Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat

[netmonkey]

I finished the game last night and caught up with as many comments in the thread as I could. I see common themes already, and wanted to post my thoughts about it.

 

I enjoyed the game a lot. It definitely took me back to the feeling when I first played the trilogy in my teens. What drives me most in these games is finding out what happens next more so than the challenge of the puzzles. I did play it in hard mode but whenever I didn't have patience on something or found it obtuse, I went to the hint book. I don't have a lot of time to play games, so I try to make the most with the time that I have and the hint book helped me move forward.

 

The ending to me was very unexpected and I wanted more, beyond an accept or deny choice. It does answer one theory that I had for a long time but it doesn't necessarily conclude what happens in the story that I've been following in this game. Guybrush remembers where he's been this whole time... and then what? To me, LeChuck and Captain Madison are as real as Guybrush (even he is just a fictional character in a game) and it would have been interesting to me to see how they three reacted to discovering that their whole world is an amusement park. Even if it was all part of Guybrush's imagination, I keep asking myself how would have he finished the story he was already telling within that world.

 

(Also, I wanted to save Wally! I still feel bad I left him stranded in MI2 years ago.)

 

If I were to lean into the ending and interpret the subtext in one of many possible ways, it feels that it's a reflection of Ron and Dave's opportunity to return to the Monkey Island world. They got a chance to play with the characters and locations once more until time was up. Stan represents the larger industry that controls the brand, possibly Disney/Lucasfilm.

[Jake]

6 minutes ago, netmonkey said:

(Also, I wanted to save Wally! I still feel bad I left him stranded in MI2 years ago.)

The solution is hidden and baroque but you can do it!

(You can get the key made for the manacle on LeShip early in the game.)

[BaronGrackle]

1 hour ago, netmonkey said:

It definitely took me back to the feeliang when I first played the trilogy in my teens.
 

. . . 

 

(Also, I wanted to save Wally! I still feel bad I left him stranded in MI2 years ago.)

And you also left him stranded in Curse.  Go back and save him!

[Sadbrush]

9 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

It's all interpretation of course, but I feel like there's a pretty strong implication that what we're seeing at the start of ReMI is the exact same moment as the end of MI2, but with some of the layers peeled back... a process which finishes when they give up on the 'parents' and walk back to the previous area and the buildings etc. have changed.

 

Also, Ron said it was important for him to pick up the story exactly where MI2 left off, which I guess it wouldn't actually be doing if this was actually just a re-enactment of that moment happening way later.

 

This is a big bone of contention with me, but definitely interesting to think about. Perhaps it's best that it's never explained for real and left up to interpretation. I don't think Ron was thinking about Guybrush and Elaine having kids back in those days (they were never supposed to be a couple), so I don't think it necessarily would have had that framing element. I think it probably would have been closer to NinjaChamp's hypothesis:

 

2 hours ago, NinjaChimp said:

Reading this led me to hypothesising what the original intent would have been in 1991, and how the envisioned 3rd game would have differed from Return. For one thing, the Guybrush & Boybrush father / son relationship and storytelling narrative seems unlikely as the developers letter suggests this is a reflection on their own experiences of fatherhood and reliving on past glory, something they would have been unlikely to come up with 30 years ago.

 

I'd wager that the implication of Boybrush being a young version of Guybrush playing pirate games with Chuckie was the original intent. In this version, Chuckie may well have been Guybrush's brother and the two old people we see were indeed their parents. None of the events shown up until that point would have been anything other than the playtime fantasy of two boys in a pirate-themed amusement park.

 

I hadn't considered this, but the original framework of 3a (in 1992) might have been some version of this that is told from young Guybrush's point of view. Of course, on a different level of interpretation, one could say that Boybrush represents Guybrush, and he's been talking to his inner child this whole time. (goosebumps)

 

10 hours ago, LowLevel said:

During the development of RtMI, Ron asked the readers of his blog what their favorite puzzle was. To me this was a very suspicious question, and I hoped that the answers to this question would help him for his next game. Several replies pointed out that an original puzzle is something that does not necessarily rely on the usual key/lock metaphor. The melting mugs of grog in MI1 were cited as an example. (by Ron!)

