Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat

[madmardi]

28 minutes ago, roots said:

What I wanted from RTMI was more Monkey Island. Not commentary on Monkey Island.

 

I think I hear what you are saying, but IMHO there was a LOT of Monkey Island in this game. Not really sure how you could ask for more...

[BaronGrackle]

Are you guys talking about the literal Monkey Island, or the world of the Monkey Island games?

 

Because Mêlée Island kind of takes center stage, heh.

[roots]

5 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

Are you guys talking about the literal Monkey Island, or the world of the Monkey Island games?

 

Because Mêlée Island kind of takes center stage, heh.

 

Technically neither. I'm referring to the games themselves. RTMI didn't feel like a Monkey Island game to me, it felt like a commentary on them above all else.

[madmardi]

19 minutes ago, roots said:

 

Technically neither. I'm referring to the games themselves. RTMI didn't feel like a Monkey Island game to me, it felt like a commentary on them above all else.

 

Yea, I was assuming we were talking about the MI games, not the island itself! 

 

Anyways, if the ending had been more "traditional" with some sort of LeChuck confrontation, would you have felt differently?

[BaronGrackle]

51 minutes ago, roots said:

 

Technically neither. I'm referring to the games themselves. RTMI didn't feel like a Monkey Island game to me, it felt like a commentary on them above all else.

Can it be a Monkey Island game, by virtue of being a commentary on Monkey Island games?

 

Still in Part 2, I'm kind of amazed to watch this reality where nobody is afraid of LeChuck (neither the town nor his crew), and he and Guybrush are both suddenly really interested in the Secret of Monkey Island out of nowhere.

 

It's sort of like a dream sequence, an alternative dimension. But when this is over, can I really value a T-Shirt in a chest over that coveted E-Ticket in a chest?

 

That would let me get on... ANY ride. I don't think I've done a MI2 playthrough yet where I've left the Treasure of Big Whoop E-Ticket behind.

Edited September 29, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Garystu]

I don't believe Guybrush, Elaine, and Stan are the real ones, with all other characters being cutouts. Why? Because we saw those three as cutouts at PAX and Gamescom. Uh I didn't in person but I saw photos on Twitter link link. Guybrush, Elaine, and Stan are as fake and as real as the rest of the cast.

 

Yes, we have to consider real world memorabilia in this reading. Just before we were shown the cutouts in game, we had to solve SOMI's codewheel, so considering real world memorabilia is on the menu here.

 

It feels so arbitrary to denote those three as real. Guybrush and Elaine I get, but I can't accept an ending when Stan is real. Stan is an important reoccurring character, yes, but he's a cartoon of a man! Yes they all are, but Stan especially! He will NEVER be real to me 😊.

 

Also, how is Chuckie related to LeChuck? Is it solely though Boybrush's imagination? A common read, but. Maybe LeChuck also had a son who became friends with Guybrush's son, and they are both picturing themselves as their fathers in their imagination? And if LeChuck had a son, I don't know how an anamatromic would reproduce. A lot of "what ifs" here, to be fair.

 

I get being let down and/or wanting more lore and clarification. That's me, in some regards. Ambiguity can be difficult to deal with. I felt full from the story overall, but I understand being left feeling empty.

 

 

 

It is funny to consider the lime poster conversation as the most real conversation in the entire game though. You and your very real buddies getting together to vent about covid deniers and do arts and crafts. good times

[JacquesSparkyTail]

6 hours ago, roots said:

 

That is my problem. RTMI is a meta-commentary on the franchise, to the extent it leaves the conventional narrative as little more than a vehicle to carry said meta-commentary.

 

My issue isn't that the "the secret" was underwhelming, or that it doesn't tie up every loose end. I'm well aware of the value of maintaining some basic level of mystery within a setting. My issue is that there is no journey.

 

What I wanted from RTMI was more Monkey Island. Not commentary on Monkey Island.

I don’t know how true that is. The main story was great and obviously you didn’t think it was just there to support the meta stuff until the ending revealed itself. So surely you had 8-12 hours of great monkey island story with the last few minutes replaced with a scene more interesting than the 6th confrontation with lechuck could have hoped to be. 
 

I can’t imagine the mind set that would lead you to think “the ending didn’t provide closure so that whole story was worthless.” 
 

let me know if I’m mischaracterising you there but that’s how I’m interpreting what you’ve said and it makes no sense to me. I would have got this game for part 2 alone but we also got 4 other parts all of which were great and none of which were diminished by the lack of a lechuck fight or a magical treasure chest waiting at the end. 

[KestrelPi]

6 hours ago, roots said:

 

That is my problem. RTMI is a meta-commentary on the franchise, to the extent it leaves the conventional narrative as little more than a vehicle to carry said meta-commentary.

