Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Monkeys, Bikers and Imagination, Oh My!

A lot of very smart people have written some very intelligent reviews about Monkey Island and its recent remastering. They’ve accurately discussed the wonderful way the game has aged and the somehow self-defeating nature of the additional voice acting and the graphical update which, while very well executed, seems to take something away from the venerable Monkey Island. The two-click interface certainly doesn’t help matters, but it’s hard to play through Monkey Island: Special Edition, in its newfangled, voice acted mode and not feel like something is a little bit off.

I’m not coming out of left field here. A lot of people have discussed this point. But what people haven’t been talking about is just why we feel this way. What is it about the voice acted version, with its painstaking, hand drawn look and wonderfully realized cut scenes, that makes the remastered Monkey Island somehow inferior to the classic, blocky version?

I’d like to start our discussion by taking a big step back and looking at Monkey Island with regards to its relative contemporary, Full Throttle. Full Throttle occupies a similar place in the gaming pantheon. It’s a funny, witty, unorthodox adventure game without fail states, with well executed, technologically dated art and some of the best writing, bar none, in games. It introduced me to the concept of games in general, dealt with adult themes deftly, in a way a child could comprehend but an adult could appreciate and interpret in a larger context.

But it wasn’t as great as Monkey Island for me.

Full Throttle was amazing. Sure, there were some issues with combat and there were the standard “pick up everything that isn’t bolted down” adventure game problems, but aside from that it was just a great game. It told a story, told it well, and gave us lots of room within that story to define it for ourselves. That last part is key. The more room we have for self-expression and, more importantly, interpretation in a story the more we feel like we’re a part of it, like we’ve taken some of it with us.

It’s the appeal of authors like Stern, Pynchon and Joyce. People will claim that it’s some sort of inherent “brilliance” which they then falter in expressing, but the appeal of these writers has always been, to me, the way we can re-interpret their worlds in our readings. Certain events will always be there: Blazes Boyle and Ms. Bloom will always be lovers, Leopold Bloom will always masturbate in public, but their thoughts, inherently dishonest and unreliable, will always be interpreted in different ways by different readers. That’s why people return to these otherwise impenetrable, infuriating texts and hold them up as a gold standard of sorts for literature. It’s very hard to have read the book and have an incorrect interpretation of the events portrayed therein.

Games operate on the same principle. Even when telling a linear, unalterable story they’ve got to make the player feel like a part of it, like their actions make up the bits and pieces between the great events. Full Throttle did this, to some extent. Not a great one. It’s a very linear game, and as such there are only so many spaces wherein we can re-interpret Ben’s quest as our own. But they are there.

But with the voice acting and the scripted scenes, the blanks grow fewer and fewer. Ben is never really “us,” he’s always “Ben.” We’re separated from him by his strong portrayal as a character. An actor is interpreting his words and we, in turn, are interpreting this actor’s performance. I’m not trying to denigrate the late Roy Conrad’s spectacular performance, I’m pointing out that his performance sets another part of the game in stone. By having an actor, especially such a talented one, make such an impressive interpretation of a character, you’re obliterating all other possible interpretations of that character. It’s Schrödinger’s principle as applied to narratives.

And therein lies one of Monkey Island’s initial strengths. We never hear Guybrush speak. We never really need to. His speech, as written, is more than commanding enough to make us care about his quest to become a pirate for dubious reasons. In fact, we never hear anyone speak.

Due to technological constraints, the game has no voice overs and only the most rudimentary of sound effects. We’ll occasionally hear a parrot squawk or a mug of grog slosh, but that’s about it. The barrier of having to run on 286s and 386s kept Monkey Island’s design simple and streamlined. Understanding and working within these constraints meant that in order to tell the story that they wanted to Ron Gilbert, Tim Schaefer and the other, less famous designers, would have to acknowledge the limits imposed upon them by technology. They worked these limits into the interface, making occasional nods to it and insuring that players were aware that the developers were aware that they were making a video game, a video game telling a story with limits imposed on it by the medium.

And it worked out pretty well.

Monkey Island was smart and funny, had a nice, solid story that moved along at a brisk pace. The story had plenty of room for player-interpretation of Guybrush, with his personality easily ranging from lothario to annoying twerp to laconic everyman. And the fact that he never speaks forced players to create his voice with their own imaginations. The crude graphics pushed us to interpret the images around us and mine them for information, to fill in the blanks of the language each character used and lend them a voice which stemmed from our imagination. Less was more and in the act of playing the game we made it our own.

I could rail on about generalities, but instead I want to get down to a few nitty gritty points. So let’s dive right in to this not-essay.

Point A: Otis.