 

If Ron took all those comments into consideration, that might be the reason why this game seems easier than all the others. He was catering more to the player experience than the frustrating designs of those original puzzles (which had me reaching for the physical hint book). 

Personally, I didn't mind the fact that Return was simplified. For one, it made me feel smarter. Secondly, I don't have the same patience I did as a kid. With only a limited play window, you want to make as much headway as possible. This game felt like it was constantly moving, there were plenty of things to explore and it was easy to keep a tally of what objectives you had to do. The thing that maybe made it too streamlined was the fact that it tells you which objects you can't combine with each other. But I think that was mostly a shortcut for them to not have to write new lines of dialogue for every failed item combination (which honestly, does get a little redundant: variations on "Nope, you can't do that.").

 

My only complaint about the gameplay is that it feels like there were still puzzles that went unsolved. There are certain items that didn't get to be used and locations that didn't feel fully explored. Areas like the locksmith shop, Wally's shop, the museum, the fish shop, et al, have so many hotspots you can interact with, but don't seem to come into play at all. Again, I think this all had more to do with a limited team and budget and not enough time to populate the world with characters and puzzles, like they did in the earlier games.

[Xantospoc]

In my personal opinion, Elaine was supposed one of the few people who were real, likely either an employee tha found Kid Guybrush AKA Kidbrush adorable ([sic] "You can't be a pirate, you are too sweet" ), or a kid that while wasn't as interested in pirates, still found him cute. (TBH, I feel like the 'older ELaine' was the original Gilbert canon while the 'kid Elaine' is the newest one)

The only issue is that there is a HUGE implication that, in case you save Elaine, she implies she is going to "do things" with Guybrush

 

The only others guys we know for sure were employees are the local fortune teller Corina (who also seems to be the ticket seller) and the man running the show, Stan. While Kidbrush likely was fond of the fortune teller, likely due to the over the top spectacles she put up, he disliked Stan's behavior, to the point of making him a con man who always gets the short end of the stick

 

Quote

GUYBRUSH: Kiss me [...] Okay then, let's go to your place.
ELAINE: Okay. But finish your trials first. don't want you to be preoccupied.
GUYBRUSH: I feel this sudden urge to complete the trials quickly.

 

After he succeeds with the three Trials (only for LeChuck kidnapping her). So I think that 'Kidbrush' had to be in his early teens. LeChuck was just a mix of the 'animatroic Pirate' present in the ride, along with his bully older (likely adoptive) brother Chuckie, who pestered him in both 'Pirate Reality' and 'Theme Park Reality' the first game. I can see Chuckie having been defeated when Kidbrush doused him with root beer.

 

Kidbrush had so much fun that, due to his issues of being adopted, ran away, and snuck on the 'behind the scenes' of the theme attraction but Chuckie  found him and they made up regarding the constant picking on. Curse, Escape and Tales were likely fun returns to the theme park without major complications, maybe Escape also had a restructure of the park after it was bought out by Rupert Murdock Ozzie Mandrill and Guybrush didn't like the changes.

At this point, Guybrush either got with the 'Elaine' or found an Elaine accepting his fantasy, grew up, got a job as a flooring inspector (irony not lost on him) and bcame a father andhe began sharing those adventures with his son. So far, Kidbrush doesn't seem to have ever joined his adventures, fake or otherwise.

[KestrelPi]

20 minutes ago, Xantospoc said:

In my personal opinion, Elaine was supposed one of the few people who were real, likely either an employee tha found Kid Guybrush AKA Kidbrush adorable ([sic] "You can't be a pirate, you are too sweet" ), or a kid that while wasn't as interested in pirates, still found him cute. (TBH, I feel like the 'older ELaine' was the original Gilbert canon while the 'kid Elaine' is the newest one)

The only issue is that there is a HUGE implication that, in case you save Elaine, she implies she is going to "do things" with Guybrush

 

The only others guys we know for sure were employees are the local fortune teller Corina (who also seems to be the ticket seller) and the man running the show, Stan. While Kidbrush likely was fond of the fortune teller, likely due to the over the top spectacles she put up, he disliked Stan's behavior, to the point of making him a con man who always gets the short end of the stick

 

 

After he succeeds with the three Trials (only for LeChuck kidnapping her). So I think that 'Kidbrush' had to be in his early teens. LeChuck was just a mix of the 'animatroic Pirate' present in the ride, along with his bully older (likely adoptive) brother Chuckie, who pestered him in both 'Pirate Reality' and 'Theme Park Reality' the first game. I can see Chuckie having been defeated when Kidbrush doused him with root beer.

