Return to Monkey Island

[MurraySchull]

Considering that one of their first scenes in SMI features Guybrush and Elaine calling each other "love muffin" "sugar boots" "honey pumpkin" "plunder bunny" etc.  and ends with them looking lovingly into the night sky together, I don't think it's a giant leap in logic for Ackley and Ahern to presume that Ron would've put them together in the third game (after resolving their differences brought about in MI2 of course.)

 

Even if that wasn't Ron's plan, I don't blame Curse for putting them together when it is/was very common for couples in movies, etc. to fight/argue in the middle of the story, and get back together at the end. Hell, even in MI2, she briefly begins to fall for Guybrush's "weakness and ineptitude" again, until she finds out that he just wants the map, of course!

 

I just find it difficult to imagine MI now that doesn't feature Guybrush and Elaine together, and it's not as if the implication isn't there at all in the first two games. I'm just curious to the direction that their relationship would've taken in Ron's presumably 1992 version of MI3. This will be something that I'd imagine he'll be working around in ReMI.

[Ramen]

1 hour ago, Jayel said:

As the guy who did the header image for that article, I think ReMI looks great! Its art feels very much like work of an accomplished and technically competent artist going for a particular style (and it is - looking at Rex Crowle's previous works they're jawdroppingly good. Knights and Bikes in particular, you can really tell it was his passion project). No one's wrong to dislike it or disagree with it stylistically, but half the fun in appreciating art is engaging with stuff you don't like, wouldn't you agree

Yes, I do agree! And as you can see, I do engage with it, I am not the one unwilling to talk about it

That doesn't mean I agree it is technically or stylistically good.

Are you Dan Lee, btw? The header image reminds me of his work. Kudos on it!

[JacquesSparkyTail]

10 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Elaine was first tricked into wearing a cursed ring, then turned and objectified into a literal statue, a mere thing and treasure to be stolen and retrieved and stolen and retrieved. Elaine then gets ten waking seconds to commit an act of domestic violence and is next shown tied up and gagged, having to listen to LeChuck's story how he killed her dad. Next scene, a good demure Christian marriage in white. I have my reservations about CMI's "20 lines of dialog" Elaine plot, and it definitely shouldn't have ended in marriage.

 

It's obvious in LeChuck's Revenge how that was never Ron's plan. Monkey 2 showed us in no uncertain terms that Guybrush chose gold and fame over her, whatever the player did. He wasn't ready for a relationship, let alone marriage. But, what Ron might have been setting up with LeChuck's Revenge was, in a nutshell, a coming of age story arc, to be concluded in a future game.

 

If it was that, Curse has smashed that arc to pieces by declaring the issues between the two resolved or at least so irrelevant that they would of course marry.  I totally understand why Ron would take issue with that.

 

So how do you pick up the pieces of this arc, 25 years after the smashing? By having the characters go their own ways for a good while. Like, Guybrush with the treasure hunting and Elaine with the Marley Foundation. Let them find together anew, define the issues again, then finally have them resolve what truly kept them apart.

 

And that would be an emotional depth that from my point of view CMI didn't have.

 

I don't know whether Ron's the type to not riddle genuine emotional moments with rich and unsavory layers of irony with bacon taste, but I'm absolutely certain that Dave can do it.

 

 

Not sure how much i agree with this interpretation of curse elaine. People often talk about curse as the moment she stopped being an independent character and started being a damsel in distress archetype but I don’t really think that’s quite fair. 
 

Her victimhood in the game isn’t the result of weakness or incompetence but just the natural result of being in the orbit of the bumbling guybrush. It effects everyone eventually lol. Once freed she’s instantly heavily outnumbered so her subsequent capture also can’t be put down to incompetence and she practically instantly escapes and sets about fixing everything like she always has (off screen, but that was a buget thing not a story telling thing.) 

 

I think if we’re looking for poor depictions of elaine there are better games to choose. Revenge depicts her as a stereotypical bitchy ex who, despite being angry at guybrush, is ready to run back to him as soon as he clicks his fingers. I don’t think it’s fair to say that before curse elaine wouldn’t have wanted to marry guybrush when its made clear in 2 that he sort of has her wrapped around his little finger. 
 