Otis is the adorable criminal locked in a cell, sharing his name with Andy Griffith’s affable, constantly bound convict. Points for the reference, Mr. Gilbert. Otis was sort of a voiceless, affable image of our future in the game, a generic pirate whose only personality trait was his relative non-pirateness. This was, of course, in the original game. In the remastered game he’s sort of an offensive hispanic stereotype, talking in a hammed up accent about how he’s innocent, dropping his th’s in favor of t’s. It’s sort of heartbreaking to see the man I’d imagined speaking in the exact voice of Andy Griffith’s character realized as an inexplicable, innocently racist, and it showcases why you shouldn’t voice certain characters: it makes them in to something they don’t have to be.

Maybe Ron Gilbert always thought Otis should be hispanic. Maybe he envisioned Otis as the stereotype of a lazy Mexican, who says “Me so sleepy” and pretends he doesn’t speak English. But, judging by the name, I’m going to guess that he initially conceived of him as an ignorant Southerner, anachronistically thrust in to Melee Island’s™ wondrous world and completely out of depth in it. A similar missed opportunity is presented in the Fettucini Brothers, who really don’t need their over the top Italian accents at all. Even so, it’s not as if his being voiced gives away one of the key plot points. And that brings us to our next example.

Point B: Sheriff Shinetop.

Shinetop was a faceless dick in the original game, everything we gamers love in a authority figure. He had no real personality qualities aside from being an arbitrary and apparently inept and cruel arbiter of the law (He tosses Otis in to the clink but he never once even scolds us for shoplifting the shit out of the storekeeper? Interesting.) and he doesn’t need any. He’s a front for the pirate LeChuck.

But the moment he’s given voice he’s a telegraphed punch, a sly wink that hey, LeChuck is on the island, voiced by the same actor without a ghost filter on his voice, and that you should totally be able to get this.

It’s absolutely no problem for people who have played the game before and already know it, but I weep for the children who will have this hilarious plot twist ruined for them because voice acting is now industry standard in games with a lot of dialog. They could’ve used some light encouragement to read.

It also shifts the pitch of his character. Games in the 80’s, 90’s and, hell, games today even, are sort of obsessed with undermining authority. It’s rare to see a ruling body or law enforcement agency in a game portrayed as anything but faceless and cruel. Sometimes they’re simply inept, sure, but in almost every case they exist only to be torn down or used as an obstacle.

The original Monkey Island did a neat little trick by making a faceless, menacing authority figure into another faceless, menacing authority figure without skipping a beat. But it did it without telling us that they were the same person first. It’s frustrating to hear Shinetop speak and know with the unfortunate perspective of dramatic irony that I’ve come to hate so much. But it’s not all bad. Let’s see what’s in store in...

Example C: The Bridge Troll.

Alright. I will admit that the voicing sometimes offers a new take on characters and that that new take can add something to the game. The Bridge Troll’s British droll is pretty fucking funny, and it casts the whole “bridge troll role” in a new light for me. I wonder if he was a failed graduate student or something before he became a bridge troll? It’s worth considering.

But the troll is the exception displaying the validity of the rule. He’s great fun, but he only sticks out as being funny because of the abysmal interpretations many of the bit players unjustly receive. Even the interpretations which seem spot on, like Guybrush and Meathook, seem to do less to add to the game and more to reaffirm opinions I had going in.

Which is why it’s so strange that I’m not playing in the Old Tyme mode on my first playthrough. Maybe I’ll do it on my second, but for now I’m quite content to roll through the game appreciating the re-mastered visuals and critiquing the voice acting. Perhaps it’s the feel of something new and original on top of a beloved property, or perhaps it’s that, despite the meh choices from producers (I’d like to reinforce that the actors, I think, are very skilled, and that the fault lies in the people who made these seemingly inexplicable choices) voice wise, the art is a great re-imagining of Monkey Island’s classic look.

But even as I’m playing the new version all I can think about is how people experiencing the game for the first time will lose a part of what made Gilbert’s masterpiece worthy of the over the top descriptor. They’ll be losing the feeling of interpreting Guybrush Threepwood and, eventually, coming to inhabit him as a guy trying to get the girl or the guy trying to get the booty or however you want to spin it.

They’ll be losing something in the performances they’re given, and I think that’s regrettable. But it has almost nothing to do with the technical competency of the re-mastering and everything to do with the current state of games.

Of late we’ve been all too willing to trade our imaginations for spaces to inhabit. We’ve been willing to trade power as players for perceived powers given to our avatars. We’ve forgotten the joy in being a faceless underdog whose only boon is their wit. And that’s a god damn shame.

So join me in buying the special edition of Monkey Island on Steam, playing through it once in its re-imagined mode, and then shaking your head and playing through it again in the old way. Because for all the wonder that technology has brought to gaming, it’s all for naught if we don’t get back to the roots of what makes our past-time great: the ability to be someone else, to have a unique experience which we can share and discuss with other people but which will never be truly be duplicated.