 

Kidbrush had so much fun that, due to his issues of being adopted, ran away, and snuck on the 'behind the scenes' of the theme attraction but Chuckie  found him and they made up regarding the constant picking on. Curse, Escape and Tales were likely fun returns to the theme park without major complications, maybe Escape also had a restructure of the park after it was bought out by Rupert Murdock Ozzie Mandrill and Guybrush didn't like the changes.

At this point, Guybrush either got with the 'Elaine' or found an Elaine accepting his fantasy, grew up, got a job as a flooring inspector (irony not lost on him) and bcame a father andhe began sharing those adventures with his son. So far, Kidbrush doesn't seem to have ever joined his adventures, fake or otherwise.

 

To me squaring all this can be a lot simpler if we assume the version of the story we're seeing through our player-eyes is not always being told with one voice. Like, when the two of them are instantly falling in love and slinging terrible pet names at each other I can easily imagine that as Boybrush playing. When there's some (pretty mild) sexual implications to one line I think it's easy to imagine that as something in an older-guybrush's head.

 

Something I like about the introduction in this game of the idea that we might be seeing things from more than one perspective is that it resolves a lot of inconsistencies that arise if you think of it as either just a literal telling of something that happened or as an imagining of a kid in a theme park.

[Xantospoc]

23 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

 

. Like, when the two of them are instantly falling in love and slinging terrible pet names at each other I can easily imagine that as Boybrush playing.

This is possible, although Kidbrush seems to dislike romance, even now (justifiably so, given it concerns his parents!), I don't see him wanting to play it

 

23 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

When there's some (pretty mild) sexual implications to one line I think it's easy to imagine that as something in an older-guybrush's head.

And I find weird to imagine Guybrush giving his romance-averting son a more blatant joke than, say, the 'Bone Master'. While the 'pick up' joke make more sense, as most end with Guybrush being put down HARD.

 

Given it's pretty obvious they wereton't meant to always be stories, I am trying to see how the original interpretation was

 

FYI, I suppose that, by the end, the 1992!MI3 was going to have as a theme 'to end everything with a bang'. I don't think at that point Ron would have wanted to continue working on MI, so he'd have tried to at least provide more closure some of the questions such as ending the rivalry with Chuckie and Guybrush, and explain who was Elaine.

 

More or less the ideas of 'Guybrush chases Demon LeChuck in Hell and Stan is here' seems it was roughly fit as 'Guybrush chases LeChuck down Monkey Island (that kind of looks like Hell) and somehow Stan there". I love that this likely means that:

1. Stan was meant to have died because of our sealing him in a coffin

2. Stan was always meant to be the guy running the theme park (also fitting because he is the least pirate guy in both games)

 

While Return answered a few things, it's meant to have a few 'backdoors' to coninue the story if he or someone else feels like it... which is not an issue to me, as I like Monkey Island!

 

23 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Something I like about the introduction in this game of the idea that we might be seeing things from more than one perspective is that it resolves a lot of inconsistencies that arise if you think of it as either just a literal telling of something that happened or as an imagining of a kid in a theme park.

 

Absolutely, as Guybrush says, in what is my favorite quote of the game, 

 

"[The Secret]'s like a story. It changes with time and the person telling it. Everyone you ask will have a different idea"

 

This story had, in either the Pirate Reality or the Theme Park reality, a true 'line of thoughts': Guybrush coming to terms with the truth of the Secret, and having successfully not been consumed by it, either by denying it (although I doubt it will ever be a canon ending, you never know) or by going home with Elaine and seeing it for what it was.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Xantospoc

[KestrelPi]

40 minutes ago, Xantospoc said:

This is possible, although Kidbrush seems to dislike romance, even now (justifiably so, given it concerns his parents!), I don't see him wanting to play it

 

And I find weird to imagine Guybrush giving his romance-averting son a more blatant joke than, say, the 'Bone Master'. While the 'pick up' joke make more sense, as most end with Guybrush being put down HARD.

