It's kinda sorta the Klonoa situation, the main series is literally a dream where all of the memories of Klonoa (aka the player) are fake, with a melancholy ending where the player has to leave the game for the real world. The spinoff games then that came after are just sequels where the downer endings and the meta elements are dismissed for more standard platformer fare. So there's this weird divide in the series even though they're all canon
I haven't played any monkey island games, or even experienced it beyond your video, but it makes me happy to see your enthusiasm for the series is going to be shown off to us once again. Its a very interesting series and I love how you cover it.
Personally, I think it will be an evolved version of of his 3. The same idea he had back then, but left to stew for 30 years with bits n pieces of the other games finding their way in as seasoning.
I'll just make a simple wordplay joke that probably summarises what the game will be. The new Monkey island game's full title could be rewritten as "Ron Gilbert's Return to Monkey Island" and that's what I'm thinking we'll be getting.
Ironically, getting a new Jak and Daxter game is how we got The Last Of Us so it'd be funny if making a video about J&D caused a TLOU Part 3 announcement or something.
One thing i can say about Money Island, for those who really don't like the "it was all a dream": The solution has been introduced by... Sea of Thieves, who has been partnering with Disney for the Pirate of the Caribbean crossover. After some lore research, The Sea of thieves would be a place like "Never Land", as Captain Hook, and Tinker Bell exist here, and are one of the ways to cross the shroud. Now what do we find inside the Sea of the Damned, in the Pirate life adventure is .... a crashed ship, with the music of the game, and a journal by Captain Kate Capsize! Making both sides happy, with it's an imaginary land, but it's still real.
The first two games don't make any references to any specific time period, but include 20th century things and references. It feels like it is a contemporary corner of the Caribbean where people haven't changed much in three hundred years. Which is plausible. It also has ghosts and zombies and magic spells, so it doesn't really matter if it is a particular time period. However, the characters in the game very obviously try to create the Carribbean pirate flair deliberately for some unexplained reason. The one thing I am certain about, however, is that Melee Island is the same island where Cygna's son Bobbin is summoned to the Loom.
There's a great interview with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman where they talk about the game. How it STARTS post-Monkey Island 2 but it takes the other canon into account as much as possible.
Not *exactly* what was said. They were very tight lipped but they mentioned how it incorporates canon in a way that, through the deliberate use of the word 'amorphous', suggests this is mostly about the unique story they now want to tell. No clue yet how much 2 covers this beyond the opening.
I just hope the game doesn't become insufferably meta and self-referential. Like, sure, Monkey Island always had meta humor, but it was sprinkled on a plot that took itself somewhat seriously. I liked that, and it was good, but some franchises take it too far. What I would hate is if the plot itself became more interested in *talking about* how it's a long-awaited game that finally continues an old cliffhanger... rather than just BEING the long-awaited game that finally continues an old cliffhanger. The meta parts weren't driving the experience in the first two games, they were supplementing it. So I just hope they don't derail the story in this one.
I didn't like Thimbleweed Park that much, because of the overly excessive use of self-referentiality. My hope for the new Monkey Island is that Dave Grossman will balance things out here. I'm looking forward to the new game, but I don't have too high expectations.
I've been doing a series replay myself. I ONLY played the original two games back in the day and have just finished those and am now started with Curse. But I already have thoughts, and they deal not just with the fanbase split but also with a reason why the original Ron Gilbert titles were not enormous hits initially and built their legacy over a longer period: It's a question of whether Monkey Island is really a "pirate adventure" game - and therefore should flesh out our expectations of old swashbuckling tropes in a marketable, crowd-pleasing form - or if it's a "subversion of pirate adventures" - and therefore should be trying to surprise us at the expense of the trope. MI1 threads the balance a bit since it does do the things it says on the tin: you become a pirate, you find treasure, you get in swordfights, you sail the ocean blue, you get the girl. It's a mix of convention and quirkiness, and the subversion is there, but also something you can overlook as just being "weird". You can easily imagine a Sierra-ized version of MI1 where Guybrush is slightly more hunky, everything is a played little more dry and you can die by walking off cliffs or starving on your voyage to Monkey Island or something. It's sort of testing the waters, both in the storytelling and the unconventional approach to puzzle design. MI2, on the other hand, goes out of its way to make Guybrush into a more despicable, amoral character who uses everyone he meets to advance his goals - a pirate, but not a chivalrous or romanticized one. You wouldn't see Errol Flynn sawing off peglegs, nailing people shut in coffins, or robbing graves, to name just one puzzle chain. It's thematically robust. Replaying it as an older and wiser self has only made it more clear that Guybrush and LeChuck are similarly villainous in depiction in this game. While it doesn't outright say, "actually, you, player, were the bad guy all along", the ending creates the kinds of broad implications that never sit well with audiences who want their media to normalize their beliefs about right and wrong. And then Curse begins...and you can tell, pretty quickly, that it's trying to be a pirate adventure. Guybrush is now a proto-Dreamworks everyman protagonist. The darker elements of MI2 are handwaved away as an evil spell. And this works! There's nothing wrong with this direction, but it's definitely not Ron Gilbert's vision at that time. It makes for a more straightforward game and probably a better, more marketable product release back in the 90's. And in the intervening period, Gilbert has had time to do other things and probably work through some fragments of his vision for MI3 on other projects. Thimbleweed Park really did nail the same kind of vibe. So when faced with the prospect of a new one, it's almost a blank slate: the goal is not to do what he wanted to do then, but to take the additional source material that was made and give it a new spin in his usual style. Plus some room to indulge whatever ideas he still has in the backlog.
