The Legend of Monkey Island (Sea of Thieves)

[BaronGrackle]

I was definitely wrong when I guessed RMI would bring an end to Monkey Island, thanks to its (in my opinion) conclusive narrative. I mean... the Prelude to RMI basically destroys most preconceptions we had about canon - in a good way. It destroyed canon in that iconic, Gilbertian Monkey Island way.

 

Before playing RMI, could any of us have predicted the MI2 ending was something Guybrush never experienced OR imagined? RMI gave us a new lens (a double monocle) to see this universe. If the MI2 ending was fabricated during a single play session between Boybrush and Chucky... then when you go back and play MI2, you're not playing something that happened to Guybrush.

 

How much of our MI2 playthrough is "noncanon", in this same way? How much of SMI is likewise fabricated? What combination of our games have been Guybrush's experiences, versus his imagination, versus his retellings to his son and others, versus his son and others retelling and/or reinventing them? And this all compounds as we question more and more things, such as whether LeChuck is real... or whether Boybrush or Chucky are real themselves. How likely do you think it is that, in the reality of RMI, both LeChuck and Chucky would be real people?

 

Like a story shared from the Anglers themselves, our Monkey Island adventures are all fine-tuned narratives. RMI might have told us that the journey is more important than the destination, but it also told us the journey is more important than its factualness, its "canon".

 

My mistake was in presuming the games would stop because canon is basically dead now. But other people knew better; they argued that RMI made the franchise more sequel-friendly than ever, because literally anything could happen and be part of this grand story. After all, if even the most nonsensical reveals of CMI and EMI could be explained now (e.g. the giant monkey robot and Herman "H.T. Marley" being the result of a single random play session), then how could anything NOT fit in? I read one particular review that shrugged along the lines of, "Everything is canon now. All the games are canon. All the contradictions are canon. That fan game with Guybrush as a ghostbuster is canon."

 

They were all correct when they said anything could happen after RMI. In fact, "anything" would really be the only appropriate mindframe to take on a sequel. That's the real gift RMI gave us.

 

LMI is as faithful a continuation of RMI as anything could ever be. "Do you have a story to share?" Well, it does.

[KestrelPi]

I do admit that through my life I've seen both sides when it comes to canon. I do think there's a nerd in me that wants to know 'okay what actually happened, though?' but over the years that voice seems to be increasingly drowned out by one that's more excited by 'what if...?' What if the monkey head was the top of a giant robot (hey, not all the what ifs have to be winners). What if a weird monkey island pocket universe appeared in Sea of Thieves? What if the voodoo lady had a hidden agenda throughout the series? What if Guybrush and Stan dated? What if...

The part of me that likes the certainty of canon can't seem to quite find a truly satisfactory answer to the question: what does canon actually provide us?

 

"A solid foundation with which to build other stories in this world"

Sure, but is limiting ourselves to one version of the story always a good thing. And does that solid foundation HAVE to be a timeline? Couldn't it just be well-defined characters and locations?

"A sense that this is a real place and not just a jumble of ideas."

Ehh. Are we all really suspending our disbelief that hard? If I can suspend my disbelief hard enough to accept some of the more outlandish world building and characters in the series, surely I can suspend it enough to accept some ambiguity in the timeline.

 

"A sense that I understand the world I'm a fan of and what's in it."

Well, yeah, I suppose that is a thing, but we were fine with living with the end of MI2 not properly explained for 30 years, so does it really matter that much?

[BaronGrackle]

You made me realize the Anglers of RMI can make criticism about consistency. If your final story doesn't mention Morgan at the beginning but then concludes with her, one of the anglers says something like, "Who is this Morgan? She just came out of nowhere", and you have to try again.

 

Random thought.

[Aro-tron]

42 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

even if Monkey Island somehow impossibly did become a Star Wars, is this a nightmare proposition?

 

Well, the Melee Island™ joke would become less funny if the trademark actually had significant value...

