BaronGrackle

I'll be playing with my children. They're in school and my wife isn't big on video games when we all do things together, so it'll probably take a while.

Yeah yeah, have the thread back. 😛 But please, no more jokes. I can't help laughing at jokes.

Eh, the bar's not so high. The medium itself has a layer of comedy/absurdity that Star Wars lacks, but even apart from that, the overall setting is clearly an island of pirates. The governor has vaguely defined leadership over them and definitely has her mansion looted periodically, the pirate ships are understood to be off-screen like Thimbleweed Park houses and residents, the time period for how long LeChuck has had them scared/landlocked is indefinite but doesn't affect the story, and of course the inhabitants look like permanent residents of Mêlée. If that's true (I'm not sure Lucasfilm has given an opinion or whether Johnson or Abrams have even thought about it), it raises a slew of questions as to how the chase of the film could have happened. How were there no other First Order ships that could have lightspeed-jumped ahead of the Resistance ships? How were they unable to send TIE Fighters to attack the Resistance ships, especially considering the ease in which Finn's and Rose's party left the ships and returned multiple times? If Finn and Rose were able to leave the chase and return multiple times, how was the Resistance unable to evacuate other members similarly (it's not a large number - they all fit on the Falcon at the end). How is the New Galactic Republic nonexistent after a single system is destroyed in a surprise terrorist strike, after which the weapon that performed the terrorist strike is subsequently destroyed? Before TLJ, the First Order as seen in TFA was demonstrated to be incapable of defeating Resistance forces in open combat (fleeing after they were roflstomped at Takodana). Then the Resistance leveled their doomsday weapon - their only credible threat. What changed? How did they go to "the First Order reigns" in TLJ opening crawl? What film evidence is there that can make us believe the First Order is a credible threat to anyone, at this point? You can stretch your headcanon to come up with reasonable answers, but they won't be VERY reasonable answers... and this stuff weighs on TLJ (a film trying to take itself seriously, one presumes) far more than the specific logistics of Monkey Island games. Monkey Island might be unclear about "how many ships are on Mêlée and how long have they been stranded?" But The Last Jedi is unclear on "do the bad guys have a lot of armies, at least more than we see onscreen?" The Last Jedi (and the other Sequel films) fail on levels of storytelling that the most basic of films, cartoons, and video games clear with ease. None of the Monkey Island games come nearly so low to the ground in quality, narrative, or basic effort.. "The best." Whew. Maybe the best of the Sequels. Maybe.

The Pirates of the Caribbean gift shops in Disney parks would make a mint on talking skulls with Danny Delk yelling and posturing.

You have answered with "I do not care", and thank you for that. For me, I need an actual setting that attempts to be cohesive within itself. I don't think I could ever rate a work of media that doesn't even attempt a coherent setting, above other media in the same genre that do go to the trouble of basic storytelling. EMI is an actual story that has coherent setting. I defend EMI because... while it does take narrative retcons that don't always make sense, and it makes story decisions many of us find weaker... we do have a tangible storyline that can be followed. I know Guybrush's situation. I learn the situation of the world and his enemies. It's an actual story; you can describe what's happening in it. I'll defend MI4 any day. EDIT: I had forgotten how much reflecting on Star Wars gets me optimistic about everything else in general. I think I might be more hyped about RMI... about Ron Gilbert's role in it... about Disney's approach to it... more hyped for it than I've ever been.

Like... am I allowed to make a new thread on this topic? (I need all three of you to tell me whether you think the First Order was tiny with few military forces and little power, or if you think it was large and "reigning" over most of the galaxy at that point. And also whether you think it affects the quality of a narrative when the film can't decide. Because to call the old ones "pretty trashy"... I always had a sense of what the setting actually was - how big the good guys and bad guys were - in every Star Wars product, until the three Sequel films.)

I'm also recently realizing that there are genre spoilers we'll probably never get as adventure gamers again, or as Monkey Island gamers. When I first played Secret (after playing Indy 3, Loom, and at least one Sierra game), it took a little while for ne to get a gauge of how much of this world was serious business versus how much was comedy. There are bones in that game that show how the tone could have veered differently. The conversation with Mancomb Seepgood... you can say "I've come seeking my fortune" instead of declaring you want to be a pirate. If you ask who's in charge, he'll drop a bit of worldbuilding of Governor vs. Pirate Leaders that never gets mentioned again. Coming out of Indy 3, I'm not sure how long it took me to realize I couldn't die (minus that one part). At the bridge, I think I believed the Troll was going to kill me if I gave three incorrect items. At Captain Smirks, I was authentically surprised that the combat system was dialogue based instead pf resembling Indy 3 or Sierra's Conquests of Camelot. I was paranoid of running out of the 480 pieces of eight in my inventory. I tried to be careful not to miss any important items that I might need later when escaping Germany... I mean, exploring Monkey Island. We aren't getting that experience in a MI sequel, nor can we. EDIT: Do we need a new thread to discuss why The Last Jedi is the third worst Star Wars movie, after the other two Sequels? I'm on a hate reddit for that kind of discussion. I can link you to things, or summarize.

