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Had Ron and Dave made this game in 1992, I'm sure it would have been very different. But unless I'm mistaken, I believe the notion that Ron HAD ideas for MI3 back in 1992 assumes facts not in evidence. I mean, I'm sure his mind wasn't a total blank. But has he ever said that there was any vision for MI3 back in the day? Again, I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that never existed. It seems that for those who feel dissatisfied with the ending, there is a theme of feeling like they just wanted closure. But may I suggest the possibility that you're just overthinking it? I mean, there is a lot of ambiguity around the specifics, but I'm not sure how much more clear RtMI can be about the core revelation. The Secret of Monkey Island is that these stories are fantasies inspired by an amusement park. And in the fellas' defense, they've basically been telling us this for 30 years — in ways both subtle and less subtle — right from the first two lines of the first game. What constitutes "reality," so to speak, is much more unexplained and nebulous. Do Boybrush and Elaine exist? Where are the lines between Guybrush's fantasy and reality? What's the back story? How do all of these pieces fit on the timeline? My hunch is that these are intentionally very undefined because — to put it bluntly — who cares? It's interesting to ponder, but at least as far as this chapter is concerned, as they say quite explicitly, that's not the part that really matters. I'm not sure if the disappointment some people experience stems from feelings of ambiguity beyond the secret, or that RtMI's big reveal is hammering home confirmation that the secret is a fairly obvious thing that's been staring us in the face the whole time. (Or from something else, I don't mean to put words in anybody's mouth.) But FWIW, I really don't think there's a lot of wiggle room around what the core of the revelation is. Like I said way upthread, I get the impression that people's comfort with this ending largely comes down to whether you're comfortable with a lot of peripheral ambiguity, or if you really want everything spelled out to the letter. This definitely isn't the latter. But just because an ending is ambiguous, that doesn't mean it can't bring closure. My opinion is that yes, the game obviously and quite intentionally leaves all kinds of loose ends hanging. But when it comes to the primary themes of the story, the heart of the matter, the capital T Truth at its core, it really wraps things up quite nicely while still giving us a bunch of other stuff to play around with. And speaking for myself, that's what I want from a Monkey Island game. I don't want everything spelled out. I don't want a neat package where everything is carefully explained. To me, that hazy, ambiguous half real, half fantasy isn't the thing Monkey Island is trying to work through to get to a destination. That IS the destination.

My current thinking is a bit on the darker side. I see Guybrush as a man with very severe issues who has lost himself in this endless fantasy of Monkey Island and the rivalry with his nemesis LeChuck. The ending of Monkey Island 2 was ALMOST the point at which the illusion was broken, but he instead created an even deeper fantasy that we see in the prologue of Rtmi. I think his son and his friends do not exist, they are merely extensions of his own personality that revels in the stories of pirates and adventures and act as a conduit for him to become lost yet again in his fantasy. I mentioned in a different comment that Elaine, in certain sections of the story, acts almost like a therapist, guiding him along to face certain truths about himself. Her very peculiar behaviour when (and if) you choose to leave the amusement park is almost like she is waiting for Guybrush to make the choice to step out of the delusion. I find the scene on the bench at the end striking in that it seems like it’s the final moment of truth. Guybrush is almost free, but there is a final test. Elaine whispers about a hidden treasure and the promise of adventure. Then Guybrush is sat alone (maybe he was always alone). Does he finally break free of the fantasy, or does he cave in and meet Elaine at the dock? I guess that’s for us to decide.

I read that as the Secret was created in 1989, not that it was taking place then. More a fourth wall break and confirmation to the players that yes you are seeing the bonafide original secret. The frame story doesn’t seem to be set in the 20th century unless everyone is a larper or something, which seems unlikely, but who knows? I guess where I’ve landed is, the game exists in its own anachronistic alternate reality, basically a pastiche of a bunch of pirate legends and modern interpretations of them (theme parks, movies, etc), and within that world people DO have amazing adventures but also tell each other stories about them. The stories all have a bit of fish story to them, because they’re told by pirates to each other to puff up their legends, but that ends up almost folding back into the tapestry of the world and enriching it further, since it’s already a world built out of this patchwork quilt of legend and lore and what you imagine it’s like to be a pirate. I know that doesn’t make any literal sense, but it’s how things feel to me. Honestly that’s always kind of how the games have felt to me (that they exist in their own anachronistic pastiche reality, more than there being some big secret) and Return went really hard on it.

