KestrelPi

In recent years I think BTTF3 has seen something as a rehabilitation, as a fine conclusion to the series. I can't go with you on it being better than the second though, which is my favourite of the lot. I feel like the first one is just very well-formed, it's hard to find bad things to say about it, the second or third can't survive without it so if you could only save one of the films it'd probably have to be the first. But the second is an absolutely glorious mess, from its bizarre envisioning of 2015 (though accurate in more ways than it's given credit for) then very silly-yet-believable 1985 dystopia and then the revisit of the location and events of the first film in a way that's never been done as well since. I can't help but love it, it's so much. The trouble with BTTF3 to me is that it hangs so much on being a western pastiche, so if you're not really into that then it's wholly reliant on the characters and writing (which are still great!). The other thing is that it's so far back in time that aside from the clocktower which barely gets used, the locations are practically unrecognisable so you don't really get the fun of the same places being recontextualised like you do in the first two. So I get why people feel like it's 'apart' from the first two, but I think most people I talk to about it now agree it's a perfectly fine adventure in its own right, and concludes the trilogy well. On the whole I think it's probably one of the most consistently good trilogies ever.

It makes sense to me that if you're going to reveal the secret after all these years then the way to do it is to reveal it, as originally intended, but in a way that will just leave fans debating for the next 30 years what the secret actually means about the world. I think the idea this game adds over and above MI2 is turning into a generational thing. Adding the whole element of these being stories which are passed down and change in the telling and are remembered differently by different people. Which of course adds a whole lot of flex to the 'canon' For me the definitive ending is taking the key but not opening the chest, choosing that it was better not to know. I see this story's ending being about Guybrush finally accepting what everyone else is trying to tell him. Good interview, though not much surprised me (except that I really did expect that having the T-shirt prize was probably an idea from 1990 as it is so in keeping with the first game)

Nothing will ever top MI2 in the series for me, not because I think it's especially better than the others (though I do think there's truly special parts of it that none of the other games have matched) but because it caught me at just the right time, felt weirdly grown up when I was at an age where I was probably juuust starting to want stories with more edge to them, inspired me musically in so many ways, and really opened my mind about different kinds of storytelling. I don't think that 11 or so year old me would have properly understood all this, but it planted seeds, for sure. I loved MI1 before it too, and I've been thinking a lot about how much I enjoy that game's puzzles, but MI2 just feels unassailable. Nothing could ever be so formative. So I think it's a pretty big compliment from me to say that I think that Return could hang out with MI1 and CMI a little way below MI2 in terms of how I'm starting to feel about it. I've said elsewhere that I like it more for what it brings to the series as a whole than what it offers as a game individually (though that's cool too), and I like that, because I feel like MI1, CMI and RMI all give me different reasons to love them. MI1 is just so nostalgic, my very first adventure game experience and how could I not feel warm towards it? CMI came at a time when I was at the peak of my LucasArts fandom, and it was so nice to be so excited about the new game and have so much of that excitement validated by what we got. And RMI is the game that makes all the others better (this is very mild allusions to the start of the game)

^^^ this thing I said after they did that very first 10 second Melee Island snippet turned out to be a good shout. I'm glad they went here with it, it makes it feel familiar despite the zone previously being mostly silent.

I would say there are only two sensible rules here: 1) named islands only - so Hook Isle counts, Knuttin Atoll counts, but not that Booty one. 2) Visitable islands only - any location that is separated by water from the other locations, and so is reachable only by boat/bridge or similar, which would include the booty mansion (or would it? It's sort of a land-bridge right?) but still knock out the little islands that have nothing on them and you can't go to.

Yeah I was saying to a friend that I might do this. I really feel like a lot of my feelings about how MI1 and 2's writing feels are tied to how it sounded in my head. That's definitely not all of it because the writing of CMI approached the same feel for me despite having voices for the first time, but there's definitely something about this, and also I want to see if perhaps I feel more strongly about the music if that's the main audio I'm focused on.

I didn't keep count but I think it was probably around 5-6 times in the end. As far as I can remember there weren't any puzzles where I had no idea what to do. A good example of this was the fish eating contest: I knew I needed to pepper the fish, and I knew I needed unpeppered fish for myself, but I was working under the assumption that it was to do with the order in which I put the pepper and the fish in the bucket, and so had to end up getting a hint at which point i realised it just wanted me to take it the unspiced fish out of my inventory when it came my turn. I kept trying to put more fish in the bucket or time the spicing of the fish or something. So there were several moments like that, where I knew exactly the puzzle logic that I was trying to implement but didn't get exactly what the valid action was to carry it off. Most of the time when I used the hint book it did actually tell me stuff I already knew, and it was really just ome implementation thing I was hung up on. I didn't feel too bad about the hints I got because by the time I asked for the hint I felt I already had 'worked out' the puzzle, and I was just hung up on mechanics. I think there was only one time when I thought I really should have solved that myself, and but I don't remember which puzzle it was.

