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Just voted. It's been almost three weeks and I have yet to stop thinking about this game, the ending, its themes and so much more. To unwind after work many times these past few weeks, I loaded up some of my saves to play my favorite parts, of which there are many, over again and I'm still picking up on so many nice little details. I have gone back and replayed the previous games with renewed appreciation as well. Regardless of how I feel about the game, that shows just how special of an experience this game was. That being said, I absolutely loved it. Is it perfection? In the purest form of the definition of that word, no. But for me and my experience, I really wouldn't change anything, so that's certainly a type of subjective perfection in my opinion. Nearly three weeks later, I think my appreciation and love of the game, and the series by extension, has only increased. The emotional layers added onto the series from this game makes me experience the other games in a whole new light and I just love that. I will also say, just being on these forums and speculating before the game and then discussing it afterwards, made the experience all the better. Everyone here is pretty mature and civil, so it's easy to have genuine conversations and constructive and civil arguments.

It really was all about the friends we made along the way.

I'm bad at ranking things, so the first question is already hard I think most of the game is fine but the ending elevates it, so I think if I were to try and rank these games, Return would end up in the top 3. Don't ask me about the other two games in there though... The artstyle is thematic and well executed, so I voted for 'Pretty good!', since I did have to get used to it a bit, but now I can't imagine anything more fitting to the game. I agree with Jake, my opinion on the ending is a bit between the two top options. "It was fine" feels a bit like a shrug, and I liked it far more than that, but I do feel it falls slightly short of perfection, since it feels kind of rushed (which may have been intentional, come to think of it). So I ended up voting for 'sheer perfection' anyway, since that came closest to my opinion. Glad to see the voting skews towards the positive answers!

Hi! After finishing Return To Monkey Island, I wanted a new puzzle, so I tried to unpack the game files. Thanks to far smarter people than me working on expanding BgBennyBoy's Thimbleweed Park Explorer, I managed to unpack and re-pack the game files. May I present to you: MonkeyPack. So far this is a pretty bare-bones commandline application, but it can do the most important parts: Unpacking the existing ReMI ggpack files, and re-packing edited files. To unpack: select one or more ggpack files, and drag and drop them onto the application; or open a commandline where you extracted the application, and call it with the arguments 'unpack [path to ggpack(s)]', for instance 'MonkeyPack.exe unpack "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\Return To Monkey Island\Weird.ggpack1a"'. Game files will be extracted to where MonkeyPack resides, in a subfolder named after the ggpack file. To pack: Select one or more files and/or folders (no ggpack files), and drag and drop them on the application; or open a commandline where you extracted the application, and call it with the arguments 'pack [list of filenames/folders to pack', for instance 'MonkeyPack.exe pack Text_en.tsv Text_de.tsv"'. The new ggpack file will be created where MonkeyPack resides. The project's readme explains things in a bit more detail. I found that if you pack a file with the same name as one of the packed files, and name it so it gets sorted after the existing files (Like 'Weird.ggpack6'), the data in the repacked file takes precedence over the existing data. This for instance makes it easy to use fan-made translations: Unpack 'Weird.ggpack1a', find the 'Text_en.tsv' file, translate some text, repack it, and place the new ggpack back into the game folder, and the English text should be replaced with the fan-translated one. I hope it's ok for me to post this, and that people find uses for it! If there are any questions or if I didn't word something clearly, please let me know! Versionlog: MonkeyPack v0.3 - 2022-10-17: -Fix a bug in the GGDict parser, that could make it miss some strings in the strings list MonkeyPack v0.2 - 2022-10-10: -Don't keep all the files to pack in memory. This massively reduces memory usage during packing -'pack' now ignores ggpack files -Add filename filtering. For example, 'monkeypack.exe unpack path/to/game/Weird.ggpack1a *.tsv' only unpacks the .tsv files from the ggpack file. Works for 'list' and 'pack' too. -Update help inside program -Update and expand readme MonkeyPack v0.1 - 2022-10-03: -Initial release

Does anyone have any idea how to take ReMI apart to get hand on some of these graphics. I was thinking about doing a few maps of this game as a personal project or creating one of these pamphlets Guybrush is carrying around. But how to get these graphics except of takin screenshots? Or maybe even getting other graphics of this game as well.