 

I don't think there's a risk of that happening with Monkey Island -- it's not like they're making LeChuck Happy Meal toys here -- but it does feel like a 'brand extension' that mines what was special about the original games. I probably wouldn't feel as annoyed if it was like, a tie-in novel, or a orchestral recording of the soundtrack.

 

I guess it's the idea of subsuming the world of Monkey Island into a larger and more commercially successful game that bothers me... and I'm generally depressed when the people who created the value of the IP aren't at all compensated when it's licensed or exploited. That's the world we live in, but it still seems deeply unfair.

[Niemandswasser]

3 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Are we really sat here worried about a future where we'd see endless cereal box tie ins and bad TV spinnoffs and mixed-bag movies, but then every couple of years we'd get an awesome comedy series about Stan's latest ventures, or an amazing RPG which explores the weirder parts of MI lore with real style and understanding?

 

Yes. This is something I actively do not want.

[KestrelPi]

2 hours ago, Aro-tron said:

 

Well, the Melee Island™ joke would become less funny if the trademark actually had significant value...

 

I don't think there's a risk of that happening with Monkey Island -- it's not like they're making LeChuck Happy Meal toys here -- but it does feel like a 'brand extension' that mines what was special about the original games. I probably wouldn't feel as annoyed if it was like, a tie-in novel, or a orchestral recording of the soundtrack.

 

I guess it's the idea of subsuming the world of Monkey Island into a larger and more commercially successful game that bothers me... and I'm generally depressed when the people who created the value of the IP aren't at all compensated when it's licensed or exploited. That's the world we live in, but it still seems deeply unfair.

 

I guess... a couple of things. Firstly I do really get the sense that the Rare folks are genuinely trying something different with Sea of Thieves and this is probably something they had to fight quite hard to make as big as it is, especially with the lukewarm initial reception. If it felt to me like Monkey Island was going to be absorbed by a real undisputed big hitter I might feel weirder about it, but honestly Sea of Thieves feels like it has succeeded against the odds, and from that perspective this more feels like it is paying respect to one of its inspirations than just eating the smaller fish.

 

And, well, my relationship to copyright is a bit complicated as someone who has worked in the field of IP rights for some time, my ideas about it have evolved over time. It's a sad fact of not just this industry but a lot of creative industries that a lot of creative work needs financial backing to happen and so a lot of ideas end up just being owned by companies who then control what to do with them. That's been true for a long time, but yeah, it is true.

 

On the other hand, I do feel like my ideal version of copyright is the one that existed at the start of copyright. It was originally intended as a way that a creator could protect how their work was used, and protect their ability to make an income for it, for a limited time, before it was released into the public domain for the betterment of the arts and culture as a whole. 

 

And that initial copyright term was short. None of this life plus x years nonsense. None of this zombie copyright stuff we get now where if something big is about to expire then whoops the term of copyright magically gets extended. The whole point is 'you can make money from it for a bit then it belongs to the world'.

I think I like that idea. What it would mean is that right now Rare could just do Monkey Island in Sea of Thieves if they wanted, and Disney doesn't make money from that, but... neither does Ron. Nor would he need to give permission. But also, as a counterbalancing thing, since Disney would no longer own it, Ron could just choose to make and sell a new Monkey Island if he wanted. But so would anyone else. And yes, a lot of that stuff would be horrible, but that's how it goes for stuff in the Public Domain, right?

18 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

 

Yes. This is something I actively do not want.

 

Okay, sure. I don't know why you wouldn't want some cool Monkey Island stuff every couple of years, but fair enough.

 

What I find weirder though is why you're spending any time worrying about it. It isn't happening. Won't happen. Monkey Island is tiny. It's not even as big as it was in 1997, which was... big enough to support a sequel after 6 years (which was an age at the time), which had some nice animated cutscenes but didn't even have the budget to do the ending cutscene they wanted and didn't produce another sequel in the same decade.

 

Even if they release 5 well-received spinoffs in the next 5 years (which they won't) that won't even worry the needle of a Disney Exec's 'thing-i-need-to-pay-attention-to' meter. So there's no need to invent these scenarios.

