EMI- Bad or Misunderstood?

[Mr Flibble]

Okay, I know everyone got a vibe of disappointment from M4, but what I want to know is, WHY? My only pet hate is the graphics. I think giving the game 3D graphics was a step forward, but for once LucasArts did a bad job. We KNOW they can do better. Look at GF. And I know about the shallow charactors, but do these really lower the game to the general level of disapproval it receives? Or did I miss something which makes it worse.After all, it had funny lines.' Good gravy! Is that a dagger I see before me?' (English Lit junkies 'll get a kick outta that)

 

PS- Doesn't Ozzie remind you of Rupert Murdoch? (the simpson version, anyway).That question almost warrants a thread of its own.

[Tahnee]

I think one of the main problems is that the humor is, for the most part, all in the satire. Satire is by nature a very subtle thing...even the more biting and directed Juvenalian satire (which is what probably 90% of all of EMI's satire is; it's extremely focused at one person/place/thing). So maybe people aren't going to get what's so funny about Jambalaya Island the first time around, if they're not actively looking for the satire. I know I only caught it because I took one look at the Starbuccaneers sign and thought, "Naaah. It can't be...they spoofed Starbucks?! All right!"

 

A lot of it's in the lit. geeking, too. I just about fell out of my chair over Ozzie's "I am Ozzie Mandrill! Look upon my works, ye mighty pirates, and despair!" line. I later quoted the line to a friend of mine, who just blinked and scratched his head.

 

And actually, I've thought lately that Ozzie reminds me more than a bit of how I've always pictured Ethan Frome. Only...more mean and bitter than withdrawn and sad. It must be the cane.

[Remi]

Well, it's certainly not bad, but yeah, the kind of humor it uses might not be everybody's cup of tea. I like satire, but I can see why not everybody would like to see it in Monkey Island.

 

Their loss, I say.

[Skinkie]

I really liked it up to the monkey kombat & herman toothrot thing, then it just got really confusing to me.

[adey12]

I really really loved the graphics of MK4, The guybrush in MK3 seems to skinny now and yuckky.

 

I loved the story.

 

I guess i just wished Hemon Toothrot stayed as Hemon and stayed on Monkey island.

 

I loved the monkeys.

 

I dont like monkey combat its a bit Reptetitiv.

 

I hope the graphics of MK5 are like Mk4

[Benny]

As an adventure game its not bad at all.

As an MI game its pretty bad because of the plot and humour, especially the plot.

[Jedi-Monkey]

The game plot and puzzles were great.

I just hated the graphics and controls. I like the point and click of the first 3 games.

The best graphics were definetly CMI except that Guybrush was too tall and skinny.

Monkey Kombat was alright. Its not my favourite thing. But at least they managed to make it into a proper puzzle when you fought LeChuck at the end.

EMI wasnt a bad game, just less excellent than the other three.

Oh yeah, the plot holes it created were annoying. If someone is making a sequel to someone elses work, they should make sure they understand whats going on before elaborating.

[Mr Flibble]

I think I didn't like it 'cos its kinda like the end of an era. The second biggest monkey head in the world gets destroyed, and beneath it there is a giant monkey robot. I wonder who thought that up? ¬¬

-

 

Also, Herman Toothrot is HT Marley. (But that can't be! Ht Marley died years ago!....in a boating accident....off the coast of australia....after getting sucked into a whirlpool...GRANDPA!!!)

 

I know there are plot holes, but what are they? No-one will ever talk about them.

 

I not defending EMI, i'm just giving it the right to a fair trial.

[Tahnee]

Originally posted by Mr Flibble

I know there are plot holes, but what are they? No-one will ever talk about them.

 

The big plot hole (and, also, the only plot hole EMI brought up I think) is how Herman could possibly be H.T. Marley.

 

See, in EMI, Herman/H.T. tells Guybrush that he washed up on Monkey Island with his accordion and took the "Herman Toothrot" moniker from the remaining letters (H and T) on aforementioned accordion.

