Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat

[bishopcruz]

Just now, benjoyce25 said:

Okay, that is a reasonable criterion. Which media products handled that well?

The Princess Bride comes to mind. Twin Peaks as well. Watchman does it for comics.

 

Off the top of my head. But they all tell stories about their medium while ALSO telling great stories themselves.

[benjoyce25]

No disputes there, either way.

[KestrelPi]

43 minutes ago, bishopcruz said:

One other question I ask, is how do you all feel it expands the world as a whole? I just don't see that, honestly I feel the opposite. The world feels like set pieces more than ever, possibly literally if that's how you choose to take the ending..

Firstly, I just don't agree with the assessment. I think there is depth there. It's not the deepest thing I've ever seen, but I absolutely do believe that it does everything it needs to do to make the 'mindscrew' work.

 

And I also don't think it's never been that sort of thing. Fans have FOREVER talked about Monkey Island feeling like it has layers, how there's something about it that hints at stuff bubbling under the surface. I've had so many conversations about that. ReMI is perhaps the first game to directly look at that aspect of Monkey Island and try to make comment about it, but it has absolutely always been there.

 

But to answer the above question, the way that it expands the world to me, is that before I felt like I would have to shy away from the bits I didn't really like as much. Like, for example, I think the monkey robot/statue showdown in EMI is much sillier than I like my Monkey Island to get. And the whole HT Marley thing. And certain parts of Tales, too, which worked less well for me, and even CMI, which I like a lot, I never liked its avoidance/dismissal of MI2's ending, but even that works fine now in the context of what Return does. Which is that it gives us permission to think of these as stories. Or even as myths, that change depending on who's telling them, and who's listening.

 

And I don't think that diminishes them at all. People still care about ancient greek myths thousands of years later, despite the fact that they're really a disparate collection of stories with a lot of internal inconsistencies and variations. Myths are some of the greatest stories we have.

 

And, freed from the stricture of 'this thing really happened. This thing didn't happen. These things contradict each other directly but we're just going to pretend they don't by not talking about it', I can just think things like: 'Giant Robot ending? Yeah, that's definitely something I can imagine Boybrush and Chuckie coming up with. Maybe that's what's going on there.'

 

When I say it makes the world bigger, I mean it allows me to welcome back in parts of the story that for years I've rather just pretend don't exist, but just decide to view them from a different lens.

 

"But if everything is permitted and there's no right or wrong, who cares, why does any of this matter?"

 

No, I'm not saying that there aren't ways that I like Monkey Island to be which are closer to what I enjoy. But I don't think Monkey Island's world has to be either 'tightly regulated' or 'anything goes!'... I think there's a sensible middle ground somewhere where the more outlandish tellings can happily live in Boybrush/Chuckie Apocrypha or Guybrush's fantastical embellishments, or Stans weird theming decisions, without the world losing its distinctive feel. And all the stuff I do like, well, I can mull over where that all fits in for 30 more years, with any luck.

 

Maybe that's a burden. But I don't feel that way.

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by KestrelPi

[bishopcruz]

1 minute ago, KestrelPi said:

 

 

"But if everything is permitted and there's no right or wrong, who cares, why does any of this matter?"

 

No, I'm not saying that there aren't ways I like Monkey Island to be that I think are closer to what I enjoy. I don't think Monkey Island has to be either tightly regulated or 'anything goes!'... I just think there's a sensible middle ground somewhere where the more outlandish tellings can happily live in Boybrush/Chuckie Apocrypha or Guybrush's fantastical embellishments, or Stans weird theming decisions, without the world losing its distinctive feel.

 

Maybe that's a burden. But I don't feel that way.

 

 

Except that was I think what we already had. Saying it is for sure all Guybrush tellings stories doesn't add anything to previous games, and the ending here I don't think adds much at all to this one. Him telling stories to his kid is a new addition here, and not much is done with it. It desperately wants to be Princess Bride but there is a fine line to walk when you are the unreliable narrator writer. MI2 I think handled it as best it could, but left enough ambiguity to really make it work. But if these are all just theme parks, then I don't see that as much of an expansion unless we decide to go more and more into the real life of Guybrush, which also seems to be against the point of what this game is trying for. If they aren't they don't much expand the world at all beyond what could already be done in previous games.

 

I hated the monkey mech too, but there is a tried and true rule of fiction when writing in a series ignore the crap that didn't work if it wasn't important, gloss over it if it was, and fix it if there is no other choice. But I've never seen a story that goes full MAKE YOUR OWN CANON ever really work. Might be forgetting something, but yeah.

