On Monkey Island being cartoonish

[Kroms]

I've noticed a lot of posters have been claiming that Monkey Island is not cartoonish. That maybe the third one is, but the real, Ron Gilbert ones are not. So I created this thread (yes, a full thread, to draw your attention).

This is a scene from Monkey Island 2. I want you to see how Guybrush escapes LeChuck's fortress. Specifically, the point at which Guybrush lights a match.

Very realistic, isn't it?

Monkey Island is a cartoon, and always has been. And for those of you about to mention SMI's close-ups:

Originally Posted by Ron Gilbert

I was always bothered by [the] close-ups. While they were great art, I never felt they matched the style of the rest of the game. Not sure how I feel about them 20 years later

.

[MusicallyInspired]

Agreed.

[Armakuni]

I partly agree, but not completely.

The first two Monkey Island games had cartoony elements, like most VGA adventure games.
But they do have more realistic graphics than the later installments.

I would say the same for the Leisure Suit Larry games... they're all cartoony, but the first three are less so than the other ones.

Originally Posted by Ron Gilbert

I was always bothered by [the] close-ups. While they were great art, I never felt they matched the style of the rest of the game. Not sure how I feel about them 20 years later

Whoah, I'm glad they still made it into the game! I absolutely love the closeups in that game!

[hamzie]

Why are you over thinking it so much

[VagrantWulf]

There's one thing to consider; even with drawn art, there are degrees of realism and cartoony, it's not a stark black & white contrast. Wander over to a comic book shop and pick up a random selection and you'll see degrees that vary from something like Dilbert, right the way up to comics that have beautifully hand-painted realistic art, and everything in between.

To say that the only consideration is cartoony or not cartoony is to look at things in a two dimensional way, but the truth of the matter is that, like comic books, Monkey Island was never really realistic or cartoony, it was always somewhere in between. If you want a cartoony adventure, look at Day of the Tentacle, then compare Day of the Tentacle with The secret of Monkey Island and Lechuck's Revenge. If you do that, the differences become rather obvious.

So no, the first two Monkey Island games were not cartoony, to simply imply the one end of the spectrum, because in doing that we might as well say that they were as cartoony as Day of the Tentacle (which they're not). We also can't say they're real-as-life art either, because that's just as absurd and they're obviously not.

And for what it's wroth, there were parts of Lechuck's Revenge which were just as vibrant as Tales of Monkey Island. And speaking of Tales of Monkey Island, do I find that really cartoony? No, not really. It is perhaps a touch more toward cartoony than Lechuck's Revenge was, but not so much. And I don't feel that Tales of Monkey Island is nearly as cartoony as Curse of Monkey Island.

Whereas Curse is nearer the Day of the Tentacle end of the cartoony scale, I think that Tales of Monkey Island actually leans toward the Lechuck's Revenge style. But that's just my opinion.

[Toothless Gibbon]

Surely they were as cartoony as they could get in those days? I always saw them that way and loved them for it.

[Jake]

When my friend loaned me his copy of Monkey Island 2, his pitch to me was "its like playing a cartoon or something!"

That said, I do like that what sets the Monkey Island games apart from a lot of other comedy adventure games is that it has a serious tone to it along with the jokes. The characters more often than not seem to believe that they're in a serious world, doing important things, even if there are wisecracks and grog machines everywhere. When LeChuck shows up in the underground tunnels, it's scary! (Or was to me!) Contrast that with Sam & Max, where everyone with few exceptions is in on the fact that they're all inside a giant joke.

That doesn't mean that stylistically it doesn't have a little cartoon to it! For instance:

[Mataku]

all serialized adventure games of the late 80s go through the same stages:

* pixelated blobs (kq1,2, MI1,larry1-3)
* better looking pixelated blobs (MI2,KQ3,4)
*trying hard to look realistic (KQ5,6, Larry5,6)
*realizing realism sucks and taking a whole new approach, make it cartoony (Larry7, KQ7,MI3,Discworld2)
*realizing that even tho those games looked great cartoony, they are way too hard and expensive to produce that way, so they turn to 3d or just give up all together. (Larry8,KQ8,Discworld_Noir,MI4)

[Armakuni]

Originally Posted by Jake

When my friend loaned me his copy of Monkey Island 2, his pitch to me was "its like playing a cartoon or something!"

