuff dubbed or not is very culture dependent.

Here is in the Netherlands (just as in Scandinavia I imagine) almost everybody is used to, and prefers, subtitles + the original audio.
There was never a dub culture because the Dutch speaking market is to small for good, expensive dubs.
Because of this the dubbing that IS done, sounds crude and ridiculous to people. Even a good dub is noticed immediately and experienced as 'fake'

Germany and France are completely different. The market is big enough for good dubs so everybody got used to them.
Because of this, people got to lazy to read subtitles. Consequently, people understand English less well, which in turn fuels the need for dubs.

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:21 am

bobdevis wrote:Whether the majority of people want stuff dubbed or not is very culture dependent.

Yep, it started back in the late 1920s when the movies with real audio appeared. There were huge discussions then whether dub or sub was the way to go, and different national cinema companies went different paths regarding it. And it's been stuck that way ever since and is really ingrown now.

Most people in the dub countries feel that dubs are the superior way to go and the sub people think that subs are the superior way.

It was a kinda funny april fools here in Sweden about a decade ago when Titanic came out. There was this big news about how Titanic will be dubbed instead of subbed and it caused quite an uproar cause a lot of people belived it was true!

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:01 pm

Children's movies - or anything that looks sufficiently childish - are still dubbed in Sweden, though. For instance, there's a dubbed version of the Simpsons movie. I don't know if that version was ever shown in theaters, but it was included on the DVD.

Which is strange because from what I've read, only about six of the TV episodes were ever dubbed.

Graxer · Post by **Graxer** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:41 pm

Nikioko wrote:
Graxer wrote: When it comes to CD games that need the CD to run however, (CoMI for instance) it applies more. ScummVM allows you to copy files off of the CD, bypassing the copyright protection element that is a CD check.
Wrong. There is no CD check copy protection at CMI, at least there isn't one at my copy. At the time when CMI was published, copy protection on CD games were rather uncommon. The CD check is for some other reasons: at that time, hard drive space was relatively small; the game data of CMI would have taken a large amount of space, so they weren't locally installed but directly read from the CD. That requires the right CD to be inserted, thatÄs all. If you copied the content to your HDD, the game ran without any CD inserted, it doesn't have anything to do with ScummVM.

Ok. You are probably right. I only ever played it with ScummVM. I made that assumption because it never existed on floppy, and I would have thought the installed size would be quite big for hard drives at the time of release.

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:46 pm

bobdevis wrote: Germany and France are completely different. The market is big enough for good dubs so everybody got used to them.
Because of this, people got to lazy to read subtitles. Consequently, people understand English less well, which in turn fuels the need for dubs.

Well, I do understand English films unless they are in a very hard slang, but I then prefer the pure original without any irritating subtitles. They are drawing away your attention from the picture.
German dubs reach 100 million people, French dubs even more, maybe 250 million. With Spanish it is quite funny, because in Spain, films are dubbed while in Latin America they aren't. Spanish dubs would reach more than 400 million people. Dutch, in comparison, is only spoken by about 25 million people.

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:21 pm

Folks, this is getting *way* offtopic. Please go to the Junkyard subforum if you want to keep discussing these things, but don't do it here.

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:30 pm

fingolfin wrote:Folks, this is getting *way* offtopic. Please go to the Junkyard subforum if you want to keep discussing these things, but don't do it here.

Well, have your ever heard of the fact that discussions develop? It is a normal thing that the topic of a conversation changes to another one. Everyone who has already participated in a conversation with other people might have observed this phenomenon. It is nothing to worry about, believe me.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:48 am

Off-topic conversations belong in their own thread. It's called netiquette. I for one don't want to click into a thread apparently about Tales of Monkey Island and the SOMI Special Edition only to find two pages of conversation about foreign versions of movies/games.

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:22 am

As I said, discussions develop. You can not tell a distinct point where the discussion becomes off-topic, because the topic doesn't change all at a sudden, it is a gradual development. And tearing apart running discussions is not nice, either.
You want to put parts of the whole arc of discussion into drawers that don't exist.

But that's just my two cents for your definite off-topic posting. Back to Monkey Island SE: As I heard, the bloke who spoke Guybrush in the German parts 3 and 4 is willing to do it again in Tales and the SE, if he is questioned to do so.