In LeChuck's Revenge, I like how on arrival on Phatt Island, the game lists all the crimes you have committed to get to this point, and it's a long list. While solving the puzzles you probably don't think about it, you just try to move the plot along and get to the next part. You can still tell yourself that you're the good guy, especially vis-a-vis Governor Phatt himself. But nailing Stan into the coffin is just cruel. Sawing off the peg-leg is a puzzle I don't like mostly because it involves sailing back and forth between islands (which is implied to take a long time, even though it only does the first time) for small items that you would have no way of knowing what you would need them for at first and only make sense after the fact. You have to be deliberately mischievous to solve those puzzles. At that point you can't have any illusions about being the good guy. And then the confrontation with Marley, which is weird because the story is framed as being told to Marley. Why would he tell Marley about the conversation he has with her? She was there! The monkey wrench puzzle doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know what that is about. And the escape from the torture chamber is similarly illogical, although I like how Wally asks what he is even there for.
I'm still kinda digesting the whole experience, but after playing the latest game, I thought a bit about the points you made in your MI vid and it certainly puts a lot into perspective. I look forward to hearing what you have to say on Return to Monkey Island.
I've waited with hope that Ron would get to finish his vision, so much so that I promised myself that if I ever became super rich and famous I'd try and buy the IP from Disney to give back to him. Now that it's finally happening, I'm glad he's willing to incorporate elements of what came after his era into this game, as well as work with the . While later instalments aren't as memorable, they all had gems within their own rights, and I really dug what Grossman did in Tales with the voodoo priestess, so I'm stoked to see him back and collaborating too. This should be an absolute banger of a game.
My guess for this Part and Rons Meta Games... We Beginn as Guybrush in his 50s in the "real world". He struggles Depression and Working a Boring 9-5 Job. Then Something Happens and He remembers that He must Go Back to Monkey Island. Back we're there fun was. Because He wanted to be a pirate. Like a Hook/ grown Peter Pan Story. I think that would fit Rons Meta Ending of Part 2 and make a good Story about Beeing a Kid again. Just Like the Feeling WE old farts had as He anounced Part 3. ;-) so a mixture between a deep and a fun game.
@@BMask Welcome dude, You just mentioning the notion they might make the old school pixel version in this made my night. I know there's no such plans, but just expressing that was cool. If they did that it would honestly be hard to express how cool that would be. I subscribed by the way.
To keep the metaphor of the original ones without destroying the new games and giving it a new spin after 30 years, this Return could represent the point of view of the son/daughter of an old Guybrush. After listening to the stories created by his father and his uncle when they were children (mi1 and 2) and after retelling the same story multiple times in multiple ways to his friends (mi3, 4 and tales), now he's brought to the park himself and he experience "the ride of Monkey Island" for the first time by creating his own story.
3:03 oh hey that's me I'm honestly deeply curious what Ron has planned for this game. Like he's said, the game he planned to make back then isn't the same as the game he'd make now. I get a sense from what we're seeing that this could end up being a celebration of the series from Ron's point of view. I think the name in itself kinda indicates that---like it's a return to Ron's ideas of what Monkey Island can be as a franchise and what it can stand for as a story. There's a lot of uncertainty, but also a lot of possibility. Looking forward to your video covering it when we finally get our hands on it! P.S.: I'm not even really a Monkey Island fan, I just find your videos and opinions very refreshing and educational. Keep up the amazing work!
It's a peculiar thing that Disney is by and large viewed as a draconian IP holder. They are, if nothing else, incredibly on the ball and active in keeping their videogame properties available. They've relicensed Tales of Monkey Island to return to digital PC storefronts recently, developed a Zombies Ate my Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol collection with dotemu, and continue working with Aspyr media to remaster and rerelease Star Wars catalog titles on the LucasFilms Games/LucasArts front. Not to mention giving clearance to Sony and Microsoft to include references to Moneky Island with Uncharted 4 and Sea of Thieves, respectively. They've relicensed and rereleased a bunch of Marvel and Fox games like Aliens vs Predator for home arcade collections such as Capcom's plug and play arcade machine and arcade 1up cabinets. With their own properties, they've worked with Digital Eclipse and publishers such Capcom to release collections like the Disney Afternoon Collecion and Disney Classics Collection with Aladdin and Lion King all while keeping a huge catalog of DIsney PC games on steam, and have gone through efforts to relicense the Duck Tales Remake to return to digital storefronts. Those are just a few examples. I'm happy they reunited Ron Gilbert with Monkey Island, but I'm not as surprised it was an acquiescent process.
Incredibly insightful comment, and put a lot of the last few years in perspective for me. I think there's a shift in video games generally that people are still mentally coming out of that Disney wasn't as noticeably active in, and now are better equipped to address as the technology becomes more ubiquitous. I guess with Monkey Island I just assumed, because Ron was so vocally out there about how hopeless getting back to it seemed, I just thought it was too tangled up but the way he's detailed it since lines up with everything you've mentioned.
While true, the vast majority of those examples are recent rereleases of old games. They aren't new games based on the cgi Lion King or sequels to Episode 1 Pod Racing or another Epic Mickey. I do think that is a fundamental difference between this, a new title in a legacy IP, and those, mere ports they pulled out of the vault, and why it seems more surprising to most observers than you seem to think it is
The entire monkey island fandom back and forth over the potential of some sense of closure reminds me of when season 5 of Samurai Jack was being teased. Obviously it's not a one to one, but I have a sense of deja vu over the impossible dream of returning to something widely loved, and the inevitably of reality that so much time has passed for people making the thing and the Industry that those people work in, that the incoming compromise is more of a reflection of the team currently than a perfect return to form. Like, I'm more of a king's Quest fan. The shifting perspectives and sudden halt after bad games only to resurrect out of nowhere isn't new to me (even though I played KQ games as a teenager in the mid 2010s), so yeah, I can only hope that whatever is delivered with Return is worth it on its own terms. Nice video Bmask!
