bishopcruz

I'm sure the new ending will be amazing and totally not a troll, can't wait.

I dunno. I think that comes from what often happens when a character from a series starts acting out of character or doesn't quite live up expectations suddenly fans start filling in the gaps because something doesn't seem right and there HAS to be a reason. But often that reason is that the writers just didn't nail the character this time around. Maybe they haven't written her in 30 years, maybe they had an idea for her, but the budget ran out, maybe it really is that she's an orderly in an insane asylum looking after former flooring inspector Guybrush. It could literally be ANYTHING because we aren't given enough to work with here. Her story, like most of the story in the game goes nowhere, is at best inoffensive.

As the newly moved in Resident grump here who is probably the most down on the game as anyone in this thread, my issue is very much not about the secret. Or at least not directly. I, and I am sure several others had a general idea of what Ron always wanted the secret to be, let's be honest here, the hints of it being a theme park were around since early in Melee Island. So I figured that A) The Secret would be underwhelming by design and B) He would go even heavier into the theme park angle. That wasn't hard to deduce, heck I am sure if we look around predictions going back decades a T-shirt would be one of the more popular guesses. Sadly my issue with Return is more in the journey itself. The more I look at it, the more I find the budget is likely bursting at the seams, the art style was likely chosen for that very reason, and I admit, it isn't one i liked at first, and it didn't much grow on me either. Even places like Melee and Monkey Island themselves seemed like shadows of their former selves. Some of that I think I could have been okay with if there was a bit more of the idea that time was moving forward, and Melee was a relic of the past, an idea the early game seemed to flirt with, but one that got dropped along with many other ideas as the game continued. But with that drop there was nothing to fill its place. Elaine came off to me as disinterested and had no real role to play in the story at all, something that hasn't happened in a Monkey Island, ever. Stan was very un-Stan like, almost subdued. LeChuck was the opposite of a threat, and the new pirate leaders vanished from the story. I can one hundred percent be on board with ambiguity, but it is VERY hard to do well. And as much as it would give me joy to say I had felt that here, I honestly did not. But it's not the ending. It really was the Journey. The puzzles were generally weak, with a couple of exceptions, very few if any came off as cheeky or clever. The new islands were bland, the story tying it all together was too. It was essentially the MI2 story all over again, but with less urgency and less interesting character. Guybrush wants a thing, LeChuck also wants the thing. That was about it. I guess what I had always considered key to a Monkey Island game was a sense of adventure, a cheeky sense of humor, clever puzzles, and over the top characters that I ended up loving or loving to hate. They tended to build up to something, often to subvert it a bit at the end, and that was ok. And here some of that was there, at times, but it never quite gelled for me. And the worst part is I feel it could have had that journey to the ending if it actually had a climax, if the new people and islands were memorable, if I had some stupid puzzle that stuck with me in its absurdity. And had it not been Monkey Island I likey wouldn't be as down on it as I am. I love this series, deeply. Have since I first played it on a 386 in the 1990s during my freshman year. Every one in the series, even Escape were some of the best of their eras as far as adventure games went. This just felt painfully average in so much. Not the acting, that was top all around, you and Murray are always a treat. And honestly that is a feel I get from other places where there are more people like me who are a bit down on the title. Yeah the ending bothers some, but I think a lot of it is the experience as a whole. The great bits can shine through at times, but so much never quite felt like it lived up to its predecessors. I still rank it above Escape, at least

I just got the impression that since he never wanted them to get together he just made her pretty much bland and pointless. She adds so little to the game and story it feels like she is there because she has to be. Outside of the Love you line which was actually sweet she feels so incredibly flat in this story. No excitement to her at all which is the opposite of every single version of Elaine in just about every Monkey Island game. It was like she had to be in the game but they had no clue what to do with her. Shadow of her former self.