 

My issue isn't that the "the secret" was underwhelming, or that it doesn't tie up every loose end. I'm well aware of the value of maintaining some basic level of mystery within a setting. My issue is that there is no journey.

 

What I wanted from RTMI was more Monkey Island. Not commentary on Monkey Island.

 

I think I was just ready for this sort of Monkey Island game.

 

What I will concede is that there are certain things in the game that I don't think were quite 'there', which I've talked about in this thread. Things like the locations not feeling as fleshed out as I'd like, the dialogue trees not being as fun as in some of the previous games, and so forth.

 

I guess I just don't really see that sort of thing as an intrinsic problem related to the meta-commentary this game does. It could have done those things better and still delivered a meta-commentary.

 

A while back I did a plot summary of all the Monkey Island games, sort of stripping it down to the bare bones summary of each game's plot to see how intrinsically goofy each story was:

 

Quote

MI1: A young aspiring pirate called Threepwood completes a series of trials to be accepted as a pirate, falls in love with a governor, Elaine, who gets kidnapped by a ghost pirate LeChuck, and gathers a crew to journey to Monkey Island to rescue her, encountering a strange castaway, cannibals, and a monkey-head temple with catacombs leading down to the ghost ship. In the end he returns to Melee, confronts the LeChuck, and reunites with Elaine.

 

MI2: Threepwood, newly separated from Elaine seeks a new adventure, since his stories of LeChuck are no longer satisfying his pirate peers. He seeks the most famous pirate treasure of all. After getting waylaid on Scabb Island, he accidentally brings about the resurrection of LeChuck, and begins a race against the clock to find the pieces of the map to the treasure before LeChuck catches up with him. The quest takes him around three islands, and culminates in his capture and escape from LeChuck's fortress, just in time to find the treasure he has been looking for. But when he finds it, it turns out that LeChuck claims to be his brother all is not what it seems with his world.

 

Curse: Lost at sea after his strange experience with Big Whoop, Threepwood drifts into port only to get immediately captured by LeChuck, in a battle with Elaine. In his escape, he accidentally destroys LeChuck once more, and finds a ring which he uses to propose to Elaine. The ring turns her into a gold statue. To turn her back, he needs to find a ring of equal value, and the quest takes him to Blood Island where he must unravel the legacy of the residing family and resolve their ghostly troubles to finally get to the ring. But LeChuck, newly resurrected as a demon is not far behind, and the game culminates with a return to the mysterious big whoop, where Guybrush must foil LeChuck's plans to build a skeleton army.

 

Escape: Threepwood and Elaine return to Melee island to find Elaine is presumed dead, and a new pretender to the title of governor is in town. Going by Charles L Charles, he is making unreasonable promises. Elaine sends Threepwood to sort out her situation with the lawyers, and along the way he's confronted by the australian Ozzie Mandrill who intends to commercialise the carribean, with chain stores. But this just turns out to be part of a deeper plan he has to find a treasure called the Ultimate Insult, which he plans to use to mind control pirates all over the caribbean. It turns out that LeChuck, disguised as Charles L Charles is also in on the deal, and wants the Ultimate Insult in order to win Elaine, and the two villains are working in cahoots. Guybrush is left stranded on Monkey Island and while there discovers that the castaway, Herman Toothrot was actually Elaine's grandfather all along, and that the monkey temple from the first game is a giant robot, which he gets control of and uses to confront Ozzie and LeChuck once and for all before they can use the insult to take over the Caribbean

 

Tales: After botching another attempt to destroy LeChuck, Threepwood accidentally turns him human and apparently decent, instead. But before he can get a hold of the facts, he's stranded on Flotsam Island, a place where the winds make it impossible to escape, and manages to unleash a LeChuck-themed disease on himself and the Carribean. He discovers from the Voodoo Lady, someone who had helped him several times before, that only a giant sea sponge can heal the pox, and after fixing the problem with the winds goes on a quest to find it. Along the way, he's swallowed by a giant manatee, reunites with an apparently reformed LeChuck, and is chased by a french scientist intent on studying him to try to use the pox to discover the secret of life, and encounters Morgan LeFlay, a conflicted bounty hunter and admire of Threepwood. His trials lead him back to Flotsam, where he narrowly avoids conviction in court for the trouble he's caused, but at a critical moment, after discovering the Voodoo Lady's own motives might not be pure, LeChuck reveals his true motives and kills Threepwood. To win the day, he must travel the underworld, return to life and defeat LeChuck once more, with the help of those he met along the way.

