How much of this is just subjective and in 10-20 years people will be saying that this Monkey Island is the best of them all and that the art is amazing?
As a long time fan of click and point adventure games, I can attest to this happening here. For a long time, people hated Curse of Monkey Island because it was too cartoonish, the voice acting didn't match what anybody had in their minds, and so on. Then Escape from Monkey Island came out, and suddenly the same people loved Curse of Monkey Island, while Escape from Monkey Island was clunky, ugly, poor puzzle design, not true to the series, and so on. Then Tales of Monkey Island came out, and fans of the series hated how Telltale Games had ruined the series, it didn't have the same spirit, the controls were a mess, the graphics were somehow worse than the previous generation, and so on.
And now here we are. I'm curious whether the trend will hold up and people who dislike this new style (which, tangentially, seems very similar to Broken Age[0], a fairly modern adventure game by Tim Schafer, another Monkey Island alumni) will suddenly claim Tales of Monkey Island was the pinnacle of the series.
You know the first thing my wife said when she saw the trailer. She said, "That looks gorgeous and fun." Which is what I imagine that Gilbert is going for. I also really like the look. It's like a modern children's story book come to life.
And why the hell does it matter that it's PUBLISHED by Devolver Digital? I doubt they had say on the look of the game.
My bet is that this is just the absurd Wind Waker hate that anything cartoony and joyful looking gets initially and 20 years from now people will say this is the best game in the series like tons of people do for Wind Waker.
Alot of the criticism is valid, the art direction is objectively awful. I work on video games for a living, and the backgrounds are too busy, the character animations too shitty.
Ron Gilbert needs to get an opinion that doesn't suck up to him. Of course fans are upset with it, any competent art director could see this coming from a mile away.