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He does use the "I" pronoun five times overall and the "we" pronoun once when referring to the elements one loves about Monkey Island. I suppose it's imprecise because not everyone loves the same things. But the things we do love probably have a lot of overlap... and in that sentence, the main point of contention would probably center on "made the best thing you could with them". Good idea for a topic: What are all the elements you love about Monkey Island?

I found a bug in my GGDict parser that could have it miss some strings, leading to an error. I didn't run into it while unpacking and repacking the ggpack files, but I released a version 0.3 to fix it anyway, just to be sure. (Also sorry if I'm not supposed to bump my own topic like this)

To be fair, we've seen evidence in comments/interviews from designers that they were trying to keep this intact, even if they didn't fully understand what "this" was. We have j2ake here who's described that Tales Ch.5 purposely had amusement park elements and tried to convey that the MI universe was frayed at the edges and might come apart if explored too deeply. And as for Curse, Bill Tiller was one of the earliest voices telling us Ron's secret, so they kind of knew. It can't be an accident that Curse's first menu is a lazy banjo playing in a swamp. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2013/04/the-magic-of-disney-parks-storytelling-pirates-of-the-caribbean/ Nor that the opening scene is a battle between a pirate ship and a fort, with our protagonist sailing to it in a literal ride cart.

I know this was always Ron's intention, I just don't think he should've revealed it to be (in an ugly word) "canon". I know TV shows, movies and games are made by writers, directors, actors etc., I just don't want them to acknowledge that the world is fictional. At least not as definitively as RtMI now has. I like how Monkey Island on more than one occasion has been compared to Twin Peaks, because it was exactly that! The difference is that David Lynch never puts his cards on the table (except when forced to, see Twin Peaks season 2). By giving away the mystery of what made Monkey Island special, the whole thing is reduced to "it was all a dream". All those Islands, people and treasures were just theme parks, animatronic's and merchandise... Monkey Island has always walked a very thin line by hinting at this, but not throwing it in your face. And the brilliance of it was that, even with Ron not helming some of the sequels, the writers kept those hints intact without even knowing it. Now that the cat's out of the bag... there is no mystery anymore. I don't care if Guybrush is a delusional orphan or if Elaine is suffering a mental brakedown hunting for limes, just like I didn't care for James leaving Twin Peaks or Cooper hunting for Windom Earle. Everything was held down by one secret, and now it's gone. The goose is dead. The ending is a work of beauty, and my reaction to it was very personal. It just destroyed the whole world that was build upon it with it. And to me, right now, that just feels like too high a price to pay. (The interesting thing is that I completed the game about 2 weeks ago, and that my stance on it is still changing a little bit every day. I guess that shows how brilliant the writing really is... So maybe I'll change my mind about what it has caused too. Right now however, I'm just saddened by it.)

Thinking back on the ending and the reveal of the secret I agree with Ron wholeheartedly, "the secret is better left a secret". Which is why I'm a bit surprised by the fact he decided to reveal it anyway. For me, in retrospect, it totally ruïns the suspension of disbelief. When I didn't know it was all played out in a theme park it was fun thinking about it. Now that it's been proven to be just that, it kinda sucked the fun out of it. It's like the "it was all a dream" ending some tv shows used to do when they wrote themselves in a ditch. You come back from the experience thinking "why did I go through this if it didn't mean anything?". Except that it smudges that feeling across the entire series. If you listen to David Lynch talk about the original mystery of Twin Peaks, he describes it as a goose that lays these golden eggs. As long as you feed it, it will continue to give you riches, but if you kill it (by revealing the mystery) you have nothing left. (I'm paraphrasing.) That's the kind of feeling I get from the ending of RtMI. The goose is dead and everything I've lived through for 30 years has been a lie. The questions the ending raises sadly aren't enough for me to go back to the mystery. I dunno, maybe it's all to fresh in my mind now and I'll have different thoughts about it in a while. But at the moment, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

So... I need you to imagine a fully decked out Sea Monkey II, with all the skulls. Imagine it crewed by swans. The swams are the guild of weavers. Bobbin, Cygna, Atropos, Lachesis, and Clothos. They sail the ship and shape the world around them by conking the skulls for music notes. These swans on their tiny skull-music boat can do whatever they want. Untwist hurricanes, rend enemy warships, open chests to Secrets... anything. Swan weavers on the Sea Monkey II.

