Return to Monkey Island

[Glokidd]

54 minutes ago, Marius said:

There is one script in Monkey Island 2 where a comment refers to the game's title as The Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.
I think that's exciting, and changes the view on the first two games a small bit: At one point the series was not just called Monkey Island, but The Secret of Monkey Island.

 

It did survive into at lease one release by accident, The MAC CD Game Pack 2 called It The Secret of Monkey Island 2 as well 😀

 

I tried to attach an image with it but have had some issues and it won't show

Edited May 7, 2022 by Glokidd
photo upload didn't work

[ThunderPeel2001]

2 hours ago, Giorgio said:

 

Thank you very much, @Marius Your profile pic is very nice too!

I also like the idea of Big Whoop as something independent, that goes beyond the relationship between LeChuck and Guybrush.

 

About the relevance of the anachronisms in the first two games – another “secret”! –, I think that what Ron says in an interview published in «The Adventurer» first issue (fall 1990) is very eloquent:

 

Bearing this in mind, the fact that in MI2 the broken grog machine from MI1 is in the Disneyland-like tunnels, where LeChuck seems to wear a theme-park-character costume, is another point in favor of the Monkey Island world interpreted as an amusement park, together with the many other elements that bring to this interpretation (the elevator that leads Guybrush from the tunnels under Dinky Island to the alley of Mêlée Island, the “Employees only” door, the “under construction” section of Mêlée Island, etc.).

 

Wow. That's pretty incredible! Great find!

 

Now I really want to ask him (and Dave) if there's any truth to the rumour that the "child's fantasy" was the original ending to MI1 until Tim and Dave talked him out of it!

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Marius]

15 minutes ago, Glokidd said:

I tried to attach an image with it but have had some issues and it won't show

The Disney bots don't want us to see it.

[Glokidd]

 

1 hour ago, Marius said:

The Disney bots don't want us to see it.

 

I managed to upload it to Twitter 😀 I also put up a MI2 ad that also has the relevant caption "Haunting Secrets from the first game revealed" and a picture of guybrush talking to dread on his ship...

I will try to post it here with this again to see if it works... it did not but linking to Twitter image urls did 😀

Edited May 7, 2022 by Glokidd
removing broken image attachment, linked pic urls

[ThunderPeel2001]

Tweet: "@grumpygamer True or false: MI2's ending was originally planned for MI1, but Tim and Dave talked Ron out of it"

 

Reply: @grumpygamer: "False."

 

This is what Bill Tiller originally said: 

 

Quote

I was told that the ending of MI2 was originally going to be the ending of MI1. But Dave Grossman and Tim Shafer didn't like it an talked Ron out of it. Then I heard from Larry Ahern that two to three months before MI2 was supposed to be done, an ending had still not been decided upon. And about then Ron decided to go with the amusement park ending he was originally going to use in MI1.

 

 

As reported here: https://mixnmojo.com/news/On-this-day-16-years-ago-Bill-Tiller-revealed-the-secret-of-Monkey-Island

Edited May 8, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Rum Rogers]

2 hours ago, Glokidd said:

Haunting Secrets from the first game revealed" and a picture of guybrush talking to dread on his ship...

I think in this particular case it refers to Dread's friend being the hanged man in Monkey 1. IF that caption has anything to do with the picture it's associated with, that is.

[KestrelPi]

5 hours ago, Giorgio said:

 

Thank you very much, @Marius Your profile pic is very nice too!

I also like the idea of Big Whoop as something independent, that goes beyond the relationship between LeChuck and Guybrush.

 

About the relevance of the anachronisms in the first two games – another “secret”! –, I think that what Ron says in an interview published in «The Adventurer» first issue (fall 1990) is very eloquent:

 

Bearing this in mind, the fact that in MI2 the broken grog machine from MI1 is in the Disneyland-like tunnels, where LeChuck seems to wear a theme-park-character costume, is another point in favor of the Monkey Island world interpreted as an amusement park, together with the many other elements that bring to this interpretation (the elevator that leads Guybrush from the tunnels under Dinky Island to the alley of Mêlée Island, the “Employees only” door, the “under construction” section of Mêlée Island, etc.).

 

Ah this is the thing I was trying to find from years ago where I remembered someone saying the anachronisms were important to the story. I thought it said it had to do with the secret, but the most that reveals is that it has to do with *a* secret. Personally I think it's likely that if the secret is anything, it probably is at least *related* to the other mysterious stuff in the game. But if not, and they had to delve into one or the other, I think the stuff that MI2 started to flesh out is way more of an interesting direction to explore than some unknown secret.

[Glokidd]

15 minutes ago, Rum Rogers said:

I think in this particular case it refers to Dread's friend being the hanged man in Monkey 1. IF that caption has anything to do with the picture it's associated with, that is.

