Lagomorph01

It's great to see that there's still so much dedication for such an old game! Congratulations for finishing this remake! Looks like you put a lot of work into it! I just can't help but notice that Razor might be washing her dresses a little bit too hot...

As you might expect from my above comments, right now I’m not too eager for a sequel. But if they did, I’d rather like it not to have this narrative structure. It’s very specific for this game and especially the beautiful ending it sets up. I don’t know, I think we can’t go back (there’s the Twin Peaks link again) to a plain old pirate adventure with modern day elements. A next Monkey Island game would have to do something drastically different, like hopping between fantasy and reality. Maybe a kind of Day of the Tentacle like mechanic where altering something in Guybrush’s fantasy will change something in reality.

I understand that it’s not the same thing, because multiple games haven’t even touched upon the secret. I do think, being what it was, the secret retroactively was a goose with golden eggs. Without knowing it, it gives room for all these adventures, while knowing it makes it an “it was all a dream” sort of desillusion. Either way you look at it, it’s gone now, every new game will be reduced to “Guybrush is making up another story”, and every old game will also bear this mark. The way I look at it at this moment, the secret was worth much more as a secret than it is now. Somehow the treasure of Big Whoop, a pirate curse, the Pox and even the Ultimate Insult to me are more interesting than a guy on a bench being an unreliable narrator.

I know this was always Ron's intention, I just don't think he should've revealed it to be (in an ugly word) "canon". I know TV shows, movies and games are made by writers, directors, actors etc., I just don't want them to acknowledge that the world is fictional. At least not as definitively as RtMI now has. I like how Monkey Island on more than one occasion has been compared to Twin Peaks, because it was exactly that! The difference is that David Lynch never puts his cards on the table (except when forced to, see Twin Peaks season 2). By giving away the mystery of what made Monkey Island special, the whole thing is reduced to "it was all a dream". All those Islands, people and treasures were just theme parks, animatronic's and merchandise... Monkey Island has always walked a very thin line by hinting at this, but not throwing it in your face. And the brilliance of it was that, even with Ron not helming some of the sequels, the writers kept those hints intact without even knowing it. Now that the cat's out of the bag... there is no mystery anymore. I don't care if Guybrush is a delusional orphan or if Elaine is suffering a mental brakedown hunting for limes, just like I didn't care for James leaving Twin Peaks or Cooper hunting for Windom Earle. Everything was held down by one secret, and now it's gone. The goose is dead. The ending is a work of beauty, and my reaction to it was very personal. It just destroyed the whole world that was build upon it with it. And to me, right now, that just feels like too high a price to pay. (The interesting thing is that I completed the game about 2 weeks ago, and that my stance on it is still changing a little bit every day. I guess that shows how brilliant the writing really is... So maybe I'll change my mind about what it has caused too. Right now however, I'm just saddened by it.)

Thinking back on the ending and the reveal of the secret I agree with Ron wholeheartedly, "the secret is better left a secret". Which is why I'm a bit surprised by the fact he decided to reveal it anyway. For me, in retrospect, it totally ruïns the suspension of disbelief. When I didn't know it was all played out in a theme park it was fun thinking about it. Now that it's been proven to be just that, it kinda sucked the fun out of it. It's like the "it was all a dream" ending some tv shows used to do when they wrote themselves in a ditch. You come back from the experience thinking "why did I go through this if it didn't mean anything?". Except that it smudges that feeling across the entire series. If you listen to David Lynch talk about the original mystery of Twin Peaks, he describes it as a goose that lays these golden eggs. As long as you feed it, it will continue to give you riches, but if you kill it (by revealing the mystery) you have nothing left. (I'm paraphrasing.) That's the kind of feeling I get from the ending of RtMI. The goose is dead and everything I've lived through for 30 years has been a lie. The questions the ending raises sadly aren't enough for me to go back to the mystery. I dunno, maybe it's all to fresh in my mind now and I'll have different thoughts about it in a while. But at the moment, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Don’t let a time frame tell you what you like or not like. If something clicks, it clicks. Rose tinted glasses is a way of telling that someone cannot see the truth because of a certain emotion. It’s a strange expression, because it suggests there is one ‘true’ way of looking at it which you cannot see because of said glasses. On the subject of art or entertainment (take your pick) I think that’s nonsense, because everyone can interpret something in their own way or have a certain element that clicks with them. It’s ALL emotion! Saying something hasn’t aged well is also a sentiment, a collective one perhaps, but still a sentiment. I can still enjoy a Marx Brothers movie or a silent film even though they’re a hundred years old. They might’ve been made differently today, but that’s not to say they aren’t beautiful or funny in their own right.

I'm a bit torn on this, because the 'old' islands don't really offer much new content and the new islands are a bit underdeveloped. I guess Brrr-Muda feels the most 'lived in' of the new islands, even though it only has three major locations. (Do all the people there live in town hall?) If I had to go for my favourite location, it would be LeShip. And even there I don't know where the crew sleeps (except Guybrush, he sleeps in Murray's crate if he doesn't want his eyes pecked out.)