 

But in MI1, if you read the captain's log in the Sea Monkey, it says that the Captain and his first mate--Herman Toothrot--set sail for Monkey Island from Mêlée. So unless there's two Herman Toothrots running around, um, yeah, you get the idea.

 

Loosely connected with that is the fact that Herman/H.T. said Ozzie Mandrill pushed him into the whirlpool twenty years ago -- but in CMI, LeChuck says he pushed H.T. into the whirlpool. (Personally, I take H.T.'s word over LeChuck's and say it was Ozzie who did it and LeChuck's full of baloney...strangely psychic, but full of baloney.)

 

To be fair to EMI, though, CMI brought up more plot holes than EMI did...not to point a finger at that game, either, but it's true. Then again, trying to properly explain the ending to MI2 isn't an easy task.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally posted by TyraaRane

To be fair to EMI, though, CMI brought up more plot holes than EMI did...not to point a finger at that game, either, but it's true.

 

Would you like to point these holes out to me? Or are you just not pleased with the MI2 explanation?

 

Anyway, EMI is my least favorite of the Monkey Islands, but it is often too harshly treated.

[Remi]

CMI had a few plotholes, though they were mostly minor (other than the explanation of the MI2 ending). An example is that they said Elaine is still the governor of Melee, yet in MI2 she says she quite the job. Nothing really huge.

[Akril]

I was thinking a little about the questions this thread asked last night, and came up with a somewhat small, yet debateable theory.

 

I'd say that as a game, EMI excelled...but in all the wrong places.

 

For example, there was a lot of "highbrow" humor that only the most culturally literate would chuckle at, but there seemed to be just a bit too much of it in comparison to just plain silly humor (i. e., "He was trying to put up a swing" --SMI, "How will being able to draw perfect circles help you get to Skull Island?" --CMI). The other three games had a fairly even balance of sophisticated/slapstick humor, and anything that the average person might not understand was usually very small and/or insignificant (i. e., the blind dog’s name in CMI, Bart and Fink’s names in LCR).

 

It might be just me, but there seemed to be a whole lot of over-my-head references, and frequently ones that were more than a little exaggerated. To add on to Tyraa’s post, I wouldn’t have gotten the Ozymandias joke at all if it weren’t for an obscure audio adventure made by a company whose goal is to spread consciousness through the media (there’s a world-famous synthesizer artist constantly getting into bloody fights with his obstinate computer called Ozymandias, king of kings, blah blah blah, look on ye works…), and I’m sure that not many people understood this really dramatic outburst from Ozzie…

 

And there were a few clever spoofs, most of which running in the same vein as Starbuccaneers (like the Voodoo XL-something or other in the IHOM, Melee), but Monkey Island hasn’t really been a series that is famous for its spoofing of companies and products. Space Quest, on the other hand, is stuffed full of sci-fi references and parodies (i.e., the parodying game titles, a video game called Stooge Fighter III, a huge, blobby beast named Jebba the Hop (who, incidentally, is voiced by Denny Delk, the voice of MURRAY)), and a Starbuck’s spoof would certainly fit into that series (StarbuckRodgers, perhaps?), but it just sticks out like a sore thumb in EMI.

 

I also think that EMI tried too hard to be better than its predecessor, and made advances in the wrong directions. The humor seems a bit strained. It reminds me of my own struggling-comic-strip-maker attempts to create a funny line or gag in every single strip when I should’ve left well enough alone. There are several things that could’ve been left out (especially the Marco Pollo line, it’s a bit disconcerting for someone who never knew Marco Polo as a game played in a swimming pool until her mid-teens, I pull your leg not. I knew him as the exaggerating explorer for at least half of my life).

