Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat

[Romão]

On 9/25/2022 at 7:14 AM, Dmnkly said:

Obviously, I have a VERY vested interest in what happens with Monkey Island going forward, so take this for what it's worth 😄

 

But one of the things I kind of love about how the fellas wrapped this one up is that I don't think more would diminish anything. I love how they've kind of closed the loop while setting up almost a kind of framework that all of these stories inhabit.

 

In some ways, I feel like this frees any future projects, should we get them, to simply be fun Monkey Island stories, new adventures, a standalone chapters, without the burden of dealing with the larger questions and setup. I feel like it would now be possible for a new game — with maybe just a couple of subtle nods to the metastory — to simply tell a fun story.

 

I mean, it would be tough to top the emotional pull of RtMI. And maybe the best thing would be not to try. But so long as any future adventures are deferential to what we just played, I don't think there's any reason they'd have to detract from anything.

 

 

Absolutely this!!! Cannot agree with this enough.

 

The Monkey Island storytelling potential never felt more open and ripe for exploration than it does now.

 

A Curse-like type of game, for example, with its great locales, puzzles, humor and atmosphere, but with some lack, let's  say, of far reaching implications and being kinda "toothless" (don't know how else to put it) would now fit much better within the Monkey Island world than Curse did coming of the heels of Monkey island 2.

 

The whole series became unburdened, let's say. If I were a video game creator, I'd much rather work on a Monkey Island in the aftermath of Return to Monkey Island that in any other moment before this game was released.

[ThunderPeel2001]

2 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

I think the Prelude's amusement park is "more real" than what it looks like after you take control. I think it's a stuffed giraffe instead of a pirate... modern currency instead of pieces of eight... a restroom instead of an outhouse... trash cans instead of barrels with sunglass rats.

 

Except the game says we are seeing reality: When Chuckie and Boybrush start hassling those random parents, we DON'T see their fantasy responses (as we do in Monkey 2), we see them in reality saying, "Please leave us alone".

 

When Chuckie and Boybrush talk about Scurvydogs, THEY see them as delicious culinary delights, but we WE see them as fly and hair covered monstrosities.

 

The intro makes this point several times: When they make their wishes (who else saved and reloaded to see them all) we see flashes of their imagination, but then we're back to reality again.

 

I mean, that's ultimately the twist: The ending of MI2 was a child's imagination (Chuckie has glowing death eyes, they're brothers, the random couple behave as though they're the real parents), but now we're in reality (they're not brothers, Chuckie isn't evil with voodoo powers, the couple tell the kids to go away).

 

It's just that "reality" is some alternate piratey universe...

 

In other words, the stuffed giraffe was really a pirate 😬

 

2 hours ago, LowLevel said:

I was deeply misled by how negative the Steam forum was, I thought those few people represented a larger percentage of gamers, while they were just noisy.

 

This is so true across the whole of the internet and why I get so annoyed by "news" articles reporting what Twitter users are saying! Internet forums and social media are a subsection of society, not a cross-section.

Edited September 27, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[BaronGrackle]

3 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Except the game says we are seeing reality: When Chuckie and Boybrush start hassling those random parents, we DON'T see their fantasy responses (as we do in Monkey 2), we see them in reality saying, "Please leave us alone".

But those fake parents keep up the "leave us alone" demeanor both at the very beginning (with the modern amusement park) and later on at the lake (with the less modern appearances). That man had a collared shirt. Chucky wore a modern T-Shirt.

 

If the reality were pirate times (sleeping pirate on the balcony) and the fiction were modern times (stuffed giraffe on the balcony), then why would the fake parents wonder if the parrot were real or animatronic?

 

If Boybrush and Chucky lived in pirate times, and voodoo magic didn't exist, then how would they think to imagine things like amusement parks, grog machines, and other modern anachronisms in the MI stories?

[ThunderPeel2001]

21 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

If the reality were pirate times

 

I never said that? 🤷‍♂️

[BaronGrackle]

4 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

I never said that? 🤷‍♂️

Oh. I misunderstood your "a reality where pirates are real".

[Garystu]

I think it would have been funnier if Boybrush and Chuckie were actually brothers. Those would have been some wild genetics, and a funny naming method for your two children. Oh well.

