KestrelPi

That's true... There are a lot of things here that feel like clues to puzzles that didn't end up existing. Maybe there are more puzzles to be discovered or maybe we're just supposed to feel like there are

I would say that it's not that the secret doesn't matter. I'm personally fine with the idea that the secret is an amusement park T-Shirt prize saying 'I found the secret of Monkey Island and all it was is this stupid t-shirt' on it. That's very on-brand for both the first and second game. I'm happy to fully accept the idea that's what the secret is buuuut... I think what the game wants to tell you is that THAT isn't the good bit. The secret matters because it gives you something to wonder about, something to ... well, let me put it this way, the Secret isn't the only reason the mixnmojo community came together. But I wonder if these games and this series in particular would have been so 'sticky', and generated so many years of love and discussion if there hadn't always been this persistent, nagging feeling that there was something else lurking in them. The neat trick ReMI does is give you the secret and then create it anew. It says: 'Sure have your t-shirt if you need a prize, and if you don't want to consider things any further than that, fine. But is that really the secret, or could it be something else? Maybe it IS something else. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe there's more to what you're seeing on screen in front of you right now. Have we told you the whole story, or are there more layers to this. What can you take at face value? ...This is fun, isn't it? See? This is the bit you like.'

There's a 'Make one serious prediction' thread in the main forum, and obviously we can't leave spoilers there, so how about we talk about them here, and any other genuine predictions we might have made over the course of the pre-release. Mine from that thread was: The carnival/child Guybrush is in SOME sense real ✅ , and the 'real' guybrush we're playing now is genuinely grown up. ✅ As is the brother thing, that's also real. ❌ It might not be quite what we imagined, but it's also not going to be 'actually nah that was all just a spell that LeChuck put on you'. ✅ The opening of the game will address this, but it'll be revisited at the end too. ✅ In another thread I said: As we journey through the carnival we see attractions that mirror different parts of monkey island games (✅ not as many as I thought, but it's in there) and as Guybrush's imagination wanders, the world slowly morphs back into his pirate fantasy (❌) We see an older guybrush taking his own kids to the carnival (✅ I'm definitely giving myself this one) which has become more run down since he last visited (🌓 I'm giving myself half marks for this one. It is more run down than it looked but not since he last visited). And he reminisces (✅), which triggers something like the above (❌ not really, it just goes straight into the game) We see wizards of oz style real-world versions of characters from the MI universe at the carnival (❌) Also you know what, I'm going to take this comment I made about my above predictions and call it a hit too: "Also I think there's perhaps a way for all the stuff I said to happen without it necessarily *simply* meaning that it's all Guybrush's fantasy but I don't want to get into it right now" ✅ (Basically, I had a strong feeling in two directions: that the carnival ending wasn't simply LeChuck's curse, firstly. I never understood the impulse to just write it into nothing, like that. And secondly that the straight 'guybrush's childhood fantasy' read of it didn't quite account for everything and that while it was closer to the truth, it would be complicated somewhat by what we actually get.) I am OKAY with that hit rate and yes I did create this post just to tell you all how clever I am I'm wondering how YOU think you did.

I don't think I could say that's it either. But. Huh. It's an awfully coherent read, isn't it? It even ties up a few things that I found odd in the moment, like how he just sits there, expressionlessly, not acknowledging his son even when he sits next to him on the bench, until he says hello to him. Like he's not completely present. Huh.

I feel like the best thing this game does as far as the future of Monkey Island goes is... ... well, if this is it, if this is the last one, if that's the last shot and we're done, I think that's absolutely fine. I'll take it. It's a great send-off. ... but if there will be more, perhaps not Ron's but other peoples, it no longer has to dance around the source material. It no longer has to tiptoe past the end of MI2, or make vague allusions while being reluctant to commit to anything that might interfere with Ron's original vision. This game says that the mystery, the inconsistency, the ambiguity is all part of the fun, and that you don't actually have to answer the questions, and you don't have to avoid them either. You can answer the same question in two ways, you can ask new questions, it's okay. There's an overarching vibe to Monkey Island which, if I were to put it into a single word would maybe be 'layered' and this game gives you a little glimpse at some of those layers and then turns to the audience, AND any future creator of Monkey Island and says... now, have fun with that.

Double click to run Nab the bread while they're telling you off for looking in the basket

You needed to give her a promotion in order to get her to make Scorched Alaska, not for the vote.