Nuh uh! 😀

Except that was I think what we already had. Saying it is for sure all Guybrush tellings stories doesn't add anything to previous games, and the ending here I don't think adds much at all to this one. Him telling stories to his kid is a new addition here, and not much is done with it. It desperately wants to be Princess Bride but there is a fine line to walk when you are the unreliable narrator writer. MI2 I think handled it as best it could, but left enough ambiguity to really make it work. But if these are all just theme parks, then I don't see that as much of an expansion unless we decide to go more and more into the real life of Guybrush, which also seems to be against the point of what this game is trying for. If they aren't they don't much expand the world at all beyond what could already be done in previous games. I hated the monkey mech too, but there is a tried and true rule of fiction when writing in a series ignore the crap that didn't work if it wasn't important, gloss over it if it was, and fix it if there is no other choice. But I've never seen a story that goes full MAKE YOUR OWN CANON ever really work. Might be forgetting something, but yeah. And that is why I think the ending tried for its themes, but never really connected with them. "It is an amusement park! BUT WAIT! It isn't! Maybe, which do you prefer. Pick one. One is clearly the one I the writer like, but you know... eh... whatever." just doesn't resonate much and isn't really great storytelling. It's like the difference between the Director's Cut of Blade Runner and the Final Cut, one friggen scene removes the ambiguity, and suddenly the ending becomes a lot worse because you KNOW what the director wants you to think.

The Princess Bride comes to mind. Twin Peaks as well. Watchman does it for comics. Off the top of my head. But they all tell stories about their medium while ALSO telling great stories themselves.

See that's my problem. I don't really feel the depth. I get what was attempting to be stated here, it couldn't really be more obvious, but I don't think those themes had to lose the charm and wit of previous entries to get there. I don't find it all that well written, quite honestly. It might be an honest expression of where the writer is, but if I am being honest, it comes across as pretentious. Then again, I very much think that way of a lot of fiction that is trying to deconstruct itself unless it is EXCEPTIONALLY well handled. It is never just enough to be ABOUT something. Themes are a dime a dozen, it's about the execution, and the experience within. Twin Peaks S3 which I use because I have seen the ending here compared to Lynch is about something, but every bit of its execution also tells a story, asks questions, and uses its camera, audio and unease to keep the viewer on edge so the mindscrew ending works. Monkey Island isn't that, and has never BEEN that and if you want to make it that you have to do a better job along the journey. The idea of it being real or not, or just a story has been played with since the first game, and more than played with in MI2, but here it's MI2 ending again but less interesting and going nowhere. Ideas are brought up and never really dealt with, its themes are superficial. And that's before we even get to the mid at best puzzles and environments. All of that is part of the game, and none of it quite reaches any level of fulfillment. There was no real emotional investment to me with these characters, mcuh at all. I suppose that comes off as horribly negative. More so the more I type on it. Fact is I generally was ok with the game as playing it, but rarely if ever more than OK. The few gems here and there, and Monkey Island being Monkey Island kept me going, but it not for that, I likely would have dropped it. One other question I ask, is how do you all feel it expands the world as a whole? I just don't see that, honestly I feel the opposite. The world feels like set pieces more than ever, possibly literally if that's how you choose to take the ending..

Somewhat. That kind of works, but honestly feels like a bit of honeypotting. Not sure why they chose the art design, works for some, but I wasn't able to connect with it much. Still better than EMI at least. That's actually a really good point. I found I tended to not fall in love with LucasArts adventures in truth until Secret of Monkey Island, even though I did play the hell out of Maniac Mansion on my NES. Monkey Island was special, and that fast characterization, biting wit, and fun dialog became the staple that LucasArts was built on. Looking at Tim being missing, does explain the main issues I had with the game, the flat characterization, and the memorable and interesting islands. The dialog trees in RMI were ok, but again, it felt like they were missing a lot of the spark that makes MI feel MI, even when I did chuckle a few times. I understand the idea, but it was missing that spark that really brought the world alive. Another note is the difference in the feel of the world. MI1 and MI2 both felt like worlds you wanted to get lost in, and explore, the bits of gross humor were minimalist, and never really drawn too much attention to, more for the joke value than actually looking dirty and disgusting, which fits with the theme park idea. Here the entire game feels run down, which I assume has to be part of the design and the points being made, I just feel that goes against the general feel of the series, to me up until this point. Looking at the Schaffer titles those worlds also generally felt quite alive at all times, which you also mentioned up there. About the only real issue I have with this, and it could very well be a memory thing, is Grossman was quite good at early Telltale with world building and character work, but it doesn't really seems to fit in here.

A little. I went in expecting it to a certain degree. Part of that is by design, the first half of the game is basically Monkey Island all over again, just kinda worse. The second half does go for new stuff. In the most generous reading the shallow nostalgia is part of the point, which to be fair is mentioned ad nauseum in the early half of the game. It didn't bother me as much as the more fundamental flaws did.