 

 

What I noticed among other things is that the stories of Monkey Island games have trended towards getting goofier over time, but also more convoluted (I don't really blame Tales for the latter, you have to expect that from an episodic storytelling format)

 

MI1 has a REALLY simple story. A man wants to be a pirate, attracts the attention of a fearsome ghost pirate who takes his love interest, so he follows him to Monkey Island where he learns the secret of how to defeat ghosts, then chases him down for a final confrontation. MI2's isn't much more involved, it just gets a bit weird at the end.

 

I think one of the things I actually appreciate about ReMI is that it doesn't really have an ambition to dazzle us with plot in the same way that some of the later stuff does. It's basically just a treasure hunt. But there's still at least as much 'journey' as those early games:

 

You arrive on Melee, you find LeChuck already there, planning a voyage to get the Secret of Monkey Island, and pirate leaders uninterested in helping you and are involved with something called Dark Magic, so you hatch a plan to sneak on board his ship. When there you manipulate his crew to get them to go to monkey island, where those same pirate leaders have set a trap for you in order to claim the secret for themselves. You find out it's been taken back to Melee Island but you need to find 5 keys to unlock it. The pirate leaders meanwhile team up with LeChuck hoping to open it up with Dark Magic. You gather up the 5 keys, then go to open the chest, but LeChuck and team confronts you and makes off with the contents, taking them back to Monkey Island where the secret can be revealed. Once again you follow him back to Monkey Island, going deep into the monkey head through a series of traps until, at the final door, nothing is quite what it seems.

 

With all the meta-commentart taken out, that still reads like a Monkey Island story to me, and it reads like some sort of journey that is similarly involved to the previous games in the series, but not as convoluted as the last couple. So I guess I don't understand what you mean by 'there's no journey'

[Lagomorph01]

Has anyone considered that Guybrush might be the only 'real' character in the entire game? If you follow the orphaned boy theory, isn't it strange that Elaine and Boybrush are by his side until the end, after which they leave and he sits there alone?

Having myself been in therapy, I know how easy it is to set up coping methods for the problems that surround you, and for me, escaping into game worlds has been one of them (just like it is for Guybrush if you follow this theory).

If you believe that the whole game is a form of therapy for Guybrush, and letting his obsession with the secret go is the goal, wouldn't it be likely that Elaine and Boybrush are his coping methods, and that's why they leave him?

 

- Boybrush: He could be the inner (rejected) child of Guybrush that needs comforting. Being nice for your inner child means you'll learn to have compassion for yourself and is the way to dealing with your patterns and problems. After which you 'fuse' with the inner child and can just be nice to yourself.

- Elaine: She's more like a counselor in all of this. She's way too nice to Guybrush to be a real person. She doesn't care that he does horrible things to people and places (even her beloved Mêlée Island mop tree). She does not judge him, listens to him and asks him questions about his actions (or maybe patterns?). She's more of a psychologist than a wife.

 

This way, when Guybrush is 'healed', he doesn't need Elaine and Boybrush anymore. He's at peace with himself and the world around him. And he ends up alone on a bench and is completely fine with it.

 

Looking at it like that through the lense of my own journey, it might be the most beautiful ending imaginable.

 

[KestrelPi]

3 minutes ago, Lagomorph01 said:

Has anyone considered that Guybrush might be the only 'real' character in the entire game? If you follow the orphaned boy theory, isn't it strange that Elaine and Boybrush are by his side until the end, after which they leave and he sits there alone?

Having myself been in therapy, I know how easy it is to set up coping methods for the problems that surround you, and for me, escaping into game worlds has been one of them (just like it is for Guybrush if you follow this theory).

If you believe that the whole game is a form of therapy for Guybrush, and letting his obsession with the secret go is the goal, wouldn't it be likely that Elaine and Boybrush are his coping methods, and that's why they leave him?

 

- Boybrush: He could be the inner (rejected) child of Guybrush that needs comforting. Being nice for your inner child means you'll learn to have compassion for yourself and is the way to dealing with your patterns and problems. After which you 'fuse' with the inner child and can just be nice to yourself.

- Elaine: She's more like a counselor in all of this. She's way too nice to Guybrush to be a real person. She doesn't care that he does horrible things to people and places (even her beloved Mêlée Island mop tree). She does not judge him, listens to him and asks him questions about his actions (or maybe patterns?). She's more of a psychologist than a wife.

 

This way, when Guybrush is 'healed', he doesn't need Elaine and Boybrush anymore. He's at peace with himself and the world around him. And he ends up alone on a bench and is completely fine with it.

 

Looking at it like that through the lense of my own journey, it might be the most beautiful ending imaginable.