I quite like Widey Bones, I wish they'd done a bit more with here. Other than that, probably Gullet or Rose?

Picking up from a bit earlier in the thread, I just don't think I can buy the idea that we start off with the kids imagining the end of Monkey Island 2, break out of that into something approximating the real world and then submerge again into a different pirate fantasy when we take control. I think they were imagining a fancy carnival and then we get to see the slightly gross park underneath, and I didn't once think to question that when I was playing. Another thing which I think makes it more likely is the way the SPIT FUN banner has RUN pasted over it. Why would Boybrush be imagining a race instead of a spitting contest if the idea is that he's now imagining the world as more gross and piratey? That said, I think the wishing well is there to show us that there is some room for the boundary between imaginitive play and reality here, and that not everything we see on screen at any one time is either necessarily all real or all imagined.

I guess I'm not getting why that matters?

Are people really that bothered by a lack of direct confrontation with LeChuck? That doesn't seem to be the thing that most people who didn't like the ending seem to be sore about. Speaking personally, it didn't even occur to me that there wasn't a direct confrontation at the end until I stopped to think about it later.

I talked about this idea earlier in the main thread (which this is maybe a better topic for) but the short answer for me is that I don't think that - I don't think the game ultimately lays enough groundwork to make 'actually we're still in the fantasies' work for me as an explanation. It's an interesting idea, but I think, as it stands, it would somewhat cheapen the impact of the prelude where I think there is a really, super clear implication that what we're being let in on is a 'realer' interpretation of the ending of MI2. I think to back out of that and say 'nah, it's actually all still imaginary' is overly convoluted. When Guybrush tells Boybrush the story, he tells him about Stan's park - we know this because Boybrush reacts that it's a silly ending. So to me that moment at the end is Guybrush remembering the last time he went to the park, before he moved on with his life and let his adventures live on in the stories he would later tell his kid. And I take the stories themselves to be a mixture of real things that happened to him and elaine, and imagined adventures at Stan's park.

I do suspect that the weird stuff on Melee's clock could have related to these puzzles. Maybe some of that graffiti around town, too. But as for 'time issues', worth it to remember that designing more than is effectively possible to produce is an extremely common problem in games and media as a whole. Which is why I describe getting a look at that stuff as a double-edged sword. It's interesting to think of what might have been, but stretching it to start believing that the better version of this game was one where this island was finished, and that the only reason it's not in is logistics. In nearly every game, stuff gets cut... so if this was the biggest chunk to get cut from this game, then it must be because they considered it the least valuable part of the game.

I certainly understand that, I'd just argue that... looked at on that level the game isn't doing a LOT different to MI2. It avoids a direct showdown with LeChuck but essentially it's doing a similar thing of cutting away to weirdness instead of completely finishing the story we were just being told. It's arguably more resolved than MI2, because at least here there are other forms of resolution and not simply a big old WTF that's left hanging there free of any context. I feel like ReMI's ending could possibly be accused of being unoriginal in the context of MI2 (I don't believe that, I think there's enough different stuff happening, but I can see the argument) but I don't see the argument that what they do here isn't Monkey Islandy enough. Whenever the topic of whether things would be tidily resolved came up in the old thread SO many people predicted it wouldn't, even lightly mocked people for suggesting it would. We half-expected a weird end. Heck, we might have even whole-expected it. So when we get one, I feel like it's hard to argue that it isn't on-brand enough. Basically I respect people wanting more of a resolution, but I don't get why they expected one.

We've talked about this interpretation a few pages back. I really like it actually, but I don't think I'm quite there for it being my interpretation, mainly because I feel like I like the reveal at the start to be so strongly implying a journey from fantasy to reality that I don't think I want it to be 'actually, it's just another layer of fantasy'. Maybe that could be really cool, but I don't think the game sets up enough stuff to make that cool. I remember feeling similar about the end of the second Matrix movie, when Neo does all the magic-looking stuff in the real world. I thought 'if the 3rd film addresses what happens here well, it'll be really cool,' but in the end it barely even addresses it. So as of right now at least I prefer to take the park, Elaine and Boybrush at face value. I love the IDEA that there could be even more to it, but I need a little more scaffolding around it.