I think we're supposed to experience the blurred lines of this, somewhat, in order to allow for the interpretation. Part of it is that the worker coming in and booting them out of the tunnels impinges on the fantasy somewhat, and what we see over the next couple of minutes is a bit like when you're slowly waking from a dream you're becoming aware of and noticing it makes less and less sense until the logic of it unravels. So in a way to me it's not SUPPOSED to make sense, there are supposed to be gaps and inconsistencies, and into those gaps and inconsistencies you can insert... the start of CMI, or the end of it. The other thing about it is... you know how when you're a kid sometimes you go somewhere and it seems like the grandest, best place in the world, and then maybe later you see pictures of it or revisit it and you realise 'oh wait. This place was actually very bland, or even gross'. Similar with that comment that they make about Scurvy Dogs being the best food ever. They clearly aren't, but I remember the feeling of thinking some pretty bad food was amazing as a kid. So maybe when they emerge from the tunnels what we're seeing is the kids' idealised view of the park, and when they walk back again we're seeing it a more as Guybrush might see it, when we meet up with him. We're gently moving from the kids' perspective of the story to Guybrush's closer-to-reality but still-ambiguous version.

I do not think that anyone predicted those things. Maybe I'm giving myself too much credit, but I feel like I got close in a lot of ways by predicting: Years later, Guybrush would take his own kids to the park The park would be more run down than it appears in the end of MI2 But I suppose this might be a vehicle to relaunch into the fantasy of the MI universe by providing a reason for a time skip and recontextualisation of the park. It didn't really occur to me ever that the time skip had already happened and we were experiencing a mixture of Guybrush's relayed memories/stories and a child's imagining of those same memories/stories. I really think you can read this in various ways (for example pieces of eight could just be interpreted as the real world currency, or it could be interpreted as one of those theme park currencies some theme parks have instead of real money, or it could be interpreted as this is a bit that is still in the imaginitive voice of the kids) But I do think the implication of the beginning that we are peeling back the fantasy piece by piece is at least supposed to be reasonably clear, and that the scurvy dog shack is 'realer' than the weenie hut. It just leaves enough ambiguity that where the line is drawn can be fairly flexible.

I wouldn't say that's the 'standard' or intentional read of what's going on here (as usual your reads absolutely flummox me 😆) but I think the game leaves enough to interpretation to allow that to be a read.

Prologue stuff

I suppose the thing is that the secret is there if you really want it. If they'd revealed it in MI1 I could absolutely buy it being another t-shirt, and it's right there for you to get. Sure it's not profound, it's absolutely silly but it's there if you really really need closure on it. But it's just that the game then invites you to find meaning in it beyond the narrow confines of knowing what the secret is, it invites you to agree that it wasn't really ever the point, and to value the unknown.

A couple more bullet points: I like the writing, I think it's the snappiest the game has been for a while, but I feel like we could have had more classic 'pick your favourite of four jokes' for Guybrush to interrupt with moments. I wonder if that's partly Schafer's absence being felt. After Full Throttle and Grim I always considered him the king of dialogue trees. I liked the ones in this game where it was basically 4 variations of the same line. LeChuck's voice was no substitute for Earl Boen's version, but for the story they were telling I don't think it had to be. Pre-voice LeChuck was full of menace especially in 2, while post-voice LeChuck became more of a comedy villain. In Return he's more ... sad. This is a LeChuck who doesn't know why he's doing it any more. It's become a rote, almost corporate exercise. He can barely inspire enthusiasm in even his most loyal crew, and I don't think we're supposed to be scared by him. Maybe that's a shame as I love the design and was hoping for a steer back towards menacing-lechuck that we never really got to, but I see why they went this way for the story they told.

This has also been my impression too. I understand why it's optional as it probably hurts the pacing first time round, but people who want the slow pace of an adventure game world to live in for a bit will appreciate it. Also I'm fairly certain they just re-insert a few jokes in that weren't in the original too which I found to be decent.

I wouldn't call them retcons, I'd say that it's more like the end of MI2 gives you a little peek behind the curtain and the start of ReMI is them opening it the rest of the way. MI2 gives you enough to see them as kids playing but still has lots of elements of their imagination playing out, then this lets you see behind it bit by bit, first by making the parents some randos and then by showing the lightning as just a random idea that Chuckie had, and then finally by getting rid of some of the fancy decorations around the park, until we're seeing the world for what it really is (or are we? Maybe there are more layers still - the nice thing about this is that there is room for that ambiguity.)

I also have to say after finishing this we might FINALLY have a new contender for the coveted crown of Monkey Island game with least monkeys.