 

And the graphics…they were groundbreaking and well-done, but they weren’t graphics that are becoming to MI. Everything seemed a little too…”clean.” I liked the previous three games for their rough and rugged look (you can almost see some of the pencil lines in the CMI graphics), and EMI’s graphics didn’t seem angular, crusty or filthy enough. It didn’t seem like a pirate’s world. It was more like a fluffy façade of one. And even after playing CMI four times, the EMI graphics just seemed a bit too funny. I don’t know what path LucasArts could have gone down if they chose not to use this kind of 3D, but even for me, an MI newbie who’s played quite a few adventure games, EMI tends to be a real square peg when it comes to graphics.

 

Also, EMI seemed to mimic its predecessors a bit too much, resulting in a veritable potpourri of MI elements, which wasn’t exactly a pleasant combination. Insult swordfighting (or some form of it anyway), finding a crew of three…CMI did this as well, but it was obviously repeating the pattern as a homage to the original MI game, but including a lot of original stuff as well. I really was impressed by the goals of the designers…thinking up piratey things that the MI games HADN’T touched on yet, and smoothly incorporating them into the game. A really interesting strategy.

 

However, in a few ways, EMI was struggling to be like its prequel instead of boldly striding forward. It seemed to hold back in a few ways that I can’t exactly elaborate on at the moment, but I think it would be a nice change of pace to break the pattern and perhaps be a little more like MI2. There was no hunting down three blokes to join your crew and finding a ship, and there was no insult gaming of any kind. But EMI relied a little too heavily on the elements of the past game for my taste, and that made it just a little shallower in general.

 

Like I said before, EMI has great graphics, but not ones that fit the MI style, a fairly interesting plot, but not one that can stand beside the plots of the previous games and not seem out of place, and quite a lot of funny stuff, but not the kind of “funny” that every MI fan laughs at.

 

And now I’d better be off to tighten my wrist braces. Ouch.

 

 

Akril

[Lefty9fingers]

This may seem strange but the main reason I dislike EMI is because of that dang grassy knowl outside the House of Sticks. When I played CMI and saw the grassy knowl and the book depositiry up there at the dualing grounds I thought it was very funny. Then I played EMI, and low and behold there was the same joke! Not only that but the grassy knowl didn't have any good reason to be sitting there all ready and waiting to be looked at except that the writers wanted to insert a joke into the game. Now this wouldn't be all that bed except they used the EXACT SAME JOKE in the previous game, where it was done in a way that it seemed natural for it to be sitting there, whereas in EMI it was just stuck front and center with no other purpose than to add life to an otherwise ill-conceived computer game.

Now don't get me wrong, in general I like EMI in and of itself, but once I consider it part of the Monkey Island saga I can't help but be disappointed. It's like being a Star Wars fan and then going to go see Episode 1 for the first time. Perhaps in this day and age overly produced films are the norm, such as Die Another Day, but when you compare Episode 1 or Die Another Day to the original Star Wars or early James Bond moves respectively there is obviously no comparison. As is the case with Escape from Monkey Island. (A fitting title when you think about how Escape from Monkey Island is a departure from the early stylistic productions, favoring a more main stream gaming approach.)

Perhaps we all have Sony to blame, for EMI is the first Monkey Island game to be on PlayStation, hence the console-oriented game controls, in which case the game was geared more towards kids who were just now getting a glimpse at the monkey island world. This is obvious from the very beginning because of the cut scene that shows us what happened in the first three games prior. In my opinion Escape from Monkey Island is like a movie remake. Take Planet of the Apes for example. The remake was a well-done, exciting action adventure movie, but anyone who was a fan of the original would like to slit the throat of Tim Burton for even considering a remake. Such is the case with EMI. Anyone who bought it for PS2 not knowing what they were getting in to probably enjoyed it because they had nothing else to compare it to. But anyone who knows the previous games knows what EMI COULD have been, we know how good it SHOULD have been. And THAT it was it sucks.

[Governor Phatt]

I don't remember a grassy Knoll in EMI, when was that?

 

I also totally agree with Akril, although the first MI games did have sort of parodies (like the end of MI2 with the brother and stuff) although i guess they were more in jokes...

[Jedi-Monkey]

The grassy knoll was in front of Freddys stick shop.

