Return to Monkey Island "continues" or "concludes" series?

[Niemandswasser]

Bill Tiller has always been very...proactive about establishing his position as a Monkey Island insider, and it's always struck me as a little disingenuous. He was obviously instrumental in establishing the aesthetic from Curse onward, and he deserves all the appreciation he gets for that, but there was a period there where he seemed to be trying very hard to fix his name in people's minds as "the Monkey Island guy" with stuff like this, and that always rubbed me the wrong way. (I think I've talked about this before, so apologies if I'm repeating myself.) 

[BaronGrackle]

You guys left a fuller quote in 2019: https://mixnmojo.com/news/On-this-day-16-years-ago-Bill-Tiller-revealed-the-secret-of-Monkey-Island

 

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Well this is all I know, and I learned it from Larry Ahern and Dave Grossman. Ron went to Disneyland, rode Pirates of the Caribbean ride. thought it was cool and wondered what it would be like to get out of the boat and explore the pirates cave and village. Calvin and Hobbes was very popular back then. It is a daily cartoon strip about a boy and his stuffed tiger going on all sorts of adventures and imagining themselves in all sorts of different things like dinosaurs, spacemen and monsters. 

I speculate that Ron combined the to together - Pirates of the Caribbean and Calvin and Hobbes - and created Guybrush. 

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. 

The explanation I heard is that Guybrush was lost in the Pirates Ride at Big Whoop Amusement Park the whole time, imagining the whole adventure. Then Chucky, his mean older brother goes and pulls him back to reality. The end. And that magical lightning coming out of Chucky's eyes and Elaine waiting by the hole on Dinky Island (which sounds a lot like Disney Land) was put there just in case there was to be a Monkey Island 3. 

The secret is that the MI world is not real. now I have no clue how Ron would have written his way out of the MI2 ending. He either knows and isn't telling. Or He doesn't know and he isn't telling you he doesn't know. Or he has a bunch of ides of what he would do and isn't telling you that either.That is a bigger secret then what the secret of Monkey Island is. 

But secret being that the whole MI world is imagined sucks. Why? Because we want the world of Monkey Island to be real, not in a kids imagination. 

Enter big whoop the portal of hell. Lechuck goes in, comes out a powerful ghost. Then he is killed again, comes back as a zombie and hatches a plan to lure pirates through the portal of big whoop and come out zombie/ ghosts. Guybrush had spell cast on him and that is why he was a little kid. he escaped Big whoop in a bumper/ dodgem car and reverts back. Elaine had to rush back to Puerto pollo to defend it from Lechuck renewed attacks because Guybrush is safely under his spell back on Monkey Island. That is the official secret of monkey island in CMI. 

Sean [Clarke] and Mike [Stemmle, lead designers on Escape from Monkey Island] don't like that secret or want to add to it, so they either borrow Dave Grossman's idea that the monkey head is jut the top of a giant monkey robot, or they came up with it independently. That is the official secret of Monkey Island in EMI.

Is this all cleared up now? There is no 'one' secret of Monkey Island. Period. Maybe in Monkey5 there will be yet another one. Personally I'd like to know more about Guybrush' s origins. Where did he come from? Who are his parents? Any brothers or sisters? WHo was the voodoo priest who brought LeChuck back to life?

 

 

I find this section funny: "Enter big whoop the portal of hell. Lechuck goes in, comes out a powerful ghost. Then he is killed again, comes back as a zombie and hatches a plan to lure pirates through the portal of big whoop and come out zombie/ ghosts. Guybrush had spell cast on him and that is why he was a little kid."

 

I find that funny because "porral of hell" that turns people undead was described in Ron's design documents for Mutiny on Monkey Island.

 

And "Guybrush had a spell cast on him" is the natural interpretation one gets when tou watch the MI2 ending while taking LeChuck's glowing eyes and Elaine's fear about a curse seriously... as opposed to NOT taking them seriously.

And yet, this had always been understood as a divergent path that CMI took. It was always understood as a different thing than what Ron had in mind. Of course, that's partially because Ron himself told us it wasn't what he had in mind...