@@shards-of-glass-man That's the episodic fan made KQ game right? My plan was to wait until all of the episodes were out, but I guess that's not happening anytime soon. But from what I've seen, it's exactly what I want out of a new KQ game if Mask of Eternity hadn't happened
@@NeptuneCactus Yeah, that's the one. It has been so long, and the devs (who have also, it turns out, made that jank anniversary Gabriel Knight remake) have been quiet for a few years, so I've basically concluded that it wouldn't be finished. Wanted an opinion since I'm likewise procrastinating on playing it
You have no idea how much I agree with all you've said. Really intelligent analysis, great work. One note though, in the original manifesto Ron DID say he's "not above using characters from the later games", so the inclusion of Murray doesn't immediately mean that it's not what he wanted to make, though I'm also certain it won't be. At the very least I hope he'll talk about all he wanted to do back in 1992 after it comes out
Thanks! And don't worry, I'm well aware of that point in the manifesto, I even showed it on screen in the video- it was the point that solidified my reason for making this and just affirming to people that, even when 3a was planned, he was never going to make exactly what he wanted in 1992. Murray himself was always a symbol of compromise.
I think people worry too much about canon. No matter what happens in Return, Curse will still exist. In an interview I saw with Stephen King he said that while he didn't like Kubrick's The Shining, it didn't 'ruin' his book. He pointed to the bookshelf and said his version was still right there, exactly as it always was.
This is late but every once in a while I come back to this video and one beautiful line in here for me is when you say that even if Monkey island isn’t “real” as in like an actual place, it is to guybrush and that’s important to the story
I've never even understood the arguments, because the ending is very explicitly not a dream or a fantasy. there's a mid-credits stinger where it cuts back to elaine, who is still real, wondering if LeChuck cast a spell on Guybrush. "Chuckie" has the classic 70s horror movie or thriller music video ending stinger of looking directly into the camera with glowing red eyes. The line about silent hill, maybe, sure, maybe both the carnival and the tri-island archipelago are both real. but the game is pretty straightforward about the setting being "real", as in, it exists in a physical reality somewhere, even if it seems artifically constructed. Like, yes, maybe Monkey Island is a theme park. But it's not an imaginary theme park, all that weird stuff still happened and the other people are still people, not figments of Guybrush's imagination. There's no evidence to assume the theme park at the end is "real" and monkey island is "not real". maybe its the other way around. maybe both of them are real. maybe nothing is real. maybe its all at once. but one thing lechuck revenge's ending is clearly not saying in my opinion is that guybrush was just a kid dreaming of adventures and running away from his family the whole time in his imagination.
The ending with elaine was apparently added in later, either for a second print of the game or late in development, to tease a return to that world for a sequel, but there were a lot of sources to adhere to then and now that showed an intention for it to have always been a theme park brought to life by a child's imagination/magic, from ron's own admission in an interview on the original (before 2 had even been developed) and in an admission by Bill Tiller (going off on what he had been told Ron's plan was). This was what surprised me the most when I finally played MI2. I had been lead to believe that only the ending was about this, and you're right, it's absolutely a satire on 70's horror endings, we even do a riff on star wars. But what was never explained and yet so painfully obvious was that the *entire game* built to that ending, and to a mystery surrounding Guybrush's parents and relationship to Chuck. It's told in a funny way, yes, but 2 was absolutely giving the impression of pulling back the curtain on the entire conceit of the franchise. If that's not the case now, sure, but it's still an entirely plausible take on what was intended. EDIT: I notice you edited the comment and yeah, I never felt what happened was a dream, I certainly felt Guybrush's time in that park or whatever wasn't real or that the people he met didn't exist, just like the Wizard of Oz. That's never really been the argument presented to me so I hope that wasn't you suddenly deciding to cover your tracks haha
@@BMask and yeah, absolutely the entire original game and lechucks revenge lead up to it. i think the intent was always that both worlds are as real as the other
I found it so hard to articulate to people why LeChuck's revenge is so good until you made your video. The people who see the subtext as just "lol random, quirky pirates" still have a fun time but they don't see what sets it apart from Curse. You're a fuckin legend for that video.
Thanks for the kind words man, I was just like them before I completed that game for myself in full. Had to try and illustrate why in a video and I'm glad there are people who got where I was coming from, makes it worthwhile.
CLEARLY, as can be seen in Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine’s finale, “Aetherium,” all of the LucasArts games exist side by side across parallel dimensions, so there’s plenty of room for the Monkey Island games to co-exist as one big, cross-cosmic family.
I think its fascinating that in-between mi2 and now we've had the whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a series that was long rumored to have taken elements from an unmade MI script and is itself named for a theme park ride.
Worth mentioning that the writers of the movie have since come out and spoken on the connection and that a lot of it was just being inspired by the same source materials and stock characters. Nothing specifically taken from the games at all, just natural coincidences.
He's called it 3a because it's the plan "a" of what should have happened before Curse. (3b) rather than it being monkey island 3 that would have happened years ago... He has made the story work but it's not his true original idea of '92.
B I don't know if I can make it another year without the Desperate Housewives video. Look me in the profile picture and tell me that it's coming. Can't say that I'm not a little jealous that franchise revivals from properties you're a fan of keep falling into the lap of people who care. Tell me that Bucky o' Hare's coming back why don't ya?