I worked out the Herman/Horatio plothole ages ago. As you probably dont want to bother going through my site to find it, Im bringing it to you. Plothole fixed.

 

 

The Life of H T Marley

 

20 years before Guybrush Threepwood arrived on Mêlée Island, Captain Horatio Theaquos Marley (Governor of the Tri-Island area) sailed off with his crew, Rum Rogers Sr., Young Lindy and Rapp Scallion the cook, to find the Legendary Big Whoop. They stopped to get supplies on Blood Island. While there they met LeChuck (Who was alive at the time). One night LeChuck got Rogers drunk and took a copy of the map to Big Whoop. It was now a race to the treasure. LeChuck got there first, shortly followed by the crew. They found out that Big Whoop was the gateway to hell. LeChuck used it and became an immortal ghost. The crew promised to never let the secret out. They split their map into four pieces and took one each. LeChuck promised to kill each one. The crew returned to their home Islands, Horatio went to Mêlée Island.

LeChuck kept his promise as best he could. Rapp died in a fire in his Weenie Hut on Scabb Island, Young Lindy committed suicide after going broke on Booty Island and Rum died in an accident involving a toaster and his bath in his home on Phatt Island.

Soon after Horatio sailed to Australia to get away from the life of Governor of the Tri-Island area. While there he met Ozzie Mandrill. In the boat race they had been preparing for, Ozzie rammed him into a freak whirlpool that took him back to Mêlée Island. (LeChuck took credit for this as everyone thought Horatio had died). The shock of it made him lose a lot of his memory. Seeing the initials H T on his accordion, he named himself Herman Toothrot. Later on that year, he became first mate under an unknown pirate. They sailed out to find Monkey Island. While preparing a meal, Horatio came across the voodoo spell to find the Island. The two pirates sailed their rowboat out to shore. They explored. When the Captain died, Horatio knew he could not get back. He trained some monkeys to sail the ship to Mêlée. When they got there Stan bought the ship. Horatio was stuck on Monkey Island until Guybrush came.

Guybrush took H T back to Mêlée Island, then went away to battle LeChuck. Meanwhile Horatio discovered the tunnel in the alley behind the church that led to Dinky Island, the home of Big Whoop. While there he became a philosopher and taught who ever came by. Guybrush a year later found him again while searching for Big Whoop. While Guybrush fought LeChuck once more, Horatio must have gone back to Mêlée Island. From there he sailed his ship to Monkey Island again. He made a good home on the beach out of his ship (he felt that to be a good hermit, you could not own a ship). He built a mine in the canyon for gold. One day while mining in his cart, he had an accident. This knocked his memory out completely. Guybrush came to the Island again and found Horatio in this daze. He threw various objects at Horatio, each one knocking some memory back into his mind. Eventually, Horatio remembered his true identity and that he was Elaine Marleys grandfather. Now he had to rescue his granddaughter from LeChuck with a bit of help from Guybrush. They unleashed the Secret of Monkey Island (a giant Monkey Robot/ Ultimate Insult) along with Jojo Jr., the monkey prince. They used it to defeat LeChuck and Ozzie Mandrill. Once LeChuck and Ozzie had been killed, Horatio became Governor of the Tri-Island area again.

[Udvarnoky]

I don't understand why everyone is saying that EMI had the most subtle, obscure jokes.

[adey12]

EMI is a great game !!!!!! Mi 3 is worst game for me, but still great.

 

I dont know why ppl moan about it. It has great puzzels, jokes and story, You see ppl walk around the towns giving it a bust astmosphere things to see, you get a bannna picker !!!!!.

It all makes sence.

 

I like to see you lot try and make a game

[Tahnee]

Originally posted by Udvarnoky

Would you like to point these holes out to me? Or are you just not pleased with the MI2 explanation?

 

Well, maybe it's not so much as a "plot hole" as it is "complete and utter failure of time and/or logic."