 

 

We've talked about this interpretation a few pages back. I really like it actually, but I don't think I'm quite there for it being my interpretation, mainly because I feel like I like the reveal at the start to be so strongly implying a journey from fantasy to reality that I don't think I want it to be 'actually, it's just another layer of fantasy'. Maybe that could be really cool, but I don't think the game sets up enough stuff to make that cool.

 

I remember feeling similar about the end of the second Matrix movie, when Neo does all the magic-looking stuff in the real world. I thought 'if the 3rd film addresses what happens here well, it'll be really cool,' but in the end it barely even addresses it.

 

So as of right now at least I prefer to take the park, Elaine and Boybrush at face value. I love the IDEA that there could be even more to it, but I need a little more scaffolding around it.

[LowLevel]

I think that if someone doesn't like too much abstraction from the usual Monkey Island script, it's perfectly OK; we don't need to like the same things.

 

This game, for sure, takes abstraction and implicitness to a very high level. For example, those who would have liked a final confrontation with LeChuck should consider the idea that the confrontation did actually take place and that Guybrush won:

 

The issue is that Guybrush exits from his fantasy before letting the player... play that confrontation or even explicitly observing it. Why I love this idea and I find it a refreshing change from the usual "beat LeChuck" ending, I can understand why some people would just like more of it.

[KestrelPi]

Just now, LowLevel said:

I think that if someone doesn't like too much abstraction from the usual Monkey Island script, it's perfectly OK; we don't need to like the same things.

 

This game, for sure, takes abstraction and implicitness to a very high level. For example, those who would have liked a final confrontation with LeChuck should consider the idea that the confrontation did actually take place and that Guybrush won:

 

The issue is that Guybrush exits from his fantasy before letting the player... play that confrontation or even explicitly observing it. Why I love this idea and I find it a refreshing change from the usual "beat LeChuck" ending, I can understand why some people would just like more of it.

 

I certainly understand that, I'd just argue that... looked at on that level the game isn't doing a LOT different to MI2. It avoids a direct showdown with LeChuck but essentially it's doing a similar thing of cutting away to weirdness instead of completely finishing the story we were just being told. It's arguably more resolved than MI2, because at least here there are other forms of resolution and not simply a big old WTF that's left hanging there free of any context.

 

I feel like ReMI's ending could possibly be accused of being unoriginal in the context of MI2 (I don't believe that, I think there's enough different stuff happening, but I can see the argument) but I don't see the argument that what they do here isn't Monkey Islandy enough. Whenever the topic of whether things would be tidily resolved came up in the old thread SO many people predicted it wouldn't, even lightly mocked people for suggesting it would. We half-expected a weird end. Heck, we might have even whole-expected it. So when we get one, I feel like it's hard to argue that it isn't on-brand enough.

 

Basically I respect people wanting more of a resolution, but I don't get why they expected one.

 

[LowLevel]

56 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

I'd just argue that... looked at on that level the game isn't doing a LOT different to MI2.

 

I am not sure that a comparison with what MI2 did would help me better understand why some people did not like the lack of an explicit confrontation with LeChuck in RtMI.

MI2 was made and played by many of us decades ago, and our taste in writing or acceptance of certain writing styles may have changed over time. Having accepted (or even appreciated) the non-resolution in MI2 decades ago would not explain to me why some people did not like the lack of direct comparison with LeChuck in RtMI today.

I also think that, if direct confrontation was what some felt was lacking in RtMI, at least MI2 gives Guybrush a chance to dismember LeChuck and leave him on the ground, which clearly and very explicitly defined LeChuck as the loser.

 

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

but I don't see the argument that what they do here isn't Monkey Islandy enough.

 

If one assumes that the definition of what makes a game a "Monkey Island game" is entirely subjective, one can find some reason in that argument as well. For example, my very narrow definition makes me classify many games in the franchise as "mostly unrelated to the original story", but that's just me. 😛

 

[KestrelPi]

7 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

 

I am not sure that a comparison with what MI2 did would help me better understand why some people did not like the lack of an explicit confrontation with LeChuck in RtMI.

MI2 was made and played by many of us decades ago, and our taste in writing or acceptance of certain writing styles may have changed over time. Having accepted (or even appreciated) the non-resolution in MI2 decades ago would not explain to me why some people did not like the lack of direct comparison with LeChuck in RtMI today.

I also think that, if direct confrontation was what some felt was lacking in RtMI, at least MI2 gives Guybrush a chance to dismember LeChuck and leave him on the ground, which clearly and very explicitly defined LeChuck as the loser.