Then in tales we’re frequently told how competent elaine is but we never see it. She starts the game tied up, goes onto instantly believe lechucks a good guy now just because he told her he was, then she gets the pox and goes on to become hyper jealous, a little rapey and very toxic. Finally she submits to being lechucks voodoo bride and end the game by saying that everything that happened across the five episodes was all a part of her plan because after all of her incompetence we’re now expected to believe she’s actually so competent it boarders on precognition. 
 

My point is that I don’t think elaine’s been done justice since the original but, at least to me, curse isn’t an especially egregious example of this. 

[KestrelPi]

11 minutes ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

I think if we’re looking for poor depictions of elaine there are better games to choose. Revenge depicts her as a stereotypical bitchy ex who, despite being angry at guybrush, is ready to run back to him as soon as he clicks his fingers. I don’t think it’s fair to say that before curse elaine wouldn’t have wanted to marry guybrush when its made clear in 2 that he sort of has her wrapped around his little finger. 

 

 

That seems like a wild intepretation of that scene in MI2 to me. After Guybrush tries to bring her round with honeyed words, she has a moment of weakness, and one that is immediately and completely dispelled as soon as she realises that Guybrush still cares more about his little adventure.

 

When they catch up again, on Dinky Island, before she'll agree to help him out he has to tell her the whole story of how he got into the mess, and seems only vaguely concerned when he falls into the pit.

 

On the other hand in Curse she instantly professes her love for him, which she seems to have re-developed by him... not being around, and then after he nearly gets killed by LeChuck instantly agrees to marry him and not even being turned into a gold statue and delivered back into LeChuck's clutches does anything to give her pause on that, a single punch aside.

 

I agree that the creators of CMI might have been expected to do the Guybrush-Elaine romance, but I think the main failing of it wasn't that that romance happened, but that it seemed to make very little effort to take us on a journey of understanding of how Elaine has arrived in this place emotionally and mentally (and by turning her into a statue for most of the game, robs itself of any opportunity to do so).

 

Now, a game where Guybrush and Elaine start about where they left off in MI2, but over the course of it re-discover a way to be happy together, where there's character growth on Elaine's part to realise she can't fight Guybrush's adventurous spirit, and Guybrush's part to realise that he can't let his thirst for adventures get in the way of the people he loves... now that would be nice to see.

 

 

[JacquesSparkyTail]

3 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

 

That seems like a wild intepretation of that scene in MI2 to me. After Guybrush tries to bring her round with honeyed words, she has a moment of weakness, and one that is immediately and completely dispelled as soon as she realises that Guybrush still cares more about his little adventure.

 

When they catch up again, on Dinky Island, before she'll agree to help him out he has to tell her the whole story of how he got into the mess, and seems only vaguely concerned when he falls into the pit.

 

On the other hand in Curse she instantly professes her love for him, which she seems to have re-developed by him... not being around, and then after he nearly gets killed by LeChuck instantly agrees to marry him and not even being turned into a gold statue and delivered back into LeChuck's clutches does anything to give her pause on that, a single punch aside.

 

I agree that the creators of CMI might have been expected to do the Guybrush-Elaine romance, but I think the main failing of it wasn't that that romance happened, but that it seemed to make very little effort to take us on a journey of understanding of how Elaine has arrived in this place emotionally and mentally (and by turning her into a statue for most of the game, robs itself of any opportunity to do so).

 

Now, a game where Guybrush and Elaine start about where they left off in MI2, but over the course of it re-discover a way to be happy together, where there's character growth on Elaine's part to realise she can't fight Guybrush's adventurous spirit, and Guybrush's part to realise that he can't let his thirst for adventures get in the way of the people he loves... now that would be nice to see.

 

 

Agreed that that would be a better story. Not trying to say curse was a perfect love story. Obviously it’s far from it as that’s not the stories primary goal. But it just feels somewhat disingenuous to see her and guybrush instantly show strong feelings for each other in secret, then see her mask slip in revenge revealing that she clearly STILL feels strongly about him but then to act like her love for him in curse came out of nowhere. It’s pretty clearly shown in the opening of curse that she thinks, or at least fears guybrush is dead. Finding out the person you love has effectively come back from the dead, found you only to instantly “die” in a capsizing ship only to repeat the process would be pretty powerful. I’m a straight man but i’d have said yes too. 