Edited September 5, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Niemandswasser]

I'm too lazy to look for a source, but as I recall multiple people have since debunked the "MI1 was supposed to end like MI2 but Tim and Dave talked Ron out of it" story. I also find it very odd that Tiller describes LeChuck's voodoo curse as "the official secret of Monkey Island in CMI" when...no it isn't? Not even a little bit? There's a whole extended gag in that game where Guybrush grills him and LeChuck sheepishly admits he doesn't even know what the secret is, so it's baffling that he'd claim otherwise, considering that's the game he actually worked on. 

[Remi]

The whole MI1 originally having the MI2 ending came from a — or possibly more than one — magazine from that time. With the editorial quality of those gaming magazines at the time, it is questionable if they were correct or not. 

[BaronGrackle]

37 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

I also find it very odd that Tiller describes LeChuck's voodoo curse as "the official secret of Monkey Island in CMI" when...no it isn't? Not even a little bit? There's a whole extended gag in that game where Guybrush grills him and LeChuck sheepishly admits he doesn't even know what the secret is, so it's baffling that he'd claim otherwise, considering that's the game he actually worked on. 

Well, something about LeChuck's monologue was always strange to me, but I couldn't put my finger on it until recently.

 

He drops some info on us:

- Big Whoop was actually on Monkey Island, not Dinky Island.

- Big Whoop is a portal to hell, the cause of LeChuck resurrecting as he does, and the power he can exploit to make an undead army.

- When Human LeChuck was searching for the Secret of Monkey Island to impress Elaine, it culminated in him landing on Monkey Island and discovering the hellgate that made him what he is, then murdering everyone else who knew about the secret hellgate.

 

Read that last point again. If you think I'm misremembering or exaggerating, go back and relisten to LeChuck talking about his quest to find the Secret of Monkey Island. He quested for the Secret, he sailed to Monkey Island, he found the hellgate that redefined his existence, and he eventually murdered all other witnesses.

 

And then, for some reason, Guybrush asks what the Secret of Monkey Island is... and LeChuck says he doesn't know? Was none of that SECRET enough for him?

 

CMI effectively merged the Secret of Monkey Island and the Treasure of Big Whoop so that they were the exact same thing. But they flinched in LeChuck's speech, and said "No, the Secret is actually something else I dunno lol."

 

EDIT: For what it's worth? If we find out the Secret of Monkey Island has ANYTHING to do with the ending of Monkey Island 2? Then that means Ron Gilbert also effectively merged Big Whoop and the Secret of Monkey Island into the same thing. 

Edited September 6, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Niemandswasser]

I always felt the same way about the way the tunnels below the Monkey Head were treated in MI1. At the end Guybrush says "I never found the Secret of Monkey Island," and I thought, really? The hidden Hell-caves where the dead live on as ghosts weren't secret enough for you?

[BaronGrackle]

19 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

I always felt the same way about the way the tunnels below the Monkey Head were treated in MI1. At the end Guybrush says "I never found the Secret of Monkey Island," and I thought, really? The hidden Hell-caves where the dead live on as ghosts weren't secret enough for you?

He doesn't say that, does he? I thought Guybrush never mentioned the Secret again until MI2, when he could ask LeChuck over the acid pit or on the Dinky Island hint line?

 

EDIT: Oh, the hint book! You mean the hint book narration.

Edited September 6, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Niemandswasser]

Huh, I could have sworn that was one of Guybrush's lines at the end of the game, but looking there now you're right. I must have been misremembering the hint book ending!

 

But he does ask again in MI2, so the point still stands!

[Wally B.]

9 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

CMI effectively merged the Secret of Monkey Island and the Treasure of Big Whoop so that they were the exact same thing. But they flinched in LeChuck's speech, and said "No, the Secret is actually something else I dunno lol."