 

And that is why I think the ending tried for its themes, but never really connected with them. "It is an amusement park! BUT WAIT! It isn't! Maybe, which do you prefer. Pick one. One is clearly the one I the writer like, but you know... eh... whatever." just doesn't resonate much and isn't really great storytelling. 

 

It's like the difference between the Director's Cut of Blade Runner and the Final Cut, one friggen scene removes the ambiguity, and suddenly the ending becomes a lot worse because you KNOW what the director wants you to think.

 

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, bishopcruz said:

 

Except that was I think what we already had. Saying it is for sure all Guybrush tellings stories doesn't add anything to previous games, and the ending here I don't think adds much at all to this one. Him telling stories to his kid is a new addition here, and not much is done with it. It desperately wants to be Princess Bride but there is a fine line to walk when you are the unreliable narrator writer. MI2 I think handled it as best it could, but left enough ambiguity to really make it work. But if these are all just theme parks, then I don't see that as much of an expansion unless we decide to go more and more into the real life of Guybrush, which also seems to be against the point of what this game is trying for. If they aren't they don't much expand the world at all beyond what could already be done in previous games.

 

I hated the monkey mech too, but there is a tried and true rule of fiction when writing in a series ignore the crap that didn't work if it wasn't important, gloss over it if it was, and fix it if there is no other choice. But I've never seen a story that goes full MAKE YOUR OWN CANON ever really work. Might be forgetting something, but yeah.

 

And that is why I think the ending tried for its themes, but never really connected with them. "It is an amusement park! BUT WAIT! It isn't! Maybe, which do you prefer. Pick one. One is clearly the one I the writer like, but you know... eh... whatever." just doesn't resonate much and isn't really great storytelling. 

 

It's like the difference between the Director's Cut of Blade Runner and the Final Cut, one friggen scene removes the ambiguity, and suddenly the ending becomes a lot worse because you KNOW what the director wants you to think.

 

 

Yeah ... just. I disagree on almost every point.

 

Sorry to be glib about it, but at this point I feel like that's really all there is left. I feel like if I were to answer all this it would just be me saying 'nuh uh' and you saying 'yuh huh' and that's not interesting for anyone concerned.

[bishopcruz]

4 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

 

Yeah ... just. I disagree on almost every point.

 

Sorry to be glib about it, but at this point I feel like that's really all there is left. I feel like if I were to answer all this it would just be me saying 'nuh uh' and you saying 'yuh huh' and that's not interesting for anyone concerned.

Nuh uh!

😀

[TommyS]

First post, finished the game yesterday and loved it but also really confused by it.

 

I'm not sure how to take the ending, none of them actually makes sense to me. If the stories take place in a theme park, the fact that it ends in a theme park is actually not an endig. It's just a child being interrupted while playing games. Or if grown up Guybrush was just imagining it (since this one didn't end with Guybrush being a child again), that's just weird. In that case,  he has a severe case of split personality disorder, and I seriously doubt that's what they were going for.

 

I don't think the ending has a logical explaination, and it was perhaps made that way, so that every possible ending works and doesn't work at the same time. That's either genius or very lazy. The only problem I have with that is that if I pretend one ending is the true ending, there's always something else that contradicts it. 

 

If the whole series is just Guybrush telling stories to his son, then that means we haven't been playing as Guybrush, but his son all along. But that doesn't explain why it ends in a theme park, even less so twice.  It means that all the stories are fake, made up by a very creative father (Guybrush), and reenacted by his son. But if so, why the need for the father to actually be Guybrush? Why not just one of Guybrush's parents? Who is the one with the vivid imagination here? The boy or the father? 

 

The more I think about wrapping my head around the ending, the more confused I get. Because while the ending to Monkey2 was a shock, there were much less variables and easier to theorize about. RTMI has a ton of variables and everything contradicts something else, and, there are several endings that ends up not really making any sense without a huge amount of suspension of disbeliefe and ignoring all the signs that points to something else.

 

RTMI seems less a Monkey Island game, and almost more a commentary on the Monkey Island series and its aging fandom. It seems to exist on a higher level than the others.

[NightWalker]

I'm still processing the ending. I'm still not sure if it's an ending I fully like or not... But it's clear for me that Ron and Dave have had a lot of discussions, philosophical talks and work behind the game. I think the game itself is mediocre in almost every point. I don't fully like the art. I know there is a lot of work behind it, but (and this is a personal choice of taste) I don't fully enjoy the new aesthetics. There is something in the art that didn't fully get me inside the world of Monkey Island, it's like I haven't felt the breeze, the beauty of the night or the feeling of being there in the same way I did with the other games of the series. But, as I say, it's a personal opinion, nothing else.