To me, I feel like part of what made the years of speculation so fun was knowing that there *was* an answer somewhere that could be revealed one day. And now that it has, I feel a really nice sense of closure. And I’m glad the game still gives us more to speculate about. I’d argue that the game is *not* saying that it’s better not to know the secret; if it was, I don’t think they would have revealed it. I think it’s saying that that there’s fun in not knowing, but that, if you do want to know, you need to prepare yourself for the reality that it might not be very exciting- but that, nonetheless, it can feel good just to finally find out. Hence why Guybrush says “I’ll need to think about [whether it was worth it]”, not that it definitively was or wasn’t worth it.

For me, it helps to think of the Plaque as "this was my original idea" (or, if you're a Mutiny Conspiracist like me, "this was one of my original ideas"). But Ron has said repeatedly that this franchise has shifted over time. I think it's easiest to imagine that all Monkey Island continuities are equally valid, and that's probably what the initial setup in the Prelude (the "is that real" parrot, and the introduction of multiple unreliable narrators for every story we've known) and the existence of multiple endings is veering us toward.

WARNING: THIS THREAD AND ARTICLE ARE AS SPOILERY AS IT GETS! It turns out that the very end of Return gets pretty ragged and frayed; the different things you do in the final few scenes can tip the games conclusion and epilogue in many directions. Mojo has compiled all the ones they’ve found so far and it’s already a whopping ten variations. That article is a great writeup of what’s currently known about the different endings and epilogues including full video capture of all of them and how to get them. (Pour one out for the Mojo staffers who watched the entire credit sequence dozens of times to tease all these endings out and then verify how they are reached!)

I relate to what you're saying, because what I said earlier in this thread was very close to what you're feeling atm. What I came around to is, the game is deliberately making reality and fiction blurred and ultimately putting the decision into your hands as to what is real and what isn't. For me, yes, the world of Monkey Island is a theme park, but I don't really side with the more bleak interpretation that Guybrush is hallucinating, suffering a psychosis, etc. I prefer to think of the Monkey Island world, both the theme park, and the outside world where Boybrush plays with his friends, as a place where anything becomes possible. In the case of the theme park, it's magical, and all those animatronics come to life as long as they continue to live inside the park.That's why LeChuck and Lila cease to be real people once they go through the door to the Secret. That is ultimately the true triumph Guybrush has and forever will have over LeChuck; he is fated to be contained within the park and never live outside while Guybrush can leave with Elaine, have a family, and share stories of his adventures. When seen through this lense, not only does the Secret not really matter to the overall experience, but neither does dwelling over what is real and what isn't. The lines are blurred, we can all be right because there is no definitive answer, and we can keep talking about it forever. The next game is now free to be a simple pirate adventure unburdened by the Secret and no longer beholden to any true vision. Ron I think has surrendered the series to us and to the people who kept the series alive in his absence. To me, not only could Guybrush be us now and Boybrush be us when we first played the series, but from another viewpoint Guybrush is Ron and Boybrush is every other dev who has worked on the series; Ackley, Ahern, Stemmle, Clarke, Jake, whoever comes next, taking the original story and adding their own spin, like the kids playing out the adventures. Looked at like that, it only makes the series more beautiful and rewarding to go back to. I totally get it if you still feel the same way after reading this, but this is just my two cents as someone who was in a very similar positon upon seeing the ending for the first time.

Do we know if it was datamined or an original discovery? I imagine you do your first playthrough and reach Wally at the end, try your monocles and hear Guybrush say "It's way too late in the game for that", then see what you can discover on a replay? Maybe they noticed that piece of art existed in the left corner of LeShip in Part 2 but not in Part 4? Who discovered this?

Nope this one is clickable: "Fish shop?"

I believe they confirmed they're random in the Steam forums. Also the skip button is weird on the PC version, too. It seems you can't press any other button before you press it, otherwise you can't skip anything. Or maybe if you press it too quickly the game gets grumpy. (I had to sit through the credits on the PC version, too.) There seems to be rhythm to it... wait a few seconds without pressing anything and then press ESC (or Switch equivalent) and it works. Anything else and you get the red symbol