It wasn't exactly a religious experience...but it's definitely the closest a video game will get to one, at least for me. I can't remember the last time a game left me thinking about it for weeks. I wasn't sure if the ending would be able to live up to what I imagined but it actually managed to hit all the notes I wanted it too and it made me really emotional. None of the other games had an ending that left me thinking "Y'know, this really would be a good end to the series." but I'd be genuinely okay with this being the end. I really think Ron and Dave knocked it out of the park on this one and gave the series the perfect send off it deserved.

A thing I'm not sure anyone mentioned, but I felt resonate with me through Elaine: Naturally I identified with Guybrush ("We are Guybrush", as per the brilliant writeup from earlier), and quickly figured out that this is an older Guybrush, a more grown up Guybrush. This Guybrush dealt with the loss of his youth, with obsessions from the past, just like I craved a new adventure in the vein of the good old ones. I nodded along the way and thought, yeah, Ron gets it. And then we get a glimspe of what our wife is doing with her time. Elaine isn't chasing some dreams. She's living in the moment and fights a deadly desease that she's not personally impacted by, simply for the greater good, not for politics but because it's right. And as if it hadn't already been clear from the start that no Secret could ever live up to our imaginations, it really stung that I realized that I was a grown man after all these years but I wasn't Elaine, only Guybrush. However, the game also says it's ok to be Guybrush. He brings a smile on people's faces. Elaine loves him, tolerates and even encourages his quest. And he's a great, loved dad. Having a daughter of my own now, I want to try to be a bit more Elaine, but I don't want to discard my inner Guybrush.

I know what you mean. I went back and forth on that second entry a LOT. I really struggling to come up with options for an ending that is designed to be uncompromising. (In the UK we'd call it a "Marmite" ending.) There doesn't seem room for lukewarm answers. Originally it read: "It was OK!". Maybe that read more upbeat. However the responses haven't been so polarising after all...

Yea, I thought it was funny when he started jumping. I kept doing it while wondering if he would eventually fall, but eventually gave up. Still wonder if there was a hidden easter egg there if you keep on jumping like 50 or a 100 times.... BTW, is there any CTRL W option in RtMI? I tried but couldn't get anything to work.

I know what you mean, but for me that tonal shift was something I liked. I am totally guessing but I feel like they tried to make Monkey Island feel more like a safe, gentle place this time around that Guybrush knows well. Getting there is no longer some big mystery, and there’s actually not much there any more — or so it seems. Obviously it becomes quite unsafe in the end but it generally has a warm, nostalgic feel that I enjoy.

[i should have known] 👕 I beat #Mojole #200 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤🖤🖤💚🖤 🖤🖤💛💛🖤 🖤💛🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/ 200 baybeee!

If you count Lafoot in MI3, then I get to count Rum Rogers in MI2. The guy keels over and is no longer an interactable object. Then Guybrush walks past to look for his map piece and I can just hear Indy from Fate of Atlantis muttering, "He's unconscious. Or dead." with a shrug.

You look more like a Forza playtester

You just saying that gave me this fun image: Us being stuck on a puzzle is basically Bench-Guybrush having a hard time remembering. “And then I put the spicy fish in the bucket!“ “But how did you survive eating spicy fish yourself?“ “I didn‘t.“ “So what then?“ “Well, er, then I was going from island to island, looking for a glass of milk. So, uh… I looked everywhere… hmm… Then I went back to Brrr Muda, to see if I can do something with the fish bucket. Nothing… So…“ And looking in the hint book is basically Bench-Guybrush‘s brain remembering again.

@Dmnkly I see a podcast/audio book opportunity. Bedtime stories with Dom.

Keep walking out onto it and he’ll start jumping on it. Return after falling and he’ll refuse to walk out to it.

I'm feeling a renaissance of appreciation for the ISLAND of Monkey Island itself, rewatching playthroughs of SMI Part 3 and EMI Part 3, in between the times that my children and I make progress at RMI (a game that uses Monkey Island's vista for its title screen). For your consideration: * In Secret, the Cannibals live on Monkey Island, which has a dormant volcano. * In Curse, the Cannibals live on Blood Island and explain they have tamed the local volcano (Sherman, AKA Mt. Acidophilus), which had been wildly active before they repaired its diet and set it at peace. Until Guybrush ruined it. * In Escape, the Cannibals are absent from Monkey Island. And... the volcano is active now. I want to know the name of the volcano god on Monkey Island, as learned by the Cannibals, and I want to know the diet regimen they gave it before it binged on Big Whoop carnival mojo.

Yes, same here, yes this is the most interesting/almost disturbing line in the whole game. I keep thinking about it too.