 

Characters, story, puzzles and even music (it's mostly a rework of the old tunes) seem not special to me. I think everything is below the standard level of a Monkey Island game.

 

But... BUT! (Important "but", hehe) I agree with some people here. I think the message of the game and the feelings that left me after the ending were so important and deep for me that I can forgive everything. I agree that one of the most important things that Return to Monkey Island does is to lift all the titles of the series and bind them in a unique way. As if we were Guybrush having his moments of dreaming in the park, we can always escape from our reality and go back to the Monkey Island world with another story. I think the feelings the game left me were marvelous and I can't stop thinking about the whole series now. I feel that the whole series is even more special now, after that gorgeous ending. But this is a personal opinion too, not everybody is going to feel the same because every person is unique and feel things differently. You know what they say... "Not everybody reads the same book... although the title on the cover is the same".

 

And I feel that it has been very important for the series to let go the secret topic. It's important to let it rest because the series is free now. The players are free now too, we don't have to search answers anymore if you understood the message that Gilbert and Grossmand sent us. And this is marvelous, because we will be able of enjoy (maybe) new Monkey Island titles in the future with totally fresh and new adventures without worrying about the secret or trying to explain the dark points of former games.

 

As I said in the beginning, I think Dave and Ron have talk a lot about this and they shoud have think a lot about it. I see a lot of work behind, because they thought all the possibilities and  understood that it was very difficult to please the players. They were worried about us and about the whole myth constructed around the secret. So... they sent us a sincere letter to us (the players)... but this letter had the form of a videogame. And that is Return to Monkey Island, a sincere conversation between the creators and the players, closing the secret topic once and for all. And, as any good conversation, you have to do your part too. The game ask you to look inside yourself and explore what do you expected to get from this game... or from the series itself. And I think it's a great exercise to stop for a moment in this fast and crazy world and ask to ourselves many things about this series. Maybe some of us will find what we are looking for... Maybe others not... But this is something personal and everyone will have to live his own journey with his own finale.

 

Anyway, I would like to say that I'm enjoying this thread very much and that it has been an absolute dream to be able of playing this game at last. If you are reading me, thank you very much, Ron and Dave (and Dominic and the rest of the team). The ending really hit me in the heart and I can't stop thinking about everything. Great job!

[KestrelPi]

40 minutes ago, TommyS said:

The only problem I have with that is that if I pretend one ending is the true ending, there's always something else that contradicts it.

I think the way to resolve this, for me at least, is to keep in mind that we're seeing the story from multiple perspectives. For example, when you select at the end that the chest was full of rubies and gold, and then the post credits scene is Boybrush playing in piles of treasure, I think the most obvious read of that is that we're seeing Boybrush's imagination of how rich they are. But the whole game probably isn't seen through the point of view of Boybrush.

 

It's an amalgamation of the different viewpoints. Some bits are Boybrush-lens, like the end of MI2 and start of Return. Some other bits are seen through the lens of Guybrush telling a story. Some other bits might be through the lens of Boybrush imagining things Guybrush is saying to him right now (maybe that's why Lila looks an awful lot like Dee). And some other bits might be told through the lens of Guybrush visiting a theme park and letting his imagination run wild. And some other parts might be more of a literal telling of something that really happened.

 

I think the Monkey Island games are what you get when you stir all these different lenses into a soup. Okay, this metaphor is getting weird... direct all these lenses through a prism, maybe? I don't know. Sure. Let's go with that:

 

The Monkey Island universe as experienced by the player is a prismatic glimpse of stories told from several possible points of view, and thus inconsistencies and contradictions are not only to be expected, but are part of the fun.

Edited September 22, 2022 by KestrelPi

[benjoyce25]

4 minutes ago, NightWalker said:

And that is Return to Monkey Island, a sincere conversation between the creators and the players,

I adore this idea, that we may, as a community, accept that the developers take us seriously, and – through game mechanics, dialogue and storytelling – we are invited to share a vision of what certain perennial themes mean to us. And that it shall free us to (maybe) partake in new adventures, take other characters for a spin, explore pockets of the Monkey Island universe, free from "unfinished business," as Gilbert and Grossman have said.