 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by KestrelPi

[Sadbrush]

So long as Pirates of the Caribbean exists, they will never go "all in" on Monkey Island.

[Vainamoinen]

19 minutes ago, Sadbrush said:

So long as Pirates of the Caribbean exists, they will never go "all in" on Monkey Island.

 

Pirates of the Caribbean lives and dies with Johnny Depp. And as much as I love Ron or Dominic, the same laws do not apply to the Monkey Island franchise. God's grandma doesn't even know what Disney will or will not do. Disney is a pure monopoly. They can do what they want.

 

Remember – Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge gamble by Disney back in the day, because large budget pirate movies were considered money overboard since the epic flop Cutthroat Island in 1995. They since took a lot of gambles with some other Disney theme park rides. Didn't work out, shrug, what are we doing next?

 

Disney can take any gamble they like now. They have unfathomed money reserves and an unprecedented iron grip around the juvenile target group. They could sell them literal piles of shit if they stamp Frozen, Marvel or Star Wars on it.

 

So maybe they will give Monkey Island a little boost just to see how it develops. They could give it a fifth of just one of their five thousand annual superhero things, just to see if somebody's interested.

 

I'd be.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Vainamoinen

[Niemandswasser]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

Okay, sure. I don't know why you wouldn't want some cool Monkey Island stuff every couple of years, but fair enough.

 

I don't want something just because it looks like Monkey Island. I don't need an RPG exploring "series lore" because that has less than nothing to do with why I like the games we have--they've always, always made up the rules as they go along. I don't want a comedy series about Stan because there's no reason on Earth you could convince me that needs to exist--that's so far divorced from anything to do with why the games work that at that point, just make something new and have done with it. I don't want more Monkey Island just to have it. I'm grateful for what I have and am more than happy to never get more if the only motivating principle for it was "can we move this merch."

 

What I find weirder though is why you're spending any time worrying about it. It isn't happening. Won't happen. Monkey Island is tiny. It's not even as big as it was in 1997, which was... big enough to support a sequel after 6 years (which was an age at the time), which had some nice animated cutscenes but didn't even have the budget to do the ending cutscene they wanted and didn't produce another sequel in the same decade.

 

Even if they release 5 well-received spinoffs in the next 5 years (which they won't) that won't even worry the needle of a Disney Exec's 'thing-i-need-to-pay-attention-to' meter. So there's no need to invent these scenarios.

 

None of what you just argued against has anything to do with what I said. Obviously it's not going to be as big as Star Wars or Indy--I brought those up to respond to AGH's point about them.

 

What I said is that I expect MI to be exploited as a marketable property for as long as the people holding the levers know they can get money out of it, which is...demonstrably happening, right now. I'm not worrying about it--I'm observing it. This doesn't mean "we get a fun new game by people with unique creative voices every couple of years." It means "they slap the branding on unrelated corners of the market where they figure it can do some low-cost work for them."

 

The reason Mojo went so hard against the glut of LEC-produced Star Wars titles in the early '00s wasn't that the community hated Star Wars--games like X-Wing and Jedi Knight were as well-beloved here in their day as the graphic adventures. It was that so much of it was being shoveled out the door with little thought behind it except that people would pay for the logo. And the reason that happened is because people *did.* 

 

Obviously Monkey Island is a much smaller thing--and if you honestly believe I was arguing otherwise I apologize for apparently giving the impression that I was in the middle of a complete psychotic break--but we're already at "a Monkey Island-branded add-on to an unrelated MMO," and that sure feels more like Super Bombad Racing than TIE Fighter to me.

[Jake]

I see both Return and the Sea of Thieves things as two opportunities that came up, where someone was willing to say yes. Those two points existing out in space don’t mean a line has been formed that we can extrapolate an trajectory out from, let alone a slippery slope. Whether you are excited about the Legend event or wary of it or resent it or anything else, it’s still a one-off thing clearly made by people excited to get to do this work. Maybe one day this will all be craven and horrible but that’s not the vibe I get at all right now. 