I liked that they used Elaine to explore the idea of Guybrush's selfishness in going for his goals. I wish they'd leant into that a little bit MORE but I think it made sense for her to be the character that needled him a little for that, given that she has been on the receiving end of it a couple of times.

Great! I'll just start my switch and rename my save games. 😍 (Oh darn!)

Eh, what's the worst they can say? No?

Right?!? MORE SWAG! MORE SWAG! MORE SWAG! 😄

I noticed an electrical cable hanging above one of the monkey statues during the final puzzles! Gonna end up scanning through every background for weeks, looking for little hints to the ending lol

Wow, so I just finished the game and absolutely loved it! The writing and jokes were top notch, the puzzles were really well designed and didn't delve into moon logic, and the art style in motion looks fantastic. The thing that really stuck with me though, was that ending! Now, we all knew the end was gonna be divisive, one way or another. The biggest question looming over the world of MI has always been "is any of this real?" and I think they did a good job of leaving it ambiguous enough that it's still open to interpretation. I've noticed though, that a lot of people who want the world to be real have been relatively...unimpressed with the ending. They wanted the answers to all the questions to be laid bare and definitively answered, a big final confrontation with LeChuck, and a Secret that would live up to the years and years of hype. After ruminating on the ending for a while and seeing what other people thought, I decided to start a playthrough of the writers cut. I ended up checking the to do list and saw the item of "Find the Secret and relive the glory days" and it finally hit me. I'd seen this before...roughly 5 years ago... Return to Monkey Island is Ron Gilbert's Twin Peaks - The Return! IT'S EVEN RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME!!!!! Almost everything is exactly like what happened when TP S3 came out. A series that has been in stasis for years, with so many questions left unanswered and the original creator coming back to fulfill their vision how they see fit, fanbase reaction be damned. Their both about chasing that feeling of reliving the glory days and answers that could never truly satisfy everyone and that you should enjoy the journey, rather then trying to get to some all encompassing Secret that could never truly live up to the expectations. You're supposed to treasure and relish in all this new time we get with these characters and this world that we all love! There was never gonna be an ending that could live up to the expectations of so many years of pondering and I really think this is the best and most tasteful way they could've approached it. All in all, it was really cool seeing my favorite game series tale so much inspiration and lessons learned from one of my favorite TV shows ever!

You’re forgetting the t-shirt! ☝️☝️

I have always felt there were dark undercurrents to those first 2 games. The surreality of the last section of MI2 always seemed like it was the visual and experiential representation of a mind finally uncovering a long buried trauma (notably this section takes place BENEATH the buried treasure chest that ostensibly is Big Whoop). The reveal of young Guybrush and Chucky at the amusement park, now followed by the reframing of this scene in the prologue of RTMI, can therefore be seen as the mind’s desperate attempt to reestablish the fantasy. You can even take this further and use it to explain some of the other odd occurrences and aspects of RTMI. Much has been made about how, beyond Melee and Monkey Island, the rest of the islands and locations in the game feel somewhat sparse and rushed with little to see and do. If you approach these issues from the point of view of a troubled man (Guybrush) desperately trying to maintain a fantasy that is quickly breaking down, it suddenly makes sense why these areas lack sufficient fleshing out. I feel this whole game is a rabbit hole that is very easy to get lost in.

This sort of thing is exactly what I mean when I say ReMI gives us so much to work with. It's not just washing its hands of responsibility and saying 'whatever, you decide. Have fun!' If you want to make up your own headcanon of what it is going on, the game certainly hands you enough slack that you can tie whatever threads together you choose, and I think that's neat that it does that, but there's so much here that also feels like it's just on the edge of being explored, and in that can live all sorts of things like the kind of wonderful read that I quoted above, which makes sense of a bunch of things that I also found unusual. For all the game gives us in the way of possible explanations for what's going on I still feel like there are potential deeper reads of all this lurking underneath the surface, more reasons to keep on digging and wondering and uncovering because I think that it's more than just 'anything goes.' I was talking to a friend yesterday who is a fan of the series but has been completely disconnected from this discussion and the wider community around MI. He enjoyed the start and the end in much the same way I did, which pleased me (there's always a bit of a worry that by being really IN it you lose the big picture a bit), But also he mentioned something interesting which is that he felt like there were a lot of hints in the game that either something more is going on between LeChuck and Elaine than the game wants to let on, or alternatively hints that Guybrush and LeChuck are, in a sense, the same person: the fact that LeChuck has that wedding veil, the way that you end up checking off most of the stuff on his list, the fact that your goals are so closely aligned in this game and both characters are criticised for obsessing over it. I hadn't thought of it much before, but there was that thing Ron said once which was 'In a way LeChuck are brothers, but in another way they aren't brothers' or something right? I think we'd always taken that to mean that perhaps they're step brothers, because some things in MI2 hint at that. But what if it actually means - yeah, they're related, in that they are the same person. I don't know how much I trust that read, but I think it's super interesting that you CAN get that from this game. The other thing that he picked up on which some people here did to is how much of the themes of this game are about storytelling, and what makes it work, with the stuff with the Chums being the most direct example of that. There's a whole stories-within-stories thing going on here, and also a discussion of what's important when telling a story which feels very not-accidental.