So far, my absolute favorite part of Return has been when LeChuck landed on Monkey Island and used the Mop Map (which Guybrush had used on Mêlée Island to find its historic mop tree), and he was somehow able to follow that map's directions to accidentally find a different mop tree on Monkey Island.

There are a few others in the Crossroads (I can’t remember all of them). There’s the Grog machine sitting there of course, though that’s almost a Monkey Island meme at this point. The boat that takes you to the different crossroads island is initially boarded via a queue system that is meant to evoke the way guests are loaded onto ride vehicles in a theme park (and it has a tiny puttering gas motor and seems to run on a track when it starts and stops). The music is a deliberate callback to the underground tunnels. When LeChuck is killed and the screen goes to white, there is some ambience from a theme park bleeding in under the voodoo sounds. Does any of that mean anything??? I couldn’t tell you because it never felt to me like there was any sort of direct symbolic correlation between these images and any one meaning in a high school literary analysis sense, but it “felt right” to us so we did a bit of it. We had talked about going more full bore and having the grave Guybrush dug himself out of be made of cardboard and astroturf and that sort of thing - waking up in a more explicitly artificial world - but in the end decided to keep it more grounded and less explicit.

🤔🙄 They clearly put a ton of thought into it. Again, it’s just not the thing you want, which is fine.

I think you might be projecting if you’re implying the Curse team effectively censored themselves for mass appeal, when it’s probably just that they didn’t like that stuff and didn’t want it in their game. I think the team did see themselves as artists and did feel free to create what they wanted, and it’s just very different from what you wanted. I think that team just didn’t like those surreal and mysterious themes that came to a head at the end of 2, so they chose to interpret that moment as “I hope LeChuck didn’t cast a spell on him or something” being the literal plot truth, and based their game on it. Even though I like Curse a lot, it’s never been the Monkey Island 3 that I wanted, because it ignores the things you’ve been talking about (which I also love about the series), but I’m sure it’s the game they wanted to make, with the only real compromises coming from budget and scope restrictions, not creative or thematic. Personally I didn’t ever care if I got “Rons original vision” in future monkey Island games, but always wanted them to live in that exciting space where uncertainty exists, where the world feels like it’s almost projected on paper and you can see that unreality and feel like you could poke a hole through it or fall through at a moments notice, if you dig too deep. I don’t think that stuff remotely appealed to the leads on Curse, though. In that case they were the ones who were irritated at the thought of the potential head on car crash with those themes, and drove the car as far away from it as possible as the motivation for their game. You’re probably right that it was a big contributor to its success - not necessarily because those themes are unpalatable, I think, but because their absence from the plot made Curse a soft reboot in a way, a great entry point in the series for a new era of players. Sorry my thoughts on this are kind of jumbled. It’s not something I’ve thought about enough.

I can understand the "fear" of saying something definitive, but I don't think "something definitive" was the only option available to the authors of other games. Telling something meaningful (not definitive) about the more surreal tones and perspectives that fascinated me the most was also an option. These themes were not only related to the ending of MI2: The whole story possibly being the product of the imagination of someone; When in time the stories take place: "Pirate Lingo! It's how everybody talked back then. Come on Guybrush, play along."; Guybrush's parents role. I do not doubt that in creating "Curse," for example, the authors thought a lot about these themes. However, in the end the final product is a story that does not address them. Everything happens in-universe: what Guybrush experienced as a kid was the result of the voodoo magic of a demonic pirate. I think that avoiding the topics mentioned above was a smart decision and that keeping everything self-contained in the pirate universe contributed to the success of the game. And that's why I would also avoid them in a possible sequel, if the main goal is to increase the chance that people will like the story. Many artists would disagree with that "if" because, understandably, they need to feel free when creating something. That's why I gave two answers: what I think was a "commercially sound" solution and what I would like for myself.

Counterpoint: I’d argue that they didn’t ignore it, but that all the sequels are consciously attempting to deal with the aftermath of 2 in their own ways, with the knowledge that if they ever had attempted to say anything definitive, fans would have rioted and punished them for trying. Those teams were all in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. I don’t think they all liked the ending of 2, but every sequel was made in response to it in some way. For example, the original design document to Curse: Mediocre but real example: I dreamed of a moment in Tales where Guybrush hits his head or takes a huge punch from LeChuck and wakes up in a first aid tent, is bandaged up by a nurse, walks outside and is back in the story, and to never mention it again. Not the most genius idea of all time, but I know I’m not the only one who worked on these games and was drawn to the idea of crashing head-on into the dual-layer blurry reality we get a glimpse of at the end of 2, but knowing a head-on crash like that would be rejected by everyone everywhere for different reasons. Instead some games tried to fold it into the reality of the game, some games did their own version of surreal piracy, some tried to acknowledge it but only around the edges. (Anyway I know this isn’t really what you meant. You know they didn’t literally ignore it, you meant they didn’t try to imagine exactly what he wanted and try to do that. I think that would have been far worse than them instead reacting however they most naturally wanted to and making that game. Someone imagining what Ron would have done and just sort of futzing around would have probably created something far less memorable than the games we got!)