[JacquesSparkyTail]

54 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

 

I don't want something just because it looks like Monkey Island. I don't need an RPG exploring "series lore" because that has less than nothing to do with why I like the games we have--they've always, always made up the rules as they go along. I don't want a comedy series about Stan because there's no reason on Earth you could convince me that needs to exist--that's so far divorced from anything to do with why the games work that at that point, just make something new and have done with it. I don't want more Monkey Island just to have it. I'm grateful for what I have and am more than happy to never get more if the only motivating principle for it was "can we move this merch."

Thats absolutely a fair enough viewpoint but it’s a hard disagree from me. I love the puzzles, gameplay etc. but its not all i love about the series. I love the world, humor and characters just as much if not more. To use the stan example, i light up whenever he turns up in a game because i know i’m about to laugh. I hit every dialogue option to make sure i never miss a line of his dialogue. For those few minutes everything else melts away and i am, in effect, just watching a comedy skit starring stan.  If 5 minutes a game can elicit that reaction from me, i can’t imagine what 10 20minute episodes of his shenanigans would do. The motivation behind the content doesn’t worry me. I just love being in this world. Preferably as part of a mi game but i’ll gladly take whatever i can get. 

[KestrelPi]

Eh, nothing 'needs' to exist.

 

Honestly if you offered me a world where no new Monkey Island things were created, or a world where 100 new Monkey Island things were created and 95 of them were terrible and 5 were great, I'd take the world where I get 5 great Monkey Island things and happily moan about the rest.

 

At least it would be something to talk about.

Edited June 13, 2023 by KestrelPi

[WorldMaker]

4 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Pirates of the Caribbean lives and dies with Johnny Depp. And as much as I love Ron or Dominic, the same laws do not apply to the Monkey Island franchise. God's grandma doesn't even know what Disney will or will not do. Disney is a pure monopoly. They can do what they want.

 

Remember – Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge gamble by Disney back in the day, because large budget pirate movies were considered money overboard since the epic flop Cutthroat Island in 1995. They since took a lot of gambles with some other Disney theme park rides. Didn't work out, shrug, what are we doing next?

 

Disney can take any gamble they like now. They have unfathomed money reserves and an unprecedented iron grip around the juvenile target group. They could sell them literal piles of shit if they stamp Frozen, Marvel or Star Wars on it.

 

So maybe they will give Monkey Island a little boost just to see how it develops. They could give it a fifth of just one of their five thousand annual superhero things, just to see if somebody's interested.

 

I'd be.

Disney is on its fourth, I believe, attempt at a Haunted Mansion film. That’s partly because none have quite hit the PotC smash, but it’s also because Disney’s park IP is reliable and has decades of history that seems perennial. It’s world recognized IP with attractions on almost every continent. PotC will get rebooted in five/ten years without Johnny Depp as soon as their is a hip new director or action star wanting to take a stab at it.

 

 Monkey Island is a niche of a niche of IP that counts the original PotC attraction as upstream inspiration. Why would Disney ever make a Monkey Island film? Everybody already knows PotC, the brand, the attraction, etc. Lack of Johnny Depp isn’t going stop Disney. They might realize that Depp was a lightning in a bottle casting choice that they are unlikely to repeat, but the attraction existed decades before the Johnny Depp movies and will likely survive decades after them too.

 

 I’d love to see a Monkey Island film or a Disney+ show. Those are “take my money” grabhands ideas. I’ve even joked for several years now that I’d happily consult on a Disney+ show because I figured you could run Sea of Thieves directly in Disney’s “The Volume” space and do it as Live Action cartoonish realism on the relatively cheap. (The Volume uses Unreal engine primarily and SoT is Unreal as well and I think even the islands that aren’t specifically built for Monkey Island references look fitting for Monkey Island side tales.) I don’t see Disney actually doing anything like that at all though because they own PotC and that is IP with history and weight. Monkey Island is just a silly little thing to Disney they happen to own only by accident of buying Star Wars.