I've been mostly posting to Reddit, but have been following this thread closely and finally decided to sign up just to add my (worthless) thoughts to the fire. I finished the game last night and since then have gone through a hastened version of the five stages of grief. From denial that it's all over, anger that it's not what I was promised, bargaining by exploring different interpretations, depression that I wasted so much of my life thinking about this, to eventual acceptance that there's nothing much more I can do about it. I think the reason this game didn't hit home with me is the fact that I haven't moved on in the same way Guybrush has. I never found my Elaine, I never went on any worthwhile life adventures, I never had a kid and now I sit on that park bench alone, contemplating my dead end of a life. In a way, though, it's a cheat. In the story Guybrush tells us, he is just as gung-ho about finding out the secret as I am. He lengthens the search as long as possible and even turns it into a search for five golden keys, and then a Matryoshka doll treasure within a treasure. Boybrush (who we initially control and in some ways represents the player) hangs on his every word. But at the end of the story, Guybrush uncharacteristically bails. In his current state, he's perfectly fine with not explaining the deeper meanings or even revealing the actual "secret" that the entire game was leading up to. He apparently reached this level of enlightenment off-screen, which doesn't necessarily feel earned throughout the gameplay we're given (which is single-mindedly about a dogged search for the truth). Rather than give us one definitive, satisfying, unifying, cohesive answer, we are allowed to "choose" our own ending and continue to speculate and theorize ad nauseam, just as we have for the 30 years prior to this release. The game doesn't really give us anything new to chew on, other than the fact that we will likely be disappointed by what we actually get (which feels a bit heavy-handed as far as foreshadowing goes). The only thing I really want to know at this point is the author's original intentions. Going back to 1989-1991, what were they initially planning to do? I know Ron has purported that this would be his MI3a, but I suspect he ended up having to compromise a lot of the original vision by accepting the new lore as canon. As others have speculated here, if the original intention was always for Guybrush to be a little kid lost in a theme park, and Guybrush and Elaine were never meant to be together (possibly because he's actually a kid with a crush on an older woman) and the whole thing culminates in a carnival like setting (which was apparently pitched as the original ending to MI1), then it still feels like we are denied an actual climax to MI2. Sure, we got other people's interpretations of what happened afterwards, but we never got all the answers straight from the original creator, and that's why I was so excited for Ron to complete his actual vision. (I'll also admit that I harbored a bias towards Curse onwards, because Ron wasn't involved; he initially seemed to disinherit the rest of the sequels, which always put a damper on my enjoyment.) I know that the "Original Secret" as established in 1989 by R. Gilbert on the plaque is that it's a theme park. That's about as literal an answer as he gives us, other than the stupid T-shirt in the ornamental box (which I suspect was devised by Stan as a cheap marketing gimmick and was probably always "The Secret" we were going to get). That's all fine and well, I guess. We can choose to tell Boybrush that it's literally what happened, or we can go back and bury our heads underground and deny everything. It's clever that we are allowed to keep our own interpretations within the construct of the game, but it's not really what I was tuning in for. I just wanted to know the truth directly from the horse's mouth and we've ultimately been denied that. Sorry for blathering on like this. It was actually therapeutic to get this off my chest, if nothing else.