 

Again though i’m not saying it’s amazing. Just that it seems to get a disproportionate amount of commentary considering most of the games are equally or more guilty of mishandling her and the relationship as a whole. 

[demone]

I think I have a certain bias when it comes to the whole marriage aspect. I started the series with Curse and only saw two characters that seemed in love, Guybrush royally screws up, but the rest of the game is spent undoing the mistake. So, it was never a leap to me. Then playing the first two games, I see things did not truly add up, but I guess my bias was always still there. 

 

There is a time jump and Guybrush is left stranded in the ocean, resenting his quest for Big Whoop and what it cost him. He seemed to have went through something horrible that put a lot into perspective. With Elaine, not sure as it's much more ambiguous and her shift is even more drastic than Guybrush. 

 

As others have said, the intention was for them not to get married and there is a lack of a journey to explain the shift, specifically for Elaine, once a new team took over, that I think is more of the problem. 

 

Not saying the relationship and marriage is endearing in every game, but for Tales specifically and the story and quest for the ring, I really enjoyed it as part of the storytelling. 

Edited July 26, 2022 by demone

[KestrelPi]

11 minutes ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

Agreed that that would be a better story. Not trying to say curse was a perfect love story. Obviously it’s far from it as that’s not the stories primary goal. But it just feels somewhat disingenuous to see her and guybrush instantly show strong feelings for each other in secret, then see her mask slip in revenge revealing that she clearly STILL feels strongly about him but then to act like her love for him in curse came out of nowhere. It’s pretty clearly shown in the opening of curse that she thinks, or at least fears guybrush is dead. Finding out the person you love has effectively come back from the dead, found you only to instantly “die” in a capsizing ship only to repeat the process would be pretty powerful. I’m a straight man but i’d have said yes too. 

 

Again though i’m not saying it’s amazing. Just that it seems to get a disproportionate amount of commentary considering most of the games are equally or more guilty of mishandling her and the relationship as a whole. 

Fair enough! I don't know how much stock I put in the strong feeling in MI1 though as an establishment of a relationship, though hear me out:

 

In MI1, Guybrush and Elaine develop feelings for each other very quickly. After a single conversation there's romantic tension and another conversation (that doesn't even occur if you do the idol trial last) that develops into full on pet-name calling. It's not like they actually have any real basis for a relationship by the end, aside from Guybrush's somewhat botched and unnecessary attempt at a rescue. By the end of MI1 they were heavily attracted to each other, and had had a maximum of 2 proper conversations. There was no 'relationship', to speak of.

 

So to me, it seems that most of Elaine and Guybrush's relationship, such as it was, happens off-screen, and on screen what we see is an initial attraction, in MI1, and then a faint and fleeting echo of that initial attraction in MI2, manifesting as a single moment of weakness in Elaine, which she shuts down instantly as soon as she gets the slightest inkling it's all a play to get the map.

 

I just don't see that as a mishandling at all, in MI2. Hope that makes sense.

 

By the way, I really like CMI as a game, I will defend it as getting SO much impressively 'right' as far as I'm concerned about the writing and tone of Monkey Island. And I often actually find myself disagreeing with Ron Gilbert's takes on things in interviews and such, so I'm not automatically trying to side with him here - but this just happens to be one area where I fully understand why he found CMI's treatment of the relationship weird. That and I thought that MI2 not being a story about winning the day and getting the girl was one of the coolest things about it.

 

 

[Vainamoinen]

59 minutes ago, Al.DeHyde said:

As for the relationship between Elaine and Guybrush; I never had the feeling he chose the map over her in Revenge, just that he went about asking for it in a clumsy way and at an unfortunate time.

 

Yeah, I had the pretty strong feeling he chose the map over her.

 

That doesn't mean I found that all too great, because it felt a bit like Guybrush would have to give up all the pirating fun to really commit to Elaine. To me, that's kind of a bachelor's idea of senseless dedication/investment to a relationship, sacrificing all your life and identity to practically merge with another person.

 

It's clear how both what Guybrush does in LCR as well as what he would have had to do to win Elaine in that moment were "wrong" steps in the coming of age narrative's perspective.

