Details of Return to Monkey Island

[demone]

According to his diary, LeChuck killed quite a few crewmates prior to the events of the game. Perhaps there was a tune he didn't approve of. 

[BillyCheers]

When Guybrush tells the pirates in the SCUMM Bar, that he’s after the Secret of Monkey Island, one replies: “Ha! It’ll turn out to be a T-Shirt or something.” Great foreshadowing! 😂

Edited September 21, 2022 by BillyCheers

[demone]

Wow, the site just posted a breakdown of all the possible epilogue variations (10 in all) and honestly it was the icing on the cake for me. It presents a scenario that addressed what could've happened to LeChuck and Lila (basically forever fighting in the pits of hell over a chest, which they don't have the key for, containing a T-shirt while lava slowly rises around them), gives one last bit of closure for the Voodoo Lady and adds some further heartwarming scenes of Guybrush and his family and all the friends he made throughout the series. There's even an actual Monkey in one.
 

Edited September 22, 2022 by demone

[Laserschwert]

Something I've noticed, that's not related to the content of the game, but how it was programmed, is the fact the game perfectly scales from 2.35:1 (which is not quite 21:9) to 4:3. I've noticed this in window mode when rescaling the window. Very, very cool!

 

Also, the pause menu music is a minor key version of the Lookout music from SoMI (which is played in major key there). So good!

Edited September 22, 2022 by Laserschwert

[BaronGrackle]

I really enjoyed stepping into the governor's mansion and having that first conversation with Carla. After the trailer, and remembering her feelings on Guybrush in MI1 and MI4, I figured her governorship was going to be a sore point early in the game.

But instead, to have a conversational swordfight with an old co-worker? Borderline old friend? No hostility, but polite catching-up? Man, that was nice. And because it came after the jail scene with Otis and Stan (a scene which unfolded exactly as I expected it to), I think it got extra points for surprising me.

(Still very early in the game, I pop around these threads like a minefield and take full responsibility for any spoils I might gain.)

[GuhGunk]

On 9/20/2022 at 2:25 PM, Laserschwert said:

The funniest detail about the three pirates from the MI1 cover was the that one of them still wore the belt with "PURCELL" on it.

 

Spoiler

Yes, and Guybrush's comment on that skeleton (which has a sword through its face) is "Looks like another greedy pirate that met a sordid fate." And when he comments on the skeleton on the left, he says "Looks like he had the wrong person watching his back." I may be reading too much into it, but I think it speaks for itself.

 

[BillyCheers]

At the museum, Guybrush complains that he is not mentioned anywhere, even though all the exhibits have to do with his adventures. To this the curator replies: 
 

Quote

 

That's what's so great about this museum! Everyone makes their own connections with the exhibits, and it's highly personal and different for everyone.

 

 

This gives us already a small taste of the ending, which basically says the same thing. There really are nice foreshadowing details in this game! 

[KestrelPi]

1 minute ago, BillyCheers said:

At the museum, Guybrush complains that he is not mentioned anywhere, even though all the exhibits have to do with his adventures. To this the curator replies: 
 

 

This gives us already a small taste of the ending, which basically says the same thing. There really are nice foreshadowing details in this game! 

Oh dang and that actually meshes very well with the idea that these actually maybe aren't just the adventure of guybrush, but just a place guybrush has been returning to for many years and feels a personal connection with him. Of course the curator doesn't think the artifacts are to do with his adventures, from that perspective. They're everyone's.

 

Which has a really nice thematic resonance with the idea that we all, or at least those of us who have been around long enough, have a personal connection with the games, and have come to value different things in them.

 

It's really the themes of ReMI which I think are so well done. It's almost like a fractal, when you zoom in on any one little bit of it it starts to look like a microcosm of what the whole game is about. I might be a little meh on the game's attention to detail in some areas but I can't deny that this is a game that has really thought about what it wants to be about. You get it too when the Voodoo Lady reveals her name. The dialogue is something like:

 

"It was kind of more exciting when I didn't know."

"You will find that to be true of many things."

 

Dang, even stuff like Bob. He finishes the book and ends up disappointed that it's over and with each reread it's diminishing returns. Then he asks you to go and get him a book that never ends so that he doesn't have to feel disappointed any more.