Good question. Well, it depends: is the goal to create a game enjoyed by as many people as possible or to create something that I would personally enjoy? Personally, I would like the next game to go more down the rabbit hole. I'm not sure if I would use the same "old Guybrush tells a story" device, but I would like to see the darker and more surreal themes explored more, perhaps hinting at themes from MI2 that were never explained and using (again) the "unfinished business" motivation to return to some of the islands shown in MI2. Perhaps an even older Guybrush might be the best character to use as the protagonist and his son might work as a second playable character, framing everything on the father-son rite of passage. On the other hand, if the goal is to create something more easily appreciated by people, I would drop any meta features, abandon any attempt to discuss older topics never explained, and simply take advantage of the framing device established in RtMI. Guybrush would tell another story to his son, this time extremely straightforward: "Guybrush gets into trouble and eventually defeats LeChuck". I would also show Guybrush telling a story to Boybrush only at the beginning and the ending of the game. I believe that after MI2, Ron Gilbert left a hot potato in the hands of other authors who wanted to create a sequel. This hot potato was handled by ignoring whatever Ron had in mind, leading to successful games and stories. RtMI is a little different, because I think it helps to frame any future game in the MI universe without ignoring what Ron did and without creating canon problems: let's pretend it is simply another story told by Guybrush to his son. This is what I would do if the goal is to simplify things and reach as many people as possible.

I believe it was in a mandatory cutscene! When LeChuck is fighting Lila. He says something like "We're looking for the SECRET, I'll have my REVENGE, something about a CURSE, you can't ESCAPE, or live to tell the TALES"

I think I’d want something that played it straight, but maybe allude to it a little bit. Like, if the game opened with a little sliver of Guybrush narration, the slimmest reference to it being a frame story or being somehow recounted, but was otherwise just a rollicking adventure. I feel like Return existing means a next game doesn’t HAVE to get deep into this if it doesn’t want to, it just has to be aware that it happened, and players’ brains will do the rest on their own.

If I'm leading a third-party team without Ron Gilbert on board, I'd probably play it safe and do a story set after the main story of RtMI, not really addressing the frame story. If in this scenario I'm working with Ron, I'd probably pitch a game set some years after the frame story, with an aging Guybrush who has largely moved on from Adventuring being called back into action one more time. Have Boybrush appear, older now, and maybe hint at an eventual passing of the torch.