That said, I do like that what sets the Monkey Island games apart from a lot of other comedy adventure games is that it has a serious tone to it along with the jokes. The characters more often than not seem to believe that they're in a serious world, doing important things, even if there are wisecracks and grog machines everywhere. When LeChuck shows up in the underground tunnels, it's scary! (Or was to me!) Contrast that with Sam & Max, where everyone with few exceptions is in on the fact that they're all inside a giant joke.

I fully agree! This is what sets the first two Monkey Island games apart from the rest - they have this 'dark' undertone to them... something I've always missed ever since. They had a bit more atmosphere because of this, I think.

Originally Posted by Toothless Gibbon

Surely they were as cartoony as they could get in those days? I always saw them that way and loved them for it.

Maniac Mansion was much more cartoony, even though it has far more simplistic graphics.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Armakuni

I fully agree! This is what sets the first two Monkey Island games apart from the rest - they have this 'dark' undertone to them... something I've always missed ever since. They had a bit more atmosphere because of this, I think.

I think all the games had it to a certain degree -- as 3 got towards its finale they started bringing it back in a way that made me happy, and/but no matter what story he's in, Guybrush is going to be taking it more seriously than most comedy game protagonists -- but it was for sure ingrained in the stories of 1 and 2 more.

[VagrantWulf]

@Jake's post with the sprites.

That's what I was trying to get at too, Monkey Island (the first two) did have more serious tones to them, and that's what allowed them to walk the line between seriousness and just being a cartoon, outright. And that's even detailed in those sprites, beautifully.

And actually, that spot between cartoony and a more serious/realistic approach is what I like best, and I feel that Tales of Monkey Island does well to capture that point too. It isn't cartoony in the way that Sam & Max (old and new), Day of the Tentacle, and so on are, it's got a more serious theme, but it's cartoony in its own way.

Monkey Island isn't an obvious kind of cartoony, it's like the smart kid cartoons of old, like Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31.

If that makes any sense at all.

[Armakuni]

That might be, yeah... but I noticed it much better in the first two games, probably because the graphics were much less cartoony.

[Edward VanHelgen]

Originally Posted by Mataku

all serialized adventure games of the late 80s go through the same stages:

* pixelated blobs (kq1,2, MI1,larry1-3)
* better looking pixelated blobs (MI2,KQ3,4)
*trying hard to look realistic (KQ5,6, Larry5,6)
*realizing realism sucks and taking a whole new approach, make it cartoony (Larry7, KQ7,MI3,Discworld2)
*realizing that even tho those games looked great cartoony, they are way too hard and expensive to produce that way, so they turn to 3d or just give up all together. (Larry8,KQ8,Discworld_Noir,MI4)

lol, good post

it has a lot to do with the current trend also, like it was fmv. now, we can see that disney is doing again traditional animated cartoons, so who knows, could be applied to adventure games too.

monkey 3 and 4 maybe feel more cartoonish also because of some exaggerated parts like clouds, character designs and various objects as fort, waves and others

[Merkel]

I think most of us can agree that the coulds style was one of the great additions of CMI.

[VagrantWulf]

Originally Posted by Merkel

I think most of us can agree that the coulds style was one of the great additions of CMI.

This even I would second, and I'm no great fan of CMI.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Armakuni

That might be, yeah... but I noticed it much better in the first two games, probably because the graphics were much less cartoony.

I think part of the perception that the first two games were much less cartoony comes from the fact that, well, there's just only so much you can do with a handful of pixels, which in some ways limits how stylized the result can really look. Who knows how much more pronounced the style of the first two games might have been had the artists been able to work with the level of detail some of the later adventure games did? Look at those semi-closeups in MI2 (the Phatt Island dock, Governor Phatt, the explosion of LeChuck's fortress) - when the artists had more detail to work with, things tended to get a bit more exaggerated/cartoony, which is probably revealing about the direction they were going for. (The VGA closeups for MI1 were done after the fact and did not involve the original team.) That you find the relative realism of MI1/MI2 to carry more "atmosphere" may have been completely incidental to the artists' intentions! I think that all of the first three games are steeped in atmosphere, personally.

Don't get me wrong, the other reason CMI looks so different from the first two is because a conscious decision was made for the game to look a certain way, but that was a choice the artists of the first two didn't have, or at least had a lot less control over, so who's to say that the same folks who made the early games wouldn't have stylized the game a whole lot more if they could have? The artists who made DOTT are not the same that made Maniac Mansion, and the artists of MI1: SE are not the ones who made the original game, but the fact that their re-interpretations of an existing universe ended up more stylized than the inspiration when armed with more resources probably isn't as inappropriate as it might seem at first glance.