 

 

If one assumes that the definition of what makes a game a "Monkey Island game" is entirely subjective, one can find some reason in that argument as well. For example, my very narrow definition makes me classify many games in the franchise as "mostly unrelated to the original story", but that's just me. 😛

 

 

Are people really that bothered by a lack of direct confrontation with LeChuck? That doesn't seem to be the thing that most people who didn't like the ending seem to be sore about. Speaking personally, it didn't even occur to me that there wasn't a direct confrontation at the end until I stopped to think about it later.

[roots]

9 hours ago, madmardi said:

Yea, I was assuming we were talking about the MI games, not the island itself! 

 

Anyways, if the ending had been more "traditional" with some sort of LeChuck confrontation, would you have felt differently?

 

It would certainly help, but I think the issue is more deeply ingrained than just the abruptness of the ending.

 

9 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

Can it be a Monkey Island game, by virtue of being a commentary on Monkey Island games?

 

It depends. I think it's definitely possible to weave in meta-commentary, but it needs to defer to the conventional narrative.

 

3 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

I think I was just ready for this sort of Monkey Island game.

 

What I will concede is that there are certain things in the game that I don't think were quite 'there', which I've talked about in this thread. Things like the locations not feeling as fleshed out as I'd like, the dialogue trees not being as fun as in some of the previous games, and so forth.

 

I guess I just don't really see that sort of thing as an intrinsic problem related to the meta-commentary this game does. It could have done those things better and still delivered a meta-commentary.

 

A while back I did a plot summary of all the Monkey Island games, sort of stripping it down to the bare bones summary of each game's plot to see how intrinsically goofy each story was:
 

With all the meta-commentart taken out, that still reads like a Monkey Island story to me, and it reads like some sort of journey that is similarly involved to the previous games in the series, but not as convoluted as the last couple. So I guess I don't understand what you mean by 'there's no journey'

 

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think it's impossible to deliver a meta-commentary in a game, or that there is an intrinsic issue with the specific commentary in RTMI. My issue is that the game assigns priority to the meta-commentary to (in my opinion) the detriment of the conventional narrative.

 

I say there was no journey for me because I never found myself particularly immersed in the narrative. Rather than exploring a world and the story that ties it, I felt dragged along through a series of lectures about something that never applied to me in the first place. (Obsession with "the secret")

 

Again, I don't think the themes that RTMI explores are intrinsically problematic. But I do think that had the game been more focused in its themes, and allowed the messaging to take both a subtler and appropriate second place to the conventional narrative, it wouldn't have been an issue for me. The best analogy I can think of is how the anachronistic elements in MI1/2 are brought into focus by MI2's end; they were always there, but are entirely recontextualised afterwards.

Edited September 29, 2022 by roots

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think they missed a trick by Guybrush not having a direct confrontation with LeChuck. It was nice popping out in the Melee again... but given that we've seen that trick before, it might have been better for Guybrush to finally kill LeChuck, only for him to fall over like a cardboard cutout. Or something like that.

 

Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I see it like this: Ron is Guybrush on the bench, and we're Boybrush getting sucked into his tales.

[demone]

I think @Jakesaid it best a few days ago. The lack of a confrontation with LeChuck in some ways showed that Guybrush was finally free from this perpetual state of constant rivalry with LeChuck.

 

At the end of Tales, Elaine claimed Guybrush was finally free from his fate with LeChuck. In a way, this game proved that. Guybrush didn't need another showdown with LeChuck to win. He simply moved on in a way. 

 

I was initially a little disappointed that there was no final confrontation with LeChuck, but once I saw that short epilogue with LeChuck fighting over a meaningless chest in hell, that's all I needed. We've had five games of the typical showdowns: this one was a nice departure and a meaningful one too in my opinion. 

 

Guybrush moved on in his life and past his battles with LeChuck and obsession with the Secret to start a family, while LeChuck was consumed by it and stuck fighting for something that would not advance any of his plans in the slightest. 

 

Throughout the game, and specifically his diary, it's clear that LeChuck was in denial about how much his hatred for Guybrush drove him along with the Secret. His attempts to claim that Guybrush was more obsessed over the Secret seemed like he was projecting his own obsession onto him. In the end, Guybrush was able to move past it, while LeChuck was consumed by it. Even his animatronic is stuck in that perpetual state, which compliments his epilogue perfectly in my opinion. 

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by demone

[Sadbrush]

16 hours ago, OzzieMonkey said:

So I've played the game a second time and I've been stewing on the ending some more, and I think I can pinpoint why I'm finding it difficult to accept. I'm really struggling with the idea that every character we've met, except for Stan and Elaine, are just animatronics. Especially LeChuck. I can't help but feel like the magic has been sucked out of the world by the end, because all of Guybrush's battles with his supposed arch-nemesis feel meaningless if he's not even a real person. I think where I'm feeling the most frustrated is that while the ending seems to be Ron giving everyone whatever interpretation they want, the version where the entire fantasy is completely real is framed as the player being in denial rather than a valid way of seeing things. Idk...could the theme park be a magic place where everything comes to life but the secret turns everyone back into their animatronic forms?