I wanted to share how I decided to perceive the game cause I'd really like some feedback on this: I think the world of monkey island is a special one where stories and dreams can become 'real' and it's here to tell us that. It's a story about stories. That can be seen with surface level stuff like the wishing well materializing actual tangible stuff even in the 'reality level'. Or Guybrush miraculously healing his broken bones to be able to pursue his goal. By changing the story with the control the player has, the whole reality of this future actually changes (can be evidence that the story Oldbrush tells is 'real' and in the same world). As seen by the different endings. Also if you decide to let Guybrush drown three times you forcefully break the story. The second time he says that he tries to be more serious and he really is, literally... It cuts back to the future and it gets revealed that YOUR narrative actually changes the reality for real real. Canon and the interpretations were always very fluid with every iteration of monkey island. The creators of these games had control and the freedom of what to make you believe in that world. And so have you of course. There is a greater theme of escapism in here. Yes, you want that story to be real as Bill Tiller stated. RTMI doesn't lie to you tho and even tells you that it is a story but it's okay and even if you "deny what you saw" it ends with what you want to see. It doesn't cut to the future anymore and returns you to the world you know and love. It's possible to go back through the ride as much as you like. You can look at it in so many ways. Find one or even several you're happy with. Your reality your rules. Pure subjectivity. You can change so much in your life if you mindfully change your attitude and inner narrative towards something... I feel like I've only scratched the surface.

When you finally can use the horse armor (final scene spoiler)...

I apologize in advance for my English as it is not my native language. The ending of RtMI has left me extremely sad. It was perfect and worked for me on so many levels. I was devastated turning off the lights. I believe this is the end of Monkey Island series or how we knew it. It was so symbolic. Yes, you could escape back and keep pretending of having adventures while also receiving “I don’t believe” achievement. The achievement in itself is quite telling. I played MI in my early teens. Back when I really struggled to understand many of the dialogs. My vocabulary improved immensely through the first two games. MI2 will forever remain the greatest game of all times for me. I cried watching the trailer of RtMI. Cried again during the prologue. Cried while turning the lights off, and still feeling incredibly sad. For me it all came to a simple understanding. Your adventures in this world are done. Go back and keep replaying them but now the lights are out. The final story is now told. For many the meta ending doesn’t work, but honestly with such lofty expectations after 30 years, no ending would have worked for everyone. Is RtMI a perfect game? Honestly no. There were a number of issues. Humor was definitely lacking compared to earlier games. The closure with Elaine with respect to the cutscenes where she learns about Guybrush’s selfish behavior was not satisfying. But it did wonders in tying up the series. The prologue and the ending were a masterclass in storytelling. The final shot of Guybrush sitting alone will remain with me for a long time. It is so beautiful and devastating at the same time. Unbelievable!

Hey, P.S., I don't mean to say that anybody would be wrong for wanting something less ambiguous. My MO would be to encourage you to judge it for what it is, not for what you wish it were. But at the end of the day, you like what you like.

what he said.

Talking of details, I really appreciated whole presentation of the game. Not only the voice acting, the animation and the art style, but also the “technical” side. From the main menu (background and music), the inventory, the fonts (I loved those, very fitting), the intro and really everything was almost perfect to me! 👌 Something I kind of missed in EMI or TMI. There were always things that bugged me (especially in EMI). You can really feel how much time, love and work was put in ReMI.

I see a lot of comments about how all the cutaways to Elaine discovering the bad things that Guybrush did didn’t really have a payoff and that Elaine simply hand waves it all away. I’d argue that, if you take the idea that Guybrush uses the Elaine character as a kind of therapist figure, their slow walk to the Monkey Head makes perfect sense. A therapist helps us to confront aspects of ourselves we might not want to face, as Elaine does in this scene, but the crucial point is that they DO NOT judge.

I know that Ron has recently said that he had no idea about his original Monkey 3 apart from Guybrush, Stan and LeChuck being in hell. But I think he really had some more ideas for the game in the early 90s. Indeed, he should have known the secret by then. Along all these years I have read once and again this interview: https://scummbar.com/resources/articles/index.php?newssniffer=readarticle&article=1033 And if you don't want to read it fully, I'll put here the important part about the secret: Ron Gilbert: I read a lot of novels and reference books, more for the flavor of the period than for accuracy. This isn't a historically accurate game. In fact, you'll see when you play that there are a lot of anachronisms, like the vending machine at Stan's used ship yard. They're there to add humor to the game of course, but they also have a secret, deeper relevance to the story -- but I'm keeping that secret for the sequel. This interview was made in the fall of 1990. So, maybe he is talking about the park we have seen in Return to Monkey Island. That's why I think he put that plaque. As Jake said, this has to be the original secret.

