KestrelPi

Ugh I just wrote a whole post on this and got an error. I'm not doing all that again so: I called bits of this, like the framing of the theme park and how I thought we'd see Guybrush taking his kids there I did not call the end of MI2 getting reframed in the way it does, and I sort of love it as an idea Also I So far, I love what they did with the ending. I never considered that precise possibility, but I got close.

I agree, I think it does more right than I would ever expect with a whole new creative team. In hindsight it's a bit ... basic, maybe, but it's a really solid, self-contained Monkey Island that goes down real smooth. It doesn't surprise me people favour it. I might like it more than MI1, once I strip away all my nostalgic feelings about 1. It's close, at least.

I reckon this one's a pretty nice prediction. I'm going to say: Captain Smirk: Nah. Dead. Meathook: Nah. Unknown. Cannibals: Maybe. Navigator: Nah Fet Bro: Naaaaah Largo: Nope. Voodoo Priest: More like Voodoo LEAST Men of Low Moral Fibre: I truly hope so but something makes me think nah. Kate: No. Phatt: Nah. Barbary Coast: They're Barbary Toast Kenny: Nuh uh Goodsoup: Nuu Van Winslow: Van Wins-no Morgan LeFlay: Giving this one an outside chance but I'm still calling Morgan Away.

Yeah I've mentioned it before but the tendency towards writing Guybrush in this weird, overly-wordy rambly way is a thing about Tales' writing and also I think it's a problem in EMI that really stuck out to me on my recent plays. If they'd written MI2 in the Tales/EMI style, instead of his generic Look At thing being "Nice [item]." it would have been something like "I've seen some [item]s in my life and, yep, that sure is a [item]". Dom does a fine job with it but I feel like Guybrush always used to have a sort of dry, deadpan side to his humour, which has recently got a lot more soggy. Guybrush stop going on about everything all the time challenge.

My prediction: 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.

I KNEW it. And now, because this thread is already dangerous.... I'm ducking out a while 😅

To clarify, I wasn't really saying they could make everyone happy - I just meant that I bet Devolver aren't used to releasing a game that is made in the USA but the fanbase skews so heavily european, since mostly they release games from newish franchises without an established base, and it's not definite but possible they might have made a few different decisions. If they had more experience in this area, for example, might they have considered that by not putting the game up on GOG they are missing a trick since it seems to be pretty big in Germany, for instance. (Heck, the reasons that some people seem to utterly despise Valve but love CD Projekt of all people still baffles me and no conversation I've had about it has ever completely cleared it up in my mind, but hey, this seems to be A Thing). Or they might have considered releasing it on a midweek date so that they could release it at 3pm Pacific and around midnight in Europe. As I said, it's not a big deal and I don't feel strongly about it, it's just an idle musing, which is all I can really do until I can play it.

It's not a huge deal but Devolver maybe underestimated how many people this would make grumpy. What with the series having a bigger following in europe and of course the UK having a day off on release day.

I feel like it's going to be a very fresh game for me too and I've seen pretty much all of the promo stuff apart from this new thing that goes through a puzzle. Unless it's gonna be a 20 minute long game, I don't feel over-exposed

I mean... yeah? Far be it from me to call for this, but isn't that EXACTLY what fans have been asking for? Ron's Monkey Island game? I never really asked for this, but you have to admit that it's a bit weird for people in one breath to say they want to know what Ron would do with Monkey Island if he had it back and then, when he tries to put Elaine and Guybrush's relationship into difficulty, in the next breath say 'no, not like that'

Would it have come right out of left field? We're told many years have past and this wouldn't be the first time they've had a bad spot in their relationship. Besides, my whole thing is that there's room for nuance here. It doesn't need to be either they're having a fight or it can be resolved or they broke up and now hate each other. It could be... they're in the process of breaking up but they find a way to end things amicably, say. Their relationship being in trouble doesn't HAVE to be this big, terrible event. It could be for the best or bittersweet or cathartic or any number of things. It's the idea that their pairing is inevitable, permanent and immutable which bugs me. I agree though that I don't think I want the game to be about that. Still, MI2 wasn't about that.

Thing is, now it's so close, I don't really want to watch it. I don't feel like I'm missing much. I'm pretty much through wanting to speculate on new material. Just want to play it now.