 

In an MI continuity where Guybrush and Elaine didn't get married, I think its very likely Dee would have instead been baby Elaine in the park. This is just personal speculation of course. But still.

 

It's a good thing Guybrush and Elaine did get married, or we wouldn't have been treated to those amazing anchor facts. I don't think Elaine would have known that much about anchors. Nobody knows more than Dee.

[ThunderPeel2001]

11 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

Oh. I misunderstood your "a reality where pirates are real".

 

It seems more like a reality where the pirate life became the dominant way of living long after it did in our one... Either way, it comes across (to me) like an alternate universe not dissimilar to the one where Guybrush is imagining his adventures. (Hence my "having its cake and eating it, too" comment.)

 

It's all very confusing and contradictory, and probably exactly what Ron wanted!

[ThunderPeel2001]

After rejoining the forum, I realised that I never opened the chest! 🤦‍♂️ I was kind of disappointed in the reveal, and it was really late, and so I didn't really explore the area. I thought that was it.

 

Tonight I went back and considered some of things I've read here, and that the "Secret" was that the entire thing was a theme park (just as Bill Tiller told us), it has  made the ending more poignant. Especially Guybrush on the bench, looking back.

 

It might take me a while to process it all.

 

I'm so glad it's getting so well reviewed, though! And (again) I don't know why the graphics looked to awful to me in the screenshots and the trailer, it looks wonderful. I simply cannot imagine the game looking any different now. I think Rex was the perfect choice! (Although I bet he's traumatised from the experience!)

 

Same goes for the voice acting. Dom was perfect. Even Alexandra Boyd, who I have struggled with in other games, was perfectly great. 

 

Strangely the biggest issue I have is probably with the dialogue. Sorry to repeat myself, but the whole game was just so damned PLEASANT. Everyone is in such a good mood and so willing to be lovely to everyone. It kind of stripped the game of having any big laugh out loud moments.

 

Which isn't to say the characters weren't memorable or interesting, they all were. But there wasn't any drama.

 

I really thought Elaine following Guybrush's trail of destruction was going to lead to a big confrontation, but it just led to another pleasant conversation. No matter what Guybrush says, Elaine forgives him or shrugs it off.

 

It's not "bad", per se, it's just a not very "Monkey Island" choice. Was this the lack of Tim Schafer in the room? Dave Grossman seems likely an unflappably lovely guy... was this his cheery voice in every character?

 

Obviously Ron and Dave have talked about this game being a reflection of who they are today. Are they both just incredibly mellow 50-somethings? Did they deliberately not attempt to capture the original feel?

 

As I say, it's not "bad". It's quite enjoyable being in this pleasant world. It's just not what Monkey Island has been for the past 30 years. (Shrugs)

 

Anyway... random thoughts!

Edited September 27, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Romão]

I must say Part II of this game is probably my favorite "Island-less" act in all of the Monkey Island games. Everything was perfect

[JacquesSparkyTail]

More nothing thoughts… The plaque in the theme park at the end implies that the series is actually set in modern day. I don’t know why but that really surprised me. I for some reason thought that the pirate world was early 1700s and the end of monkey 2 was just later that same century. No idea why i thought that, probably the clothes. Everyone has period costumes on (including guybrush in this game) but apparently THAT was the anachronism and everything we previously thought to be anachronistic was actually appropriate. 

[LuigiHann]

40 minutes ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

More nothing thoughts… The plaque in the theme park at the end implies that the series is actually set in modern day. I don’t know why but that really surprised me. I for some reason thought that the pirate world was early 1700s and the end of monkey 2 was just later that same century. No idea why i thought that, probably the clothes. Everyone has period costumes on (including guybrush in this game) but apparently THAT was the anachronism and everything we previously thought to be anachronistic was actually appropriate. 

 

Personally I'd flip it, and assume the plaque is an anachronism (effectively a fourth wall break) and that the stuff we see in the frame story setting is realer than that. But it is open-ended enough to read it either way. 

 

5 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

If the reality were pirate times (sleeping pirate on the balcony) and the fiction were modern times (stuffed giraffe on the balcony), then why would the fake parents wonder if the parrot were real or animatronic?