Curse was the first Monkey Island game I've ever played. With that being said, even after playing the others, I always thought that Big Whoop had something to do with the Secret and that LeChuck used its powers, but that he didn't really know how or why it worked that way. I mean, everybody knows that there's a weird voodoo power in Monkey Island that makes people ghosts/zombies/warps reality/creates giant monkey robots, but nobody knows why or how it's there, not even LeChuck

[BaronGrackle]

In MI2, Herman Toothrot did give the Thimbleweed Park ending to the Men of Low Moral Fiber (Pirates), in Shakespearian terms.

 

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We met a philosopher on the island, and he told us something which changed our lives. He told us that all the world is a stage and that we are merely players.

 

So Thimbleweed might have been the Secret at some point in the '90s. But it's probably something different by now, regardless.

 

EDIT: But of course... if Ron doesn't keep the interpretation that MI2 somehow ended up on Monkey Island at the end, then it's kind of a stretch to connect the MI2 ending to the geographic Monkey Island.

Edited September 6, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Niemandswasser]

18 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

In MI2, Herman Toothrot did give the Thimbleweed Park ending to the Men of Low Moral Fiber (Pirates), in Shakespearian terms.

 

So Thimbleweed might have been the Secret at some point in the '90s. But it's probably something different by now, regardless.

 

My hunch has always been that the ending wouldn't have been overly metafictional, if only because Sierra had already done that multiple times by then (Leisure Suit Larry 3 and Space Quest 3 in the same year, even!) So much about Ron & co.'s design ethos seemed to be about doing their own thing rather than following established trends in the genre that I can't imagine they would have considered the idea for long if it had come up. (Thimbleweed's a different story, of course, coming 20+ years later and being conceived, for better or worse, as a game very much about adventure games--and possibly as Ron's last word on the subject, with the chance to ever do more MI seemingly out of reach at the time.)

[KestrelPi]

The Ars Technica piece is pretty clear on how this secret relates to the original:

 

Spoiler

 

[Vainamoinen]

I finally got it, folks. 🤯

 

Back when Dave said that chronology might become difficult, he meant that it might become difficult with the Monkey Island game that's next after ReMI.

 

Return to Monkey Island concludes the timeline – not the series – with an older protagonist who finally gets his shit together. But video game characters aging in that way, that's unheard of in this kind of serialization. Directors of future Monkey Island games will likely choose to place their story between Tales and Return, get him back to his younger self. These games will be prequels to ReMI.

 

This of course means that Ron could kill off Guybrush at the end. Just saying. 😅

Edited September 16, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[KestrelPi]

From the eurogamer piece:

 

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The idea of any future Monkey Island game recently seemed uncertain, as the Return to Monkey Island website briefly classed the upcoming release as a "conclusion" to the series. (This wording has now been changed to describe Return simply as a "new chapter").

Is Return the ending of the series? In Gilbert's words, he "can't imagine" there not being more Monkey Island adventures to come - though whether or not Gilbert, Grossman and Crowle will themselves return remains to be seen.

 

also:

 

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And what of Elaine? She is a strong character in her own right, so could we ever see a bigger role for her in a future Monkey Island game? Well, actually yes. Giving Elaine a starring role is, in fact, an idea Gilbert and Grossman have both discussed in the past.

"[Something] I've always kind of wanted to explore was a Monkey Island game helmed by Elaine, where Guybrush is the sidekick in it all," Gilbert revealed. "It's something that interests me quite a bit... [but] I don't know how to make that game."

Grossman said he felt the team would ultimately need to change how they approach the series with Elaine in the main role.

"It's tricky, because it's difficult to imagine Elaine solving problems in the same way that Guybrush does," he stated. "She's got to kind of have her own 'mode', [and] we have to figure out what that is before we can make that game."

 

 

That last part would also imply to me that playable elaine was considered for ReMI but ditched, just like Ron said it was

[BaronGrackle]

39 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

That last part would also imply to me that playable elaine was considered for ReMI but ditched, just like Ron said it was

So I just now realized Thimbleweed Park gave us a basis for playable ghosts, thanks to Franklin.

 

A playable LeChuck would be able to turn on elevators, grog machines, roller coasters...

[Udvarnoky]

And you guys thought the question was settled.