 

I just want to say, I really love this interpretation. It's the "Night at the Museum" theory. Would be cool if everything came to life after dark after Stan closed up shop and handed Guybrush the keys.

 

16 hours ago, OzzieMonkey said:

If I can get slightly personal for a minute, I have severe anxiety and am prone to very intense depression, and it tends to make me value clarity a LOT, because otherwise I tend to overthink, catastrophize, and generally think the worst of any situation. Because there are so many ways to intepret things, it overloads my brain a bit and picking one version never quite sits comfortably for me because it always feels like I'm denying something. Man, I'm really thinking too deeply about a videogame, I suppose it's good that it is so thought-provoking, though it's personally not in a way that feels right for me.

 

Yeah, this is the reason I struggled so long with the ending. I've written a lot about my initial disappointment with the last 5 minutes of the game (it really did feel like a traditional adventure up until that point), and the lack of conclusive answers provided by the devs (which I felt had been promised). It's been buried now, but after pondering about it for some time, I'm quite happy with my own headcanon version and I've been able to make everything "fit" to my own satisfaction (with a few additional tweaks here and there). 

 

Personally, I didn't really need a final LeChuck confrontation, although I was surprised at how abrupt the ending came. I do like the fact that we follow LeChuck through that final door with the anticipation of a climactic battle, and then our perspective changes completely (similar to the ending of MI2). It is sad though that LeChuck does not appear to be a real person within the park and is only the source of Guybrush's wild imagination, which does take the wind out of my sails. I still maintain that he was partially inspired by his adopted brother Chuckie (and bears a striking resemblance), who possibly vied for Elaine's affections at some point, but it's not the same. 

 

Anyway, those 10 variations on the ending really helped me to move on, since it gives you loads of new ways to interpret what happened and also gives some indication of where things "stand" with all the characters at the end of the game. My OCD and desire to know everything gradually lifted over the past week (has it only been a week?), and now I can accept all the evidence as presented.

[Thrik]

I didn’t really consider this before, but your comment about Guybrush’s brother made me remember that that whole brother exchange did happen in MI2, even though in ReMI it’s just Guybrush’s friend, right?

 

I think my head is roughly at:

 

* During MI2 we see Guybrush as a child playing around with his brother

* During ReMI we see Guybrush’s son playing around with his friend, reenacting one of his dad’s made-up stories

* During ReMI we also see Guybrush making up a new story for his son

 

I am leaning towards all of it being made up, however grounded in the fabric of places where Guybrush and his family spend time at different points in their lives. An amusement park, a seaside park, a theme park — we see all three and they’re quite distinctive from one another. 😄

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

I cannot make this scene work in my head canon now...

 

 

[LowLevel]

7 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Are people really that bothered by a lack of direct confrontation with LeChuck?

 

Based on what I'm reading around, some are. I think that some players were expecting a more "standard" story, less grounded into meta narrative.

 

5 hours ago, demone said:

Guybrush moved on in his life and past his battles with LeChuck and obsession with the Secret to start a family

 

I really enjoyed reading your comments, but I think that whether or not Guybrush has moved on with the Secret is actually something for the player to decide, not something that the story presents as the only or main outcome.

In one of the endings, Guybrush has kept the key to the chest and is watching it. This could imply many things, including that he will never stop thinking about it. I'm biased on this point though, because that's the kind of ending that I like more.

 

53 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

I cannot make this scene work in my head canon now...

 

The couple seen at the beginning of RtMI is coincidentally identical to Guybrush's parents. If we accept this fact, one might revamp my theory that Boybrush and his friend were pretending that the couple were their parents because they were still reenacting Guybrush's story, which included him and his brother emerging from the underground tunnels into the park. 😛

[LuigiHann]

If we read into the retcon that, regardless of how much of the stories actually happened, the games themselves have thus far visualized them as filtered through the lens of Guybrush's storytelling combined with Boybrush's imagination... it tracks that since Boybrush doesn't know what Guybrush's real parents look like, he'd just envision an old couple, and he's probably seen that old couple around before.

[demone]

12 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

I really enjoyed reading your comments, but I think that whether or not Guybrush has moved on with the Secret is actually something for the player to decide, not something that the story presents as the only or main outcome.

In one of the endings, Guybrush has kept the key to the chest and is watching it. This could imply many things, including that he will never stop thinking about it. I'm biased on this point though, because that's the kind of ending that I like more.