 

 

Curse of Monkey Island establishes that animatronics exist within the pirate world, at least as a concept

[BaronGrackle]

Just now, LuigiHann said:

Curse of Monkey Island establishes that animatronics exist within the pirate world, at least as a concept

Secret establishes grog machines.

[KestrelPi]

7 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Except the game says we are seeing reality: When Chuckie and Boybrush start hassling those random parents, we DON'T see their fantasy responses (as we do in Monkey 2), we see them in reality saying, "Please leave us alone".

 

When Chuckie and Boybrush talk about Scurvydogs, THEY see them as delicious culinary delights, but we WE see them as fly and hair covered monstrosities.

 

 

I agree with this... the game leaves enough wiggle room for some interpretation but it's pretty clear we're seeing the same scene from MI2's end play out but with some of the layers of imagination peeled back. I think alternate reads of that are ... POSSIBLE, but they're really pulling against what the game is pretty directly showing us.

 

At the end of MI2 we're seeing them as adults, then as kids, then in the carnival and it seems that then ReMI strips back the carnival some, and so on, it's a progression.

 

The area that is most open to interpretation I think is what role the carnival plays in it all. Taken at face value, where they end up seems less like a carnival with rides (the rides we can see vanish from a background) and more like ... well, at best a big park, really. Maybe a fair.

 

It's certainly not something that feels big enough to have a network of underground tunnels supporting it, anyway. So when we see the underground tunnels with all the theme park supplies and spare tracks and things, on what level is it operating? And when the kids are imagining the big whoop sign and the rides, whose story are we seeing?

 

It could be that they're imagining something like the Carnival of the Damned that CMI posits as the end of MI2 and start/end of CMI. I think that makes sense as an explanation, but then what exactly is the carnival we see at the end of ReMI? Is that reality? If so, it seems like a different one from the park-reality where he's telling the stories. Or at least a different aspect.

 

One way you could tie it all together is something along these lines:

 

In the real world (or some slightly more piratey approximation of it) Guybrush visits Stan's carnival as a kid, and goes back ever year, imagining himself having all kinds of adventures there. He doesn't quite grow out of it, but he does meet Elaine along the way, who used to appreciate it in the same way he did but has sort of moved on. She tolerates his fascination with the place but nowadays doesn't go out of her way to nurture it. In the park, there is a sort of treasure hunt, every year, but usually Guybrush either comes away empty handed or doesn't take away the biggest prize.

 

Elaine and Guybrush perhaps go on various real-world treasure hunting adventures, but they never really do anything on the same big, grand scale of Guybrush's imagined adventures in Stan's park. They start a family, and this becomes a new priority in Guybrush's life. He no longer loses himself in the fantasy of the park every year, but he does keep it alive through the stories that he tells his son, which are a mixture of his real adventures with Elaine, and embellishments that he tells, inspired by the times at Stan's park.

 

His son loves all the stories, and he often play acts them with his friends. Where ReMI starts is during one such thing, and we get to see Guybrush telling his son another heavily embellished tale of his old adventures. At the end of the story, for reasons, Guybrush changes tack and reminisces about his very last visit to Stan's park, the one where he stays very late, determined to finally find the secret for himself. This, he does, or doesn't do depending on the player's choice.

At the end of the story Elaine tells Guybrush about a new little adventure he has planned, but before we cut to credits we get to see Guybrush reminisce one more time about his younger days when anything seemed possible, and feel content that he's passing some of that spirit onto his son with his stories.

Edited September 28, 2022 by KestrelPi

[Sadbrush]

Random question, but if Guybrush and Elaine had a daughter, do you think they would name her Girlbrush or Ladybrush? (Or possibly, Laneybrush?)

[JJ1]

1 hour ago, Sadbrush said:

Random question, but if Guybrush and Elaine had a daughter, do you think they would name her Girlbrush or Ladybrush? (Or possibly, Laneybrush?)

Girlbrush.  Ladybrush sounds like a product sold in the cosmetics area of a store.

[LuigiHann]

6 minutes ago, JJ1 said:

Girlbrush.  Ladybrush sounds like a product sold in the cosmetics area of a store.