One note, was posting late as hell at night after finishing the game and reading responses, as such I said YOU when I meant "we" as in MI fans in general. Not trying to single you out and on rereading I see how that might have come across. Because I am not trying to say that you are wrong for liking it, even if I do not as much. Glad you loved it. I definitely did not and I absolutely did not go into the game wanting to be a negative nancy. Less than 24 hours later I am honestly liking it less the more I stew on it. Endings being endings and understanding that coming back to something 30 years later was never going to be perfect in the first place. Gilbert was in a different place in 2020 when he started this, which was also obvious even NOT reading the letter at the end of the scrapbook. Being a gurmpy old man today instead of the wide eyed kid who played MI1 likely also changes my views as well. I have trouble getting over the generally flat characters, the downright boring new islands, and the shaggy dog retread. Whether or not the ending here was always the original ending will be debated for a long time. Either way it feels cheap, not deep and not especially interesting. The lack of any great LeChuck interactions near the end bothered me too, along with the disappearance of the three new pirates. Whole lot of build up and very little payoff. I dropped an opinion. MIght be right, might be wrong. Could say much the same to you here as well. Could it be that you are so happy to get any sort of MI game that you're ignoring some fairly obvious flaws? Doesn't matter either way. Recency bias IS a real thing. It isn't going away because we know about it, it's part of how our brains work as a whole. Having a new Monkey Island that is pretty good in a lot of ways is going to tickle certain parts of the brain especially with hardcore fans. And let us not forget the corrolary to it, which is if something doesn't feel right for whatever reason to a crotechty old bugger like myself, then being a fan there is also a tendency to be hyper critical. I like to think that I am not being so, but who knows? And of course that doesn't mean people who did like it will stop, or vice versa. You like it more the more you think about it, great. But I was speaking in generalities as I said above. As in, where will this be a year down the line? Two? Another few decades from now when I'm in diapers? Maybe by then I will come to love it as much as MI2, I doubt it, but it's possible. Maybe the fandom will still put it on a pedastal. But 2 days or so after release it's impossible to say one way or the other because we aren't there yet. In another note: After having gone radio silent since the release announcement, apparently there was also some sort of pre release controversy of some sort that I had zero idea about which had people in teams even before release. Which is likely to make discussions nothing but sunshine and roses with from here on out .

Thing is, I love David Lynch, and this was not David Lynch. For an ending like this to work, the journey has to be interesting and great. And I think once the recency bias goes away and you really LOOK at the game, I just don't feel the journey was great. And to be fair it was going to be VERY hard for Gilbert to do a great follow up to MI2 and everything else 30 years later. For me the bigger issue than the ending was that the cast was flat as a board. And I don't mean the artstyle, which was also not to my taste. LeChuck gave me ZERO laughs, a few of the puzzles did, but that is about it. Elaine was just personality-less throughout the game. Wally didn't feel like Wally, about the only character that felt like themselves was Guybrush, and even he felt muted compared even to part 1 and 2. And I thought the ending was lazy meta. Can't help feeling this way. I liked it fine when it was the ending to MI2, but this is just the same thing, again but with nothing really new added on, just more questions to ask and none that I find particularly interesting. I like all MI games even this one, overall. But I do think that at the end of the day RMI falls a bit flat. Also new but not new here. Been an MI fan since the early 1990s, playing on my soundcard less 386 as one of the games in a Lucasfilm Adventure collection. Overall I think the whole game is fine... just fine... and that's about it. The ending was a rehash of MI2, and the game was an inferior rehash of the first two. The new islands SUCKED. All of them. Look at Phatt Island, Booty Island, Scabb Island, the original Melee Island, all of them had more personality and areas to explore than this one did. Best area was Lechuck's ship but even that was done better in CMI. I am like you, I WISH I loved this game. But I don't. It's fine, just... fine. The art isn't at all to my taste, and the gross out part of it doesn't quite feel like it works. Yeah there was some of that in the first couple, but not quite like this. It felt like bad Ren and Stimpy. Still the pacing was pretty strong, always knew where to go, and what to do, but the world felt tiny. Most of the islands had 2-3 areas, Melee was a shadow of its former self, which I guess was the point but I didn't feel it was handled all that well either. In many ways this felt like a band going back to record another album years after their heyday, but without anything new or interesting to say.