 

 

The couple seen at the beginning of RtMI is coincidentally identical to Guybrush's parents. If we accept this fact, one might revamp my theory that Boybrush and his friend were pretending that the couple were their parents because they were still reenacting Guybrush's story, which included him and his brother emerging from the underground tunnels into the park. 😛

I agree, but I would also add that even when Guybrush opens up the chest, he takes the Secret and disappointment in stride. He still moves on from it for better things. LeChuck's crew all bailed on him because they were horrified what would happen because he does not handle frustration or disappointment well. That is perhaps a key difference between Guybrush and LeChuck. Guybrush can move on while LeChuck is defined by it. 

 

The idea of him keeping the key because he never have up on it is a fascinating one, but he seems to have set it aside to start a family, at least for now. I really like this take as well. 

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by demone

[neoncolor8]

I don't know if this was already discussed, but why did the melee clock show a different time on the map to the secret?

 

I thought that there was gonna be a puzzle where you had to repair the clock and change the time according to the map (8 o'clock or maybe 11:40? hard to tell) to get access to the secret. But no. 

 

Also: who put the safe there? Stan?

[Romão]

As I kept reflecting on the ending, some new thoughts have sprung. This will be an enormous post, soI’ll be truly grateful to those who manage to read the whole thing.

 

So called “metanarratives” have been told before, across various mediums, whereas by placing the audience as the unwilling target of some sort of storytelling, fourth-wall breaking pun, or resorting to the “it was all in the main character’s head and imagination all along” angle. 

 

Regardless of how masterfully conceived these “metanarratives” can be (whether in the form of books, movies, etc.), there is inevitably a gap, a distance, between what the characters are experiencing and what is our own reaction to those experiences. A good storyteller will diminish that distance, create greater empathy between the audience and the characters, but we are still outside witnesses, external observants. We can be touched emotionally by the story, but that tends to come down to how much empathy has been conjured between us and the characters, on how much we can imagine ourselves in the characters’ shoes, on how much we can “relate”.  

 

However, I feel RTMI takes this to a whole new level, using a storytelling method that is a particularly perfect vehicle for exploration of this kind of thematic undercurrent: the point and click adventure game.

 

This goes beyond the mere notion of being able to control where the main character goes,  or how long we can linger in certain places or  even the choices of dialogue (within the  obvious limitations of the game framework). Those are just the mechanical and functional means of the storytelling experience.

 

We learn, in what I think is a pretty definitive and unequivocal conclusion, that the world of Monkey Island is a plateau of existence, a mental place, a dimension, if you will, where Guybrush finds solace, refuge, escapism and entertainment. I won’t go into the discussion whether this dimension is any more real than the one where his everyday existence is taking place. What seems pretty definitive to me, is that those two dimensions are separate, they are two different things, although elements from the “everyday dimension”, to a certain extent, seem to feed the fabric of the Monkey Island dimension (and probably vice-versa. as well), as the things we experience almost subconsciously in our everyday lives can also feed our dreams. 

 

This Monkey Island dimension might have been triggered by Guybrush’s experiences, both as a child and as an adult, in a pirate themed amusement park, as a way to escape from a reality that is either too sad, too painful, too dull or too empty to face without solace. The details really don’t matter. And this is where the “metanarrative” comes to its full fruition. We are not witnessing Guybrush escaping into an imaginary pirate world, as he tries to take some reprieve from his everyday existente, while feeling empathy for his plight.

 

No, we are Guybrush! 

 

As much as I ever felt in any work of art, we are indeed the character. We are not empathizing with Guybrush, we are not relating to Guybrush. We truly are Guybrush. We are the ones looking for solace, refuge, escapism and entertainment in a fictional pirate world. We are the ones (particularly in this forum of such dedicated fans), who treasure and look forward to the moments we spend in this Monkey Island dimension. We don’t do it to spend the time while waiting for the train to arrive. We don’t do it because there’s nothing else to do. We don’t do it to fill in the blanks in our daily schedule. We make it a pinnacle of our leisure time. It’s primetime worthy. In those playing hours, we rather be in the Monkey Island world than in whatever real life has to offer , regardless of how happy or fulfilled we feel.

 

I don’t play Monkey Island the same way I play other games. Not even in the same way I play other point and click adventure games. It’s not to reach the end, get a dopamine fix or an adrenaline rush. I play it for the experience, to live in that world for a bit. That’s why I like  linger in the wonderfully evocative locations, just wander around the locals, why I look forward wish to get stuck certain puzzles, so as the music and ambiance seep through my skin and become engrained, so as to when we listen to the soundtrack, it will immediately conjure up memories and feelings of those precious moments spent in the Monkey Island dimension.