 

I feel like the details in the writing really reward repeat viewings.

 

 

[BillyCheers]

8 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Oh dang and that actually meshes very well with the idea that these actually maybe aren't just the adventure of guybrush, but just a place guybrush has been returning to for many years and feels a personal connection with him. Of course the curator doesn't think the artifacts are to do with his adventures, from that perspective. They're everyone's.

 

Which has a really nice thematic resonance with the idea that we all, or at least those of us who have been around long enough, have a personal connection with the games, and have come to value different things in them.

 

It's really the themes of ReMI which I think are so well done. It's almost like a fractal, when you zoom in on any one little bit of it it starts to look like a microcosm of what the whole game is about. I might be a little meh on the game's attention to detail in some areas but I can't deny that this is a game that has really thought about what it wants to be about. You get it too when the Voodoo Lady reveals her name. The dialogue is something like:

 

"It was kind of more exciting when I didn't know."

"You will find that to be true of many things."

 

Dang, even stuff like Bob. He finishes the book and ends up disappointed that it's over and with each reread it's diminishing returns. Then he asks you to go and get him a book that never ends so that he doesn't have to feel disappointed any more.

 

I feel like the details in the writing really reward repeat viewings.

 

 

Yes, absolutely!

 

And I'm starting to think that pretty much every detail of the ending is hinted at somewhere in the game. Like if you tell Cobb that you're looking for the secret, he says:

Quote

I heard the secret is just some marketing gimmick Stan thought up.

Well ... 😅

[GuhGunk]

45 minutes ago, BillyCheers said:

At the museum, Guybrush complains that he is not mentioned anywhere, even though all the exhibits have to do with his adventures. To this the curator replies: 
 

 

This gives us already a small taste of the ending, which basically says the same thing. There really are nice foreshadowing details in this game! 

 

Spoiler

Interesting. My interpretation of the museum curator was decidedly less favorable. To me, he came off as a know-it-all who was so confident in his knowledge that he opened a museum to the public to display it, but he obviously had lots of facts wrong and didn't want to consider new information even when it was from a primary source. Honestly, it came off like an allegory of our current climate of content creators with lots of instances of self-proclaimed experts peddling dubious information.

 

[BillyCheers]

4 minutes ago, GuhGunk said:

 

  Hide contents

Interesting. My interpretation of the museum curator was decidedly less favorable. To me, he came off as a know-it-all who was so confident in his knowledge that he opened a museum to the public to display it, but he obviously had lots of facts wrong and didn't want to consider new information even when it was from a primary source. Honestly, it came off like an allegory of our current climate of content creators with lots of instances of self-proclaimed experts peddling dubious information.

 

Sure, the curator isn’t very likeable. That was just referring to this one statement of his.

[naamex]

When you go the courtroom and hand out the documents from the guy in the island, then ask the judge to cite a statute, he literally tells you to STFU 🤣

Then Guybrush says "ok I withdraw the question"

Edited September 22, 2022 by naamex

[KestrelPi]

Following on from that thing we were talking about how once you start you can't stop noticing ways how the game alludes to its larger themes. Over in the other thread I just got done talking about how I see monkey island now as this kind of amalgamation of the different lenses through which the story is being told, and that accounts for a lot of the weirdness and inconsistency we see.

 

At which point I thought... maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems a really odd detail to include in the scrapbook that you can make this weird monster out of lots of different parts in EMI. It's such a tiny bit of that game. But is this another wink to the player, another metaphor for what the Monkey Island storytelling universe is?

 

"It didn't help with anything... but I had fun doing it."

 

I'm probably overthinking it. But that's okay.

[TommyS]

"You must walk the path yet you have already walked the path" - Voodoo Lady

 

Is this game basically a retelling and a sequel to the Secret of Monkey Island?

[immortalwah]

A few things I noticed:

 

-The first 3 parts mimic the first 3 parts of the original SOMI; the fourth and 5th play out more like the island hopping and twist ending of MI2...

