Leaderboard

Oh my god the brief fan obsession with “Tales is Monkey Island 6 and there is a secret 5th game” during the lead up to Tales drove me absolutely insane. All we wanted to say was, the characters had some adventures between Escape and now, to give the world some time to reset and heal. 2, 3, and 4 seemed to have taken place back to back to back, and it was clearly more weight than the MI universe could really bear and everything was starting to get really creaky, so we wanted to give the universe a break. Oh well. People REALLY don’t like it when there are holes in canon, I guess. (I LOVE holes in canon, that’s where my imagination as a fan can have a home in the work, a bunch of weirdly shaped gaps and grooves to run my mind over, but I feel like I’m increasingly in the minority with that preference.) If it helps, I can finally tell you as one of the designers on the game that Tales is Monkey Island 5.

The june digital devolver trailer (this one) versus the latest trailer:

We’re all waiting

And now we're debating how this game starts from the ending of MI2 and somehow counts the last 3 games as canon...some things never change

Those are all very unlikely titles for Indy 5.

Guys, we've solved it. When Ron Gilbert says he doesn't think of this as Monkey Island 3a or Monkey Island 6, what he ACTUALLY MEANS is that we fans are neglecting the game between Escape and Tales. Return is therefore Monkey Island 5a or Monkey Island 7.

My guess would be that the scrapbook will update as you encounter characters and situations where knowledge of past games would be useful, so that meeting Carla for the first time would unlock her relevant scrapbook page(s) for example. I could be wrong, but I doubt there'll be info pre-loaded in there about Freddy the stick merchant or Jumbeau LaFeet.

So a couple of things to note about that trailer: Firstly, were they using the Ultimate Talkie edition of MI1 in that footage? It has classic vga with Guybrush's voice and you can hear the SE version of the Scumm Bar music briefly. Either that or there's an extra-customisable remaster on the horizon, god that'd be good Also, I'm starting to get a bit confused about how the scrapbook is meant to function as a recap. Put yourself into the shoes of someone who's never played a Monkey Island game; does this give a comprehensive picture of the story of 5 games, or to them, would it just be a series of images? I wonder if it'll be a narrated scrapbook by Guybrush or if there are pages with writing on them that we haven't seen.

Maybe that's why Guybrush looks so different in Curse of Monkey Island onwards. He got replaced by an imposter after Big Whoop. The game's ending will be the real Guybrush meeting the non-Ron Gilbert Guybrush.

We didn't ever really seriously talk about a Tales Season 2, but I would hope we would have called it something else. My honest guess is "Return to Monkey Island," because its the title I think everyone considered every time doing a new Monkey game ever comes up. (Except Tales, because we knew we weren't going to Monkey Island in Tales! It seems like "going back to a familiar place" would have been a goal for a second one if we'd done it, though.) Star Wars didn't used to do this! The post-Rogue One world is absolutely wild. Everything is canon, any gap is now an invitation for more media instead of negative space for your imagination to make the world seem bigger than it is. I think it's a huge fuckup in the direction they've taken the IP, and is part of why things are falling apart so badly. Star Wars was not a universe built for everything to be lore hole'd. Oh well! hey they should make a thread just for this kind of discussion My god, you're a madman. Excited to finally see Walrus LeChuck.

There was a brief window towards the end of TLJ, where the dreadnought stad destroyer is coming apart, and Finn finds himself about to face Phasma, and then Phasma gets injured but doesn’t quite die. In that moment for just a second I thought Finn was going to save Phasma’s life and pull her into a ship. I still wish that had happened. I want an alternate universe where Finn, Rose, and Phasma barely escape that ship explosion and then get knocked into deep space together, and have to spend act 1 of the next movie getting back to our heroes. After two movies, Fin could have faced his stormtrooper past head on, Rose could have had a way harder target to test her beliefs against, and you could actually do scenes where Gwendola Christie takes her helmet off and gets to act! Plus I like awkward road trip stories, and the three of them crammed into some tiny ship they barely made it onto before the destroyer exploded seems fun.

There was just a single dev quote, I don't even remember who said it exactly (neither does the Monkey Island wiki), to explain the very basic concept of the in medias res beginning of the Tales. And somehow that idea took fans' brains hostage. It was everywhere. People kept parrotting it on the forums. They talked about how that would affect canon. They wanted Telltale to "do Monkey Island 5 next" so that horrible gap would be closed. The Telltale forums mod squad spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to get rid of that false info that Tales was "actually Monkey Island 6". And see where it led us. 🤣 Maybe planting the seed is easier than removing the tree, so I think I'll start talking about a "fictional Indiana Jones 1" in which he finds Shorty and the Nurhachi. By the way!

Yup haha I find it kinda awesome that the original april fools got our hopes up for a fake Return to Monkey Island, then many years later Ron gives us a real Return to Monkey Island through a April Fools. It honestly couldn't be more perfect!

Are you telling me that Return to Monkey Island has been the subject of two April Fools' Days? 😐

Aww drat, for a second I thought they might explain what happened inbetween Escape and Tales. Find out about the lost Monkey Island 5 that Telltale developer's said happened inbetween. Fictional Monkey Island 5

Uk fans, Bank Holiday has been approved on the 19th of September. Not sure if schools and colleges will close.