Well, Ron was pretty clear that there weren't any other ideas at the time other than Guybrush going to hell and Stan being there. I think that's certainly not entirely true, because as a creative person you always have some ideas. But that doesn't mean that he would have or could have implemented those ideas in the final game... And I think a real MI3a (exactly as he would have done it back then, if that would be possible) would have disappointed most people even more nowadays. It would have been a sequel for the old time (1992 or 93) and would certainly have been appropriate and good for then, but from today's perspective certainly a bit bland. I find what we got instead much more exciting, appropriate to the current times, and satisfying! But of course: In the end, no one can be satisfied - although I think Ron did quite a lot to do that: He revealed the real secret, he picked up a lot of cool elements from MI1 and 2, he didn't ignore the other sequels, he gave the whole series and especially the sequels even more meaning. I don't know, what more could a fan ask for?

Or hinting that LeChuck and Guybrush might be two sides of the same personality trying to reconcile itself. Elaine’s character acts almost as a therapist in certain parts of this game, guiding Guybrush to face up to aspects of himself in order to help him escape the seemingly cyclical nature of the fantasy he continually allows himself to fall into.

He’s said recently that his “plans” were more a few ideas and a vibe, than anything concrete. It seems like they wanted to go to the afterlife/hell (and Stan would be there), and LeChuck would become the Demon Pirate LeChuck as his final form, and beyond that they were trusting they’d figure it out as they went once they started working. Starting work turned out to take over two decades, and at this point the afterlife was in Tales and the demon pirate was in Curse. The end of this game does say the carnival is the original Secret, so I have to assume an “original vision” version of the game would have had some version of doubling down on the amusement park still being a meta layer that runs below the surface of the story. You’re right that Elaine relationship and Boybrush stuff is surely not what we would have seen in a 1993 MI3, and I don’t think we’ll ever know what that would have been, because I don’t think they figured out what that transition out of the end of MI2 would be when they wrote it. The sense I get now is, they wrote that ending and knew they didn’t know how to write themselves out of it yet, but knew it would be a fun challenge to tackle once it was time to do so. I bet whatever we got in 1993 would have had the same feeling as Return, of an unsettling and thrilling record skipping the groove before settling in again, but all the details would be different.

I mean... there are ten (that we know of) different endings that change depending on your actions in Part V, so even within the game itself, this is kind of explicitly so 🙂

Finished the game a couple of days ago and needed some time to gather my thoughts. Okay... I absolutely loved it. I was hoping I would love it but I never expected it all getting to me so much as it did. For years I was never that much excited for the series to ever be continued by Ron, mostly because of the now infamous article where he said he would ignore everything after 2. I never liked that. I really love every game in the series and the fact that it is one continuous story (despite some small continuity hiccups in Escape) and wasn't looking forward to Zelda-like alternate timeline/version/whatever shenanigans being added to the series. I also liked Guybrush and Elaine being together. I completely understand that wasn't Ron's original intention, especially after how their relationship is in LeChuck's Revenge, but again, for me the games after that cemented the relationship. Tales was about them having issues and working on them to come out of it better by the end. Undoing all of that would feel weird (and perhaps slightly spiteful?) to me. So imagine my face when the camera pans to the right, revealing daddy Guybrush sitting on the bench and it all hit me at once. Not only did Ron and Dave respect the relationship, they doubled down on it. And tying it together with Revenge's ending is just genius. By doing this framing device, suddenly every weird thing in the series, every inconsistency, everything can be explained. And it gives it all sooo much heart. Honestly, the tears came hard when everything clicked in my mind, after a simple camera pan to the right. Ugh. Then the game itself. I don't have much to say next to I loved it all. The structure being somewhat of a mashup of 1 and 2 (but with details and puzzels dialed up to 11; 4 map pieces? 6 keys!) worked really well with the themes of nostalgia and growing up. Like many of you, my first reaction after the ending was "what?!" but after letting it all sink in a bit more, I love it so much, it's perfect. Like @Jake said earlier, there's a very clear theme going on of Guybrush and LeChuck going through the same motions, over and over again. I think there are many ways to interpret the ending but the main thing for me is; Guybrush chooses to let go of his obsession because he sees what it does to others. Not only in LeChuck vs the new Pirate Leaders, but also in his own actions after that talk with Elaine in the Monkey Island jungle. Granted, it's not a realization of Guybrush that is talked about aloud but still, that scene is there for a reason, and it's right before he letting go. I think the way story ends is foreshadowed throughout the entire game, especially with the whole Chums-story puzzle. Guybrush learns to change his story so it would make a better and exciting story (like mentioned before in this thread, see Pan's Labyrinth and Big Fish). And it worked! Because we'll probably talk about what's real and what isn't for a long time, just like the ending of Revenge before this one. Random thoughts: - It's funny how ideas and themes from both Escape and Tales are also in this game. Escape: classic piracy being outdated and making way for something new and hip. Tales: the theme of going through the motions and Guybrush' getting confronted with him being kind of an asshole, destroying lives in his way. - Widey Bones is an interesting character because we know almost nothing about her and the fact that a lot of her dialogue at the beginning hints at the ending makes it all the more theory-fueling. - Was it just me or did Herman Toothrot's ending getting stuck in the cave and Guybrush saying it's another tale a way of linking it to Ron's The Cave? - Loved we got nods to Escape (sorry, I recently played it and still love it a lot) in Carla and Otis' dialogue. Slightly sad we didn't get a more direct nod to the Toothrot-Marley thing. - The plaque at the end saying "original secret" says it all I think. It's good that stories change as we get older. Nothing has to stay or be exactly the same as it was in the past, that's the whole point of this game. Guybrush loving things like Stan's old place or being on Monkey Island while he hated it before perfectly captures the nostalgia theme. - Did we ever see Madison die? This was the only part that felt weird/rushed to me, as it builds up both a teamup and a betrayal but then shows very little of it. Madison being the final one going up against LeChuck instead of Lila would have been more logical I think? Unless I'm missing something... - Murray being in the game so much was great. Love the short reprise of his theme from Tales when he appeared. - Speaking of the music; I want this soundtrack asap. - Loved LeChuck's crew and the diversity in characters. Also that there was just another demon there like it wasn't anything strange or weird, he's just there. - @Dmnkly I can't say enough good things about your work in the game (or the entire series). Amazing work as always! Hope we get to enjoy your Guybrush for many more games to hopefully come (but if not, this was a perfect ending) - Random Ron story from years ago when he visited Amsterdam and he hung out with a bunch of fans. I remember asking him what he thought about the Toothrot twist in Escape and he said he didn't know what I was talking about. I asked him to spoil it to which he said yes so I told him. I still remember his reaction being a very blank stare and then just ".....huh". Best poker face ever. I probably have more to say but that's it for now.

