BaronGrackle

Why... simultaneous joyful anticipation and blue-fired rage/fear, of course. Co-existing in the same space.

Even though I'm sort of frothing in other forums, I will admit the mouth(s) look better with the changes. I did notice how they looked in the trailer. I thought they were still the same, until you pointed this out. For what it's worth. EDIT: LeChuck's co-existing simultaneous mouth(s) is actually a sublime illustration of my hype over this game.

This is something that can be overcome in a Lucas style adventure game, but it feels more difficult to imagine in Monkey Island specifically because: 1) Guybrush is our protagonist and our vehicle, and he's been firmly established as hetero coded (only flirts with women, has been seen as identifying/dressing male as a very young child). So that's our primary game perspective. 2) It's comedy, and a huge portion of Guybrush's reactions to his world are comedic. A lot of things are played for laughs. I feel like the most genius types of inclusion are the most subtle ones, but that's hard to pull off because subtlety might not get the message across. As an example... imagine Largo LaGrande comes back, and Ron decides he has always been a transgender male. (I heard a fan suggest this once as an alternative explanation for the bra.) If Ron wanted to canonize this... how would it even be depicted? It's a topic where subtlety is often the best and most beautiful means, but if you're too subtle then the fans accuse you of pulling a "gay Dumbledore" without any real evidence shown in your work. I can stop if this is crossing uncomfortable lines. I think I'm done with my thoughts on it, anyway?

In MI2 even, they'd use Guybrush's wide-eyed sprite.

I guess I just can't think of any Lucasarts adventure game (from Maniac Mansion to Escape from Monkey Island) that would scream: "This isn't very inclusive." I guess Zak McKraken calls the two women college students co-eds... Indy 3 and 4 have all kinds of Nazis and swastikas, even if they're depicted as your enemy... Escape's writing of creepy Guybrush and also Brittany was clearly written before #metoo empathy... and I suppose that even with the vegetarian leanings, the "primitive" depictions of the cannibals on Monkey and Blood Island (Secret and Curse) are arguably problematic. I'd understand if Lemonhead and his tribesman don't return in Return. EDIT: Though one of my favorite jokes in Curse is when Lemonhead downplays the natives' understanding of medicine by bragging about their European-influenced, state of the art BLOODLETTING center. That was irony done well.

Yeah, similar to ending "A Pirate I Was Meant To Be". In both of those you can end things early, but it's more fun to drag it out until the correct option is the only one left!

I remember in AOL forum days, I had Castle Brunwald down. I was much flakier on the Airport and exit from Germany, but that Castle Brunwald I just enjoyed playing through in various ways. If I wanted to avoid switching uniforms often, I'd just knock out Corporal Kruger (#3), and I'd avoid touching the ale guard (#1, who you can also pass by offering a drink) until I had the officer's uniform. He lets an officer pass automatically without any dialogue puzzle, and then I'd never have to switch clothes... though maybe that doesn't net I.Q. points, I forget. And I recall that, to "clear a path" as your guide described, I needed to fight some guards in a certain order... and I think I even talked to most of them first so that the tough ones didn't chase me down early. Textbook alarm guard (#8) was a Medium (or maybe he was Hard, but the area was large enough I could retreat a huge amount?); I needed to give Mein Kampf to save my energy - and I recall he would start attacking if I'd already knocked out some guards before meeting him. Also his hair color changed if you went to the save menu after punching him out. Painting guard (#4) was also a Medium, but the painting made him disappear so that was nice. The Easy guards were the ones on the first floor (#2, #3) and the nervous guard at the top of the third floor stairs (#9). I'd target them first, and manage to keep full health. Then the Medium hallway guards were the heavyset one at the end of the 2nd floor (#7) and the officer Sigfried (#11), so I'd fight one then use first aid before facing the other. It was a shame that, after planning all that or faking Colonel Vogel with the old book, it still teleported you to the middle of Germany afterward. I wish some of Secret of Monkey Island's contemporaries had gotten modern rerelease treatment. Add a sucker punch option, and Last Crusade is good to go!

@ThunderPeel2001, I just had the pleasure of reading your Last Crusade walkthrough on gamefaqs that you wrote 20 years ago or so! Reading about the punch, retreat, punch strategy again takes me back. And I share your opinion, which may be unpopular: the fighting system in Last Crusade was far superior to the one in Fate of Atlantis. (Though the sucker punch was nice.)

Inclusive? In the context of an adventure game, I'm not even sure what that means. No copyright protection wheels? /joke

Minor perhaps, but both of those are good examples. Now I remember reading someone's opinion, that selling Celso the ticket is the best glimpse we have of Manny the travel agent.

How curious! Time to restart the EGA and assassinate Bob again. - - - "Why, Guybrush?!" "Because I want to see what you look like when you die in this reality. Hold still."

Yeah, I've thought about this. Of course, I'm a hater, so my natural inclination is to link the New Pirate Leaders with Rex Crowle. I'm sorry not sorry. It's always going to be in my brain because they were all sort of revealed together, and the New Pirate Leaders aren't returning characters so they only exist in the current art. But I'm like, 96% sure that wasn't creator intent. (shrug) EDIT: But more importantly, weren't the Pirate Leaders always useless and unimpressive? I thought it was fitting that they disappeared as soon as LeChuck hit Mêlée and were never heard from again. I'm a little surprised to see them return in this game. I'm curious where the story will go. Would Guybrush even want them in charge again?