[tredlow]

I think people only refer to the visual design as not being 'cartoony', instead of the story. If you look at the closeup scenes from the first game before playing it, you wouldn't call that 'cartoony'.

I, personally, detest the term 'cartoony'. I prefer 'exaggerated' or 'stylized' when discussing about visual design.

PS: thank you Jake for the MI2 sprites.

[Kroms]

Originally Posted by VagrantWulf

@Jake's post with the sprites.

That's what I was trying to get at too, Monkey Island (the first two) did have more serious tones to them, and that's what allowed them to walk the line between seriousness and just being a cartoon, outright. And that's even detailed in those sprites, beautifully.

Well when I say "cartoony," I do not necessarily mean "for kids," just like Pixar and Studio Ghibli don't make for-kids films. There's always a dark undertone in Monkey Island, usually around the time LeChuck comes-in. Have you listened to some of his backstories in Curse?

A lot of people are pretending otherwise, though. I can understand their point of view when they say that LeChuck's Revenge goes really dark by the end, only for the sequel to start-off all bright and shiny, but I don't agree that's necessarily a bad thing. Monkey Island always had a very cartoony element to it (especially when Guybrush starts goofing around). He really only goes serious when Elaine is in danger. Even when LeChuck is around, he still has time to give him a wedgie.

Chuck Jones/Day of the Tentacle it ain't, but there's definitely a cartoonish element in there, of which CMI is a natural evolution.

[monkey_05_06]

I think that some very valid points have been made here. Really if we look back at SMI and LCR...they were both made at 320x200 resolution. Most modern computers have their screen resolutions set to at least 1024x768 and higher, especially on widescreen monitors! As a point of reference this screenshot is at the native resolution for the first two games.

Now imagine if your entire desktop was displayed in that tiny, tiny space. "But I couldn't see anything!" I hear you exclaim...this is the challenge that had to be overcome in the early 90s to make games like this possible. Given what they had to work with, there is simply no way that the team could have made the graphics look either more "realistic" or "cartoony" than what we were given.

Now personally I always enjoyed the close-up screens from SMI. They are, as Ron said, beautiful artwork. Yet just as he said, they also don't flow very smoothly into the rest of the game. In the entire game of SMI there are close-ups for 1) Mancomb Seepgood in the SCUMM Bar, 2) Elaine in the Governor's Mansion, 3) Carla (the Swordmaster) outside of her house, 4) Captain Smirk outside of his house, and 5) Guybrush as he peers in on the vicious, man-eating parrot. That's it. Of the entire game, that's the close-up shots we got.

Anyone trying to demand that "MI should be realistic" based solely off of these 5 scenes from the first game is a bit off their rocker IMO. Now I have said in the past that with SMI and LCR that the graphics style did (largely) aim to be very realistic. Because they did. Yet CMI, "cartoony" graphics and all is still one of the highest-rated MI games amongst the fans.

I'm tired of hearing everyone moan and complain about the graphics style. If anything TMI is more realistic than EFMI, so that must then be considered as a step in the right direction.

And if I hear someone say that "MI was supposed to be 2D" one more time...I hope you have 911 on speed dial coz somebody's about to get beat within an inch of their life. Please, I beg of you, any of you: Show me where Ron, or Steve, or Tim, or any of the original team ever came out and in an interview said "Monkey Island was always intended to be a two-dimensional game."

Just because the graphics style has changed does not mean that the atmosphere has changed with it. I do accept and fully understand that the graphics have a large part to do with the way we perceive the game. But whether it's that old pixelated look or full 3D graphics, aren't they just there as a medium to portray what's taking place? If it's that important to you...perhaps you would be happier if once it's released someone made TMI into an IF game? Then you wouldn't have to worry about graphics at all! The graphics would be as "realistic" or "cartoony" as you imagine them to be!

To me the TMI models are definitely a step-up from the EFMI models. That is of course just my opinion, but are we really that blindly devoted to those pixels that anything higher than 320x200 resolution is a sure sign of witchcraft and demonic influences?

That's a bit extreme, but then so are some of the complaints against the 3D graphics. Honestly...if it bothers you that much...play with your eyes closed.

P.S. Sorry, I get a bit long-winded.

[Shiversul]

I wonder what would happen if the original Dev's made the first one a bit later in time, around the time of Curse release

What would that game look like?