How did I do this 👕 I beat #Mojole #185 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

It’s not much and I shared this previously, but I built a Monkey Island boat ride on Planet Coaster.

It’s a stretch but I’d love for them to do a Remaster with new solutions and puzzles and a soundtrack (Neil Cicierega would be a great choice as he helped with the Deluxe version)

Though I’m glad there is a ton of conversation happening in the Monkey Island subreddit, the Reddit threads have made me slightly insane because of the common Reddit pattern: in any given subreddit if you like something (the game or tv show or whatever or, for example, your electronic device works properly) you reply in the comments about your experience, but if you don’t like something (or your thing is broken) you just go and make a new thread about it. I find that though Reddit reads as “honest” to some eyes, because of how surfaced negative reactions are, that’s really because the combination of how humans work and how Reddit works means that gripes end up on the front page of a sub in multiple dupes, and people enjoying a thing end up buried. It gets to the point that you end up with people making posts saying “am I the only person who likes the thing/am I the only person who isn’t having problems?” and moderators often have to start forcibly enacting rules to make the people who all have the same thought (or gripe, or problem) post in the same thread together instead of starting new ones. That’s not to say not liking something is somehow uncommon, but it is to say I think Reddit in particular ends up surfacing negative reactions and people in search of others who feel that way, than it is good at surfacing “I enjoyed it.” The art style of Return had this pattern, where many who had a problem with it decided they needed to make their own unique thread in the subreddit to show people why they in particular didn’t like it. The people who did like it mostly stuck to the game announcement and trailer megathreads. It created the feeling that the number of people who had a negative first reaction to the art vastly outnumbered the people who did, when in reality it was either a more balanced distribution, or they were a minority. We’ll obviously never know the actual split (and fortunately it doesn’t really matter how many people do or don’t like a thing), but it’s a reminder that Reddit isn’t actually a barometer of anything, especially just looking at how many threads of what type hit the front page of a subreddit, or generate the most comments. sorry I just wrote way more than I meant to about Reddit. Anyway I liked the ending. I don’t think the game was universally great, but it hit me personally pretty hard and has remained on my mind for months since I first played even an unfinished version. I usually don’t like “it was all a dream” or “YOU get to figure out what it means” endings either, for what it’s worth. I think there is more going on in Return than that. I am unfortunately a very by-the-seat-of-my-pants thinker who intuits a lot quickly and then am slow to catch up with the actual mechanical backing of those reactions (which can sometimes drive my coworkers crazy) AND I’m a big procrastinator, so I have been slow as hell to contribute meaningfully to this thread other than off topic stuff about Reddit, but I feel like the thematic throughlines across Return are very strong, and to me at least they felt fresh, within Monkey Island and gaming and the current pop media landscape.