 

Given it's pretty obvious they wereton't meant to always be stories, I am trying to see how the original interpretation was

 

FYI, I suppose that, by the end, the 1992!MI3 was going to have as a theme 'to end everything with a bang'. I don't think at that point Ron would have wanted to continue working on MI, so he'd have tried to at least provide more closure some of the questions such as ending the rivalry with Chuckie and Guybrush, and explain who was Elaine.

 

More or less the ideas of 'Guybrush chases Demon LeChuck in Hell and Stan is here' seems it was roughly fit as 'Guybrush chases LeChuck down Monkey Island (that kind of looks like Hell) and somehow Stan there". I love that this likely means that:

1. Stan was meant to have died because of our sealing him in a coffin

2. Stan was always meant to be the guy running the theme park (also fitting because he is the least pirate guy in both games)

 

While Return answered a few things, it's meant to have a few 'backdoors' to coninue the story if he or someone else feels like it... which is not an issue to me, as I like Monkey Island!

 

 

Absolutely, as Guybrush says, in what is my favorite quote of the game, 

 

"[The Secret]'s like a story. It changes with time and the person telling it. Everyone you ask will have a different idea"

 

This story had, in either the Pirate Reality or the Theme Park reality, a true 'line of thoughts': Guybrush coming to terms with the truth of the Secret, and having successfully not been consumed by it, either by denying it (although I doubt it will ever be a canon ending, you never know) or by going home with Elaine and seeing it for what it was.

 

There's different levels all this could be playing on though of course so at any one time we don't know if we're looking at an interpretation of

 

* Boybrush playing with friends based on a story told to him before by Guybrush

* Boybrush imagining something he is being told by Guybrush right now

*Guybrush wandering around a theme park he's been to lots of times and imagining his adventures in it

* Guybrush remembering something that really happened, without Boybrush being there

* Guybrush making up or embellishing a story to tell his son

 

Or any other variation of these. I guess my point is that I think that any single interpretation of what the game presents us with quickly falls over. So I've started to think about Monkey Island (the world as seen by the player) as a sort of fusion of various perspectives, its own entity which is informed by them but isn't the same thing as any of them.

[Xantospoc]

3 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

So I've started to think about Monkey Island (the world as seen by the player) as a sort of fusion of various perspectives, its own entity which is informed by them but isn't the same thing as any of them.

 

I also like to think that Boybrush is also partially a player stand in and that, when told that Herman Toothrot was Grandpa Marely he was like "This is a very dumb idea, it makes no sense [explains how much the continuity got messed up by such reveal" (like most of us) and thus Guybrush decided to quietly drop that story

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, Xantospoc said:

 

I also like to think that Boybrush is also partially a player stand in and that, when told that Herman Toothrot was Grandpa Marely he was like "This is a very dumb idea, it makes no sense [explains how much the continuity got messed up by such reveal" (like most of us) and thus Guybrush decided to quietly drop that story

 

I feel more like Guybrush than Boybrush, honestly, and can just as well imagine a lot of EMI as Boybrush's weird riff on some of the stories he'd been told by Guybrush.

 

But yeah, if I was to take a step even further back... I feel like it's kind of like how dreams you have will incorporate elements of things that happened during the day, things that you've been thinking about, stuff you were doing before you went to sleep, how you're feeling, and all that - and then sort of remix them all into something fairly unique.

 

I sort of could see Monkey Island (the games) as a semi-dreamlike representation of the collective imaginations of anyone who, as Ron put it, wanted to jump off the ride and explore the world, and Guybrush Threepwood as a sort of focal point that gives the world and story some coherence.

 

In many ways it's like something I suggested a couple of months back in the main forum:

 

"What if guybrush is the spirit of the collective imagination of all children fantasizing about playing pirates."