I actually really loved how Tales started years later and just dropped us at the end of Guybrush's latest adventure. It was a nice way of just saying "We're back after so many years and not missing a beat." I think for most games and media in general, whenever there is a gap, it's because they eventually want to make entries to cover it. Star Wars and Kingdom Hearts do this to almost a fault I would say. When done right, it can be extremely satisfying but other times, it's answering questions no one really asked or cared about and was simply better left up to the imagination of the viewer/player. Sometimes less is more and I really enjoyed just hearing vague references to what Guybrush went through, knowing full well it was a joke and also just a nice way to build out the universe a little more subtly. The one gap I always wanted filled though was after MI2 and here we are, less than 9 days away from getting more of that context.

I admit i definitley poured fuel on that fire back in the day 😅 Although my issue with it was slightly different. I took it as Lucasarts wanted to reserve the right make their own Monkey Island 5 later, and were saying that Tales didn't count as a numbered entry and was merely a mini series or spin off. This rubbed me the wrong way and i wanted them to confirm Tales as a 5th entry. I get what the developers were trying to do, to build on the lore and feel like Guybrush never stopped adventuring during the hiatus. Its weird to me though like fictional Red Dwarf series ix or the missing Liesure Suit Larry.

That‘s a cool idea! I guess, as the hint book, it could blink when something new is in the scrapbook. Another thought that I had (and liked) is that it would also fill with important moments you have in this game. This way you could get a quick recap if you put the game aside for a longer time (of course none of us would ever do that…) and it would give a little extra satisfaction when you achieved something cool, to hear Guybrush’s view of it.

I think that the easiest thing to do for the developers would be to assign a description to each item in the scrapbook, something that Guybrush can narrate when clicked/tapped. I don't think that the scrapbook would be comprehensive, though. The goal should be to quickly inform newcomers of events, places or characters that are needed to recreate the context in which RtMI exists. Overwhelming them with information not needed to understand the new game would backfire, in my opinion.

There's a Monkey Island 8?! I'm so behind

I still imagine a Disney-canon version of Jedi Knight where Finn takes the role Kyle Kararn had... a former stormtrooper turned Rebel/mercenary, awakening his Force connection, discovering a secret Valley of the Jedi planet, and sealing it from a faction of Imperial Remnant darksiders. Theoretically, it could exist as a remake. But I have zero hopes.

I do agree that Finn's stuff is by far the weakest part of TLJ, but I find the rest of it so strong that it makes up for it. And it's not that I think Finn's stuff is bad, it's just noticeably less interesting than the rest of the stuff going on and he worked far better with the other major characters to bounce off.

I think they should release Monkey Island 8 days early, out of respect for the Queen.

Yeah, I think this is an important point and one area where I think SoMI is really good. It has a ton of unconventional adventure puzzles that aren't just simple inventory things *Insult Swordfighting *Follow the storekeeper *Grog-based jailbreak *Getting into the kitchen *Negotiating with Stan *The forest map *The dreaded seagull *Head of the navigator *The rock-slinging/aiming *The directions to monkey island recipe All of these feel to some extent like a set piece that give the game a sense of uniqueness. MI2 is a much bigger game but I feel doesn't have as quite as many of these unusual puzzle moments and a lot of them are similar to stuff done in MI1. Off the top of my head: * The fortress directions * Spitting contest stuff * Famous pirate quotations * The gambler password * Getting into the kitchen mk2 * Elaine's dialogue puzzle * I suppose the underground tunnels could be called unusual because of the time pressure and stuff * Finding the sunken treasure * The parrot That's a tricky one. It depends what you mean by the question. If they were making MI1/2 today, do I think it would be a better game if certain puzzles weren't made harder by pixel hunting or just being weird moon logic moments? Yeah, probably, I suppose. I do think the extent to which adventure game puzzles have a reputation for being illogical is exaggerated - usually that's just the 2 or 3 puzzles in a whole game that stick out, but yeah, if they'd ironed out those things I guess I do think it'd be better. If they were making a faithful as possible remake of the game, as in not just a remaster but a ground up remake? I think I'd want to keep the gameplay as similar as possible but just change the UI and graphics and music and utilise a hint system. If the goal was for a grong up remake in the spirit of the original, and following its story and characters but not a shot-for-shot remake, like the FF7 remakes? In that case, I think I'd want them to write the puzzles with modern audiences in mind. It's a fascinating thought experiment to consider what a modern, high-production value complete remake of MI1 might even be like. I absolutely don't think it's warranted, or remotely likely, but it's fun to think about what that would even be.

I don't want to set expectations because Aaron certainly hasn't promised anything, but for the past week or so he's been tweeting his adventures in emulating Grim and now EMI. It's fun to watch.

Well, the game has a scrapbook of Guybrush's memories as an item in the inventory, so that players can consult it while playing. I wonder why this kind of "reference manual" would be useful during the game.

This is a wild idea and I love it. They could have avoided the unfortunate fallout of Carrie Fisher’s death, by having her leave the story off screen in the past (a far cleaner way to pay tribute to her than the cobbled together performance they put in ep 9), and Luke could have continued to appear in the story without the time jump having any effect on his age, as he’d be a force ghost.

I like TIE Fighter.

I like it too. I made this when I was 11.

A lot has already been written on this topic over the past five-odd years, and so, both to prevent our venturing unnecessarily across well-trodden ground and for the benefit of those joining the conversation without having seen its beginnings in the ReMI thread, I'd like to provide a brief summary of the arguments made thus far, as well as to pre-emptively raise such points as I expect will figure heavily into the discussions to come. Thusly: "Yeah, but"

I always felt the same way about the way the tunnels below the Monkey Head were treated in MI1. At the end Guybrush says "I never found the Secret of Monkey Island," and I thought, really? The hidden Hell-caves where the dead live on as ghosts weren't secret enough for you?