 

And I know Monkey Island is not real. Guybrush knows Monkey Island is not real. But it is true. And it matters. And that’s why we like to discuss the minutiae of this world, what things are “more real” than others (although nothing of it is really real), why we hang posters of it on the wall, listen to the soundtracks, replay the games knowing by heart all the solutions to every single puzzle. We want to keep visiting the same amusement park, we get excited when there’s a new ride on the horizon and we love riding the same old, well-worn, familiar rides.. And when not in the amusement park itself, we reminisce by looking at ticket stubs, park maps, promotional brochures. 

 

And I, like Guybrush, want Monkey Island to be as real as possible. So I keep chasing the horizon, clinging on to every small thing that might make it a little bit more concrete. I want to make LEGO models of Melee Town, the Giant Monkey Head and Woodtick. I want character statutes to proudly display on my bookcases. I want to wear T-Shirts of the Legendary Treasure of Melee Island. But it is not real. It 's not concrete. It can’t be.

 

And just like Guybrush, I felt disheartened when I reached the back alley of Melee Island at the end of the game. It’s time to go home. My day at the amusement park is almost over. No more new rides to try. It’s with heavy hearts that I turn off all the lights in the park. I have to get back to my more mundane existence.

 

But this game gives us something absolutely new. Almost revolutionary. It shows us a Guybrush with a life outside of Monkey Island. And a happy and fulfilling life at that, with a beautiful family. And we realize, maybe for the first time, that Guybrush doesn’t really need Monkey Island anymore. He’s ceased to be obsessed by it.

 

And this is where The Secret comes in. And how it really could never have been something of true importance. It was a red herring all along, a distraction, something with an importance that grew in an unwarrantedly disproportionate manner throughout the years. It was ever only something that was part of the fabric of Monkey Island, among many other things. It was never its raison d'être, never a cipher to understand the whole thing. Monkey Island is not a mystery to solve, but a “reality” to experience. Like life itself.

 

Lechuck lost sight of this. Monkey Island ceased to be a “good place”, where one could have sprawling adventures, meet colorful characters and visit fascinating places. It was all about The Secret, looking for some sort of resolution, an answer, something with which to cover the gaping holes in his existence.

 

At the end of the game, Guybrush is finally freed from this anchor (ohh, symbolism). He can now visit Monkey Island because he wants to, not because he has to. It’s something that adds to his life, it doesn’t replace it. And it has become a pure thing again. A place where he can play pirates, simple as that, only constrained by the limits of his imagination. Stories being told around a campfire.

 

In light of this, the very beginning of The Secret of Monkey Island has become even more perfect. Guybrush arrives at Melee Island not by ship, but by walking through a stone archway, as it were some sort of portal, and declare bluntly and plainly:

 

 

This is all we want. We are Guybrush from the very start. We want to be pirates in a make-believe world. That’s why we are playing. Even the setting is perfect. How else would a Pirate setting be enticing unless when seen and interpreted by a child-like imagination? Throw any serious degree of historicity in it and the whole thing crumbles, with all the pillaging, violence, depravity and filth involved. It has to be a Pirate universe as imagined by a child. Again, it was never about The Secret. The whole point of experiencing Monkey Island is perfectly captured by the very first thing Guybrush says.

 

There can never be a Monkey Island prequel. There’s no other possible beginning. To do it would be to corrupt it. Nothing exists before that declaration of intent. That’s where the whole dimension of Monkey Island is born. “I want to be a pirate”. That’s the absolute summation of what Monkey Island is all about.

 

At the end, Guybrush (and myself), realize there’s peace to be found in knowing there’s no deeper meaning behind all of it. Monkey Island is a “good place” to visit every now and then. Guybrush has regained the purity of intent shown in that very first scene in The Secret of Monkey Island. The whole thing has become unburdened by overarching narratives, unsaddled by strict continuity between adventures, freed at last from the shackles of having to provide answers and meaning. 

 

Elaine emphasizes this by suggesting yet another adventure. Of the simpler, purer kind. And how perfect and crucial that little intervention is. Brings the whole thing full circle. And Guybrush sits on that bench, looking truly at peace with himself (as I see it), having regained the true purpose of Monkey Island. That image is the perfect coda to the Ron Gilbert trilogy. The lookout scene in SOMI as an overture. This is one as an epilogue.

 

 

The world of Monkey Island is now wide open. There was never a better time to create new stories in it. Purer stories. With more cannons and less “canon”.

 

I became a father 6 months ago. A little Boybrush named Manuel. Like Guybrush, I now have a family to share the world of Monkey Island with. And it has become something new again. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Romão