 

Escape and Tales tried to fix their differences by making a pirate out of the governor – the couple shared that interest henceforth, which justified their relationship. In my opinion, absolutely not what Ron would have wanted, but he'll just have to deal with that idea now.

 

If Ron had done "his" Monkey Island 3 in the 90s, who knows how these two characters would have ended up. Maybe Ron had a genius plan to strike a balance and reunite them, maybe he just hated the idea of Guybrush and Elaine being together and they'd sail away in opposite directions in the very last scene. Maybe I would have loved it, maybe I would have hated it. I'll never know.

 

But it seems like for the first time in six games, we'll be playing Elaine in Return. And that's not just "shaking things up", I think it also means that she's growing to be more of a protagonist, more of Guybrush's equal (not necessarily in the piracy sense). I'd love for them to work together in that scene/those scenes, maybe even in a dayofthetentacly kind of way. That wouldn't just be something that I'd love to have back as a game mechanic, but would mean the world for their relationship to each other as well.

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, Vainamoinen said:

But it seems like for the first time in six games, we'll be playing Elaine in Return

I still don't quite buy this - he flat out denied it on his blog, which might be so that it's still a surprise when it happens (but if he wanted it to be a surprise, why wouldn't he have just removed that line from his tiny dev diary before posting it??) I guess a few trailer scenes where the camera is focused on Elaine isn't quite enough to persuade me it's happening. I'd LOVE to be wrong on this though.

[JacquesSparkyTail]

3 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Fair enough! I don't know how much stock I put in the strong feeling in MI1 though as an establishment of a relationship, though hear me out:

 

In MI1, Guybrush and Elaine develop feelings for each other very quickly. After a single conversation there's romantic tension and another conversation (that doesn't even occur if you do the idol trial last) that develops into full on pet-name calling. It's not like they actually have any real basis for a relationship by the end, aside from Guybrush's somewhat botched and unnecessary attempt at a rescue. By the end of MI1 they were heavily attracted to each other, and had had a maximum of 2 proper conversations. There was no 'relationship', to speak of.

 

So to me, it seems that most of Elaine and Guybrush's relationship, such as it was, happens off-screen, and on screen what we see is an initial attraction, in MI1, and then a faint and fleeting echo of that initial attraction in MI2, manifesting as a single moment of weakness in Elaine, which she shuts down instantly as soon as she gets the slightest inkling it's all a play to get the map.

 

I just don't see that as a mishandling at all, in MI2. Hope that makes sense.

 

By the way, I really like CMI as a game, I will defend it as getting SO much impressively 'right' as far as I'm concerned about the writing and tone of Monkey Island. And I often actually find myself disagreeing with Ron Gilbert's takes on things in interviews and such, so I'm not automatically trying to side with him here - but this just happens to be one area where I fully understand why he found CMI's treatment of the relationship weird. That and I thought that MI2 not being a story about winning the day and getting the girl was one of the coolest things about it.

 

 

Yeah that makes sense. I guess we just interpret those scenes differently. 
 

I’m starting to think I’m misremembering revenge. I play through 1-5 every couple of years but always hurry through 2 as it’s my least favourite (I’ll desperately try and justify myself on that another time 😂)

 

But the way i read it is that elaine is clearly very into guybrush in secret. She’s holding those feelings back in revenge because of the way he’s acted but is ready to run back to him when he’s ready to grow up. Then in curse she’s relieved he’s alive and that’s what spurs her on to put up with his nonsense if it means she can be with him. Luckily in the intervening time guybrush has grown up somewhat and is less arrogant than he was meaning that they are finally a perfect fit. The only problem is he then proceeds to turn her into solid gold. 
 

That’s perfectly serviceable to me as a love story. It would have been nice if most of the important parts weren’t in curse’s opening cutscene alone but i can get over that because that particular game isn’t trying to be a love story as much as it’s trying to be an adventure story. 

 

That being said, if i am misremembering revenge all of that falls apart 😂

[Al.DeHyde]

8 minutes ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

I play through 1-5 every couple of years but always hurry through 2 as it’s my least favourite (I’ll desperately try and justify myself on that another time 😂)

😲😲😲

I'd be interested to read why since it's my favourite!

 

I generally feel the same as you about the relationship (but my perception of it might be coloured by the fact that I first played when I was quite young and didn't really 'get' the romantic stuff). Definitely think Elaine was hoping Guybrush would say what she wanted/needed to hear in Revenge and was hurt when he asked about the map like a dope.