[tmetic]

I've just finished the game and I cried and I love it. I don't have coherent thoughts at the moment but my immediate feeling is that it was perfect in absolutely every way.

[Leontes]

4 hours ago, benjoyce25 said:

Here is the thing though: even with quite explicitly definitive endings, even literature students (who should be at least very invested readers, if not superreaders) find out very early on that interpretation is a many-splendoured thing (thanks, Ms. Han), and that a prism of different version spring up almost immediately when someone throws the "But what did it all mean in the end?" rock into the Pool of Donchaseeit.

Funny you mention this; my girlfriend (who also greatly disliked the ending) and I were discussing why we were so bothered, and I said "Maybe it's because I have a literature degree. Not in the sense that 'I know what I'm talking about and everyone else's opinion is wrong!', but rather because I have spent SO much time being literally graded on how well I'm able to extract meaning from someone else's work."

All of my upper division courses were basically "okay we just read something, let's collectively come up with 10 theories that all work as to what really happened" and essentially you can either go in the camp of "well, this is what's actually on the page, soooo that's just it" or "but this was written in Germany in 1947 so clearly this is all about the Holocaust" and another kid says "well I think it's about dinosaurs and unicorns" and all of these interpretations hold equal weight because everything's made up and the points don't matter.

To not be bored I would just come up with the most outlandish theories possible and be maximally convincing to sell my garbage idea, only to get an A from the professor. Inside I'm screaming "no, you idiot! I'm just bullshitting you! You're rewarding me for grasping at actually nothing!"

That's why I never rush straight to a game's Steam forum after I've seen the interpretive ending to find out what wild theories people have about what they just saw. It just puts me back in school in the worst way possible 😂

 

So is it a theme park? Is it all real? Being told it doesn't matter and I get to choose what I believe just makes me check out. I'm just completely soured on that entire process and I think as a result I've never been able to enjoy those kinds of endings ever since.

[Dmnkly]

4 hours ago, benjoyce25 said:

A curious notion, work.

Certainly, whether we like it or not, digital gameplay might often feel like work. And yet...

How would you (and y'all) define the difference between the work of figuring out the solution to a concatenation of puzzles (which can be tedious, trial-and-error, and time-wasting), and the work of interpretation (free-from flights of fancy with foundations in fictional facts)? In what ways do they tax the mind differently? Why should one of those acts of labour satisfy even the most hard-nosed adventure enthusiast, but not the other?

 

I'm not saying *I* feel this way. I'm positively thrilled 😄

 

But I understand that not everybody does or might feel the same. People might take a break from the the spreadsheet work they get paid for by doing the "work" of playing solitaire. Which calculations people find taxing and which they find relaxing is interesting and, I suspect, very personal.

 

I'm just saying that while I LIKE having all of this subtext to sort through, I can see how somebody might enjoy solving adventure game puzzles but not solving the analytical/thematic questions. I am, by nature, somebody who always wants to help somebody else enjoy something that I enjoy. (Food, anyone?) But I've spent enough of my life doing that that I've learned to grudgingly admit to myself that sometimes it just ain't gonna happen.

 

EDIT: VERY illuminating cross-post there, Leontes 😄

Edited September 22, 2022 by Dmnkly

[tmetic]

16 minutes ago, Leontes said:

Funny you mention this; my girlfriend (who also greatly disliked the ending) and I were discussing why we were so bothered, and I said "Maybe it's because I have a literature degree. Not in the sense that 'I know what I'm talking about and everyone else's opinion is wrong!', but rather because I have spent SO much time being literally graded on how well I'm able to extract meaning from someone else's work."

All of my upper division courses were basically "okay we just read something, let's collectively come up with 10 theories that all work as to what really happened" and essentially you can either go in the camp of "well, this is what's actually on the page, soooo that's just it" or "but this was written in Germany in 1947 so clearly this is all about the Holocaust" and another kid says "well I think it's about dinosaurs and unicorns" and all of these interpretations hold equal weight because everything's made up and the points don't matter.

To not be bored I would just come up with the most outlandish theories possible and be maximally convincing to sell my garbage idea, only to get an A from the professor. Inside I'm screaming "no, you idiot! I'm just bullshitting you! You're rewarding me for grasping at actually nothing!"

That's why I never rush straight to a game's Steam forum after I've seen the interpretive ending to find out what wild theories people have about what they just saw. It just puts me back in school in the worst way possible 😂

 

So is it a theme park? Is it all real? Being told it doesn't matter and I get to choose what I believe just makes me check out. I'm just completely soured on that entire process and I think as a result I've never been able to enjoy those kinds of endings ever since.

