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We should say 'the eye of the manatee' instead.

Wear ‘em how you like y’all

Finished it a few days ago. Still processing but... * Overall I enjoyed the game and revisiting the world * Tonally it felt quite innocent and sweet - more similar to MI1 than MI2's burnt-out vibe. But even sweeter and more storybook than MI1. * I thought it was a shame you couldn't revisit locations from previous games, like Meathook's Island, Captain Smirk's hut, or the remains of the Cannibal Village, etc. Even if there was no story there, it would have been nice to see them again. And other islands let you visit locations that served no story purpose. * Contradictory maybe, but I found visiting locations that had no purpose a bit frustrating. * The art style grew on me and of course I now can't imagine the game any other way. I wonder if there are further entries, is this now The Style or will it continue to change with each game? I'd still love to see a Steve Purcell/Peter Chan art directed modern MI game. * LeChuck did not feel threatening or intimidating to me at all, which is a shame. But I did enjoy his crew. * I have mixed feelings about some of the story threads being abandoned, especially Elaine's investigation into Guybrush's activities. That had me genuinely nervous as to where that was leading and I don't think it really paid off. I was expecting something like "Guybrush is the real bad guy" maybe? * I didn't mind the ending - I didn't see it coming, but as soon as it was revealed, it was "aha, okay, of course." I remember when Mixnmojo first posted their theory on this years ago, and it blew my mind then. In the years since, I came to accept it as the likely truth - especially with that Bill Tiller quote about the making of the first two games, and knowing about Ron's initial inspiration. So this felt a bit like Game of Thrones to me: for better or worse, we all knew who Jon Snow was before the show got there. I'd say MI2's throwing in of some doubt made it a bit more fun, and possibly even contributed to the series' iconic status. Sometimes unanswered questions are just more fun to chew on. Maybe it was something that should never have been definitively resolved?

Not sure I saw this posted, but if you pick up the skulls after the quake…

Well I feel like Guybrush. I've recently finished playing a game that took me back to being a kid and had to return to the real world but my daughter is running round pretending to be a pirate! That's funny, I've only read up to page 5 of this discussion so far. I typed out my reply then read the post by @Gins above which says pretty much just what I was thinking but much better 🙂

I think overall the world would be a better place if nobody used the term ‘rose-tinted glasses’.

Has there ever been any documentation about who composed which tracks in the first two games (especially 2)?

I love the art style but I definitely wouldn’t want every monkey island thing to look like that forever, just like I wouldn’t want it to be pixel art or 3D forever. But i would *love* a T shirt with this style pleaaaaseeeee. And, to be honest, the only part of the game where I felt like the vibes were *absolutely perfect* was on LeShip.

For 2 a good rule of thumb is that Land composed Scabb, McConnell composed Booty and Bajakian composed Phatt. But there are probably exceptions to this and some level of collaboration on all of it. I think I heard Largo's theme was a group effort which is plausible but it wouldn't surprise me if McConnell was the driving force behind that as it containst a lot of his fingerprints. Compare that theme for example to Swanky Maximino from Grim Fandango (which incidentally was a tune originally written from Monkey 2, which they couldn't find a use for)

It's also an achievement. And it changes depending in the number of skulls you pick up

Maybe Elaine is actually the delusional one. While Guybrush is trying to just have fun in a place designed to have fun at, Elaine ist fighting windmills and wants to cure animatronics from scurvy 😂

Don’t let a time frame tell you what you like or not like. If something clicks, it clicks. Rose tinted glasses is a way of telling that someone cannot see the truth because of a certain emotion. It’s a strange expression, because it suggests there is one ‘true’ way of looking at it which you cannot see because of said glasses. On the subject of art or entertainment (take your pick) I think that’s nonsense, because everyone can interpret something in their own way or have a certain element that clicks with them. It’s ALL emotion! Saying something hasn’t aged well is also a sentiment, a collective one perhaps, but still a sentiment. I can still enjoy a Marx Brothers movie or a silent film even though they’re a hundred years old. They might’ve been made differently today, but that’s not to say they aren’t beautiful or funny in their own right.

This is what the "Docs" end sting looks like: If you want to see it for yourself, plop this file next to the other "Weird.ggpack" files in your game directory, and then run Guybrush back up the stairs before getting the key: http://www.thunderpeel2001.com/Weird.ggpack6 It is literally just this image, however. I don't know if there's more to be found in order to trigger it to do anything else.

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.

So, the other day I posted two things I would change about the game. Freeing Wally and having a showdown with LeChuck. Both of those are now perfectly answered for me. There is an achievement to free Wally, which I did last night and man did it feel satisfying. I had wanted to do that since Curse, my first MI game, so a weight has been lifted. With the multiple epilogues, it gave a scenario for what happened to LeChuck and Lila. Forever fighting in the pits of hell over the Secret. Knowing what they are fighting over is a T-shirt makes it all the the more satisfying. Cool way of showing how their obsession enveloped them. I realized I just wanted a bit more closure on Lila and LeChuck especially and that short epilogue does just that in spades. It also works on many levels. LeChuck was described several times throughout the series as true evil that could never be destroyed completely. So, him being enveloped by his lusts and trapped in hell fighting over essentially nothing is perhaps the perfect end for him. It also compliments the fantasy/carnival aspect well. Their animatronics are stuck in place, still after the secret, while Guybrush leaves and starts a family with Elaine. So, now I wouldn't change a thing. The game is perfect to me and just gets better the more that gets unraveled/revealed. The other epilogues compliment other characters/aspects perfectly as well.