Yeah, the lack of save slots is a real... "real"... issue. Makes it particularly hard for us Mojo professionals who may need to jump back and forth through the game in the name of journalism.

Following on from that thing we were talking about how once you start you can't stop noticing ways how the game alludes to its larger themes. Over in the other thread I just got done talking about how I see monkey island now as this kind of amalgamation of the different lenses through which the story is being told, and that accounts for a lot of the weirdness and inconsistency we see. At which point I thought... maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems a really odd detail to include in the scrapbook that you can make this weird monster out of lots of different parts in EMI. It's such a tiny bit of that game. But is this another wink to the player, another metaphor for what the Monkey Island storytelling universe is? "It didn't help with anything... but I had fun doing it." I'm probably overthinking it. But that's okay.

When you go the courtroom and hand out the documents from the guy in the island, then ask the judge to cite a statute, he literally tells you to STFU 🤣 Then Guybrush says "ok I withdraw the question"

Keeping the title spoiler free, but this is definitely a spoiler thread. Has anyone found and visited the other island in the game? Not the tiny one hidden in the crooks of the map that you need to find to complete the game, but the whole secret island sunken beneath the sea? If you get the trivia card about Cogg Island, and see an answer that looks like map coordinates, pick the coordinates and then sail there and dive into the ocean! I haven’t done this yet but watched a YouTube video about it and, immediately switched it off because it looked substantial I want to explore it for myself, but there’s a whole other place hidden inside the game, attached to the trivia card sub-game.

No, I missed the point of the series because they never bothered explaining it. I was just being glib. 😛

This is more or less explicitly confirmed by Ron and Dave in the addendum to the scrapbook. The Chum quest in particular seems to get at the heart of the secret: people want to feel what you felt at some exciting point in your life, through the use of grandiosity and colorful fluff. Monkey Island was the creators' fluffed up story of their lives and how they look back on their adventures as explorers of uncharted territory

I've already recorded the first 30 minutes of music from the game today (rough estimation, I haven't edited anything yet), and from the looks of it, it'll be a massive tracklist (and quite difficult to deal with variations). My only chronology change is that I've moved the chapter card to AFTER the opening credits (instead of at the very start), and my tracklist up to now looks like this: 1. Main Menu 2. Underground Tunnels Prelude 3. Big Whoop Main Square 4. Scurvy Dogs Shack 5. Outhouse 6. Big Whoop Park 7. Story Time 8. Opening Titles 9. Chapter Card 10. Revisiting the Lookout 11. Mêlée Island Docks 12. The SCUMM Bar 13. New Pirate Leaders 14. Mêlée Island Low Street / Old Pirate Leaders / High Street The Big Whoop area sounds like one seamless track, but the side tracks actually have their own loop points, so they can be made into separate tracks. A difficult one is the park area, where the sword training has a variation of the loop, but it only plays for a few seconds, until the sword fight is over. So it'll be quite difficult to capture a full loop of that one. For now, the Lookout track was the only one where I noticed an actual outro once you leave the screen. Mêlée Island for now sounds like one big loop, cross-fading through its variations, but that's where I stopped recording. Maybe for the sakes of a shorter tracklist, more cues can be combined, but then again, if you want to play specific cues, you would have to search though a long track, which isn't ideal either. That being said, I don't know if I manage to go through the whole game like this. Maybe it CAN work as a team effort. BUT: I think it might make more sense to wait until we have working extraction tools for the music tracks. It'll still be work to compile a working album out of those snippets.

I know anything I've posted to YouTube gets flagged as copyrighted but OK to share. That does mean they -- presumably Devolver -- can take it down at a moment's notice, but that seems unlikely, at least for now. (Might change if they do an OST.)

Sure, but if someone has to get to that point I'd say that this is inherently a poor design choice 😛

That is also really interesting! It is really funny, that normally I think I wouldn't like stories to be that unclear or vague. But either ReMI does it so well that I can embrace it or ReMI just taught me to like those solution (both would be great). And the more different interpretations I have or read, the more I love it – and don't even want to commit myself to only one. And that again is so much in style of the game: It doesn't matter and it's good this way.