[KestrelPi]

14 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

Escape and Tales tried to fix their differences by making a pirate out of the governor – the couple shared that interest henceforth, which justified their relationship. In my opinion, absolutely not what Ron would have wanted, but he'll just have to deal with that idea now.

Yeah, I always thought that was a bit of a stretch, especially in Tales. She was obviously capable and adventurey, but her attitude towards pirates in MI1 seems at best neutral. She's attracted to guybrush enough to let him get a way with some stealing, I suppose?

 

Although that leads me on a tangent to thinking about the Idol of Many Hands, and why it's called that. It doesn't seem to be because it looks like many hands, and so I'm guessing the idea is that it's called the Idol of Many Hands because it exchanges many hands because it's always getting stolen by pirates doing the trials. It wouldn't have surprised me, if things had gone the way they were meant to, if Guybrush had been expected to turn the Idol back in in exchange for another t-shirt at the end.

 

More of that theme parky stuff...

[JacquesSparkyTail]

On 7/26/2022 at 10:15 PM, Al.DeHyde said:

😲😲😲

I'd be interested to read why since it's my favourite!

It’s definitely a me problem. I can look at the game intellectually and admit that it’s probably the best one but it has one aspect that’s unique to the series that i can’t get past and that’s navigating between islands. Sounds like no big deal but having to go to the overview of the island, go to a location, find an item, go back to the overview, go to captain dredd, go to another island, go to the overview, go to the next location and then use the item is just too much of a slog for me and it actively sucks the fun out of the other aspects of the game. That one extra step of having to use dredds ship is nothing at all but when you have to do it every 5 minutes it feels like you spend more time getting to places than you do actually playing the game. Glad it doesn’t bother anyone else but there’s something in me that just hates it. Still like the game but that constant minor annoyance knocks it down my rankings. I struggle with day of the tentacle for similar reasons.
 

 I think rons said in the past that he recognises it was a problem so i’m not too worried about it happening again in return but the fact that the ice queen of brrmuda has a crown made of keys but the locksmith is in melee is concerning.

Edited August 18, 2022 by JacquesSparkyTail

[KestrelPi]

14 minutes ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

It’s definitely a me problem. I can look at the game intellectually and admit that it’s probably the best one but it has one aspect that’s unique to the series that i can’t get past and that’s navigating between islands. Sounds like no big deal but having to go to the overview of the island, go to a location, find an item, go back to the overview, go to captain dredd, go to another island, go to the overview, go to the next location and then use the item is just too much of a slog for me and it actively sucks the fun out of the other aspects of the game. That one extra step of having to use dredds ship is nothing at all but when you have to do it every 5 minutes it feels like you spend more time getting to places than you do actually playing the game. Glad it doesn’t bother anyone else but there’s something in me that just hates it. Still like the game but that constant minor annoyance knocks it down my rankings. I think rons said in the past that he recognises it was a problem so i’m not too worried about it happening again in return but the fact that the ice queen of brrmuda has a crown made of keys but the locksmith is in melee is concerning.

Huh. Remember also Guybrush in the new game looks like he's a speedy boy. If they do want island hopping in this game I think they'll have tried to address it by making navigation between locations easy and quick.

 

(I definitely felt the pain of having to do a lot of hopping and backtracking between locations recently in Tales in the final chapter with all the portals, but for some reason it just never bothered me with MI2*. I see the point, though.)

 

 

*OR DID IT? I first played it on an Amiga, with its 11 disks I had to swap regularly. I wonder if I cared back then. I don't remember being bothered by it, but if disk swapping slowed things down so much back then, maybe by the time I got to play the PC version it seemed positively fast paced in comparison.

Edited July 26, 2022 by KestrelPi

[ThunderPeel2001]

NEWS! More news coming... soon!

 

 

[demone]

Posted by Ron. Glitch of the day

Edited July 26, 2022 by demone

[KestrelPi]

7 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

NEWS! More news coming... soon!

 

 

Apart from more platforms, I wonder what else this could possibly mean that isn't a release date. I feel like the implication is that it's not coming out next month, but I think that's not too surprising.