 

Good call, I hadn't thought about that and you are probably right 😀 

 

That ad is excellent 😀 I like the "Illiteracy-driven icon system" caption 😀

[KestrelPi]

...

Edited May 7, 2022 by KestrelPi
double post

[Rum Rogers]

10 minutes ago, Glokidd said:

 

Good call, I hadn't thought about that and you are probably right 😀 

 

That ad is excellent 😀 I like the "Illiteracy-driven icon system" caption 😀

Yes it's fantastic! 😀
Thanks for sharing!

[KestrelPi]

Thinking about it, while it could be that the Secret of Monkey Island is barely mentioned in MI2 because it's trivial and unimportant, it could also be that either:
 

• The revelations of MI2 so thoroughly trump it that it kinda seems pointless to address it at that stage
• The Secret of Monkey Island over the course of development morphed into something much bigger than just Monkey Island, and is related to the whole layers of reality stuff in a way that means it just doesn't quite make sense to refer to it as 'the secret of monkey island' so they stopped using those words for it. Essentially, Big Whoop is an expanded version of the secret, perhaps.
• Since Monkey Island ostensibly isn't featured in MI2, it just didn't make any sense to talk about its secret much in that game.

[Zaxx]

7 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Thinking about it, while it could be that the Secret of Monkey Island is barely mentioned in MI2 because it's trivial and unimportant, it could also be that either:
 

• The revelations of MI2 so thoroughly trump it that it kinda seems pointless to address it at that stage
• The Secret of Monkey Island over the course of development morphed into something much bigger than just Monkey Island, and is related to the whole layers of reality stuff in a way that means it just doesn't quite make sense to refer to it as 'the secret of monkey island' so they stopped using those words for it. Essentially, Big Whoop is an expanded version of the secret, perhaps.
• Since Monkey Island ostensibly isn't featured in MI2, it just didn't make any sense to talk about its secret much in that game.

 

I always thought that the reason why MI2 doesn't care about the secret is because - contrary to all the other games in the franchise - in MI2 the characters have clearly moved on. Guybrush became a pirate and is looking for other adventures (like growing a beard!), he's no longer with Elaine though he's still in love with her, Elaine governs a different island etc. Apart from the first game (because there everything was new) it's the only story where the characters aren't treated as they were frozen in time, they can change, have new backstories that are revealed etc.

 

Big Whoop is the reason why the secret comes back into the story, the revelation that Dinky Island and Big Whoop are related to Monkey Island is kind of the thing that brings back that whole thing.

[MurraySchull]

1 hour ago, Rum Rogers said:

I think in this particular case it refers to Dread's friend being the hanged man in Monkey 1. IF that caption has anything to do with the picture it's associated with, that is.

 

The hanged man in MI1 is actually Herman's friend that he sailed to Monkey Island with (the one that wrote the Captain's Log). Dread's friend was the navigator head that the cannibals give Guybrush, since Dread mentions that he and his "navigator" were taken prisoner by cannibals, only Dread escaped, and he kept one of his navigators' eyeballs as a good luck charm. (There is a continuity error in that the navigator head has two eyes in MI1, so it's possible that connection between the navigator head/Dread's friend may have been a late addition in MI2's development.)

[Marius]

22 minutes ago, fentongames said:

There is a continuity error in that the navigator head has two eyes in MI1

I just played that part yesterday and thought the same. Classic continuity error.

But then I had a stupid, funny thought: Maybe the heads missing eye was simply replaced by one of the many eyes from his necklace.

[Rum Rogers]

2 hours ago, fentongames said:

Dread's friend was the navigator head that the cannibals give Guybrush, since Dread mentions that he and his "navigator" were taken prisoner by cannibals,

Well I stand corrected, thanks for pointing this out. I'll have to replay 1 and 2 soon, I didn't use to make these stupid mistakes in my heyday 😅

[ThunderPeel2001]

3 hours ago, fentongames said:

The hanged man in MI1 is actually Herman's friend that he sailed to Monkey Island with (the one that wrote the Captain's Log). Dread's friend was the navigator head that the cannibals give Guybrush, since Dread mentions that he and his "navigator" were taken prisoner by cannibals, only Dread escaped, and he kept one of his navigators' eyeballs as a good luck charm. (There is a continuity error in that the navigator head has two eyes in MI1, so it's possible that connection between the navigator head/Dread's friend may have been a late addition in MI2's development.)

 

Yeah, Dread's story always confused me. It was obviously a reference to the navigator's head... but then the description was off.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Another Ron clarification on Twitter:
 

 

So the "child's fantasy" ending isn't related to the anachronisms in MI1 -- at least in a pre-planned way, as the ending hadn't even been thought of until close to the end of production. And actually I just remembered that Ron talked about how the idea for the ending came about in his Pax Australia keynote -- which I can't believe I forgot during this whole conversation 🤦‍♂️.
 

