> They've done this exact thing N times before, this is just the N+1 iteration of it.

I think what you might be missing is that "they" has been a different group of people each time since the original two games—this is the first Ron Gilbert Monkey Island game since LeChuck's Revenge. I believe Gilbert has also said that he's disregarding everything in Monkey Island "lore" that he wasn't around for the writing of. because of all of this, the franchise has a general identity problem, including a visual identity problem. most people who are excited to play Return to Monkey Island are not coming from a place of "well most of the rest of the games looked different from one another, let's see something new!" I think most people expected the franchise to either maintain its new "Remastered" look, or look closer to the original two games. personally I'm glad they chose neither!

the backlash only seems disproportionate due to reporting on it. "New Game In Franchise Looks Different From Old Games In Franchise, Many Anonymous Internet Users Vocally Upset About This, Like Everything Else, As Per Usual" doesn't really have the same emotional galvanization effect, see?

Except that the graphical style isn't even that dissimilar from MI1 and MI2 once you account for the obvious difference in resolution and detail. It's a lot less cartoonish than, e.g. Day of the Tentacle where Gilbert was also involved, that came out not long after MI2. So I'm really not getting what the complaints are about. MI1 and MI2 were never trying to look anywhere near photo-realistic, so what's the alternative those complainers have in mind?

fullscreen character closeups in the VGA release of the first game at least (never played the second one! keep meaning to) were most certainly more realistic-looking than anything else in the series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island#/m...

but again I agree that the new style is actually a neat compromise between the old cartoony pixel art character sprites and something totally different, without going down the full-cartoon-whismy route that the later titles and Remastered games took. part of the charm of the first game is how expressive the characters without being too over-the-top cartoony like DoTT or Sam & Max. the new style looks like it should be able to recapture this feeling quite well!

again, the complaints are stupid, but should have been very easy to expect, because pleasing everyone—especially when it comes to nostalgia—is basically impossible.

One might argue that you need realism in a character closeup more than anywhere else, to avoid falling into the uncanny valley. But even then, these are not trying to be actually photorealistic. They could be described as painting-like, not unlike so many other scenes in 1980s and early-1990s games.

yeah, I just always assumed it was showing off the 256-color capabilities of VGA for that version—the original CGA art is more cartoony-looking.