 

See, on Blood Island, Griswald refers to Minnie Goodsoup as his great aunt, IE his grandmother's sister. Minnie says that LeChuck stole the diamond ring from her, right? Presumably when she was young...hence the "Belle of Blood Island" title. Now even assuming that Griswald's grandmother was the older sister and had Griswald's father/mother by then...Griswald isn't young.

 

Likewise, during the evil stories bit, LeChuck says that he went to find Big Whoop (or is it the Secret of Monkey Island? Ack. Can't remember.) in order to impress Elaine. There was a shipwreck and all that, he was the only survivor, he made it to Blood Island and stole the ring to get a ship...etc. When he finally makes it to Monkey Island, however, he says that he found Big Whoop and jumped into it and became an undead ghost -- and H.T. Marley and crew, so horrified by LeChuck's tranformation, ripped up their map to Big Whoop and went their separate ways.

 

LeChuck then proceeded to hunt down all the crewmembers over a number of years (presumably, some of the things he mentions might actually take a while) and kill them all.

 

Now, Elaine had to at least be thirteen (at bare minimum, and even so, ew!) when LeChuck first tried to win her hand. So how old are all these people, really? None of it really quite fits, since LeChuck only seems to have been in his late thirties when he died...and Elaine only strikes me as being about twenty-six...(would a 30+ year-old woman say "we're too young to become career bureaucrats," really?) but the mess with Big Whoop and H.T. Marley happened twenty years ago. So unless everybody's sitting on the Fountain of Youth, I'm confused.

 

 

Jedi-Monkey, I came up with a similar theory...there's just one problem: H.T. Marley specifically says in EMI that he washed up on Monkey Island. I at first explained that away with, "well, he was confused," and he thought he was on Monkey when he was really on Mêlée...and so he joined the Captain because he was trying to get back to Mêlée, not realizing that he was already there...but that's really stretching things, I think.

 

Originally posted by Akril ...especially the Marco Pollo line, it’s a bit disconcerting for someone who never knew Marco Polo as a game played in a swimming pool until her mid-teens, I pull your leg not. I knew him as the exaggerating explorer for at least half of my life

 

True. Though, I think there are probably some correlations between Marco de Pollo and Marco Polo. Um, maybe. (This is from the person who's currently trying to prove a correlation between the "scaring the gravedigger" scene in CMI and a good chunk of Hamlet, though, so don't take my word for it.)

[Udvarnoky]

Ah, you see, that's where I disagree. He could have already have been a GHOST at the time.

 

I basically find ways to make CMI plausible, but I just can't do it with EMI.

[Lefty9fingers]

Jedi_Monkey, I would just like to point out that Herman's middle name is Tocamatta(SP), not Theaquos.

[LeChuck lives]

The bit that ruined it for me was everythig from when u get on monkey island. the stuff before that was quite funny and i liked some of it. also i didnt like the graphics.

[Jedi-Monkey]

I couldnt remember the name when I wrote it. Its not improtant, it begins with a 't'.

Ill have to check on the washing up on Monkey Island. I think he just said he washed up on the other side of the world.

[Tahnee]

Originally posted by Lefty9fingers

Jedi_Monkey, I would just like to point out that Herman's middle name is Tocamatta(SP), not Theaquos.

 

Torquemada.

 

Originally posted by Jedi-Monkey

Ill have to check on the washing up on Monkey Island. I think he just said he washed up on the other side of the world.

 

I just checked...H.T. says that the whirlpool dropped him "on the other side of the world." However, at the beginning of his story, he also says that he's going to tell Guybrush how he wound up "here on Monkey Island with nothing but a busted accordion, the clothes on [his] back, and a head full of broken memories."

 

So it's implied that he washed up on Monkey Island. If he hadn't, there would've been more to the story after he fell through the whirlpool.

[Jedi-Monkey]

If he had explained that it wouldnt be a plot hole.

Thanks for that though.

[Ernil]

I like to see you lot try and make a game

 

 

Yufster, please step forward.