 

but after playing I'd rephrase it to "What if the MI universe is a representation of the collective imagination of all people playing pirates, and Guybrush is just the perspective from which we experience it"
 

[dan_the_rebirth]

oh boy monkey island has gone full meta now with, all that analysis^^

 

i love the new game and the art stlyle, some characters and backgrounds looked like they could be from a new day of the tentacle game xD

 

i think ron likes to mess with the players alot. so all that controversy of the ending(s) is surely part of his game design. 

the good thing is that because of the framing with buybrush you can always explain away all that meta stuff: the mi2 ending was already the imagination and play of him. and the return ending was guybrushs version of boot wanting to tell boybrush the truth. 

 

still i loooved that meta part and the denial option. 

 

ps. : i just realized that this is the only monkey island without a final confrontation with Lechuck. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LuigiHann]

3 hours ago, Xantospoc said:

 

I also like to think that Boybrush is also partially a player stand in and that, when told that Herman Toothrot was Grandpa Marely he was like "This is a very dumb idea, it makes no sense [explains how much the continuity got messed up by such reveal" (like most of us) and thus Guybrush decided to quietly drop that story

 

Fun other thought since it's all meta-storytelling, combining two separate people into one character for narrative convenience is a very common thing that arises during the editing process and when adapting a story into another format. 

 

Furthermore, given the frame of RtMI, it works out just as well if HT really is based on Boybrush's great-grandfather, or else he just envisions him as such. The actual surprise twist that one is the other perhaps didn't really play out as such, but if everybody in the story is somebody in real life then HT being somebody's grandfather makes as much sense as anything.

9 hours ago, Sadbrush said:

My only complaint about the gameplay is that it feels like there were still puzzles that went unsolved. There are certain items that didn't get to be used and locations that didn't feel fully explored. Areas like the locksmith shop, Wally's shop, the museum, the fish shop, et al, have so many hotspots you can interact with, but don't seem to come into play at all. Again, I think this all had more to do with a limited team and budget and not enough time to populate the world with characters and puzzles, like they did in the earlier games.

 

It definitely didn't bother me that there are hotspots not tied to puzzles... in fact, I prefer it, since the games where every single interaction ultimately ties into a puzzle, the world ends up feeling small. I liked that there was stuff that only existed for worldbuilding or characterization. 

 

The one thing, puzzle-wise, that did feel a bit unresolved to me was the graffiti around Melee's shops. But Guybrush's most notable response to those is "this looks unfinished," so maybe that was a nod we were intended to understand in retrospect

Edited September 26, 2022 by LuigiHann

[Xantospoc]

4 minutes ago, LuigiHann said:

 

Furthermore, given the frame of RtMI, it works out just as well if HT really is based on Boybrush's great-grandfather, or else he just envisions him as such. The actual surprise twist that one is the other perhaps didn't really play out as such, but if everybody in the story is somebody in real life then HT being somebody's grandfather makes as much sense as anything.

 

Like most of the ideas in stories, not everything worked. I don't need to explain why people disliked the whole "Herman Toothrot = Horatio Torquemada". I don't think however he saw Toothrot as a rrelative, given he was relatively cool about his father leaving him in a dark cave. 

 

And mind you, Boybrush is genuinely shocked when his father said he'd have given his firstborn to Locke Smith 

[Colorfinger]

10 hours ago, Sadbrush said:

My only complaint about the gameplay is that it feels like there were still puzzles that went unsolved. There are certain items that didn't get to be used and locations that didn't feel fully explored. Areas like the locksmith shop, Wally's shop, the museum, the fish shop, et al, have so many hotspots you can interact with, but don't seem to come into play at all. Again, I think this all had more to do with a limited team and budget and not enough time to populate the world with characters and puzzles, like they did in the earlier games.

 

Yes, agree with this. There feel like there are quite a few areas that should or could offer something (particularly Terror Island, where there are a number of places that literally only exist for a cutscene, to pick up one object, or for a trivia card), but don’t. My hope is that the critical (and hopefully commercial) success of Return will enable greater investment in the next game. Or maybe they can be like real modern developers, and release a DLC that restores Cogg Island and adds a bunch more content through the other islands too… I can dream

[Jake]

7 minutes ago, Colorfinger said:

Or maybe they can be like real modern developers, and release a DLC that restores Cogg Island and adds a bunch more content through the other islands too… I can dream

Though you’re right it does seem pretty unlikely for a substantial update like that to drop, Thimbleweed Park got two updates kind of like this! Neither of them are as intense as what you describe but they’re both pretty substantial updates for an adventure game: One of them opened the towns previously-closed arcade, and another added a bunch of extra dialog between the main characters (and introduced the hint system).