1. VGA (or is it just the CD VGA?) has Bob disappear suddenly with an unassuming pop. Is that how it looks in EGA? 2. Not necessarily! In Tales, Guybrush is root beer zapped at least once and seemingly has his spirit obliterated. He just respawns at the Crossroads and manages to reenter the living world again. EDIT: New headcanon: When a ghost is zapped by root beer, the level of agony and drama is correlated to the wickedness of their spirit. Think of Zak McKraken needing to burn away his bad karma if he killed animals. This is why Ghost LeChuck's death is the most drawn out, and Ghost Guybrush's is the second most drawn out. Bob is an innocent soul, so he goes quick and painlessly.

Yes, convincing Maureen to stop tearing you apart! Fair point on the vehicle computer inputs. Monkey 2: Winning Elaine over. I thought the answers were obvious, but apparently some playtesters had to work at it. It looks like she has a little system of "getting warmer" and "getting colder" reflected in her responses to you, similar to how MI1 Stan will always give you his current appraisal of the ship's worth if you ask him. Curse: I don't care if I did it in MI1 already: defeating Rottingham. Tales: Romancing the manatee, the melee a trois with Morgan and the swordfighter Was there a great dialogue-based puzzle in Grim Fandango? Little things like convincing Glottis to be your driver come to mind, but I don't recall a moment of major dialogue challenge. It's funny because, in the poetry bar in Year 2, my children initially thought you needed the correct poem to win over the marxist beatniks at the table. Maybe it's because when you ask about your poem, the three of them give different critiques... my kids didn't realize the critiques were always the same, and a red herring.

That's actually kind of funny. If I had known about that sign in my first playthrough, it would have just tantalized me with "Elaine is here and also probably a way to open that root crate". As it was, I just operated under the go-to mindframe of "This is a door that kicks you out, so you must need to go in because adventure game!"

True, but the dialogue puzzles succeed in getting me! Great moments in dialogue puzzles Last Crusade: Every interaction with Nazi guards. Secret of Monkey Island: Defeating the Swordmaster, buying the Sea Monkey. Fate of Atlantis: Final dialogue with Dr. Uberman. (Honorable mention: resisting the urge to sell fine leather jackets to an armed, trigger-happy guard.) Knights of the Old Republic I and II: Too many to count. Top prize goes to your trial in Manaan if you destroy their kolto supply and ruin them.

Huh. I'm curious but can't check now. Does anyone remember what the sign says?

Something something this was intricate symbolism done on purpose to convey that Bob is on the wrong side, that he is naturally a friendly pirate who has no business being LeChuck's right hand man... or should we say, no business being LeChuck's RIGHT LEG man? He poses and stands as if he has nothing LEFT of himself, as if it were gone, but in actuality it is his side RIGHT BY LeChuck that is false though it pretends to be real. In actuality, it is the part of Bob's soul that is LEFT that is true and has been all along. Through most of MI1, Bob is the wrong way round. Now he is upside down. Heh heh heh, I am not laughing out of joy. Inside a dream, inside a dream, inside a dream. (recites more Manny poetry lines) The End.

It is funny that the inconsistency happens when Bob faces left, and he happens to be facing left the vast majority of his appearances.

With Guybrush and Elaine... I just worry that we'll have "Elaine sees Guybrush as a little brother" play out. It worries me because Ron has said in the past that Elaine sees Guybrush as a little brother... and he's said more recently that Elaine and LeChuck are like older kids while Guybrush is like a younger kid tagalong they can't shake off. And I can't reconcile the idea of "Elaine isn't physically attracted to Guybrush" with what I see in ANY of the Monkey Island games... from the scene of Elaine inviting him to her place in Secret to fool around, to her being ready to take him back in Revenge if he hadn't been distracted by treasure, to the cementing of their relationship in the following three games including the role of their marriage itself as the final puzzle solution in the series to this point. I've said it before, but the whole thing makes me wonder if it was Grossman or Schafer who wrote the scenes at Mêlée's docks and Booty's mansion, rather than Gilbert.

Unrelated: As a child of the '80s-'90s, I think that (overall) what we consider "kid shows" have grown in lengths and bounds in terms of maturity. If you have Disney+, you can do a binge on products like Gravity Falls, DuckTales 2018, Owl House, and freakin' Amphibia. And as a result, when you walk into other franchise discussions, you have to keep yourself from laughing when you hear things like "[big franchise] was always meant for kids, don't be critical" or "you can't compete with nostalgia" or "you can't go back". I go back routinely. There's a lot of quality in today's world. EDIT: By the way, the intro text to the film Lightyear is incorrect. There is no way Andy watched that movie in 1995. Andy watched that movie in 2022, just like us. It was a reboot film, and he dragged his spouse and kids to it, and he loved it.

Oh, the Sea Monkey! I understand now. I thought there was some weird conspiratorial fanon about Guybrush causing the Mad Monkey to sink, and that's how its last known coordinates were known and recorded, and that's why Guybrush knew it had been recorded in a library book... bwa ha. Confirmation that Bob was root beer zapped (either by Guybrush or someone else) and has lived in the Land of the Forgotten for so long that his spiritual form is beginning to break down and manifest inconsistently. If he can't remember which leg was a peg, then his reality of existence can't remember either.

I've never heard of this thing. What's the premise?

Yeah, it's funny that Curse shares the death theme with his life insurance venture. But after that, not so much. EDIT: Actually? I guess in Tales, Stan exists as a symbol of the forces trying to kill you. So Secret and Escape are the oddballs. (Unless of course the secret of Monkey Island is death, in which case Stan sells you passage to it.) Stan in Grim Fandango universe when? "Mr. Threepwood! Well, son, I'm ready to take you now!"

Thanks for indulging!