I don't know how I'll feel in a year but right now it's about: 1) MI2 2) MI1 = ReMI = Curse (I can't separate these at the moment, I like them all equally but for different reasons. If I absolutely HAD to, MI1, then ReMI, then Curse at the moment.) 3) Tales 4) EMI

I basically posted mine already so here it is again, with a few modifications now I've had some more time to think about it: In the real world (or some slightly more piratey approximation of it) Guybrush visits Stan's carnival as a kid, and goes back every year, imagining himself having all kinds of adventures there. He doesn't quite grow out of it, but he does meet Elaine along the way, who used to appreciate it in the same way he did but has sort of moved on. She tolerates his fascination with the place but nowadays doesn't go out of her way to nurture it. In the park, there is a sort of treasure hunt, every year, but usually Guybrush either comes away empty handed or doesn't take away the biggest prize. His obsession with this does cause some tensions with Elaine over the years, which we see in MI2, but she comes to tolerate it. Elaine and Guybrush perhaps go on various real-world treasure hunting adventures, but they never really do anything on the same big, grand scale of Guybrush's imagined adventures in Stan's park. They start a family, and this becomes a new priority in Guybrush's life. He stops visiting the park every year, but he does keep it alive through the stories that he tells his son, which are a mixture of his real adventures with Elaine, and embellishments that he tells, inspired by the times at Stan's park. His son loves all the stories, and he often play acts them with his friends. Like many kids around his age, he has an idealised version of his father, which Guybrush does little to discourage. Where ReMI starts is during one such thing, and we get to see Guybrush telling his son another heavily embellished tale of his old adventures. At the end of the story, for reasons, Guybrush changes tack and reminisces about his very last visit to Stan's park, the one where he stays very late, determined to finally find the secret for himself. This, he does, or doesn't do depending on the player's choice. At the end of the story Elaine tells Guybrush about a new little adventure he has planned, but before we cut to credits we get to see Guybrush reminisce one more time about his younger days when anything seemed possible, and feel content that he's passing some of that spirit onto his son with his stories. Other bits: the LeChuck we see in the games represents an extreme version of Guybrush's worst tendencies - his obsessions, his disregard for the well being of others in pursuit of his goals. Also, the ending in my head (though not the one I chose for my first play) is that guybrush takes the key, but decides not to open the chest, finally content with the not-knowing.

I don't know, I think there's a level of ambiguity about what Guybrush's world is like. He and elaine are still dressed like they are in the games, and the place ostensibly uses pieces of eight as currency, even after the layers of imagination are stripped back the food place sells things called scurvy dogs, and grog. And at the end Elaine talks about a treasure hunt for her and Guybrush to go on, and also Boybrush mentions something about wanting to watch the Galleon leaving. I sort of got the impression that the world we find them in is like the present world, but a slightly more pirate-themed version of it.

I think I was just ready for this sort of Monkey Island game. What I will concede is that there are certain things in the game that I don't think were quite 'there', which I've talked about in this thread. Things like the locations not feeling as fleshed out as I'd like, the dialogue trees not being as fun as in some of the previous games, and so forth. I guess I just don't really see that sort of thing as an intrinsic problem related to the meta-commentary this game does. It could have done those things better and still delivered a meta-commentary. A while back I did a plot summary of all the Monkey Island games, sort of stripping it down to the bare bones summary of each game's plot to see how intrinsically goofy each story was: What I noticed among other things is that the stories of Monkey Island games have trended towards getting goofier over time, but also more convoluted (I don't really blame Tales for the latter, you have to expect that from an episodic storytelling format) MI1 has a REALLY simple story. A man wants to be a pirate, attracts the attention of a fearsome ghost pirate who takes his love interest, so he follows him to Monkey Island where he learns the secret of how to defeat ghosts, then chases him down for a final confrontation. MI2's isn't much more involved, it just gets a bit weird at the end. I think one of the things I actually appreciate about ReMI is that it doesn't really have an ambition to dazzle us with plot in the same way that some of the later stuff does. It's basically just a treasure hunt. But there's still at least as much 'journey' as those early games: You arrive on Melee, you find LeChuck already there, planning a voyage to get the Secret of Monkey Island, and pirate leaders uninterested in helping you and are involved with something called Dark Magic, so you hatch a plan to sneak on board his ship. When there you manipulate his crew to get them to go to monkey island, where those same pirate leaders have set a trap for you in order to claim the secret for themselves. You find out it's been taken back to Melee Island but you need to find 5 keys to unlock it. The pirate leaders meanwhile team up with LeChuck hoping to open it up with Dark Magic. You gather up the 5 keys, then go to open the chest, but LeChuck and team confronts you and makes off with the contents, taking them back to Monkey Island where the secret can be revealed. Once again you follow him back to Monkey Island, going deep into the monkey head through a series of traps until, at the final door, nothing is quite what it seems. With all the meta-commentart taken out, that still reads like a Monkey Island story to me, and it reads like some sort of journey that is similarly involved to the previous games in the series, but not as convoluted as the last couple. So I guess I don't understand what you mean by 'there's no journey'