 

-In part 1, Widey mumbles some foreshadowing:  "the secret smells like popcorn," "lights out always comes sooner than you think"

 

-there are a bunch of weird looking birds all over high street that look just like the weird bird next to the parrot in the prologue

 

-Dee mentions that anchors used a straight V-shape last century and only became the familiar modern design this century.  I did a little cursory googling and it seems like the change happened in the 19th century!!!  What does THAT mean?!?!

 

 

Also, a few questions:

 

-I'm not sure if people were referencing this earlier in the thread, but are the dead pirates on Terror Island supposed to be the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" of the 1st two games?  Who else would they be?

 

-Can anyone make out the words on Curator's shirt?  It has "Melee" written backwards on it.  Is it the Treasure hunting or Sword Master t-shirt?  Something else?

[Marius]

8 minutes ago, immortalwah said:

-I'm not sure if people were referencing this earlier in the thread, but are the dead pirates on Terror Island supposed to be the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" of the 1st two games?  Who else would they be?

It's not them. Take a look at the Monkey 1 box.

 

10 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Following on from that thing we were talking about how once you start you can't stop noticing ways how the game alludes to its larger themes.

They hint at themes everywhere! Did you take a look at that locked cupboard in LeChucks galley? Guybrush gets more and more excited that there must be something horrible behind it, because it is locked so well. The chef then says that its locked because the door keeps opening on it’s own. And Guybrush is disappointed by that unexciting answer. It was better when he didn't know the reason.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Marius

[WorldMaker]

Something I appreciated was how much the game seems to remark upon unfinished business, and crossing off the TODO list, and then often seems to further reward it when you go just a little bit beyond. That also continues to feed into the overall themes: The Secret itself being unfinished business to cross off a TODO list. A general sense of leaving the world a little better than you found it, or at least trying to put some things back (almost) into their proper places. (Be courteous to other treasure seekers.) The non-hidden achievements tell me I have a couple I missed to try for. I don't know all that I'm missing in hidden achievements either. I found at least one currently super-rare one according to Steam Achievements percentages. I wonder in general how many you can cross off of Elaine's "post mortem" conversation in general, that seemed enough like a "report card" that I'm wondering if there are incredibly hard versions of the puzzle solutions that "fix" some of the wrongs Elaine mentioned. But maybe Adventure Games have just conditioned me too much to think there are better solutions than the ones I found, and that plays into the themes too if there really is no way to solve some of them with an Adventure Games mindset, that you can't ever actually check the entire TODO list.

 

I caught at least one other Papapishu (other than the one on Terror Island), I think it was while playing with various bits of fire on LeShip. It does amuse me that they avoided many of the obvious callbacks and jokes, but that one made it in and remained consistent.

[Blondebeard]

After the earthquake and consequently after Guybrush steals Wally's monocle aka business cards, Wally adds a small sign to his sign saying: "Nothing is free".

Edited September 23, 2022 by Blondebeard

[Remi]

After cutting down the mop tree...

 

 

Monkey, underwater...

 

 

Presumably suggests you're in a pool in the theme park.

 

 

 

[BillyCheers]

Talking of details, I really appreciated whole presentation of the game. Not only the voice acting, the animation and the art style, but also the “technical” side. From the main menu (background and music), the inventory, the fonts (I loved those, very fitting), the intro and really everything was almost perfect to me! 👌

 

Something I  kind of missed in EMI or TMI. There were always things that bugged me (especially in EMI). You can really feel how much time, love and work was put in ReMI. 

[miraculous.0]

I noticed an electrical cable hanging above one of the monkey statues during the final puzzles! Gonna end up scanning through every background for weeks, looking for little hints to the ending lol

[Remi]

When you finally can use the horse armor (final scene spoiler)...

 

[demone]

In the crow's nest of LeChuck's ship, you can see three sharks swimming in the ocean. Might be a reference to the sharks from Curse that followed Guybrush everywhere.

 

I also think that Stan handing Guybrush the keys at the end were Ron and Dave's way of saying they are giving the player the literal keys to make their own ending and interpretations.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by demone

[Udvarnoky]

The "Seckrit" sign that Captain Madison and co. use as LeChuck bait is misspelled the same way Dr. Fred's secret lab is in Maniac Mansion.

 

 

[demone]

If you look at the grease in the scurvy dog shack, Guybrush mentions the place could use a swabbie and then comments how he would never be a swabbie.