 

Oh!

release date announced
 

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by KestrelPi

[demone]

It would be amazing if the release date is just casually revealed by Ron in a tweet to a user asking. Would be perfect for his type of humor. Sadly, that day is not today. 

[Garystu]

This is obsessing over little details, but I'm loving Guybrush's default expression.

 

 

 

At first, I read it as a bit pensive and uncertain. But now I'm reading it as more quizzical, dazed, or resigned. It is a very netural face and would be made to be read in a number of ways. And these are all fitting emotions for Guybrush. And I like it.

 

Haha reading too much into a little eyebrow asymmetry.

[KestrelPi]

2 minutes ago, Guybrush Transmasc said:

This is obsessing over little details, but I'm loving Guybrush's default expression.

 

 

 

At first, I read it as a bit pensive and uncertain. But now I'm reading it as more quizzical, dazed, or resigned. It is a very netural face and would be made to be read in a number of ways. And these are all fitting emotions for Guybrush. And I like it.

 

Haha reading too much into a little eyebrow asymmetry.

It's interesting isn't it. Definitely saying something. Up until now I don't think I would have read very much into guybrush's default expression at all. I guess that's another reason why I think it was a good decision to make his head quite large in proportion with his body, because the face can do so much, even at a distance. There's a sadness here, or perhaps at least a weariness. But in the little scene we just saw, he still seems cheerful enough to joke around a little. Really makes you wonder about where his mind is at for this game...

[Knight Owl]

53 minutes ago, demone said:

It would be amazing if the release date is just casually revealed by Ron in a tweet to a user asking. Would be perfect for his type of humor. Sadly, that day is not today. 

Maybe Ron secretly has the release date announcement set to trigger when someone asks him for it the number of times it takes for the navigator head to give you the necklace.

[BaronGrackle]

4 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Elaine was first tricked into wearing a cursed ring, then turned and objectified into a literal statue, a mere thing and treasure to be stolen and retrieved and stolen and retrieved. Elaine then gets ten waking seconds to commit an act of domestic violence and is next shown tied up and gagged, having to listen to LeChuck's story how he killed her dad. Next scene, a good demure Christian marriage in white. I have my reservations about CMI's "20 lines of dialog" Elaine plot, and it definitely shouldn't have ended in marriage.

 

It's obvious in LeChuck's Revenge how that was never Ron's plan. Monkey 2 showed us in no uncertain terms that Guybrush chose gold and fame over her, whatever the player did. He wasn't ready for a relationship, let alone marriage. But, what Ron might have been setting up with LeChuck's Revenge was, in a nutshell, a coming of age story arc, to be concluded in a future game.

 

If it was that, Curse has smashed that arc to pieces by declaring the issues between the two resolved or at least so irrelevant that they would of course marry.  I totally understand why Ron would take issue with that.

 

So how do you pick up the pieces of this arc, 25 years after the smashing? By having the characters go their own ways for a good while. Like, Guybrush with the treasure hunting and Elaine with the Marley Foundation. Let them find together anew, define the issues again, then finally have them resolve what truly kept them apart.

It's funny, because you said something earlier in this thread that kind of blew my mind and questioned my perspective on Elaine in Curse, in connection to Elaine from the previous games:

 

"Elaine likes Guybrush. But Guybrush isn't ready for a relationship, and that was the central takeaway of LeChuck's Revenge. Most of us have probably tried to worm their way back into Elaine's heart back in that infamous party scene. Which was a game of trial and error, one that always ended in failure. Eventually, Guybrush would choose Big Whoop over Elaine for us and in spite of us. It was a line in the sand that we could not cross. Sure, he'd take Elaine AND Big Whoop, but if he only got ONE, well ... sorry Elaine, pirate here."

 

If we follow that thought: Elaine likes Guybrush and is ready for a stable relationship. The only reason they aren't together in Revenge is because Guybrush is not on that same page and not ready to make the choices toward getting there.

 

Elaine is there; Guybrush had to catch up.

 

And so (if we give CMI more credit than it likely deserves), CMI is the action of Guybrush catching up. Giving Elaine the cursed ring is arguably an apt metaphor for Guybrush's entire approach to their relationship thus far... flawed, lazy, and destructive. Literal objectification, right? Guybrush has to undo all that, and approach it the proper way.