I'm so looking forward to your future video on Return! Your analysis of the other games was spot on. You managed to capture exactly how I felt about them, especially the ending of MI2. Return truly lived up to my expectations for a Ron Gilbert's MI3. The prologue and ending, in particular, deeply connected with me - I loved how the game developed the themes of storytelling, obsession, nostalgia, and moving forward. Such a fantastic game.
I think that you perfectly encapsulated the core themes of RtMI! For me, it's a game about the art of storytelling, and how a storyteller can embellish or change his stories over time. Yet the themes of obsession, nostalgia, and moving forward are certainly present and crucial in the game as well. It's a beautiful game and I loved all of it! The Prelude and the Ending resonated with me in a particularly deep way as well! I see that RtMi caused a divide in the fanbase - some people hate the ending. However, I loved that the game's final moments are purposefully ambiguous. Ron Gilbert gave us some answers, yet he presented them in a way that is open to debate and speculation. You are very correct, it is a game about letting go and moving on. I feel that if we got a simpler and more conclusive ending, then the game wouldn't be half as impactful and memorable as it is!
I always dislike whenever a new revival ignores some of the "worse" aspects of its franchise. The Star Wars sequels ignoring any influence of the prequels, Dragon Ball Super setting itself before the controversial end of Z, half of the Halloween franchise, the Terminator movies desperately trying to make another Terminator 3...all of these things are good in their own rights (well, except Terminator) but their disrespect of the crappy things that came before always rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like a sequel should always try to redeem or excel things that came before, not sweep them under the rug because they're ashamed of it or something. One of my favorite games is Sonic Generations, which remixes levels from a lot of previous Sonic games, even ones with rather...middling reception. Including Sonic 06, often considered one of the worst games ever made. But Sonic Generations didn't joke about how bad it was. It didn't mock it or shame it or ignore it. What it did was acknowledge it was a part of the franchise's history, and embraced it the same way it embraced the other more famous games. And it was a great pair of levels! A sequel should embrace its history! Return to Monkey Island doesn't need to ignore the previous games in order to be a "proper followup" to the second. There's no reason to ignore them! They're part of the series and they helped evolve it. Pretending like they didn't exist, or just brushing them off with some dumb joke, would be a huge mistake in my opinion. Monkey Island 6 can be a great followup to Monkey Island 2 just like it can also be great to 3, 4, and 5. I hope Ron Gilbert respects these titles as much as he respects his own.
Love your insights and thoughts on the games you cover. You have every right to ask for Likes and Subs when your videos are of this calibre. Look forward to your future vids!
I'm glad Ron is honest about changing as a person. It think it's important. Making a sequel exactly as if nothing happened in between would kinda feel... hollow. Like if the game wants to make any point (especially when you can argue there's a strong meta aspect about his games), it has to acknowledge that time has passed and other games came since. It has to touch it on at least some level. And you can extend that sentiment to any other stuff really. The world has changed so much since monkey island 2. And it's important for creators to also evolve their ideas along with it. So yeah, the game won't be written as it would have been in the 90s. And that's.... normal.
I think it can be done successfully and has been done on several franchises. It's just all relative in context here. All we can hope is Ron is telling the story he genuinely wants to tell.
I'm actually also one of those people who like Curse a lot (although I'm not certain if I like it better than Secret) and didn't like Revenge AS much (although I still liked it). But my dislike was never from the "real or not" meta-elements of the story, but the padded gameplay and convoluted puzzle design. I once read an inteview with somebody on the development team (maybe Ron himself?) where they explained that they specifically designed every puzzle chain intentionally so you would have to jump from island to island to solve them. And I just hated that. I can see the need to have SOME longer quest chains move from island to island, especially to make the world feel bigger and more interconnected... but to have the player constantly jump back-and-forth between disjointed locations for every. Single. Quest... It's just mindless padding to artificially extend the game's runtime. It's the worst part of the tedious boat sequence in the first game, extrapolated to the max. (Also, the "monkey wrench" puzzle can absolutely GO F**K ITSELF!) Uh... that was a way bigger rant than I initially intended. Either way, even liking (some of) the sequels, I would have been completely fine with Ron going back to his baby and finishing the story the way he wanted, simply because I'm curious as hell how it would look like. I wouldn't have seen it as betrayal, it wouldn't have nullified my enjoyment of the other games, and I'd have bought it day one anyways, just like I will with Return.
I feel the same way, although the island jumping is necessary for the cut-scenes between the map pieces. Otherwise you could get several pieces at once. It still feels unnecessarily convoluted how you have to go to one island to get one item to got to another island to get another item to get another item at the first island again, with no hint at any point which item you need or what you need it for or how to get it or where. The string in the swamp is a strange enough choice, it's not where I would look for a string, but at least that's on the same island.