Okay. No Once and Future King / Fallen Order style flashbacks for learning information, then.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Now excuse me. I've seen Black Sails and am now going to ponder.

For me, it was an earlier sentence. I'll write the beginning, non-spoiler part of the sentence I mean. The end of that sentence tells me how the game begins.

I read it. And... I feel like the beginning is more spoilery than the end section. The end section doesn't say much that's new. The beginning part very casually mentions a puzzle and the nature of how you solve it. The nature is the spoiler.

Huh. I might... not click the link. I might not read the interview. This feels weird. EDIT: Nah. I'm reading it.

We are ideological opponents. If Ron still loves doing this, and he loves everybody on this team so much that he wants to keep working with them, then I hope he starts a new story with a fresh creation that he owns fully (or a sequel to something he fully owns, like Thimbleweed Park). He'd be able to tell his own stories without the baggage of entitled fans and prior expectations, and at the end of the day he'd own it - unlike other IPs like the Cave, which have brought him down.

I initially read this thread title as "Tell me why I’m about to get ripped", so my brain immediately went to Temple of Doom muscles - deciding to work out for the sake of effective cosplay.

Will we eventually hear more from this?

Now, for video games? I'm still geeking out on Shovel Knight: King of Cards. That's something to write an essay over.

Let's remember that Noah has only raised our expectations for the first ten minutes of the game!

Funny thing is: Curse consistently wins on reddit polls. I think the "pixel era" vote gets split between Secret and Revenge.

I don't know if I've ever been "blown away" in the nature described by a twist, but I have been surprised by them before. Psycho's classic twist authentically got me. But my moments of being blown away and being disappointed... they rarely have to do with surprises and spoilers. My most recent moment being blown away was probably... the Amphibia finale? I enjoyed the ride. I went in with high expectations, snd they were met. My most recent moment being extremely disappointed was... The Force Awakens? I've always been a Prequel hater, so I really expected the Sequels to be things I could get behind. Force Awakens successfully lowered my expectations for the rest.

Is it wrong if I feel a little sad that Fate of Atlantis gets a nod in the Disney Parks while Monkey Island does not?

New post: "Help! Looking for the in-game hint book!"

In MI2, Herman Toothrot did give the Thimbleweed Park ending to the Men of Low Moral Fiber (Pirates), in Shakespearian terms. So Thimbleweed might have been the Secret at some point in the '90s. But it's probably something different by now, regardless. EDIT: But of course... if Ron doesn't keep the interpretation that MI2 somehow ended up on Monkey Island at the end, then it's kind of a stretch to connect the MI2 ending to the geographic Monkey Island.

He doesn't say that, does he? I thought Guybrush never mentioned the Secret again until MI2, when he could ask LeChuck over the acid pit or on the Dinky Island hint line? EDIT: Oh, the hint book! You mean the hint book narration.

Well, something about LeChuck's monologue was always strange to me, but I couldn't put my finger on it until recently. He drops some info on us: - Big Whoop was actually on Monkey Island, not Dinky Island. - Big Whoop is a portal to hell, the cause of LeChuck resurrecting as he does, and the power he can exploit to make an undead army. - When Human LeChuck was searching for the Secret of Monkey Island to impress Elaine, it culminated in him landing on Monkey Island and discovering the hellgate that made him what he is, then murdering everyone else who knew about the secret hellgate. Read that last point again. If you think I'm misremembering or exaggerating, go back and relisten to LeChuck talking about his quest to find the Secret of Monkey Island. He quested for the Secret, he sailed to Monkey Island, he found the hellgate that redefined his existence, and he eventually murdered all other witnesses. And then, for some reason, Guybrush asks what the Secret of Monkey Island is... and LeChuck says he doesn't know? Was none of that SECRET enough for him? CMI effectively merged the Secret of Monkey Island and the Treasure of Big Whoop so that they were the exact same thing. But they flinched in LeChuck's speech, and said "No, the Secret is actually something else I dunno lol." EDIT: For what it's worth? If we find out the Secret of Monkey Island has ANYTHING to do with the ending of Monkey Island 2? Then that means Ron Gilbert also effectively merged Big Whoop and the Secret of Monkey Island into the same thing.

You guys left a fuller quote in 2019: https://mixnmojo.com/news/On-this-day-16-years-ago-Bill-Tiller-revealed-the-secret-of-Monkey-Island I find this section funny: "Enter big whoop the portal of hell. Lechuck goes in, comes out a powerful ghost. Then he is killed again, comes back as a zombie and hatches a plan to lure pirates through the portal of big whoop and come out zombie/ ghosts. Guybrush had spell cast on him and that is why he was a little kid." I find that funny because "porral of hell" that turns people undead was described in Ron's design documents for Mutiny on Monkey Island. And "Guybrush had a spell cast on him" is the natural interpretation one gets when tou watch the MI2 ending while taking LeChuck's glowing eyes and Elaine's fear about a curse seriously... as opposed to NOT taking them seriously. And yet, this had always been understood as a divergent path that CMI took. It was always understood as a different thing than what Ron had in mind. Of course, that's partially because Ron himself told us it wasn't what he had in mind...