Jake

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!)

I don’t think it’s possible to get them all in one paythrough, as they seem to be delayed a few steps behind you, and depend on the order in which you get the keys.

👕 I beat #Mojole #195 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

A Grumpy, Terrible, Dinky Explorer

Thank you 😊 And I agree. I initially tried to split it up into ten 10ish minute pieces or three 7ish minute pieces or something, so the album could have more variety, but it works best as it does in game, as a giant suite.

We’re gonna need a second black tshirt.

I scanned archival assets for Laserschwert and all I used was this black tshirt.

Ah damn they’re even outsourcing the inscrutable shitposts to bots now!? Mojos days are truly numbered.

I think in the closing credits they call the engine Dinky, so I guess they did settle on that name.

Mojo has just posted all the unedited OGGs to twitter so I assume tools are coming soon. From the game rips I made a 20 minute edit of LeShip which includes all the variants and also weaves in the Murray intro cutscene as a mid-song bridge into the Murray track, and closes on the spyglass cutscene, since it ended up working out well as a way to end the track. https://remi.mojodb.com/music/LeShip.mp3

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.

I added a “never” option. Hope that’s alright!

Confirmed: It happens if you leave the game for a couple days and then load your save!

Yes true it is a remastered bandana.

👕 I beat #Mojole #194 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 💛🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚💛💚 🖤💚💚💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I hope so too.

It is. I haven’t watched the last couple seasons of Star Wars shows (boba and obi wan) because the end of Mandalorian season 2 made me need some time away, but these first four episodes of Andor have been some of my favorite Star Wars viewing of the Disney era. I was never as huge into the EU/Legends stuff as my friends growing up, but Andor captures the most aspirational version of the EU feeling for me: The idea that off in the corners of the Star Wars universe, there’s a bunch of human-scale stories happening that are probably just as interesting (or more interesting) than the operatic drama at the heart of it. Some episodes of Mandalorian have scratched that itch, but nowhere near as potently or consistently as these first few hours of Andor have. Andor also just looks great. One of my favorite things about the main Star Wars movies is that as the story goes on, from scene to scene, you learn more about the universe: you’re going somewhere new, seeing something you’ve never seen before, learning about a new place with its own rules and a history you’ve not yet encountered in the story until now. It’s a type of worldbuilding that leaves tons of pockets for your imagination to explore in its wake. Mandalorian didn’t do that for me - it felt like it was circling the same few places over and over, and even when they went somewhere that was technically new, it either felt the same as what came before, or like it didn’t really belong in the show. Andor though, is delivering this particular Star Wars feeling in a way that’s totally working for me. It helps that all the production design is really inspired, and it’s shot very cinematically. I don’t feel the edge of the virtual set the way I eventually started to on the Mandalorian. (I’m sure they’re using the volume plenty as part of their toolkit, but it’s blended in better and doesn’t feel so one note as a result.)

This release seems fine? It has the soundtrack on CD, the return of the classic bandana, the Corley Motors keychain is a genuinely great idea, and the box looks good. Just ignore the other stuff if you don’t care about it. Limited Run makes boxes full of fun stuff, they aren’t the criterion collection. It would be cool to get very hallowed and grown up style criterion releases of these games because they’re things we liked as kids and are now very smart and tasteful adults, but also, eh. This is closer to what I imagine a deluxe version would have actually looked like in 1995 had it existed, and that’s fun to me too.

This is 100% how I took it. Finally someone builds a museum to Guybrush’s many exploits, but of course he gets credit for none of them (to the point that a character from a whole different pirate franchise gets credit for one of his feats).

👕 I beat #Mojole #192 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤💚🖤🖤💚 🖤💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💚🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

My guess is that’s to obscure the joke from fully being revealed until you get there. But it could also be lore.

Same. I like seeing an old piece of dev history and I like that they sank it beneath the ocean. It’s a cool Easter egg. I can’t really imagine how it worked into the finished game, though, and don’t really need to.

booyah 👕 I beat #Mojole #190 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤💛🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚🖤🖤 💛💚💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

1000%

I saw the end of Twin Peaks the Return in part as Frost and Lynch doubling down on an indictment of coopers self-motivated and maybe self-satisfied and definitely hubristic belief that he has the power to save people who are beyond saving, or maybe don’t want to be saved, or maybe don’t need to be saved. It happened a bit at the end of the series 2 finale, happened again in fwwm (his advice about whether or not Laura should take the ring), and was aggressively doubled down on at the end of The Return, where after already combusting multiple times attempting this, Coop fights his way out of the black lodge (or whatever it is) only to drag a seemingly random woman to Laura Palmers house, arguably doing far more harm to the universe than good in the process. That image at the original series finale of him smashing his head into the mirror again and again was stuck in my brain as the scene cut to black at the end of season 3. Unsurprisingly some fans were absolutely livid at this: Where’s coopers heroic end? Why didn’t he save Laura for good? Lynch is trolling us, spitting in our faces! It’s more of the same! I feel like with Twin Peaks The Return, Frost and Lynch were at least in part saying, definitively, “you heard us the first two times,” knowing some people won’t like that at all but doing it anyway. Like you said, I don’t think Gilbert and Grossman were being as arms-length about it, and I feel like across the prologue, entirety of Part 5, and the epilogue, they satisfyingly answer far more than Peaks ever did (and more than I expected them to with Monkey, to be honest. But like Frost and Lynch, I think they were definitely declaring “we don’t ever want you to be 100% comfortable with this, and we never did. If you missed that the first time, now it is laid out even more clearly.” I’ve never minded that about 2, and found Return’s… return to those ideas super thrilling. As a kid it was actually probably my first exposure to an ambiguous and deliberately unsettling ending like that, and I remember not feeling ripped off or betrayed, but more “oh I guess stories can end like that? that’s cool”* and then had almost thirty years of food for thought on lots of subjects. * I first played 2 on easy and wasn’t sure I’d found the real ending, but because I didn’t like it but because it was irregular, so I replayed on hard and got the same one and said “okay that’s how it is.”