Another interesting aspect that I have seen in a German adventure forum was a poll, which Lucasarts adventure should be done. Most of the people would appreciate a Remake of MI2, since there is no talkie version either. AFAIK there were handdrawn backgrounds that that were scanned for the game. Since I strongly believe that these drawings still exist, I would really appreciate those being used for a possible revamp of MI2 instead of redrawn pictures in comic style.
However, second is FoA, I guess that is because this game could really be improved by better graphics and the great sound track in better quality.
Other adventures were far behind those two, and some hardcore gamers said, they wish no remake, because the games were perfect the way they are, and every remake wouldn't be an improvement but a backstep. I answered that the remake actually is a chance to reintegrate parts that have been cut away for reasons of disk space or technical difficulties (e. g. cutscenes in the Loom CD talkie version). The SE of BS e. g. has lots of new scenes which make the game actually better

I personally would have appreciated keeping the naturalistic look of characters like they are in the close-ups instead of changing them to comic style. Guybrushs hairdress is dreadful and in MI1 he definetely didn't have an earring yet; on the other with these eyes Elaine looks rather like Turandot than a Caribbean governour. And LeChuck is far too "materialistic" for a ghost pirate.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 12:39 am

For those who weren't there or didn't know, LucasArts did a live 1-hour playthrough of the new Monkey Island Special Edition today at Justin.tv and it just ended a little while ago. I recorded most of the entire playthrough (audio only). So you can't see anything, but you can hear some of the updates. Plenty of examples of voice work and the new soundtrack as well. It's in OGG Vorbis format because it's smaller than MP3 and it's quite a long file (brought the file size down 94.7%!).

I missed the intro music and the opening. But the recording starts in the Scumm Bar while talking to Spiffy, I believe. They also switch between the Special Edition and Classic modes often so when the sound dies down and you hear the original CD-ROM version that's what that is. Enjoy. The quality is actually pretty good. If you don't know how to play OGG files then download Winamp or a plugin for Windows Media Player. The sound is also a little loud and distorted just at the beginning because I had the volume level up too high. I fixed it shortly after recording.

Monkey Island Special Edition Playthrough 52:42 long, 28.4MB

Some musical cues. Some of these aren't the only times they come up:

00:00 - Scumm Bar
06:47 - LeChuck's Theme (cutscene)
14:38 - Jail Theme (Otis) (notice that this version uses the alternate bass lead from the Adlib/MT-32 soundtrack that wasn't included in the CD-ROM version)
16:40 - Following the Shopkeeper
21:56 - The Circus
24:22 - Melee Island Map
26:24 - Voodoo Shop I love this version but my only issue is that this wouldn't sound near as threatening enough in the Monkey Island cave tunnel maze
52:02 - Stan's Used Ships

Also I missed the Loom guy's sales pitch, but the voice acting for that character was spectacularly goofy! Too bad I missed it. The shopkeeper's voice is absolutely excellent.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:31 am

Actually, scrap that. You can just watch the archived videos yourself here:

http://www.justin.tv/clip/51614f11159958be
http://www.justin.tv/clip/e2ed2efb16b700d7
http://www.justin.tv/clip/9fc63696aa02f759
http://www.justin.tv/clip/2e48e093c9479bed

ezekiel000 · Post by **ezekiel000** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 6:52 am

It's quite disappointing that they didn't increase the number of frames of animation to make all movement smoother.

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:20 am

ezekiel000 wrote:It's quite disappointing that they didn't increase the number of frames of animation to make all movement smoother.

Apparently, they made the decision to support all the old graphics in the 'legacy look' mode.
To do that AND make the movement smoother with higher framerates is something they probably deemed too much work.

Those extra frames have to come from somewhere.

Laserschwert · Post by **Laserschwert** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:05 pm

I think they would've had to change the Scumm-code too much if they'd inserted more animation-frames (especially regarding the switch between old and new)... I guess one factor that made this whole project possible (and not too expensive for them) was the fact that they could use the same engine, and "only" swap out the low-res backgrounds and sprites with high-res ones. Of course they still had to change the code a bit (scrolling looks smoother, voices are implemented, the whole old/new-switch function).

Seeing part of the playthrough (I don't want to be spoiled too much already) I'm actually a little relieved about the look of the backgrounds (like the forest and ESPECIALLY Carla's hut, which looked fantastic), as the ones I've already seen looked only half-decent to me. I guess this being somewhat of a "test"-project, I think they had limited resources in the graphics-department.