Hello! I finished Return last night and have spent a long time reading through this thread. I love everyone's opinions and analysis. Thanks for sharing them. I've got many thoughts swirling in my brain about Return and I wanted to plonk them down somewhere, so figured this was a good place for it. I'm not sure if they'll be interesting thoughts, and it's going to be scattergun, but it might help me figure out my feelings. I'm so glad the scrapbook exists and it acknowledges all the Monkey Island games. I love them all in different ways. Every time there was an in-game reference to Curse, Escape, or Tales, I was delighted -- I wish there were a few more, but I'll take what I can get. I also wish Herman wasn't retconned to not being a Marley, just because the idea of Ron and Dave sticking with Escape's controversial twist amuses me greatly. The opening Boybrush twist took me completely by surprise. I knew I was in for a good ride after that. Murray is a legend. You can never have enough Murray. When Return was announced, I was reserved about the new art style. However, my concerns immediately vanished when I began playing. In motion it looks absolutely stunning. The colours are vibrant and varied, the close-ups are funny and dynamic, and it's packed full of details. I particularly liked all the creatures lurking in the backgrounds. I found a lot of the interactions with Elaine to be quite unsettling. I appreciate this is a weird take, but: Guybrush seems surprised to see her on Melee, her photo with Guybrush is torn, she appears out of nowhere on Monkey Island, she knows how to get to Monkey without a potion, she coincidentally came to fix the Sea Monkey. At the end, where you're going through Monkey forest with her and Guybrush is struggling to keep up with her pace, I wondered if the distance between them would keep increasing before Guybrush is left alone. I was almost expecting Guybrush to have died when he got pushed off the Monkey cliff (with everything else following being a dream) or Elaine to be a figment of his imagination. I completed Return without using any hints and I'm happy about that. For me, it was the perfect difficulty because I was never stumped for too long. I can see why some people found it too easy, though, especially as the interface immediately shows that you can't use/combine items (which I welcomed -- the brute force 'try everything on everything' is tedious). Bit disappointed I didn't get an achievement for completing it without hints. How did Wally know where the secret of Monkey Island was? I might have missed that explanation. I like that the hover text shows Guybrush's thoughts, rather than just the name of the item. That's a simple change but it works well. Scurvy and Terror were nice islands, but felt slightly hollow. There were points on Scurvy's map that you couldn't visit, which was disappointing. On Terror, it had lots of places to go but nothing to do and no-one to talk to. Cut content perhaps? I wish these were more fleshed out. I can't see these becoming iconic islands. On the other hand, I really liked Brrr Muda. There wasn't loads to explore, but it felt lived in and meaningful. I enjoyed the act on LeChuck's ship where you're mingling with the crew, getting to know them, and helping them out. I respect Flambe's dedication to relaxation. You'll never replace Earl Boen, but the new LeChuck actor did an excellent job. Just the right blend of sinister and silly. I played all the old games directly before starting Return and Dominic Armato's voice acting is, as always, fantastic, but noticeably different. There's still the classic upbeat Guybrush, but at times he sounds more world-weary. It worked really well for the character and themes of the game. So many inventory items were paper-based, like books, pamphlets, notes, diaries, etc. I know this sounds petty, but I wish there was more variety in the items you carried. The trivia book was a fun addition, though thought it odd that it spoilt some things -- I found out Herman would appear in the game through a question, for example. I would have liked to discover that naturally. I also wish I knew that you had to answer them to generate more cards because that explains why I stopped getting them at a certain point. I'm keen to go back and collect them all. The music is fantastic. The way it blends between the tracks is excellent. I crave a soundtrack release ASAP. I've never been particularly interested in finding out what the secret of Monkey Island is, even when I first played the original. I just saw it as a fun framing device for a piratey adventure. Plus, now so much time has passed that any answer will be unsatisfying. I thought Return handled this concept spectacularly, with regular hints from characters that you shouldn't build things up. For me, the ending was perfect because it lets you take from it what you want. I'm still trying to figure out what I want. Guybrush on the bench at the end nearly made me cry. Please don't let this be the last Monkey Island game. But I'm content if it is.

I hope so too.

I'm curious to see if Ron will talk openly now about the history of the secret now that the game's out.

I was kind of expecting to end up in the alley in the end of the game. During the cutscenes with LeChuck and Lila I saw the door and was crossing my fingers that it's not the end yet. I was in denial. Then walking through the door, indeed leading to the alley, simultaneously with Guybrush, I thought, no! Not yet!

I know and I hate how genius that is. I just wanna feel good though😭!

I thought the same thing when I finished it, but now I feel like being disappointed and a bit upset was part of what Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman where looking for. Guybrush is disappointed and feels like it’s over too soon, and we feel the exact same way. I think that having a more fulfilling ending would have be too… well, fulfilling. We would just have witnessed Guybrush’s disappointment, not felt it with him.

I think I would have liked to see the ending in the weird theme park version of Melee last a bit longer – maybe have Guybrush comment on some more things, see some other characters, or more rooms. And then maybe build up to the secret in the chest just being the T-shirt. I think I like the direction they took but i was just *way* not ready for it to end that abruptly, haha. Like I didn't dislike it, but I definitely wasn't in a good mood as the credits rolled. I guess I wish the game stayed with me a bit more to talk about the themes and resolve some of the collateral damage Guybrush caused. Maybe, like, you get past the code wheel puzzle, there's a little cutscene with LeChuck, then you open up the chest and it's the T-Shirt. Guybrush says "wait, I'm not ready!" (or whatever that line was) and you find yourself in the Melee amusement park behind the church. Cut to title card: *Part 6: the secret.* then you sort of just go through this weird version of melee island, talking to Elaine about your disappointment in the secret, sort of a Part 2 of their conversation on Monkey Island. And then after that sequence, then we go back to the park bench. Idk that's just an idea. I'm not upset. I'm not upset! I'm not upset...

I believe Quick and Easy software (aka @bgbennyboy) are on the case! https://quickandeasysoftware.net/software/thimbleweed-park-explorer