I also started the games with Escape From Monkey Island, which I bought a used copy of on a day trip with my dad from a now defunct game resale shop in a mall somewhere. I was probably 10 years old, and neither of us knew what Monkey Island was, but the game fit our family's warped sense of humor, so it was something we ended up bonding over. For that reason it will always be my favorite of the series. That said, I own the (soon to be incomplete, go figure) collector's set now and every game is very special to me in its own way, and they are each unique enough for me not to have strong feelings one way or another. I never really beat the game, though, I would repeatedly get to the end and quit, because like all the other entries in the series I find they get weaker the further along you get, both in humor and in puzzle complexity. Ironically enough, usually the most boring part to me would always be about the time you actually get to ***Monkey Island*** .The first time I beat a Monkey Island game would end up being some 5-6 years later, when the Monkey Island Special Edition titles were released on Xbox Live Arcade. And after that I beat them all, in order. I think the order you play these dramatically changes your view of what all the imagery and references are supposed to satirize or represent. In "Curse" and Escape from Monkey Island, you miss out on the context of the ending of LeChuck's Revenge. They make allusions to it, but don't acknowledge the twist. So my first experiences with the franchise made me think that it was simply a quirky critique of American consumerism. It's supposed to be this daring pirate adventure, but you just have this strange manchild of a guy walking around commenting on licensed merchandise, there's trademark logos on everything, endless products to examine that are often disgusting and useless, 4th wall breaking pop-culture references and self-nods, a pre-occupation with bureacracy and the mundane. I loved that. Looking back now though, it does make sense that what Ron Gilbert was doing was meant to make you look a bit deeper and question the reality of the game itself, and there's something to be said for that vision. I don't think ultimately whether or not the story was "real" is important in that case, though, at least not anymore. Because debating about what is canon and not canon is a matter of plot. And the major takeaway here is dealing with theme. The ambiguity is honestly a blessing, and I expect a sort of compatibilistic approach to the new game. One where we can feel satisfied that all our favorite fictional characters weren't just figments of imagination of another fictional character, but still explores the ideas that Ron Gilbert originally wanted to.
From the perspective of someone very much into the ending of the second- and I say this also as someone who also had exactly your approach where I didn't play the originals first, and had the same thoughts until I played the second- I think the only reason I would have been interested in the original idea of any canon is not for plot, but for resolving a specific character thread. The mystery around Guybrush's parents, whether or not the islands are real, yeah, it's become a commentary on the Disney experience for sure across all the games- but I wanted to know *why* this kid wanted to escape his reality. What was so bad, what with his allegedly new family was *so* terrible that he felt the need to escape into a fantasy and become, as explained in the second game, such a desperate, markedly worse person? Curse and Escape swear he's the guy he says he is. Curse even regresses him to who he used to be, and Escape gets him married, something Ron never wanted to happen. So why? What was the payoff for that initially? I doubt I will ever see the fruits of that ending, I'd like to think I would, but I think there was something there established in one (where a random guy with a made up name turned up out of nowhere bragging about his sone-to-be reputation) that I would have liked to have seen resolved. To me exploring the manifestation of a child's sense of adventure and a longing for the past is why the Disney parks are still such powerful places, for better or worse, and I felt an ending to that statement was inbound the moment the veil across the game was pulled down.
@@BMask Yeah that's true, from a character study perspective LeChuck's Revenge is doing a lot that I think most players aren't being mindful of as they play the game. We see Guybrush sort of go off the rails a bit and see him as a much more insecure, desperate person. Interestingly enough, I went back and opened the Monkey Island Chronicles book after watching this video, which is basically the design works book in the collector's set if you haven't had a chance to look at it (I don't think it's available in print and a quick Google didn't bring up any e-books) and David Grossman and Ron Gilbert both have pretty similar memories of making the end of that game. I won't go into too much detail if you'd like to read it, but if it's not available online I can type something up.
@@Wereskeleton Purchased the collectors set as soon as it was announced! I'd heard variations on how the ending came together before but it was great to see the actual discussion of how it escalated. Probably for the best that Ron didn't use it for the original in the end for that very reason.
@@guybrushthreepwood4758 It was darker and it ended in a cliffhanger, which was kind of unprecedented at the time. Then it got reevaluated when ROTJ came out and people decided they liked it after all.
THIMBLEWEED SPOILERS DOWN BELOW I really like your takes on the MI games, seeing how you came from the 4th one - which at the time felt like a total betrayal to me of what those games were originally going at - and still managed to get a very good grasp of the series' essence. (btw:My first was the 2nd, so I kind of started with the whole "what is real?" state of mind) As you said, that you don't care for Monkey Island anymore but for Ron's Return, I discovered myself feeling the same way. Ron Gilbert has this formula of breaking the formula. Taking a known premise and changing something about in a hopefully unexpected way to give the player not only a new experience but also one that let's them think and evaluate about the presented topics. He did that in a more innocent way with the first MI (the heroes path that doesn't take itself to seriously), then way more mature with the second, and then over and over again (there is some depth in those humongous entertainment Kidsgames for example, people would be surprised by) until Thimbleweed Park, in which the game gets selfaware of being a game. That, while being an awesome and challenging concept a it's best, can on the other hand take people away from the established game world and back to reality (haven't played Thimbleweed Park ever since my first playthrough). That's not necessarily bad, but I understand how some people like Bill Tiller were afraid that Ron's original idea would break people's will to stay in this goofy pirate world and therefore go outside and do something else than playing (something that MI2 also already suggested). Challenging Ideas are still challenging and against the comfort zone - therefore not everybody's favorite choice. I'm glad Ron goes this way anyhow. What boring and pointless everything would have been without him... So of course we don't just get Monkey Island 3a. That game is born dead. And we could be sad about how things have gone. OR we look at everything like it was supposed to happen this way, in which we kept the save and whole piratey mold of monkey Island for far to many decades and be prepared because no matter in what way: Ron is finally going to break it! PS maybe, because all of those decades, Guybrush is going to be an old man in this one (who is still a child in the real world), maybe the knock-into-water of a post Gilbert-Game-Character is a very literal hint on how things willd go - we'll see! Predictions seem to have their way on this channel...
I just think TW idea of "It's just a game" quite hollow in it's execution. Plot just doesn't built up in any meaningful way and twist just feels to be quirky for sake of it. Monkey Island 2 ending is iconic because of how it ties with commentary of the second game and I'm happy it wasn't ending of 1,because then it would ring as hollow as Timberweel and wouldn't actually engage in anything substantial.