I fear we're going offtopic, but here's my two cents: I love the whole BTTF trilogy apart from one tiny detail. BTTF2 introduces "What's the matter, McFly? You chicken?" thing about Marty being a hothead. It truly comes out of left field for me, because nothing in BTTF hints at this. I get that they wanted to give Marty a character arc, but it's so obviously shoved in there that I cringe every time it's mentioned. Other than that, almost perfect trilogy (aside from some necessary recasts). The first one however is flawless and one of my favourite movies of all time!

Now that the dust has settled, I'm ranking the game a little lower than I would've thought. That's not to say I didn't really, really, really like it, but it has more to do with how little new ground it treads. Most of the locations we've already seen in other Monkey Island games, and the new locations don't really feel quite as inspired or detailed as the old ones. A lot of the themes have been done before too (by EMI no less!), maybe not as effectively, but the overlaps are there. The graphics are nice and the compositions and details are wonderful! I'm just still not a fan of tween animation, and while it was expertly handled, I still just see shapes tweening back and forth. I guess it's a compromise that has to be made if you want 2D animation in this day and age, but I just don't like it. About the ending: I really love the humour, the music and the ambience, but I can't shake off the feeling that It's retreading some of the same ground as in MI 1, 2 and 4. On that note, it's not in my top 3. That'll still be SMI, MI2, CMI. That being said, I had a great ride! And the fact that, to me, it doesn't reach the hights of some previous titles, doesn't mean it's not a great game! I'm really impressed by the accomplishment of Ron and his team! Chapeau to them, and I love the product that they've made! Now gimme a physical edition with a soundtrack CD!

I actually peppered the fish while they were IN my inventory, so I had to go to Mélêe to get a second portion of fish that wasn't peppered! I did beat the puzzle though! The hardest one for me was proving that I was the accountant. I was sure I had to find out where he went and convince him to sentence Stan. After I was meddling with the picture I kinda stumbled upon it by accident. Same goes for the last puzzle (with the date and the pirate heads), I had no idea the limerick was supposed to house a year.

Yes! Boybrush’s voice is absolutely amazing! Very well done!

Good for you for prioritizing! The game will wait.

Nope. I didn’t really need to. I honestly think hard mode should’ve been called normal mode, because it was still way to easy. I was hoping to be stuck for at least a couple of weeks, not sail through it in one.

I’m actually quite sad by how good they already look…

+ the gazillion dollars on shipping and taxes. It’s actually double as expensive if you live overseas.

Unpopular opinion: I don’t really like the new pirate leaders. I think they’re too bland for bad guys, and they never really develope into anything interesting. I love me some Iron Rose though. She’s pretty well developed for the role she has, and

I’m not a big fan of these releases, I’ll pass on this too. I hope ReMI get’s a decent physical release!

I never thought I’d see Monkey Island mentioned in the A.D. (a big Dutch newspaper), but here it is! The headline reads: The comeback of the century

I second that! It’s really worth every piece o’ eight!

Has anyone considered that Guybrush might be the only 'real' character in the entire game? If you follow the orphaned boy theory, isn't it strange that Elaine and Boybrush are by his side until the end, after which they leave and he sits there alone? Having myself been in therapy, I know how easy it is to set up coping methods for the problems that surround you, and for me, escaping into game worlds has been one of them (just like it is for Guybrush if you follow this theory). If you believe that the whole game is a form of therapy for Guybrush, and letting his obsession with the secret go is the goal, wouldn't it be likely that Elaine and Boybrush are his coping methods, and that's why they leave him? - Boybrush: He could be the inner (rejected) child of Guybrush that needs comforting. Being nice for your inner child means you'll learn to have compassion for yourself and is the way to dealing with your patterns and problems. After which you 'fuse' with the inner child and can just be nice to yourself. - Elaine: She's more like a counselor in all of this. She's way too nice to Guybrush to be a real person. She doesn't care that he does horrible things to people and places (even her beloved Mêlée Island mop tree). She does not judge him, listens to him and asks him questions about his actions (or maybe patterns?). She's more of a psychologist than a wife. This way, when Guybrush is 'healed', he doesn't need Elaine and Boybrush anymore. He's at peace with himself and the world around him. And he ends up alone on a bench and is completely fine with it. Looking at it like that through the lense of my own journey, it might be the most beautiful ending imaginable.

Just finished it last night, the ending is wonderful and left me thinking for a long time... (I even woke up in the middle of the night thinking of it.) I haven't really gathered my thoughts on it, yet. But I'll say one thing about the game... I love the comeback of the "Pappapisshu" cry! 😄

This is great news! I've been oogling that book for a while and I'd love an English copy! Of course I don't have any reason to complain at all the Monkey Island goodness that's being released recently, but I do have a question for the author: I don't know how the book is structured, but what I'm wondering is if you'll update the book to include Return to Monkey Island. After all, if I'm not mistaken, the French version was released before ReMI was even announced. I am a completionist at heart, and I'd love for every chapter to be mentioned!

I used Winamp back in the day. But I haven’t used it since the move to Apple hardware. I thought it was a great player though, I loved how easy to use and customisable it was!

I love this idea! And it really fits in with the whole B horror esthetic that Maniac Mansion is build around. I’d love for it to have hammy acting with C grade actors as well. Phantasmagoria comes to mind! But the whole thing should be really polished, like we’ve come to expect from LucasArts/Film Games.

I’d love for a Return to the Mansion to happen, but honestly, I’d rather have Ron make something new, like he did with Thimbleweed Park.