Yeah, they've never used the term "widescreen support" in any advertising. Double Fine has always been upfront with the fact that Grim Fandango Remastered will be presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The game also doesn't have to be played with a mural. You will be able to play it with black borders as well, as can be seen on the game's official website at grimremastered.com.

As much as a widescreen option would be cool I'm also cool with just its original aspect ratio. People always complaining about "black bars" in games remind of the times when we had those horrible pan-'n'-scanned movies for VHS and sometimes even DVD because people couldn't understand the concept of losing more information on the screen by chopping off half the movie just so they'd have a picture fill up the entirety of the screens of their CRT televisions.

I've played enough older games on my computer originally made for 4:3 screens stretched automatically on my screen to say that the effect is never attractive. I'd much rather play it 4:3 if it means I get a better/more accurate-looking game overall (Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee for instance, if I just boot up the regular GOG version I automatically get a stretched-looking picture, but I tried that DDHack thing and I got both sharper graphics (I originally could only run it smoothly with the 12 scan-lines option, or whatever it was, reducing graphical details and quality greatly) and its original aspect ratio which looked much better in spite of "black bars." The only thing it screwed up was the cinematics. When it'd transition to a new one, a static frozen image of the last area you were at before a transitional cutscene or whatever else would be stuck in the background as the cinematic takes place until you reached your new destination. Well anyway I digress.

I rarely preorder games so I won't be for this one. I'd like to read reviews of the actual product itself first (which hopefully will mostly be relevant to the game itself and not rantings from people about Broken Age and Space Base Coast 2 Coast, or from angry, stupid MRAs), but so far it looks like it's coming along quite famously. It's neither an Early Access title, which means no Space Base drama, and it's not being released as a two-parter, so that's good too, plus it looks like a much better game than Broken Age (which I haven't played yet, I wouldn't mind though) though that's probably because it's Grim Fandango, one of the most celebrated adventure games of all time that I've been wanting to play for some time.

To me as long as this as the final part of Broken Age come out and turn out well then I'm not seeing any difference between this and Wasteland 2, which is a game that also raised millions of dollars, far, far more than their original asking price, and was released in Early Access for $60 for one or two years (even I found that a bit much of an asking price for an Early Access title that raised so much money), but hey eventually it got out of Early Access, with a more reasonable price and it seems to be mostly well-received across the board so really the only real mistake I can say that Double Fine has honestly made so far is their handling of Space Base DF-9. I got that game in the Amnesia Fortnight Humble Bundle so I can't exactly complain about what I paid for but that's the only thing about DF I think anyone can honestly, legitimately complain about for right now.

IN the announcement GOG says something about "widescreen support" but this could also mean that the game runs without strechted picture on WS monitors as well.

"Grim Fandango Remastered refreshes, refines, and remasters the award winning title and Tim Schafer's last hurrah as LucasArts' adventure-gaming-extraordinaire. The remaster modernizes the game's presentation and gameplay with completely repainted textures, widescreen support, and quite possibly best of all: modern controls. You can now say goodbye to unwieldy tank controls, a staple of the early 3D era, and enjoy a fully point-and-click interface - but only if you want! The option to play the game as originally envisioned is always there."

I'm buying it because I don't own it. (Lost my CDs LONG ago).
And I can't get it anywhere else, short of pirating it.
And its an old game, and this means I won't have to spend 3 hours fiddling with my computer to force it to run properly. (As with trying to run any old game).

Generally it's only the Win95 and Win98 games which are hard to get working. With DOS games you can always use DOSBox and WinXP games usually work with modern computers without issues.

Not sure if anyone has pointed out the errors with this post yet, but I thought I might just incase they haven't.

Firstly, I'm the guy "in charge" of Grim Fandango Deluxe, which is presumably the mod this guy is referring to when he says "textures in HD". (There's no other such mods for GF, we're the first and only.) As a result I feel like I'm in a good position to talk about the differences, and what you can and cannot do with Grim Fandango mods. (Come visit us at the RESIDUALVM forums!)

1. Nobody has upped the quality of the textures for HD (except DoubleFine for this new release). We got SOME of the models of Manny done (the lead character), but that was it. It took us years to get that far, don't hold your breath for competing texture packs from us.

2. The "widescreen" mod he refers to was only a video, created by ultraneonoirantihero. It has never been playable. It was just a video he made to demonstrate what such a mod might look like. Nobody ever made it real, or even came close to making it real (the technical problems were discussed, and they seemed unrealistic to surmount).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cigf0ZT9pu0

3. 1080P has also not been properly implemented by anyone. There's been SOME movement in this direction in recent builds of ResidualVM, but that's about it.

4. The point and click integration mod, made by Tobias Pfaff, is still buggy, and will probably never been finished now that DoubleFine have taken up the mantle themselves (with the help of Pfaff himself).

5. Even forgetting mods, ResidualVM (the software required to run GF on modern machines) still offers a buggy experience, unfortunately. The lighting, for example, is still not fixed properly. ResidualVM is a wonderful piece of software, but it's still not perfect, I'm afraid.

In short, the OP doesn't know what he's talking about. There are NO fan-made high-res texture packs for the entire game, NO fan-made widescreen support, NO 1080P resolution mods, and even the point and click mod is buggy.

This new version includes a wonderful new lighting system, re-orchestrated score, new controls (even beyond the pnc), and an art viewer... in addition to all the stuff that OP claims you can get from fanmade mods -- but can't.

Even though I was involved in the making of one of the mods the OP refers to, I certainly will be buying this version!

(at)ThunderPeel2001: That is exactly what I experienced. After the OPs post I went to your site and tried those mods (GrimMouse and the HD Texture pack for Manny Year 1). It is fun playing GF with mouse but there still are issues like some sound problems, low res subtitles, lo res textures ect. After short testing I coudn't find any bugs with the mouse controls but I am sure they are there if you say so. It is nice that this way I'd have the possibility to play the game with the original music (other than this everything should be changeable on the remastered version) but I think the remastered version will be THE version. It is unfortunate that it needs such "high" hardware and does not even run on WinXP anymore (don't know why since this is an old DirectX game) but we have the commentaries, Hi-res textures, new controls (if you like), new lightning (if you like), better compressed cutscenes, new orchestrated music (from the original composer) and artworks. For every GF fan this should be a no brainer.

Yes, DF has said that they're working on lowering the System Specs for the game in time for release:

www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/16142/#371804

I agree with your point that it's meant to be 4:3, but I think it's mostly because everyone had 4:3 CRT monitors at the time...

Of course, back then 4:3 was the standard. Still the assets were made for that aspect ratio specifically.

Of course, that was the bit I was agreeing with! :P

The only thing I was disagreeing with is that it was 4:3 as an homage to Casablanca, when all games at the time were natively 4:3.