[KestrelPi]

Definitely outside the scope of this project but I always thought it would be interesting to have a living adventure game where occasionally you could tell new stories with the same locations and characters via content patches, a bit like how things like MMOs keep the game alive with patches between big expansion releases.

[LuigiHann]

38 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Definitely outside the scope of this project but I always thought it would be interesting to have a living adventure game where occasionally you could tell new stories with the same locations and characters via content patches, a bit like how things like MMOs keep the game alive with patches between big expansion releases.

 

That's somewhere between Telltale's episodic structure and Myst Online's periodic content updates, and I think the issue with an ongoing one is generally that you end up doing several games worth of work for one game's worth of sales, and adventure game content gets consumed much more quickly than something endless like an RPG or a sim game. Always a bummer because the idea really is beautiful in theory. Would love to see somebody make it work

[Jayel]

2 hours ago, LuigiHann said:

 

It definitely didn't bother me that there are hotspots not tied to puzzles... in fact, I prefer it, since the games where every single interaction ultimately ties into a puzzle, the world ends up feeling small. I liked that there was stuff that only existed for worldbuilding or characterization. 

 

 

I agree. Even if they're not gameplay relevant they make the world more tangible. I don't have numbers to prove it but I think LucasArts adventure games tended to have fewer interactable hotspots compared to games from other studios (for example, look at some of early 90's Sierra games where there isn't a single pixel in a room that doesn't have some sort of text description), perhaps to reduce players wasted time using everything on everything when they're stuck on a puzzle and don't know what to do next. Their worlds felt less rich as a result of it. Puzzles in adventure games aren't satisfying to solve for the most part - there's no out of the box creative problem solving like emergent sandbox games - so I'd rather that they stay on lite side and give as many interactable (or "look-at"able) hotspots/items as possible that are not tied to puzzles.

[LowLevel]

One of the reasons I did not find it unexpected that Terror Island was completely devoid of people (and life in general) is that, in my opinion, the whole place is taken directly from a chapter of (spoiler about a book)...

 

Spoiler

"On Stranger Tides". And that's a place where (normally) you can't find people but only mushrooms and spores that transform themself into animals (just as Guybrush says in RtMI)  and even body parts and fully formed faces (as seen in MI1). That's why the island is intentionally empty.

 

[demone]

21 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

One of the reasons I did not find it unexpected that Terror Island was completely devoid of people (and life in general) is that, in my opinion, the whole place is taken directly from a chapter of (spoiler about a book)...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

"On Stranger Tides". And that's a place where (normally) you can't find people but only mushrooms and spores that transform themself into animals (just as Guybrush says in RtMI)  and even body parts and fully formed faces (as seen in MI1). That's why the island is intentionally empty.

 

I've been meaning to buy that book for years now. Really should order it now to see more of the real inspiration behind the series. 

[BaronGrackle]

8 minutes ago, demone said:

I've been meaning to buy that book for years now. Really should order it now to see more of the real inspiration behind the series. 

There is a fantastic puzzle solution toward the end of that novel, just before the final act, and I'm surprised Guybrush hasn't done anything quite like it.

 

To those who have read, it's the way that Jack Shandy gets them to halt the sacrificial ceremony against his love interest.

[backtothemansion]

Can i just say some of the jokes in Return have wonderful clues to the ending.

 

For example, this joke reads differently with hindsight!!! 🤯

 

[Joe monsters]

13 hours ago, Xantospoc said:

In my personal opinion, Elaine was supposed one of the few people who were real, likely either an employee tha found Kid Guybrush AKA Kidbrush adorable ([sic] "You can't be a pirate, you are too sweet" ), or a kid that while wasn't as interested in pirates, still found him cute. (TBH, I feel like the 'older ELaine' was the original Gilbert canon while the 'kid Elaine' is the newest one)

The only issue is that there is a HUGE implication that, in case you save Elaine, she implies she is going to "do things" with Guybrush

 