Hey everyone, I need your help: Maybe someone in here can convince me otherwise, but I actually really hate the ending to this game! It's not necessarily what happens, it's the execution. I feel it didn't stick the landing, and since so many of you are saying that for you, it did, I'm hoping I'm not too far gone; I'd love to be swayed! I definitely understand the metaphors at play. It's about family, about aging, about the power of stories, about losing your sense of place in the world and trying to go back in time to recapture a feeling you felt when you were younger. I played the first game 30 years ago when I was 6 years old; it's not lost on me that I'm Guybrush, and if I'm hoping to get that feeling I felt as a 6-year old when I first played SoMI, I'll have to face the horrible truth that no matter how much you want to, you can never truly go back. Too much has changed, you just get shadows of what once was, and that's what Guybrush's quest is about here, overall. The part that fails for me has everything to do with Guybrush's disconnected dialogue towards the end. As soon as he gets out of the door in the alleyway he says "Oh no! I'm not ready yet" and implies that the park is closing. Stan trusts him enough to give him the keys because Guybrush is either an employee or a superfan (saying he's going back to his flooring inspector job suggests the latter). Guybrush then makes some comments about how Stan did a good job with the puzzles this time, LeChuck was fearsome (but I'm still 6-0 against him!), and that adding the other pirate lords was a good twist. He's lucid and understands what's happening around him. This all suggests that everything in every game has been different times that Guybrush has come to his favorite theme park (sure, video games are theme parks, so we're "him" playing the different games, or Boybrush) and the scrapbook is full of physical objects from those trips. That's fine! I'm happy with this, after 30 years of waiting I was initially excited to get some kind of answer as to the truth of what's happening here. Unfortunately It's completely deconstructed as when Guybrush talks to Elaine, she sounds like she's trying to calm down an insane person having a nervous breakdown ("You're right here with me"). He repeats himself, says that he doesn't understand where he is, and Elaine just tells him it's time to go. Wait what? I thought he was an expert on this place? Why would he be suddenly confused in the slightest? Is he supposed to be a player-insert where we're supposed to be confused? If so then why the initial dialogue that plays the entire situation straight? What the hell just happened? Literally SECONDS ago he knew what was going on. Now we're back on the bench at the "real" theme park. And Elaine says she has a map to a treasure. So which is it? It's a pirate theme park and Guybrush is a flooring inspector? Or he and Elaine are pirates, voodoo/LeChuck are real, he's telling stories to his son but exaggerating them and he's bad at endings? I'm seeing a lot of folks in here saying they love that the ending can be interpreted in many different ways. That it's great that it doesn't actually matter which of the above is true; that it could be either, both or neither, and that's what's beautiful about it. I'll go ahead and say it; I must be in the minority where I absolutely hate when writers do this. I don't find the activity of speculating what the ending means to be particularly fruitful, as it puts the burden on the audience to establish their own headcanon instead of actually answering anything. Yes, I'm serious when I say BURDEN. Maybe I'm just burnt out from taking tons of literature courses in college but I check out as soon as we get to the part where we're interpreting what we thought the author meant vs. what they chose to actually portray in the story. I could come up with a million theories as to what's really happening in this story (the two above are just what I'd consider the most likely answers) but since there is no objective truth I just have to pick something to believe, and I'd honestly rather not. I just felt like I'd leave Return with answers to 30-year-old questions, but then I'm just told "Ha, you dared have a question you thought we'd answer? Jokes on you, maybe you shouldn't have cared so much". I'm frustrated that all of the characters in the game essentially patronized me the whole way through, saying "hey you probably shouldn't care too much about the Secret" or "it's gonna be a disappointment so you shouldn't get your hopes up". When Flambe came out of the fire to tell me again I was very, very annoyed. Like, my dude, I get it. My bad for caring about what really happens in the story The endings of stories do matter, and I'm not happy that I'm being told otherwise. The thing is, I didn't care what the secret was. I didn't care if I ever found the answer, I just wanted an actual ending that makes sense. The one where "it's always just been a theme park" is great. An ending where "these stories really happened, Guybrush is an unreliable narrator and we may never know the true ending to MI2" is also fantastic. It's just that what we actually see in the theme park is a Guybrush who is simultaneously fully aware of what's going on in the story, but also somehow completely confused and doesn't know where he is, and then he just gives up and says "well, does it even matter?" It's almost intentionally disruptive so that you can't definitively choose one or the other. Ron had an interview where he said that people would either be excited or infuriated by the ending. Do you folks think I'm just doomed to be the latter?