[JacquesSparkyTail]

It does make you wonder what the franchise would look like today if that spielberg monkey island movie happened in the 90s. I imagine it would be unrecognisable. The curse style would definitely have stuck around if nothing else.

[Sadbrush]

7 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

Pirates of the Caribbean lives and dies with Johnny Depp.

 

Just a couple years back, they proposed doing a "reboot" with Margot Robbie as the lead. I think that IP is much more universally recognizable and lucrative in conjunction with the theme parks. I can't see Disney with two competing pirate movie franchises, unless they somehow make a resurgence and replace the current superhero trend. 

 

2 hours ago, WorldMaker said:

Monkey Island is just a silly little thing to Disney they happen to own only by accident of buying Star Wars.

 

Yeah, it kind of makes me think of that recent Willow Disney+ reboot. Which wasn't a success with the legacy fans and failed to engage the younger ones. I think this new Lucasfilm doesn't really know what the hell they're doing and will probably stick with what works for them for the foreseeable future: which is Star Wars, as far as the eye can see.

 

2 hours ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

It does make you wonder what the franchise would look like today if that spielberg monkey island movie happened in the 90s. I imagine it would be unrecognisable. The curse style would definitely have stuck around if nothing else.

 

See, this is exactly the kind of thing I wish they would have made, back when the iron was still "hot." It might have just been a one-off film (like lots of animated films of the '90s), but it would have been a cult classic for sure. And probably lured a generation of kids towards the point-and-click genre. Which might have revitalized and fueled it for awhile longer, etc.

 

I understand wanting Monkey Island to remain a niche thing that only adventure gamers know about, but there are other ways it could have thrived, too. Just like Sam & Max, which had comic books and a TV show and a shitload of games over the years, but still hasn't burned its goodwill towards fans (in my opinion). Let's face it, Monkey Island was never going to be the next Indiana Jones or Star Wars cash cow.

 

And while we're at it, remember the attempt to make Maniac Mansion into a sitcom in the '90s? It actually made it even more weird and niche, somehow. And we still only have two of those games in existence, which haven't lost their classic status. 

[Niemandswasser]

1 hour ago, Sadbrush said:

I understand wanting Monkey Island to remain a niche thing that only adventure gamers know about, but there are other ways it could have thrived, too. Just like Sam & Max, which had comic books and a TV show and a shitload of games over the years, but still hasn't burned its goodwill towards fans (in my opinion).

I don't think anyone here is saying they want MI to remain a niche thing only adventure gamers know about. If they were saying that, they're in for a terrible shock--MI has been a well-known, highly-regarded part of video game history for a while now. I remember a PC Gamer headline from years before ReMI was a blink in anyone's eye that said "Ron Gilbert wants Disney to call him about Monkey Island"--no explanation who Ron was or context for MI, but the assumption that most people reading PC Gamer knew those things well enough to click a link without any other context.

 

You mention that a whole generation of kids might have been turned on to point and clicks if an MI movie had been made in the late 90s--kids were well aware of Monkey Island in the '90s. I went to school with plenty of kids who'd played the games, and I've met plenty more adults who aren't Mojo-posting fans but who have fond memories of playing in their youths. Obviously it wasn't a huge, zeitgeist-shaping cultural touchstone, but it wasn't Bud Tucker in: Double Trouble, either. 

 

But even if that wasn't the case, I'm not worried about public perceptions of Monkey Island changing. I don't care what the public thinks--if I did I wouldn't have bought Eurotrip on Blu-ray. What I don't want is to get to a point where "new Monkey Island" doesn't mean anything except a label and the presence of some copyrightable iconography. That trajectory feels more possible to me this week than it did before.

 

Let's face it, Monkey Island was never going to be the next Indiana Jones or Star Wars cash cow.

 

Again, nobody is saying this. Just because something can't be exploited for billions doesn't mean it can't or won't be exploited for all it's worth. 

[Gins]

7 hours ago, WorldMaker said:

Monkey Island is a niche of a niche of IP that counts the original PotC attraction as upstream inspiration. Why would Disney ever make a Monkey Island film?