 

That's what art is, though. Creating meaning where there is none. That's what life is. You missed out if you bullshitted all the way through. You've gotta embrace it.

[BaronGrackle]

Reddit is filled with multiple similar threads right now.

[Leontes]

1 minute ago, Dmnkly said:

I'm just saying that while I LIKE having all of this subtext to sort through, I can see how somebody might enjoy solving adventure game puzzles but not solving the analytical/thematic questions. I am, by nature, somebody who always wants to help somebody else enjoy something that I enjoy. (Food, anyone?) But I've spent enough of my life doing that that I've learned to grudgingly admit to myself that sometimes it just ain't gonna happen.

On this; I feel like the point-and-click genre is all about those eureka moments. You look at what's in your inventory, you think about what the game has told you and what hints it's given you, and suddenly a lightbulb turns on, you say "aha!" and you insert the solution. It's the driving force behind any puzzle game, and why escape rooms and the like are having their renaissance. You're rewarded for your "work" with that epiphany moment and it's so addicting you always keep coming back for more. Being presented with a problem and feeling good about solving it is an incredibly human thing.

 

This ending says "there's lots of hints. Think back to everything you know about the series and that's the solution to this final puzzle", only there actually is no answer. There's no payoff for "getting it right" as "getting it right" isn't even a thing that makes sense when there's no solution or feedback to get that eureka moment at all. You can think it's a theme park if you want, you can think they're really pirates, you can think it takes place in 1701 or 2022, Return could take place in New Orleans Square in Disneyland, etc. I don't want "my" solution because I could either put zero effort or tons of effort into it and come up with my own elaborate delusion on what the ending means. I just want the real ending. I'm a sucker for canon.

Postulating on what I think the real answers are bears no fruit for me because I know will never receive that feedback or that "eureka!" reward. I notice that a great deal of community and discussion is born when a game has an ambiguous interpretive ending, but I feel very isolated and excluded from enjoying those discussions because they're all just fan-fiction to me. A previous post said that the 30+ years of speculation on what really happened at the end of Monkey Island 2 was a gift, but I wasn't a part of those discussions because I just didn't care.

You know what would be really great? For Ron or Dave to say in an interview "oh I thought we were 100% clear about the fact that it was always a theme park since MI1" or "yeah he's just telling his kid the exaggerated story of what really happened, don't worry about the details too much, that's the nature of stories". That would be the ultimate gift for me, because at the end of the day, I'm not the type of person who wishes that the story truly ended the way I wanted it to in my own personal headcanon; I just want to see the full expression of the artist's intention on the page, not mine, not anyone else's. The perfect ending.

 

All in all, I am really happy to be in the minority on this (though heading to other online places, a lot of people agree with me on this and frankly I'm sad that that's the case) and I hope that in time I can grow to see what you all thought was great about how the story ended. If it turns out that Return to Monkey Island is liked by 99.9% of people I'm overall very pleased with that.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts here. I hope I'm not being too much of a downer.

[KestrelPi]

23 minutes ago, Leontes said:

So is it a theme park? Is it all real? Being told it doesn't matter and I get to choose what I believe just makes me check out. I'm just completely soured on that entire process and I think as a result I've never been able to enjoy those kinds of endings ever since.

 

I guess if I thought ALL this game was doing was saying 'eh, I don't know. Everything's true. Or nothing is. Who cares? you decide' then I might feel the same way about it. But I don't think that IS what it's doing. It's presenting you with a range of possibilities and then arguing for the value in wondering about them rather than finding The Answer. And at the same time it's doing this with the perspective of someone (Guybrush) who has been at this for a long time now, trying to impart a lesson to someone who is just getting started (Boybrush), and maybe learning a little something about himself in the way.

 

When many of us started all this, in the early 90s, we were all more like Boybrush, but I think that by the end of ReMI we've all become a little more like Guybrush. That's why I think it comes across as so warm and affecting, rather than just kind of callous and dismissive of its own material.

[Leontes]

Just now, KestrelPi said:

When many of us started all this, in the early 90s, we were all more like Boybrush, but I think that by the end of ReMI we've all become a little more like Guybrush. That's why I think it comes across as so warm and affecting, rather than just kind of callous and dismissive of its own material.

Funny enough, I felt like Boybrush at the end.

[Joe monsters]

I'm honestly not a big fan of the "literature degree" argument.

I'm actually a professional writer- a French one, obviously ; I don't usually write in English as you all can see - and I still loved the ending.