 

Maybe "Galbrush"

[Xantospoc]

Btw, I wish to say that I think  that at least up until recently, Guybrush and LeChuck being 'brothers' had to be a real thing.

Why?
Thimbleweed Park (which I am aware is meant to be a fictional world, but still) had this excerpt

 

[NightWalker]

6 hours ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

More nothing thoughts… The plaque in the theme park at the end implies that the series is actually set in modern day. I don’t know why but that really surprised me. I for some reason thought that the pirate world was early 1700s and the end of monkey 2 was just later that same century. No idea why i thought that, probably the clothes. Everyone has period costumes on (including guybrush in this game) but apparently THAT was the anachronism and everything we previously thought to be anachronistic was actually appropriate. 

Yeah, I think that too, that the world of the game could be set in the modern day. Maybe even the clothes that Guybrush and Elaine are wearing in the park, while Guybrush tell his stories to his son, are costumes that the park sells you (or rent you). And maybe the treasure of Mire Island is some other amusement park attraction or another game prepared by Stan, who knows.

 

Anyway, one thing I found weird is that it seems to be lesser anachronisms in Return to Monkey Island than in the two first games... or maybe it was my impression. But in Monkey 1 and 2 we saw things very obvious such the grog machine, the water pump or even the signs with lightbulbs. In Return to Monkey Island... I don't remember many anachronisms... Maybe the staple remover and I can't think of much more apart from some dialogues which talk about modern things.

[dan_the_rebirth]

who gave the kid the name boybrush? i dont recall that mentioned anywhere

[Garystu]

7 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

I really thought Elaine following Guybrush's trail of destruction was going to lead to a big confrontation, but it just led to another pleasant conversation. No matter what Guybrush says, Elaine forgives him or shrugs it off.

 

I actually love this?

 

The You Suck Speech is a tried and proven trope in video gaming. Metal Gear Solid did it twenty or so years ago. Hotline Miami did it. Spec Ops: The Line did it. Undertale was considered incredibly subversive, because you got a choice to suck or not, and that's its a sign of how common a forced You Suck speech is. There's way more games too, my point is that Games Do This.

 

So I was also primed for this confrontation and blindsighted when I didn't get it.

 

It is was concerning! You'd done some really horrible things, and it felt wrong to have Elaine just shrug it off like that! This is where she should be ripping into you!

 

The scene is very close to the ending. When you reach the theme park, you understand. Of course she shrugs these things off. Don't take it so seriously! It's a game.

 

At least that's how I saw it. There's problems with this reading as well, but because there's always problems with readings of a meta story with an unreliable narrator.

 

1 minute ago, dan_the_rebirth said:

who gave the kid the name boybrush? i dont recall that mentioned anywhere

 

 

If you turn on the character names in the subtitles, that's the name displayed for Boybrush.

[Doom Saber]

22 hours ago, Sadbrush said:

 

Yeah, especially the fact that she's in costume and seems to stay in character as "governor" would be a way of explaining how they met in the park and why he started falling for her. I still think she might be a higher-up in the park, since she seems to get around the island area pretty frequently, but still takes her "job" very seriously.

I too think that she is a higher up, but that she gained the position later in the series like in Monkey Island 4 especially when she is no longer governor in that game.  I see the governor position as the Disney Princess position, but instead of the specific Disney Princesses being the more desirable cast member roles in real life, it is the title of being governor.  I feel that Stan wouldn't have given the keys to Guybrush to lock up unless Guybrush or Elaine was an employee at the park as well.  Since Guybrush is a floor inspector, it makes sense for Elaine being the employee.

 

I see how ppl interpreted Guybrush and Elaine as being real pirates because of the line Elaine said that she found a map right before the game ends.  I interpreted that as Elaine and Stan has made a new adventure for Guybrush to have fun playing with.  I didn't take them as being actual pirates since none of their adventures were actually fun if they were real within the universe.  To clarify, I don't think Guybrush thought that the adventure to lift the curse of his fiancee being turned to gold by an engagement ring he gave her was fun.  I also see how ppl taking the Elaine scene at the end of MI2 seriously.  Those sort of endings were popular during the 90s and early 2000s to make ppl question endings.