Finally got to start the game this evening and I'm just amazed at the simplicity and elegance of the "solution" to MI2's ending, and how neatly it places all the other games into a continuity that still makes sense while allowing for as many "just go with it" diversions from established backstory as you like. I never would have thought of it in a million years, and I can't wait to play the rest of the game now!

It's not them. Take a look at the Monkey 1 box. They hint at themes everywhere! Did you take a look at that locked cupboard in LeChucks galley? Guybrush gets more and more excited that there must be something horrible behind it, because it is locked so well. The chef then says that its locked because the door keeps opening on it’s own. And Guybrush is disappointed by that unexciting answer. It was better when he didn't know the reason.

Honestly, I interpret it as "whatever ending you want, it's yours". Unless a new game comes out that specifically says "this is what's happening!" and turns the whole thing upside down again , just like with Monkey 2's ending and Return's beginning before this.

I finished it two days ago and I can't stop thinking about it! How do you all interpret the ending when Guybrush finds out that he is at the amusement park? Are the adventures that Guybrush tells to his son real or imaginary? And is it all really happening in pirate times or in modern day? What's your take? I think it happens in modern time... The plaque on the wall at the end says that the amusement park was founded in 1989 by R. Gilbert. I think that Guybrush loved playing a pirate in the amusement park when he was a young man. And now he tries to convay the same passion to his son by telling him imaginary pirate stories. What's your take?

To speak of a meta is very apt. Every forum has one, but Reddit's is particularly toxic and prone to extremes due to the voting system. It's a fascinating topic, particularly if we contrast against a forum such as this, given the smaller and more insular nature, the closer dev relationships at the top etc. But I won't derail further. While describing it as "teehee" was admittedly a little hyperbolic, I personally didn't get the impression that Elaine was especially bothered by what Guybrush had done (contrary to appearances in the cutaways) despite the impact of his actions both individually and as a whole. Guybrush's continuing obsession with the Secret at that point also made him seem insincere. I don't think this is particularly helped by the break in continuity and reality that the ending brings. We see the "destination" with an "enlightened" Guybrush, but the "journey" is missing contrary to the prevailing theme. It just doesn't really add up for me.

I think it’s wildly influenced by memes, reactionary acts of snap judgement, and has its own meta that can be pretty disconnected from the world at large. Within that context, what you say is true, but it’s a helluva context. I didn’t read it as “teehee,” and more like, any of these things individually are less bad than some of the truly bad things we’ve encountered, but you should look at the aggregate effect you’re having because it might not add up to something great. It read to me as Elaine extending Guybrush a line of trust, but also as an increasingly tenuous one. Like, she didn’t need to say he was on outrageously thin ice, and if he couldn’t read the room he would be in trouble. I saw the guybrush in the frame story as one who took that conversation to heart. It’s part of why I don’t really want a Monkey Island 7!

Reddit doesn't intrinsically give preference to either side of the dichotomy. Rather the prevailing opinion will reign and contrary viewpoints will be downvoted into oblivion. I've seen subreddits go from castigating the mildest criticism to essentially de facto outlawing the slightest expression of positivity. The "screw the megathread, MY opinion is Sooooo special it needs it's own thread" behaviour is a separate phenomena. (Megathreads do suck on Reddit admittedly, they really only work on these kinds of forums) The cutaways in the leadup actually gave me a lurching sense of foreboding that things were heading into a temporary mini-break of the relationship, it was a little perplexing when it culminated in Elaine essentially going "oh guybrush you're so silly teehee", particularly given Elaine's strong-willed and socially minded characterisation. I presume the intent is that Elaine is the sole "real" person that we encounter throughout the game, and she's not bothered by Guybrush's trail of destruction as everything else is cutouts and imagination. But again that feels iffy to me.

Interesting these lasts reading keys on the Guybrush-Elaine relationship. I am building my personal canon of how to interpret the entire saga and I would have my say. My belief is that in the real world Elaine may have been a superior of Guybrush, if we want to see the theory of Flooring Inspector and see a hierarchy of employees. Who knows, maybe Guybrush met Elaine simply by working in the amusement park and fantasized a lot about her. Then succeeded years later. Maybe he was an apprentice and this explains why he needs to feel like a hero. She, however, never needs him, but rather, she is always a step forward to him and she always can get by. That's how I explain why Ron didn't want to write and build a solid relationship for them, but I LOVED that in this game she was both an essential support but also a good motivator.

Here’s a shot I took the Photo Booth and an extremely Part 5-appropriate look behind it featuring @Dmnkly