I deeply think that art is about provoking emotions. The fact that we are all still thinking and talking about it, feeling strong emotions, whether it's joy, anger, sadness, disappointment, mean something, at least for me.

I don't remember the exact quote, but I remember Ron Gilbert saying that this is what art should be, at least for him. Art shouldn't just be fun, nice, easy to understand, but provocative, something that makes us think and feel.

For me, this feeling of disappointment is part of the experience. After all, it's a game about disappointment.

Now, I'm not saying that it's pleasant or even that people have to like it - of course, anybody can like or dislike anything, and I perfectly respect that.

I just don't think it was badly done, therefore badly written. There is meaning to what we experienced. There is a theme. Something Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman wanted to say. It's about aging, it's about looking at the past, it's about obsession and disappointment, it's about Monkey Island and thinking what Monkey Island is about.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Joe monsters

[KestrelPi]

2 minutes ago, Leontes said:

Funny enough, I felt like Boybrush at the end.

...to appreciate the ending in the same way that some of us have. 😉

 

Seriously though, it's fine, it's not going to work for everyone. I'm just trying to convey why I think the ending was more than just 'idk you decide', for me at least, and even though it was ambiguous and invited the player to decide, it wasn't weightless, there was purpose behind it.

[Joe monsters]

And also, I have to insist, I wasn't trying to be demeaning in any way. I perfectly understand people who dislike or even hate this ending. It's clearly not for everyone. To be honest, even if I love it now, I didn't like it at first.

I was just trying to express my opinion on that matter.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Joe monsters

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, Joe monsters said:

I deeply think that art is about provoking emotions. The fact that we are all still thinking and talking about it, feeling strong emotions, whether it's joy, anger, sadness, disappointment, mean something, at least for me.

 

I admit it feels a bit like cheating, but earlier it did occur to me that the very fact we're having this conversation at all sort of proves to me that the game works on the level I think it works. If it didn't, there'd be nothing to talk about.

 

I know I know 'I win automatically, so there' isn't all that compelling, but nevertheless I'm thrilled to an extent that this is the kind of conversation we can have at the end of this game.

[Joe monsters]

I agree. And I don’t see it as cheating. This is the beautiful part of it. 

I think, more importantly, we’ll see if we’re still talking about it in one year, in ten years, in 30 years… like we did with MI2’s ending.

[Leontes]

12 minutes ago, Joe monsters said:

I'm honestly not a big fan of the "literature degree" argument.

Oh to be sure; I am not saying I am "more qualified" to have an opinion than other people or anything to that effect. Or that others aren't as "practiced" as I am so therefore they are just too blind to see the flaws in the ending or any other statement of massive hubris.

I am saying instead that because I went through the "exercise" of doing this process so much in a very arbitrary, institutionalized and fabricated way that I'm legitimately scared that I had such a bad experience that it prevents me from enjoying the same thing you're all seeing in this ending. Like I've just been traumatized somewhere so I check out when this sort of thing happens in media.

I mean the farthest thing from "I know about literature, I know what I'm talking about". If anything, getting that degree was a mistake if for me it just sucked all the enjoyment out of everything forever! Haha.

EDIT: Ninja edit, though my girlfriend had the literal same exact response as I did so my theory about being jaded by college falls flat. Damnit.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Leontes

[NightWalker]

I forgot to write something in my former post.

 

I was going to write about a theory of mine... Thinking about several Ron's interviews from the past and how he told that it was an error to get Guybrush and Elaine married... I was thinking whether originally Boybrush was going to exist or not. Since Ron didn't wanted Guybrush and Elaine to get married I think that, maybe, the original idea was about Guybrush being a kid in a theme park among the animatronics. I still remember how, in Scabb Island, the bartender ask for an ID to give him grog.

 

Maybe Boybrush has been a product from Ron and Dave accepting the rest of the games as canon. Maybe the original ending of Monkey 2 was going to be explained as Guybrush being a kid imagining adventures in the park... And Guybrush couldn't get married because he was a little boy and Elaine was a worker in the park. And, since Curse of Monkey Island finished with them getting married, maybe Ron was forced to introduce Boybrush to explain the ending.

 

It's clear to me, reading those interviews, that Ron had a powerful reason for Guybrush and Elaine not getting married. I guess he and Dave had to rework many things in this game to readjust everything. Who knows. Just a little thought... but, in the end, it doesn't matter I guess. The important thing is the ending message that Ron gave us. That's what I get overall the rest of the details.