(as an aside I will confess that in my head I thought it was a coin flip whether, as guybrush sat on the bench on his own that we'd get catapulted back into the moment of confrontation with LeChuck... sort of get to enjoy it as a private moment between us and Guybrush without Boybrush there to hear it. On balance I'm glad they showed restraint and didn't try to have it both ways, but if it pleases you, one can imagine guybrush sitting there thinking about what "really" happened past that door)

The thing is, I don't feel like I've been 'robbed' of the author's take. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that this game, more than any previous Monkey Island game, takes an authorial stance on what Monkey Island is about. That's to say it actually takes some of the vague sense of mystery that we've always talked about the series having and makes comment on it. It doesn't resolve all the mystery, and in fact one of the things that it says very clearly is that tying everything up neatly isn't its goal. It also leaves enough open that yes, it is possible for the player to make up their own mind about what they believe about certain events. But... where I think I differ is that... while all that stuff is super interesting to talk and wonder about (look at all the discussion it's already generated) I don't think any of that stuff is at the emotional core of the game, and the emotional arc of the game is to me what provides the closure. We start with Boybrush playing around and messing with the ending of Guybrush's Monkey 2 story. Boybrush points out that there seems to be a lot unresolved in his stories, and so he starts to tell a new one. And as he tells it, the theme of storytelling, and what's important to a story, what makes a mystery fun, comes up over and over again. At various points during the story, Boybrush interrupts to remind us that this is a story we're being told, and also sometimes to criticise the way that Guybrush is telling it. Over and over again we are warned by different characters in different ways that we might not feel satisfied with the answers when we get to it but we press on, and just when we're about to confront LeChuck once and for all... the game goes all Monkey 2 on us and we're faced with a strange, hard-to-intepret ending. This doesn't satisfy Boybrush at all, and we probably feel a little similar as well, at least the first time through, but Guybrush isn't just going to hand Boybrush a satisfying answer. Or if he does ('rubies and gold!') it's pretty clear to the player that that's the most boring possible choice and probably untrue. I think he wants to teach his child to delight in the mystery of things. To enjoy the not knowing, and the speculating and the chase, more than the prize at the end of it. That, I think, is the emotional core of the story, that's the journey that we go on that has a satisfying resolution, and that was what was playing through my mind as the final shot before the credits lingered.

I'm always sort of wary of peeking behind the curtain too much these days, given the double edged sword that has proven to be. I think the average player doesn't think a lot about content getting cut, and doesn't understand very well that cutting is a big part of the creative process. On the one hand I'm super interested in what the concept behind Cogg might have been and what the puzzles were like and how it fit into the story. On the other, it's hard for me to wish it hadn't been cut because maybe it killed the pacing, or they decided it was just the worst bit of the game, or didn't advance the plot enough, or just didn't fit thematically as well as some other stuff. 'Cut for time' could mean a lot of things. Sometimes I watch deleted scenes out of interest, but I only very rarely wish they hadn't been cut. In a way, I'm happier this easter egg exists than I am sad that Cogg wasn't finished in the end.

Yes I noticed that as well. Felt very deliberate to me, because the first time you see it you assume it's about the game you're about to play, but at the end when you review it it hits quite different.

Nuh-UH! The 3rd point, why EH? seems straightforward enough. I was repeating my prediction that I don't think going to be 'it's just a LeChuck spell', but adding that I think it might not quite be quite what we imagined (i.e. just kid Guybrush coming out of his fantasy) ... which is TRUE because in the end it turned out not to be Guybrush at all. And it's also absolutely true that the opening of the game addresses this some, and it's revisited again at the end. In fact, thinking about it, in the thread I only made 2 predictions * That it's not just LeChuck's spell, and the carnival/kid guybrush is in some sense real but we'll catch up with him as a grown up and the start of the game will address this and the end of the game will revisit it. (Okay, it's a long prediction but it's all about the same thing) * I sort of made a throwaway incorrect prediction in the middle of all that, that the brothers thing is real. I also predicted (though elsewhere) that Guybrush would have a kid and we'd see him taking him to the carnival, though the way I described it happening was somewhat different. (that said, I'm happy to 'win' 😅) The main thing to me is Guybrush and Elaine's relationship, which is at best tenuous at the end of 2 but seems almost completely repaired in ReMI. But also Murray, and the various other allusions made to the rest of the story. I think it's fair to say that it mostly works as a 3rd installment but there would still be some elements which would puzzle a player who didn't play CMI at least. Which tallies with Ron's advice of which games to play to prepare (1 and 2, 3 if you have time)