Well, at least we know now, but I'm going to be gwumpy all day waiting around for it.

Sure I remember that line, I'm just not really interested in lawyering their relationship based on single, probably throwaway lines in the game - all I was saying is that their relationship in the first 2 games at least, and probably the first 3 games could at best be described as 'rocky', so I don't know why them being together has somehow become this unmoveable fact. Yeah, this line of thinking I think I can see a bit more. If it took up too much oxygen in the writing, maybe it made more sense to dial it back.

Relationships change. If they can be a complete disaster couple in 2, then reconciled in 3 and basically functional in 4 and 5, why couldn't they be in trouble again in 6?

This bit from the Eurogamer piece is interesting (and a bit annoying to me, personally) Absolutely do not get the fan obsession with Guybrush and Elaine. In the first game they met twice and had a deliberately corny, unrealistic romance. In 2 it had gone bad and the one big scene with her goes badly. In CMI she spends most of her time as a statue then they get married. In EMI they're married happily but mostly Elaine just sends Guybrush on errands. Only in Tales do they actually put in any real work to make any sort of comment about the sort of commitment their relationship is, and even in that both characters appear to have some romantic chemistry with other characters (even if it turns out at the end Elaine was faking hers). It's not exactly the greatest love story ever told. Why can't they be a little unhappy in marriage? Why can't we have stories in games that explore that kind of relationship? They clearly WANTED to. 😕 Ah well, I'll try to follow my own rule and try not to wish for the game to be something it isn't. It's just a bit frustrating to see that they couldn't make that sort of thing work.

From the eurogamer piece: also: That last part would also imply to me that playable elaine was considered for ReMI but ditched, just like Ron said it was

I guess it's a mini-coda.

I'm also of the feeling that it'll be playable, but I think it'll be a playable prologue rather than Part I. I do think it somehow relates to the Secret, perhaps tangentially, but in SOME way, since it makes sense to me that if you find the secret in this game. What we know about the secret so far is that you're going to find it, it will be the same secret that Ron had in mind in 1990 and what he said in an IRC chat room some years ago:

I don't think it'll happen immediately during the opening, I just think it could happen later during the opening 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

I'm going to put my chips down and say I bet they DON'T do this. I don't feel strongly about it either way, but I'd like to see Rex's depiction of the carnival. My prediction for how it opens, summarised from speculation else where is that one or more of the following might happen As we journey through the carnival we see attractions that mirror different parts of monkey island games and as Guybrush's imagination wander, the world slowly morphs back into his pirate fantasy We see an older guybrush taking his own kids to the carnival which has become more run down since he last visited. And he reminisces, which triggers something like the above We see wizards of oz style real-world versions of characters from the MI universe at the carnival If I get any of this right, I'm gonna crow about it. If I get all of it totally wrong, I'll probably praise the game for surprising me.

Basically what I suggested in one of the other threads. We know the game starts where MI2 leaves off, directly. And we know from interviews that the start of the game and how it proceeds from the carnival is a guarded secret and is going to be interesting in SOME way. So I bet we'll want to discuss it. But we might not be ready to dive into a full-on spoiler thread when we do. I propose this thread for discussing the very opening of the game. Depending on how the game actually opens, I am going to suggest that here is the place to discuss spoilers for, but NOT BEYOND, for example: 1) The Part 1 splash screen 2) Guybrush's arrival on Melee, assuming that's the first proper island. 3) After the Big Interesting thing happens. Whichever feels most appropriate, use judgement. Basically because the end of MI2 is weird we can expect the start of ReMI to be weird. When that weirdness subsides and this game starts being more of a normal Monkey Island game, that's when to stop talking about it here and start using the full spoiler threads. How about it?

If it helps, I don't think the hint reveals anything we haven't seen in clips before.

I believe the way that these things uuuusually work is that if it's locked it needs to check the internet to see if the game can be played yet. Once it is unlocked, though, you should be able to play it in offline mode.

In fact this one thing is likely to promote SO much discussion that I almost wonder if it's worth having a seperate thread for people who have played the start of ReMI but still don't want to risk spoilers for the rest of it. "Return to Monkey Island [Spoilers but only the first bit]"