 

In Revenge, Guybrush chooses treasure over Elaine. In Curse, Guybrush chooses Elaine over treasure... literally.
 

He literally chooses Elaine over treasure to the extent that he changes a golden treasure in his possession back into Elaine.

Edited July 26, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, BaronGrackle said:

It's funny, because you said something earlier in this thread that kind of blew my mind and questioned my perspective on Elaine in Curse, in connection to Elaine from the previous games:

 

"Elaine likes Guybrush. But Guybrush isn't ready for a relationship, and that was the central takeaway of LeChuck's Revenge. Most of us have probably tried to worm their way back into Elaine's heart back in that infamous party scene. Which was a game of trial and error, one that always ended in failure. Eventually, Guybrush would choose Big Whoop over Elaine for us and in spite of us. It was a line in the sand that we could not cross. Sure, he'd take Elaine AND Big Whoop, but if he only got ONE, well ... sorry Elaine, pirate here."

 

If we follow that thought: Elaine likes Guybrush and is ready for a stable relationship. The only reason they aren't together in Revenge is because Guybrush is not on that same page and not ready to make the choices toward getting there.

 

Elaine is there; Guybrush had to catch up.

 

And so (if we give CMI more credit than it likely deserves), CMI is the action of Guybrush catching up. Giving Elaine the cursed ring is arguably an apt metaphor for Guybrush's entire approach to their relationship thus far... flawed, lazy, and unworkable. Guybrush has to undo all that, and approach it the proper way.

 

In Revenge, Guybrush chooses treasure over Elaine. In Curse, Guybrush chooses Elaine over treasure... literally.
 

He literally chooses Elaine over treasure to the extent that he changes a golden treasure in his possession back into Elaine.

 

I actually *kinda* like this as a way to explain Guybrush getting ready for a relationship.

 

The symbolism doesn't totally work for me because Guybrush would also have to be some sort of monster to keep Elaine trapped as a statue just because that's treasure, but I can certainly see how by going out of his way and risking death to fix the problem he caused he is showing growth, and a commitment to the relationship that we maybe haven't really seen from him before.

 

But I just wish we'd got to see Elaine's journey there, too. I don't know that I agree that Elaine was ready for a relationship and it was just Guybrush who needed to become ready. The only way I can read MI1 is that both of them jumped into that relationship without giving it very much thought, and things fell apart rather predictably before MI2. What I'd like to have a bit more on-screen is Elaine sorting out her feelings about Guybrush.

 

With ReMI they have a unique chance to revisit this. If it is indeed set many years after their last encounter with LeChuck, and as it appears, we're dealing with somewhat older characters, there's plenty of scope for the passion to have gone from the relationship even if they are still married. Maybe things have become rather rote and routine now.

 

Maybe the game will end with them finding a way to rekindle the love they had before, and it'll be sweet

 

Maybe the game will end with them parting, but reconciled as friends, and realising that's a little sad, but actually okay.

 

I think about the ending of Full Throttle a lot. I LOVE it, how Ben and Mo had obvious romantic tension between them, but ultimately it's unrealised - and it's a little sad, but also feels very real. Sometimes even if you want it to work, it just can't work. It's the wrong moment, people aren't where they need to be in their lives, people aren't able to sacrifice enough of themselves to make it work, whatever it is.

 

I guess I'm just really craving an interpretation of their relationship since MI2 which is more than just 'they're together, they're meant to be together, and that's that.' It's fine if the ultimate out come is that they're still together, or get back together or whatever. I just want the game to acknowledge in some way that them being together isn't a given, an inevitability, or the natural order of things.

 

To Tales' credit I think it hinted at this with Morgan, and had some nice 'in another life, this relationship might also have worked' moments, but it still feels a bit at arms length from actually addressing the Elaine-Guybrush romantic dynamic.

 

[BaronGrackle]

Tangent: Elaine went "woof" at Human LeChuck. Did she see him as "woof" when he was alive?

[demone]

10 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

Tangent: Elaine went "woof" at Human LeChuck. Did she see him as "woof" when he was alive?

I think the implication is that Elaine found LeChuck physically attractive and had him over for dinner but once she found out how depraved he truly was, told him to drop dead.

Edited July 27, 2022 by demone