1. Revenge 2. Secret 3. Curse 4. Return 5. Escape 6. Tales Revenge is without a doubt my favorite. It takes the already brilliant Secret and makes it more of everything in all the right ways, and it just resonates with me. Guybrush's evolution from a nice wannabe to an experienced pirate who becomes full of himself to his own detriment becomes more and more brilliant every time I experience it. It has its flaws for sure, especially with some unfair puzzles and tedious backtracking, but these things are annoying once, the whole rest of the game keeps on giving on every replay, discussion and listen to the soundtrack. Secret in second because it is the original and an eternal classic. It is the giant from whose shoulders Revenge leaped even higher. CMI is so close to tying with Secret. It is in my opinion a perfect point and click. Just that Revenge and Secret hit my personal tastes better, but Curse is a fine entry point to the series. These three will likely always stay this way for me. The other three each have their own issues but like with pizza, even the worst Monkey Island games are still amazing. Return didn't quite reach my hopes and dreams but it is a perfect love letter to the series as a whole and is Ron's official blessing for the fans to accept all Monkey Island games before and after it as canon regardless of the team. EMI suffered most from its controls but was otherwise very Curse-y to me. It jumped the shark in the end by trying to connect everything with everything - Herman, and the Robot - but you know what? Back then I found that awesome. And I liked Monkey Kombat Tales is last on this list, but as said, to be the worst MI game is still no slouch (and as said the bottom three constantly change for me). I didn't care much for the Telltale formular overall, and it was the height of the "casualification" era, which alienated oldschool fans who wanted hard puzzles in favor of expanding the audience and saving the genre. And while many games from that time weren't for me, I believe they achieved that and I'm grateful for it.

I appreciate the effort the person that captured those videos went through, thanks! But I also wanted to see the stingers in-game, and I don't have the patience to sit through the credits every time. Luckily I was looking for an excuse to use my MonkeyPack program for something useful, and I found the credit files. So I hereby present a mod that shortens the credits to just a few seconds. Since I feel guilty about removing all the names, this mod makes the credits instead show a reminder to only use the mod to see the stingers, and not all the time, because a lot of people worked very hard on the game, and they deserve their names listed. It should work for all included languages too, though my reminder message is in English for all of them. Just place the attached file in the 'Return To Monkey Island' game folder (which can be found on Steam by right-clicking the game, going to 'Manage', and clicking 'Browse local files'). It doesn't override any existing files, and the mod can be removed by simply deleting the file again. Weird.ggpack1f

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

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

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.

Its under heavy development at the moment , a lot of ReMI stuff has been added. I added support for dumping the audio a few hours ago. I'm not doing a new official release until I can think of a new name for it. Grumpy Explorer is one possibility, any other suggestions welcomed.

I think you’ve sold me on doing a Cave replay. I don’t remember much about my first playthrough.

I read that a lot more positively: the thing they actually love doing together is going on adventures! The Secret is just absolutely not something they share and Elaine sees it as a self destructive fixation that Guybrush should drop. Guybrush in the early games is plagued by this quantum state of believing in himself against all the doubters, and the insane amount of insecurity that comes with it. The Secret (and his relationship with LeChuck) are framed in this game as almost regressive fixations Guybrush has — things that feel like once they enter his field of vision, they blind him from everything else he has accomplished. He finally gets away from LeChuck (for better or worse, due to his pursuit of the Secret) then finds the secret and (literally and figuratively) wakes up and looks around him and the mess he’s made, and has some clarity about what his situation is. I read finding the Secret almost as bottoming out. Elaine warned him on the walk to the monkey head that maybe he was about to bottom out, and all he can really do is make mild to wild excuses for it (while never fully copping to any of her points or the larger unspoken warning/concern). But a few minutes later it hits, and I think hits hard, and the wake-up moment isn’t far behind. But the part where Elaine and Guybrush are traipsing around the world getting embroiled in absolutely weird adventures or helping people solve their very complicated problems, that seems legitimately like things they have in common and is why they work well on screen together when they do. The sort of secretly-shared “I found some awesome map!” moment plays as that to me: the secret is long in their rear view mirror and now they’re off being their best selves, doing what they love. Yes I realize this is a cynicism-free read of the wraparound frame story! Anyway I feel like I’ve repeated myself in here too many times so I will stop until I have a better post. 😛

Adding a bit of diversity here! My favourite game is The Curse of Monkey Island and unlike a lot of people that prefer the game because it was their introduction to Monkey Island series this was actually the third Monkey Island game I played. The first one being LeChuck’s Revenge: Monkey Island 2. I must say that I didn’t get most of the jokes as my english back then was really basic and most of the witty dialogues went over my head. None the less I still enjoyed playing it but for me it was just another great adventure game. The second game I played was The Secret of Monkey Island (CD version) and I must say I enjoyed more than LeChuck’s Revenge: Monkey Island 2. Then in 1998 I played The Curse of Monkey Island and that’s when I really became a fan of the series. It’s hard to say why this one and not the others, but I think the main reasons are because of the amazing drawings by Bill Tiller and the atmosphere it creates with Michael Land’s music on top of it. The Blood Island part is definitely my favourite as it’s very mysterious and exotic and almost makes you want to go there. Of course, not all is good. I felt the carnival part a bit boring and the ending a bit rushed, but overall it’s still an awesome game.