Knight Owl

Maybe you still wouldn’t even get to read it until after the credits when he pieces it back together, and it goes in the scrapbook.

FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE MENTIONED THIS. I love this game and I got used to it after a while but man this game feels so much less responsive than literally any other point and click adventure, purely because each click only registers *after* you let go of the mouse button, and you can’t hold it down to keep moving in a direction. It’s a good thing the controller controls are surprisingly fantastic. I don’t see how anyone could speedrun this game with mouse and keyboard with how much smoother the controller works; did you know you can free roam and run on the map screens with a controller, rather than being stuck to the path? It takes like less than half the time to traverse. I generally would agree with the rest of your critiques (although for me they didn’t bring the experience down much), but this is the one thing that I definitely never felt while playing the game. I replayed MI2 right before this one, and wow that game’s solutions are so ridiculous that I couldn’t get through it without hints. This one on the other hand, I felt like all the solutions were pretty reasonable, and the puzzles well designed, if not particularly complex. I managed to not use the hint book at all on my hard mode play through. I’ve heard some even say that the game was too easy compared to previous games. That said, I respect your opinions about it; I know how much puzzles feeling annoying can bring down the experience.

To me, I feel like part of what made the years of speculation so fun was knowing that there *was* an answer somewhere that could be revealed one day. And now that it has, I feel a really nice sense of closure. And I’m glad the game still gives us more to speculate about. I’d argue that the game is *not* saying that it’s better not to know the secret; if it was, I don’t think they would have revealed it. I think it’s saying that that there’s fun in not knowing, but that, if you do want to know, you need to prepare yourself for the reality that it might not be very exciting- but that, nonetheless, it can feel good just to finally find out. Hence why Guybrush says “I’ll need to think about [whether it was worth it]”, not that it definitively was or wasn’t worth it.

I love the art style but I definitely wouldn’t want every monkey island thing to look like that forever, just like I wouldn’t want it to be pixel art or 3D forever. But i would *love* a T shirt with this style pleaaaaseeeee. And, to be honest, the only part of the game where I felt like the vibes were *absolutely perfect* was on LeShip.

I think I would agree with this as it pertains to the ending, although before I got to the end, as I was playing the game, I honestly didn't have many complaints about the world and characters. I do think the islands could have been more fleshed out, but I was just happy to be able to explore this vast sea and meet a bunch of new characters. The part on LeChuck's ship struck me as being particularly character focused which was awesome, and a great change of pace from what I'd experienced with Monkey Island up until that point. The adventure just felt really big to me, the way it basically takes the structure of monkey island 1 and 2 and smushes them together. It certainly felt like a bigger game than SMI, imo. It helped that I only played a couple hours a day and spread it out over two weeks, I think. But near the end I felt like I was definitely rushing to see what was next and get to the secret, which dampened my enjoyment a bit. I was so caught up in getting to the next screen that I didn't even realize you could unlock the golden chest! Idk, feel like this game was pretty optimistic in the end (despite being intentionally unsatisfying in a traditional way), and I can't imagine that whatever Ron had in mind in the 90s would have been more optimistic than this.

The more I think about the ending, the more I simultaneously appreciate it for what it's trying to say, but also... *sigh* I just wish we got a bit more character resolution. I think they could have still incorporated those themes while not necessarily "taking the wind out" of the ending, as Ron put it in Cress's interview. The ending started to get a bit emotional, and I feel like it could have been more so if it played around in that space a little more. And, although the game's main themes revolve around storytelling and memory, there were also themes about accepting change, and being kind and respectful of others, that I'm not sure really came through in the ending. For how long this game was anticipated, and how many times Ron has done the abrupt ending, I guess I thought it would have been okay for this game to finally have a bit more of a cushion to land on. Idk. I think, certainly, the wrong way to approach this game's ending is to finish the game, immediately think "wow, that sucked and meant nothing," assume the team meant it as a slap in the face, and never try to think about it beyond that. But, even after thinking about it a whole bunch, I'm still not sure this is the best ending they could have gone with. Oh, btw, I think they handled the stuff with the secret and the dialogue tree with boybrush at the end really well (although I feel like, to make things slightly less confusing, the T-shirt probably should have said "all I *got* was this stupid t-shirt" rather than "all it *was* was this stupid t-shirt", no idea why they worded it that way, but whatever haha).

Terror island gave me Mary Blair vibes, like the colors and shapes, which I loved. really felt like something you’d see in a Disney art book

I wish Brr Muda had a little bit more to it – Like, I wish the little seaside town you can see to the far right of the trials building, with Guybrush’s ship, was explorable. Melee island felt like the only fully realized town in the game, which is fine, it’s all about what’s necessary for telling the story. But I like towns and I wish there were more 😛

I'm still interested in knowing the intent behind MI2's ending. If that was supposed to be the reveal of the secret, what the lighting eyes and Elaine saying "I hope he doesn't have a horrible spell on him" meant, or if they had any idea how they were gonna resolve it in a potential third game. Just curious

Well said

Now I'm thinking that maybe Ron just in the moment said "I have my own interpretation of what is canon" just in the sense that the game invites everyone to decide what's canon for themselves, but then realized the implications of what he just said and backtracked. Haha

Agreed. Which is why it's such a tease to go and say "One of these endings is my personal interpretation of what really happened." (paraphrasing) Why would he do this to us!! 😛

Yeahh, honestly! Like I'm genuinely just curious, and I don't think I would take that as being canon, seeing as the game clearly treats all endings as equally "canon," and that Ron says Dave and the other team members likely have their own choice for which ending is canon. I get what Ron is saying, that whichever one he says is right is what the internet is going to latch on to, but I *kinda* think there's a way to talk about it without that happening. Idk. That said, if I had to guess which ending I think Ron thinks is canon, just based on process of elimination, I feel like it's gotta be the theme park ending, just because Ron says in the interview that the secret was originally envisioned to be that guybrush was really in an amusement park the whole time. I think maybe part of the reason he doesn't want to say it is that he knows it's not the direction the series has gone in over the years, and wants to respect that. I know it doesn't matter but I really dislike speculating about what *Ron's real thoughts* are. I just wanna know, haha, I don't think it would ruin anything for me. It's definitely a little horrifying that Ron seemingly plans to take this one to the grave. Haha, I don't really care. I don't care. I don't. I do not.

Wow, hearing ron talking openly about the secret and how it changed/stayed the same from the original game is so, incredibly satisfying. Like, I know that an interpretation of the game's themes is that, whatever the secret was, it was going to be unsatisfying. But for me, hearing this, it's just so nice to finally get some closure.

Can't wait for Return To Monkey Island: Special Edition where we get developer commentary