Unexpected elements in the franchise?

edited January 2011 in Tales of Monkey Island
Ok, so this forum is my entire social life. So, just give me a break. :) I've noticed that lately I've used the same standards to judge things for my entire life, some of them not even so sophisicated. Lately, I've been using "unexpected" as a standard to judge the quality of something.

Something that's unexpected, interesting. For example, a song that has several odd beats and lyrics. For another example, a movie like Temple of Doom, with it's silly raft scene, or Willy Scott pairing, or Short Round. I'd also say that the heart scene was rather unexpected for TOD at the time of it's release.

You can easily use other standards your entire life, limiting yourself to personal tastes and joys. You could say it didn't feel like Monkey Island, something was off. Or you could say they were completely out of character.

What if we use what's unexpected as a standard? Why can't you change your standards just out of intellectual curosity to judge the quality of something?

Their are no definitive ultimate standards to what makes something good/ bad, at least with entertainment such as this example.

Look over the past 5 games and share what you found to be unexpected and interesting, thanks. And if you'd like, I'd be interested to see how you rate the 5 games side by side with their unexpected elements.

Based on this standard, I think Indy 2-4 are better movies because the first is so predictable and expected. The nazis dieing at the end, etc etc, very expected movie.

Comments

  • edited January 2011
    You should start listening to prog music. Odd beats and/or strange lyrics are very typical for that genre. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King is a good place to start.

    When it comes to Monkey Island, I guess EMI had a lot of unexpected things, but it certainly wasn't the kind of unexpected that made it good, imo.
  • edited January 2011
    StarEye wrote: »
    You should start listening to prog music. Odd beats and/or strange lyrics are very typical for that genre. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King is a good place to start.

    When it comes to Monkey Island, I guess EMI had a lot of unexpected things, but it certainly wasn't the kind of unexpected that made it good, imo.

    I also meant the the level of predictability. I've sort of merged the two concepts in my mind, expectability and predictability. Some thing else in TOD that I find unexpected is that the hero becomes posessed, now we've seen the hero fall and make a come back again and again but I didn't find the way that TOD did it to be predictable and I was not expecting it.

    ROA is a fairly predictable movie, and doesn't really have too many surprises a part from a few witty action seqeunces. It may be seen as pretty cliche to be honest, TOD and LC and KOTCS may age better with this standard.

    If you use unpredictability and unexpectability as a standard, for entertainment value, I'd say the second movie is clearly stronger, more eventful, entertaining, as well as the third and then again the fourth.

    There is no ultimate definitive standard in this world how one must view something correctly with a correct set of standards to measure the value and worth of that something. If you want to be open minded, logical, you may see another perspective of this, as it's subjective standards that judge the quality of these socially relevant material things to begin with such as movies and games...

    Of course something that's predictable and expected can be considered tired, bland, generic...etc etc.
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