Well, I feel weirdly pleased with myself about talking so much about how all the pre-release speculation is part of the fun of all this, and that we should value that more, in the context of the ending I just watched. Also: here is a list of idle thoughts I've had while and after playing the game that are in no particular order: I can not imagine them coming up with a better solution to the end of MI2 than the prologue. It ticks all the boxes I wanted it to: it surprised me (a little bit, I did call some of it), it leaves a lot open to interpretation, and it allows for an explanation of some of the mystery surrounding the series without removing the kind of eerie ambiguity that it needs. It somehow performs the magic trick of making it so that everyone who has had an idea about what was going on the end of MI2 gets to be a LITTLE bit right. Except people who thought it was all just a voodoo spell and nothing more? I guess those people would have a hard time claiming they're right. No but hang on, since we're never shown what REALLY happened in Guybrush's version of events, even THOSE people could claim that LeChuck still placed Guybrush under a spell at that part of the story, and everyone STILL gets to walk away happy. Remarkable. I think the way they treat Elaine in this game is as good as possible, given that they didn't want to address the trouble the relationship has been in, in the past. It makes sense to me that she is here own person, with her own agenda, not directly supporting his agenda (and having her own) but not going out of her way to interfere with it, either. I think that's a fairly healthy way to run a relationship between two people whose ambitions might occasionally otherwise cause tensions. Structurally the game feels quite different to the ones before it. For the first 3 parts we explore some specific locations, then only when it gets to part IV does it feel like the game really opens out with island hopping fun and a high number of nested puzzle threads happening at once. I don't think it's a negative, it's just not quite how I imagined it working. Melee really does feel like the most important island in the game. It has the most characters and locations over all, and it features in more of the parts of the games, and so forth. I'm fine with it. Terror Island just was a terrifying island. I guess sometimes it does live up to the name. Huh. That said, I don't know if I really got a sense of place with the other islands in the same way as Melee. They don't feel quite so lived in, quite so fleshed out as, say, Booty, Scabb, or Phatt, or even Plunder and Blood Island. I can't help but feel like they come off more like... places that exist in order for Guybrush to have puzzles in them, rather than places with their own life independent of whatever Guybrush is up to. Brrr Muda comes closest to feeling like it is a real place, but it's still a bit empty. Most people just grunt. There's a town hall, a courthouse and a prison camp and a castle, and the town hall is basically rooms set up for 3 trials. I'm not quite lost in the vibe of it in the same way as something like Scabb.

It's true that he didn't know it was cursed, but it WAS part of a voodoo zombie pirate's treasure hoard, and so it was at least hasty. Also getting her stolen in five seconds flat was definitely on him. 😄

To my mind the whole point is that there is no official 'really happened'. You can decide that it all basically happened just as Guybrush said but with a few imaginitive wrinkles thrown in by his son, or you can decide it sort of happened buy Guybrush exaggerated and changed a lot of it, or that it sort of happened but Boybrush imagines a lot of the details and changes a lot of stuff, or that none of it happened at all and it's just fun stories Guybrush is making up for his kid which he's then taking and running with. It's true freedom that, that I think any attempt at peeling back the curtain any further would probably hurt.

This I agree with. It is a bit weird that Guybrush doesn't really acknowledge his part in causing the problem in the first place but that IS sort of in character for him. I think perhaps some might have been hoping he'd accept more responsibility based on other chats I've had. But... and this is just me ... but I've always thought this idea that Curse is sort of a redemptive arc for Guybrush in which he literally and metaphorically earns Elaine's love to be a bit of a reach. Curse to me is a very standard story of Guybrush causing trouble by acting before he thinks and other people ending up worse off for it and then him clumsily fixing it. It's fine that some people have weaved in an interpretation of Curse that tells it as a growth story for Guybrush where he learns the error of his ways from MI2, but I think you need a microscope to read that subtext, if it exists at all.

Better give it 20, 30, I'd say.

I noticed this one, and enjoyed it

When he's done the prologue and come back, then we can have a REAL discussion of what 'Roncanon' even means. 😄 By which I mean (spoilering just in case he sees this so soon)

The other thing this neatly resolves that I've been thinking of a lot lately but that I never really bothered to say out loud because it was such a minor point to me, is that I was never quite satisfied with the 'this is all just young guybrush's imagination' in ONE way, which is that while it made sense of a lot of what was going on in the first games, sometimes Guybrush's thoughts were a bit too grown up for it to quite fit. And I don't even mean in big, obvious ways, but in tiny little ways too - like, how likely is it that a small boy would know enough about food to know they hate vichyssoise? But if you reframe it all as 'these are things that either an older guybrush is making up as stories for his kid, or embellishing a little in the retelling (I wonder if by the end we'll get to know which - I sort of hope this is a let-the-audience-decide scenario, but I don't mind either way), and then his own kid is imagining re-enacting them and adding his own embellishments and flourishes, it makes PERFECT sense of it all. Everything is explainable as either being seen through the lens of storyteller-Guybrush or Boybrush. If you don't like the idea that some of the events in EMI happened 'for real', hey - you can just say 'well, to me, that game is just bits of stories told by Guybrush that Boybrush has further distorted into his own weird riff about a robot with his dad's encouragement.' Viewed through that lens, I even like it a little more than I did previously. If you don't like how weird and fast Elaine and Guybrush's romance was in MI1 you can explain that as Guybrush glossing over a lot of the icky details in front of his son and exaggerating their flirting for comic effect in a way that would make Boybrush laugh, OR you can imagine it as Boybrush's own imagined re-enactment of how that moment would have gone. This is a tremendous gift, I think, as it basically just gives us the MI universe and lets us all make of it what we will.

it does better than that. It reframes the ending in a way that: allows the adventures to continue allows everyone to decide for themselves how much of the subsequent games really happened the way they were told leaves enough room for some individual interpretation of events I think it's possibly the perfect solution