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 yeah, agreed. At first I really was in love with TW - Feld a bit like a playable 'Gravity Falls' untill it unraveled in not mattering at all because everything was a lie and so on... Still kind of a courageous way to do that twist - you know a lot of people will be unsatisfied. Yes Monkey Island I was better of without that ending. In Therms of Doing this 'It was all a Dream'-Ending thing well: just thought of Zelda Link's awakening. That one was just good without taking anything away from the player.
@@Maddismukke Driver: San Francisco is a classic in how you do "you're in coma" twist so well. Like, second view mission with ambulance chase are absolute classics and break what you expect from regular racing game.
I'm kind of expecting a similar approach to how the Halloween film series got rebooted in 2018, where canonically it ignores certain installments but can still wink at the audiences who are familiar with them. Considering how meta the Monkey Island games are I wouldn't be surprised if this happened.
Look I'm not saying that that e-ticket from MI2 is the key to everything, but Ron did recently describe Return as an 'e-ticket ride' and Return to Monkey Island is an anagram of "On To Dinky's E-Realm, Runt" so, I mean, draw your own conclusions.
I see the whole series like a theme park. Every game is a different kind of ride and i enjoy every game for what it does. Even part 4 although it is on the bottom of my list because of the consolisation.
Now it's the unreleased sam and max game's turn!!! Go on! Say it'll never come out and jinx it so we can play it already!!! They even said it was mostly done, but we never got to see it, and I think that's the crime of the century!!!
Well for me this new game just means I should go ahead play the games already (I've had the whole series in my steam library for a while now lol), I've had no wait and I have no expectations :)
2 роки тому+2
This is like me complaining about the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine - I wanted the promise of a whole new unknown quadrant of the galaxy fulfilled and we got run of the mill aliens and a war story instead. On the other hand, the show became a milestone in serialized storytelling and rightfully created an army of fans.
SPOILERS Excuse me, I know that I already wrote a comment below a few months ago, but I just can't stop thinking about RtMI, particularly its opening and ending. Ron devised this game in a specific way that gives us some answers, and yet lives us with some questions to ponder upon... When does the framing story of Guybrush and Boybrush take place? Were Guybrush's adventures real or completely made-up stories? Is Guybrush a pirate or a contemporary flooring inspector? Ron made the opening and the ending purposefully vague. And everyone can have their own interpretation with enough evidence to back it up. I find this game fascinating, and I would love to know your take on it!
(sorry for my English, in advance) To me, Ron messed it up. He really didn't know how to actually start the game to make a REAL continue from MI-2. So he made a new "ending" of Mi-2, as an opening for RTMI, to match it with a story that basically is copy of MI-1, just rivisited a bit. And at the end he went also for the same ending of the Mi-2! The story looks a mess to fill some holes here and there (some of them look really unfinished, like some room in Terror Island or some locations on the map of the single islands, like they were intended to be something, then didn't finished them) just to create some obstacle to arrive at the end of the story that takes to no where again justifinying it letting say to boybrush "you are bad with endings" so everything looked as planned. I perfectly know that he released an interview where he says "everything was planned from the beginning". Of course. He cannot say otherwise, because it would create even more mess with the game sellings , and people wouldn't like a rushed non finished game, so he just say "I thought it like that". It's a plain lie, to me, of course. We are talkiing about a game, we're going to live, anyway, of course, but since we are debating it, I think that we can consider we are not that stupid to believe everthing just because hypnotized from the first Monkeys and the respect to Ron Gilbert. He is changed for sure, he probably doesn't consider Monkey Island as important as the fans do, and money appeal everybody. Ron is not immune.
I don't know if anyone else saw it this way, but the thing I took away from MI2's ending was that the theme park was built on top of cursed ground somehow, like a pirate graveyard that's slightly akin to how Link falls into a tree and ends up in Termina in Majora's Mask, not as a 1 to 1 but along those lines. Also it's, at least to me, a possible story beat they could have gone or maybe even WILL go with following MI2. That's just my thoughts though, I mean after all, the ending still gives the idea that Le Chuck still has powers, not just with the creepy lightning eyes/Michael Jackson Thriller ending look at the camera, but in the fact that your choices get overridden by Chuck's responses. Granted, I haven't played any of the games and my only exposure to the series is through B-Mask's videos and Guybrush's costume appearance in the Force Unleashed games or the appearance in Uncharted 4, so I'm missing a lot of the detailed context if my suggested plot point is implied in the other games. I FEEL like it was implied near the end of ToMI, but I don't know/am entirely sure. Plus not to mention there was a whole recent section of a reference to the games in Sea of Thieves, won't spoil where you find it but it's part of the collab story in an interesting location.
for what it's worth, Ron did recently say in an interview that Return will pick up right where LeChuck left off, in the theme park. And then we'll go from there.
In a recent interview with adventure gamers Ron said that the most important thing about Monkey Island was that it's a great pirate adventure. The characters, the music, the world, the impeccable script and design are what compels me to play Secret of Monkey Island at least once a year. The meta aspects in 2 are cool, but they're not end all be all. It's interesting seeing the series through the yes of someone with a completely different perspective. But, yeah, I don't relate to what you consider to be the enduring aspects of MI at all.
I've read the interview and I understand the point. I have a lot of pirate adventures in my life I can enjoy. A lot of point and clicks, a lot of stories that are what they say they are and we all have fun and go home and get back to living our lives. But nothing made me feel the way 2 did. Nothing. Ron has discussed that aspect, too.