The only others guys we know for sure were employees are the local fortune teller Corina (who also seems to be the ticket seller) and the man running the show, Stan. While Kidbrush likely was fond of the fortune teller, likely due to the over the top spectacles she put up, he disliked Stan's behavior, to the point of making him a con man who always gets the short end of the stick

 

 

After he succeeds with the three Trials (only for LeChuck kidnapping her). So I think that 'Kidbrush' had to be in his early teens. LeChuck was just a mix of the 'animatroic Pirate' present in the ride, along with his bully older (likely adoptive) brother Chuckie, who pestered him in both 'Pirate Reality' and 'Theme Park Reality' the first game. I can see Chuckie having been defeated when Kidbrush doused him with root beer.

 

Kidbrush had so much fun that, due to his issues of being adopted, ran away, and snuck on the 'behind the scenes' of the theme attraction but Chuckie  found him and they made up regarding the constant picking on. Curse, Escape and Tales were likely fun returns to the theme park without major complications, maybe Escape also had a restructure of the park after it was bought out by Rupert Murdock Ozzie Mandrill and Guybrush didn't like the changes.

At this point, Guybrush either got with the 'Elaine' or found an Elaine accepting his fantasy, grew up, got a job as a flooring inspector (irony not lost on him) and bcame a father andhe began sharing those adventures with his son. So far, Kidbrush doesn't seem to have ever joined his adventures, fake or otherwise.

I really love everything you said. This is also my theory, I couldn’t have expressed it better. Thank you!

[Mintopia]

So a week later and my reflections/thoughts on the endings and how I see it.

 

So we'll start with the secret. I love how it's handled - what the secret is isn't important, and it was never going to be revealed, it could be anything, it could be a lame T-shirt, we don't know as we have an unreliable narrator.

Is Guybrush really a flooring inspector? No. Is it all the delusions of someone obsessed with pirates/theme parks? No. I see it that he's legitimately telling the story of Return to Monkey Island and how he *maybe* found the secret to his son, but everything from stepping through the door is just him making up that part for his son - either to help teach him the lesson that obsessing over something like the secret is bad - and that it doesn't really matter; or to make a fun story.

The ending of MI2 as featured in MI2/the start of the prologue? What we see in MI2 is Chuckie + Boybrush playing out the ending of an adventure Guybrush had where he found Big Whoop. Again - we never see the real ending, but we know from CMI Guybrush ended up cursed and in a carnival - so this is why the boys pretend and play around that they're in this carnival but don't really know the details or are embellishing it. When the player gets control in the prologue - it's not the Big Whoop carnival. There's no rides, no Steamin' Weenie shack, no costume shop, etc, it's a park with some shops.

As I see it, MI1, most of MI2 except the bit in the Tunnels, CMI, EMI, Tales, and Return until he steps through the door *mostly* happened as we saw. Along with any number of unknown tales, adventures, etc. that we haven't seen. At some point they had a child, Boybrush, and this is years later and his Dad is telling him stories of the adventures he went on.

Everything is real except the endings of MI2 and Return; and only Guybrush possibly knows what the secret is - or he gave up on finding it out. Maybe it was a T-Shirt, maybe it was gold, maybe it was the friends we made, maybe he never found out. We don't know.

As a player, still find it slightly frustrating the main inner plotline didn't get a resolution, but I can live with that. The game was enjoyable.

6 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

There is a fantastic puzzle solution toward the end of that novel, just before the final act, and I'm surprised Guybrush hasn't done anything quite like it.

 

To those who have read, it's the way that Jack Shandy gets them to halt the sacrificial ceremony against his love interest.

It's a brilliant part of the book and a nice callback to Jack's origins. The books was really done a disservice by the terrible movie adaptation. I also picked up on the Terror Island aspects of it too.

[Doom Saber]

I might be one of the few who loved the ending of Return to Monkey Island, but I was elated that Ron Gilbert retconned  the notion that Guybrush fantasizing as a mighty pirate back into the game series; I enjoyed the meta ending in MI2 where Guybrush and Chuckie were paying pirates at an amusement park.

 

In my headcanon, Elaine was originally  a cast member a la "Disney princess" in the sense that she worked at the amusement park.  She probably gave Guybrush a chance when he asked her out due to his love of the park and playful personality