 

Edited May 8, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Niemandswasser]

41 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Yeah, Dread's story always confused me. It was obviously a reference to the navigator's head... but then the description was off.

I actually once had the chance to ask Dave Grossman about this bit...and he couldn't remember who it referenced.

 

What's especially frustrating is that everything about it seems to point to the navigator head except for the missing eye...while MI1 also features a character whose defining visual characteristic is that he has a glass eye.

[Trapezzoid]

51 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Another Ron clarification on Twitter:
 

 

So the "child's fantasy" ending isn't related to the anachronisms in MI1 -- at least in a pre-planned way, as the ending hadn't even been thought of until close to the end of production. And actually I just remembered that Ron talked about how the idea for the ending came about in his Pax Australia keynote -- which I can't believe I forgot during this whole conversation 🤦‍♂️.
 

 

Ha, cool. Yeah, I had a feeling MI2's ending was the result of writing himself into a corner and coming up with a left turn that doesn't exactly fit, but still works pretty great. I think the most enraging part about it is that it's ambiguous and a cliffhanger. If MI2 outright said that it was all a fantasy, that would be a hell of an ending, but it'd sort of kill the sequel potential. It's that unresolved feeling that drives the hate mail.

 

I wonder what the deeper secret of MI1 he alluded to was, then. Maybe it was going to have the Thimbleweed ending.

[Spiketheclown]

Regarding the MI2 ending, I've always felt like it was some combo between "child's fantasy" and "magic spell". My own theory is that Guybrush is really a kid in the Big Whoop amusement park, but the park is a magical place which made Guybrush's pirate fantasy a reality, and turned his bully elder brother into his archenemy because this is how Guybrush viewed him.

[roots]

4 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

So the "child's fantasy" ending isn't related to the anachronisms in MI1 -- at least in a pre-planned way, as the ending hadn't even been thought of until close to the end of production. And actually I just remembered that Ron talked about how the idea for the ending came about in his Pax Australia keynote -- which I can't believe I forgot during this whole conversation 🤦‍♂️.

 

The ending of MI2 specifically being unplanned at that point in time is not a statement on the role of the anachronistic elements in either game. While Ron does not have a plan for specific plot points ahead of time, the likelihood is he does have a vague notion of the direction of the plot and the elements he wishes to explore. Looking at TWP, he evidently has a passion for questioning the nature of reality in his games.

 

As an addendum, can we please not call it the "child's fantasy ending". MI2 rather explicitly lampshades the notion through both Elaine's "SPELL" comment and LeChuck's 4th wall break. It's a common misconception that MI2's ending is just a fantasy, and it has arguably harmed people's enjoyment of the game over the years.

[Zaxx]

1 hour ago, Spiketheclown said:

Regarding the MI2 ending, I've always felt like it was some combo between "child's fantasy" and "magic spell". My own theory is that Guybrush is really a kid in the Big Whoop amusement park, but the park is a magical place which made Guybrush's pirate fantasy a reality, and turned his bully elder brother into his archenemy because this is how Guybrush viewed him.

 

So Big Whoop is like Silent Hll, got it.

[Jake]

40 minutes ago, roots said:

As an addendum, can we please not call it the "child's fantasy ending". MI2 rather explicitly lampshades the notion through both Elaine's "SPELL" comment and LeChuck's 4th wall break. It's a common misconception that MI2's ending is just a fantasy, and it has arguably harmed people's enjoyment of the game over the years

I think Elaine’s “spell” remark could just as easily be a kid still playing the game when everyone else went home. I don’t think it’s that, but I’m not a fan of requests to cut off a line of interpretation because you don’t like it.

[Scummbuddy]

Exactly. Elaine could very well exist in her reality, whereas Guybrush and Chuckie could very well be real kids that stumbled into a alternate dimension.

 

I'm mostly of the idea that as soon as Guybrush landed under Big Whoop he was instantly within a spell cast by LeChuck, and Guybrush played along perfectly to plan.

[roots]

4 minutes ago, Jake said:

I think Elaine’s “spell” remark could just as easily be a kid still playing the game when everyone else went home. I don’t think it’s that, but I’m not a fan of requests to cut off a line of interpretation because you don’t like it.

 

That sounds like a massive reach to me, nor does it address the latter 4th wall break. But that aside.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've not got an issue with differing interpretations nor am I trying to "cut them off", it's just that in this specific circumstance it's a (arguably mis-, albeit popular) interpretation that is one of if not the root cause of the more negative reception that MI2 has. Nor is it definitive, which I why I think simply calling it the "MI2 ending", rather than "the X ending" is preferable.

 

Heck, I'm actually rather partial to the "Monkey Island is a deep psychosis from childhood trauma i.e. death of parents" theory myself, even if I do think the interdimensional nexus theory is a lot more plausible.