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Hi! I’ve not posted here probably in 15+ years but it’s nice to come back and talk some MI. Having finally finished the game I’m just delighted by how wonderfully well this bookends and recontextualizes all of the MI games. The themes running through it were much stronger than I expected and on a meta level it just resonated a LOT. It’s an amazing design feat that not only does RTMI feel satisfying in itself, but it also manages to kind of rescramble and reinsert a whole bunch of stuff from the previous games in a way that’s incredibly pleasing (in part because some elements are left sufficiently ambigious). My head canon is having a great time right now. I do still have two reactions. By far my strongest one is that I love what it’s done on a higher level. On a lower level I guess not everything worked as well (at least not all of the time). It's not really the most important level of experience for me at this point, especially considering this game comes 13 years after the previous MI games, so I find the meta stuff delicious and accept it wholeheartedly, but I'm still thinking of the surface-level experience as well. RTMI being so much about looking back reminds me why I like the stories of earlier games which weren’t quite yet as layered in meaning. I enjoyed MI1 and MI2 precisely because they were stuck deeper inside their own little worlds (and, well, I was also a kid back then). In the early games it was nice that you got to inhabit a pirate story book that, while not taking itself at all seriously, did spend quite a bit of time with character and world-building. Slowly peeling that stuff back was really fun. I enjoyed Chapters 1 and 2 the most in this regard while exploring the world and getting to know LeChuck’s crew. In Chapter 4 it felt like the islands were too obviously thematic and in service of the puzzles. A lack of story/location detail made this chapter less interesting to me. It’s a pity as structurally it was the closest to MI2’s “Four Map Pieces” which is probably my favorite MI chapter. In RTMI the reward comes a lot more from the meta-narrative aspects than what’s inside this particular glass bottle itself. I don’t think that matters too much in the end though and I’m very happy this game exists. What it has to say is ultimately far more important and rewarding. If an MI7 ever gets made (which feels hugely optional) it could decide to focus on telling more of a stand alone story, though I would hope the meta elements are still at least acknowledged or hinted at. I must confess when the art style was first shown I had some doubts (I’ve been known historically to, uhh, have dumb kneejerk reactions to art styles 👀👀). It was more angular and DOTT-like than I’ve associated with MI but I very quickly warmed up to it and came to love it. It’s really really nice to play an MI game again and to be so wonderfully surprised. Thanks also to Dominic for doing such a wonderful job voicing Guybrush again