@@BMask He certainly has. And even though I consider those to elements to be icing on the cake, and the pirate adventure to be the beating heart of the series, I'm glad you make these videos despite me not relating to them. Of course the biggest split in the MI fandom are those who acknowledge that Curse Guybrush looks like Doug Funny, and those who acknowledge it while championing that fact.
realistically I don't care about either faction. I loved all the games (not 4) for their own unique reasons. I just personally think that it's fun to hype this new one up as THE ORIGINAL CREATOR LEADER OF THE MONKEY ISLAND UNIVERSE HAS TOOK HIS RIGHTFUL PLACE AT THE HELM OF THE RIGHTFUL SUCCESSOR TO THE ORIGINAL DUOLOGY
In MI1, there are two different endings depending on whether or not Guybrush destroys his ship with the rock or not. In EMI, the canon ending is confirmed to be that Guybrush destroyed the ship. Maybe RMI takes place in an alternate timeline where Guybrush did not destroy the ship and CMI/EMI/Tales did not happen. It could also be possible to have the to timelines merge somehow, not unlike the Swamp of Time puzzle in EMI, solving any plot inconsistencies.
You know, one of the things I actually really like about your videos is how nuanced they tend to be. Excited to see the new Monkey Island, and what you will take from it as well.
I love them all too. Some more than others are better but it's a franchise that I wish were easier to pick up and play. The Nintendo switch needs the entire series
Yeah, I agree. It would be great if the switch at least got the MI1 and 2 remakes and tales. Luckily I still have them on my PS3 at least. And MI3 and 4 are able to run on my old shitty laptop. At least the chances of return getting released on the switch are pretty big.
I loved point and click games as a child and i got back into it with sam and max save the world remastered, replaying Freddi fish games and now finishing Sam and Max through time and space.
I guess it depends on where your exposure to MI started for most people. Mine was right at the start on the Amiga500 as a child so tbh I never gave it much thought other than Priates are cool back then, then onto MI2 as a teenager and it really does have a different feel about it all the way through, like it's more grown up. MI3 although I still rate it was like playing a movie I guess and lost something, but by the time I'd played it (needed a PC remember) I'd played and completed so many others, one of note was Discworld II which felt very similar art style wise but dare I say it was actually the better game imo due to it's source material... I've totally forgotten where the story went in the next MI games, which says something as it held top spot as my favourite game for a lot of my younger gaming life.
I am also in the "I liked them all" camp, just wasn't that big on MI4 and MI2s ending. it's not that I can't accept that it was "all a dream", it's more that I feel like it's a cheap, unsatisfying ending that avoids answering interesting questions brought up that dragged me into the game in the first place, in favor of bring up some uninspired meta plot twist, that pretends to be deeper than it actually is. I feel like this about Thimbleweed park, too. MI2 and Thimbleweed park are amazing games, just didn't like the ending. Doesn't mean the games are bad. Honestly, no matter what camp you're in, I think none of us need to worry. It's gonna be a great game. Chances are, I will hate the ending but I'll still love my journey there.
Genuine question- you're aware the ending carries through the entirety of 2, right? Who did you think the skeleton parents were supposed to be? Why do you think LeChuck turns into guybrush specifically at the tree? Did you not find it interesting that half of the islands makeup is directly based on theme park iconography, if not directly mapped over existing rides from Disney parks? I think too many people assume the meta nature of the ending is a random element thrown in at the end, when it's built into the very foundations of both games. The ending, as with Thimbleweed park, tells me so much about the nature of games and how we perceive them, confronting us with the idea of whether or not these things live beyond us or should simply because we aren't there. I don't want this in every game, but that I got those feelings from both games is something I just can't get anywhere else. They're so deliberate that I can't even begin to entertain the idea that they're lazy, somebody carefully planted that reveal, and in no way do I accept it as cheap or uninspired. If you don't like it, fine, but to label it as something it's not is what frustrates me, nothing worse than something put down merely because it's misunderstood.
@@BMask I am aware of that, but I didn't like the ending either way. I enjoyed the weird stuff happening and MI2 and was interested in how they would explain it. Granted, this is the first video I've seen from you and it has been a while since I've played MI2, so the details are probably slipping my mind right now, but no matter how well it is set up the "It was all a dream" still feels cheap to me. Also note, nowhere did I say it was lazy, I said it was uninspired. Edit: Oh yeah I said it was "it pretends to be deeper than it is". I didn't mean it's lazily implemented throught the story I meant that I personally didn't feel like it was very interesting. Bad choice of words there.
@@Nyghtfall The thing about Ron though is that he's very interested in the nature of the relationship between games and the player, and I don't think he's just doing it because he wants people to bask in the glow of how deep he is. I think it's just how he likes telling stories and while some may consider his predilection for meta stuff uninspired- let's face it, there's a lot of meta stuff that doesn't work- I really don't think he's doing it without great purpose.
@@Nyghtfall Also you gotta understand that Ron pretended to make Monkey Island 2 in 1992 but he left the company. He wasn't going to leave the franchise with that final.
To be honest B-Mask, I didn’t get any of that from Thimbleweed Park. The ending definitely felt kind of out of nowhere for me. I like meta-commentary that explores the relationship between the game and player (like in Spec Ops The Line, Undertale, and Metal Gear Solid 2), but I didn’t get that at all from Thimbleweed Park. Still a good game though. Perhaps a video on that would be in order, as I certainly would like to understand better your viewpoint.