[Doom Saber]

1 hour ago, NightWalker said:

Yeah, I think that too, that the world of the game could be set in the modern day. Maybe even the clothes that Guybrush and Elaine are wearing in the park, while Guybrush tell his stories to his son, are costumes that the park sells you (or rent you). And maybe the treasure of Mire Island is some other amusement park attraction or another game prepared by Stan, who knows.

 

Anyway, one thing I found weird is that it seems to be lesser anachronisms in Return to Monkey Island than in the two first games... or maybe it was my impression. But in Monkey 1 and 2 we saw things very obvious such the grog machine, the water pump or even the signs with lightbulbs. In Return to Monkey Island... I don't remember many anachronisms... Maybe the staple remover and I can't think of much more apart from some dialogues which talk about modern things.

 

Ever since the ending to MI2, I always took it as modern times.  What I love about the games is that they aren't set in a floating timeline, but to the real world timeline, more or less.  What I mean is that each game - o1ther than the ending to MI2 - are sit in the same time period as each game's release.   Since Guybrush was a teenager in MI1, it makes sense that he is around 40 or 50 in RoMI - each game is about Guybrush's during a certain point in his life - a reflection of Dave Grossman's and Ron Gilbert's lives during their own experiences as 20 sonethings to 50 sonethings.  The letter found in the scrapbook pretty much confirms this.

 

I honestly feel that if Disney ever makes a Monkey Island movie, they should hand it over to Pixar and make it about a teen  (Guybrush) with an overactive imagination that goes through life my pretending to be a swashbuckling pirate hero.  For example, handing in his homework to his teacher, which in his head, is him is turning in his pirate diary to a historian. The theme could be that you are never old to fantasize and have fun.  I think Steve Carrell made a movie with similar themes a few years ago.

13 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

But those fake parents keep up the "leave us alone" demeanor both at the very beginning (with the modern amusement park) and later on at the lake (with the less modern appearances). That man had a collared shirt. Chucky wore a modern T-Shirt.

 

If the reality were pirate times (sleeping pirate on the balcony) and the fiction were modern times (stuffed giraffe on the balcony), then why would the fake parents wonder if the parrot were real or animatronic?

 

If Boybrush and Chucky lived in pirate times, and voodoo magic didn't exist, then how would they think to imagine things like amusement parks, grog machines, and other modern anachronisms in the MI stories?

IMO, I don't think the real universe in MI is a world of pirates.  I think it is similar to our world except pirate amusement parks are popular there.  Now that I think about it, Monkey Island and Big Whoop being two different amusement parks make sense - Stan probably owns  a couple of theme parks across the nation.

 

It makes sense as in the breakup between Guybrush and Elaine ended so badly after MI1, she probably asked Stan to transfer her over to another theme park as a means to get over Guybrush.

[Doom Saber]

1 hour ago, Xantospoc said:

Btw, I wish to say that I think  that at least up until recently, Guybrush and LeChuck being 'brothers' had to be a real thing.

Why?
Thimbleweed Park (which I am aware is meant to be a fictional world, but still) had this excerpt

 

To be fair, was it ever confirmed that the Monkey Island book in Thimbleweed Park was written by Ron Gilbert?  The reason is that the book titles and entries were submitted by Kickstaker backers.  I forgot to do this, so I never wrote a passage or a title of the book.

 

Anyway, that Monkey Island book in Thimbleweed Park might have been written by a Kickstarter backer. 

[Lagomorph01]

Just finished it last night, the ending is wonderful and left me thinking for a long time... (I even woke up in the middle of the night thinking of it.)

I haven't really gathered my thoughts on it, yet. But I'll say one thing about the game... I love the comeback of the "Pappapisshu" cry! 😄

[roots]

My current pastime is trying to figure out how best to work RTMI into a canon where MI2's ending takes narrative precedence.

 

Chuckie's eyes at the end of MI2 pose a little bit of an issue, but the rough notion that RTMI is the product of a "Curse of Big Whoop" that has ensorcelled both Guybrush and LeChuck (And potentially Elaine) equally is an interesting one. A curse that messes with the mind to the extent that it not only convinces you you're someone you're not, but that you're your own son and reality is the fantasy is particularly hellish.