 

They could make it a PotC film, like with Stanger Tides. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Secret of Monkey Island.

 

Just instead of Guybrush, we'd have some young lad who's good with a sword and had a more palatable name. As a twist, this guy doesn't want to be a pirate. Elaine would not be the governor, but rather a governor's daughter, because audiences gotta find it believable, you know (/s).

 

LeChuck is a silly name so they give him a more piratey name, but keep his ghost crew.

 

Secret has a lot of cool characters, but it would be costly to hire a good actor for everybody, so like in most movie adaptions, let's consolidate the most memorable characters:

Guybrush's crew is just one guy. He's a pirate that not-Guybrush has to break out of prison and beat in a sword fight, and he has tattoos. The bird touching is silly so as a callback to fans, we just give him the name of a bird. If he flails his arms around wildly while he talks, and talks in a very fast confusing way and is a master of convincing people of half truths, we got Stan in there too.

 

Actually, the whole "Monkey" Island is silly sounding and doesn't invoke piracy at all. We simply rename Monkey Island to the Island of the Dead, give LeChuck a monkey sidekick and name another island after an animal that's more piraty than a monkey, e.g. a turtle.

 

Where's my money Disney?

[neoncolor8]

On 6/12/2023 at 8:35 PM, Gins said:

I'm waiting for a good sail and then I might buy it. I had my eyes set on this game since the announcement, but then it was Xbox exclusive, then when it came to PC I was put off by the multiplayer, since I have no friend who would play this with me.

 

But maybe swinging across to Hook Island with a rubber chicken in 3D is enough to get me to try it.

It seems that the rubber chicken scene is not on the way to hook island, but going down(?) to Stan's. At least that what it looks like to me. I hope they don't mess up the locations to much.

[BaronGrackle]

5 hours ago, Gins said:

and name another island after an animal that's more piraty than a monkey, e.g. a turtle.

Hey hey now, pirate Tortuga was real!

[dognut]

unsurprisingly, Tim has also had no involvement: https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/1668765387889197056

Edited June 14, 2023 by dognut

[Lagomorph01]

Love the statement on that one. 😂

[MurraySchull]

On 6/12/2023 at 6:29 PM, Didero said:

The big Steam Summer Sale is coming on June 29 (I love that they just announce all the sale dates now), so I think I'll pick it up then.

 

Will Sea of Thieves definitely be in the sale this year? I'll pick it up on Steam then if so.

[Didero]

5 hours ago, MurraySchull said:

Will Sea of Thieves definitely be in the sale this year? I'll pick it up on Steam then if so.

 

It's on sale fairly often, so I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be.

Plus, it's a live game, with frequent updates and real-money cosmetics, so I assume they'd want as many people buying the base game as they can.

[MurraySchull]

 

Some new Monkey Island cosmetics coming to Sea of Thieves in time for Episode 1's launch next Saturday! (Including a piranha poodle!) We also get our first brief look at Elaine.

 

I picked up Sea of Thieves in the recent Steam sale but have yet to make a start on it! Will probably try and learn the ropes of it at some point this week.

 

 

The reveal that the story takes place following on from the end of Curse honestly makes even less sense than before (Since Escape begins only three months after Curse, there's no time for Guybrush to be Governor and in the mansion for almost a year.)  So I'm just gonna ignore any sense of canon that this game will have and just treat it as a bonus feature.

[Didero]

21 minutes ago, MurraySchull said:

The reveal that the story takes place following on from the end of Curse honestly makes even less sense than before (Since Escape begins only three months after Curse, there's no time for Guybrush to be Governor and in the mansion for almost a year.)  So I'm just gonna ignore any sense of canon that this game will have and just treat it as a bonus feature.

Oh yeah, I'm not seeing this as canon at all. It's called 'Legend' for a reason!

 

Some of those cosmetics look cool, like the clothes and the figurehead. Not sure what the other ship decorations and the weapons have to do with LeChuck though.