You're so damned lucky that I can't put up gifs in UA-cam comments because I'd be spamming you with The Holy Grail bit with "HE'S A WITCH! BUUUUURN HIM! BURN HIM!" Also, I mean... The point is that this brings up the discourse of fandom. Fandom is silly. Let's take a hypothetical of Sonic the Comic. You'd get people who say "Nigel Kitchens Sonic the Hedgehog is the best!!" and others (who are probably quite evil and probably deserve to be behind bars) "Lew Stringer was the best Sonic writer!"... Both camps are valid, it's just dependent on whatever the hell you grew up with and preferred. I love most of the Monkey Island games. I JUST want a good time. But yeah, good take as always B
You read it here first: both the Monkey Island world and the amusement park "real" world exist and both are real, as parallel universes/dimensions. Originally the MI world was magically created by the Big Whoop ticket, but it is now a real dimension. The ticket allows travel between worlds/dimensions. Depending on how much of the rest of the canon Ron wants to explain, the ticket could lead to even more dimensions including one where Guybrush can hide from Le Chuck, and one dimension corresponding to hell, in which Le Chuck gained his powers. The new game will begin at MI2's end and somewhat end in a way that allows Curse to happen (Guybrush in a car and probably hit with a partial loss of memory). Le Chuck is Guybrush's brother but only in the amusement park dimension. D̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶̶̶R̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶ ̶̶̶M̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶k̶̶̶e̶̶̶y̶̶̶ ̶̶̶I̶̶̶s̶̶̶l̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶d̶̶̶,̶̶̶ ̶̶̶w̶̶̶e̶̶̶'̶̶̶l̶̶̶l̶̶̶ ̶̶̶g̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶c̶̶̶r̶̶̶o̶̶̶s̶̶̶s̶̶̶-̶̶̶o̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶r̶̶̶ ̶̶̶w̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶̶̶N̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶f̶̶̶l̶̶̶i̶̶̶x̶̶̶'̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶"̶̶̶T̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶O̶̶̶A̶̶̶"̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶a̶̶̶s̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶3̶̶̶.̶̶̶
@@BMask Oh. Okay. I just never read it anywhere else (on the contrary I've read countless binary statements like "the MI world is a child's dream" OR "the amusement park is a Le Chuck trick/spell/curse").
I played 1 and 2 first and I fell in love with them, but I adored curse. I realized I adored Curse because I could actually beat it, but then I returned to 1 and beat it, and loved it more than Curse, then I beat 2 and also loved it
If you want another pretty good point and click series in the mean time, have a look at Deponia and Edna and Harvey by Daedalic. Both have a lot of charm to me, and generally go for pretty cheap. Otherwise fun vid, and I hope you use your powers for good in the future. Maybe let Sly rest though
4:03 hey, my comment! Funny thing is, in 2020 I applied to the art director job that Devolver Digital was offering without knowing I was applying to a new Monkey Island game. I sent my pixel art stuff hoping that I would at least get a minor job on Ron's new game. I'm so glad I was wrong. 😊 Great video, by the way.
you basically stated my view in many more words of its not being made in the particular time and place and without all the people who worked on the originals it will have to be different it can't be what could have been.
I dunno man, for me including Murray in the trailer seems like Gilbert saying openly that he is aware about what happened during those years, but by throwing him into the sea he highlights that he rejects all of this and wants to tell his story, not spoiled by what this franchise was representing over the last two decades. I mean, just look how surprised Murray is and how the violin ghost girl is annoyed by his rambling, not even allowing him to end the sentence. It is probably sadly true that this will not be the 1992 MI, but I have this funny feeling that the new title will not address (unless to mock it) any of the stuff that took place in Curse and onward. Amd that this just might be the satisfying conclusion we all expect and deserve.
It was Ron knocking aside the fans going 'but I thought Ron would only work on Monkey Island if he owned the IP'. On account of Murray saying that, and it no longer being true at all. New interviews exist where he goes into more detail about how it doesn't knock Curse and the other games out of canon which I highly reccomend checking out, fascinating stuff on his current mindset.
It's not like alternate sequels are new. Like Nier. Those had a more solid explanation though. Not sure what they mean by "difficult". Monkey Island was medium at most.
15:45 - no, man, it does not. I don't understand why people think it works, when someone asks me to like / subscribe, I unsubscribe immediately just in spite. No one tells me what to do. Nice vid, btw, always looking forward for them!
See, that's my fear of asking- but in doing so I've netted way more subs than my usual videos. I don't understand how it works, but I have evidence now it's a risk worth taking.
Each of the Monkey Island games made by Ron represent who he was at the time and he's world view at that moment. It's like that with a lot of writers which is why it's often difficult to recreate the magic of there original works.
There are a lot of conflicting expectations regarding RTMI. Some fans are happy that it involves COMI as Canon, while others would prefer COMI was left out. I personally hope that Ron might incorporate COMI into his original idea. I also think that the world of Monkey Island is part of the BIg Whoop Amusment Park. If it is so, then Guybrush may easily find Murray while walking through the theme park and bring him to life with the power of his imagination. Heck, he may even find a giant monkey robot in the fun-park, who knows? Maybe he will encounter themes and characters that will come to play in COMI, EFMI and TOMI. Maybe, by the end of RTMI we will get a choice to leave the amusment park or continue playing in the world of Guybrush's imagination - this is where the begining of COMI would come in. I suspect that Guybrush, Chuckie and Elaine are just two brothers and a sister playing pretend in the amusment park. This is just my guess, we'll see if anything of it turns out to be true. Anyhow, this is another great video, B-Mask! I would love if you shared your thoughts on RTMI once it comes out!
Elaine cause also easily be a childhood friend that he knows from school or something. I do like the idea of like there is something supernatural in the background of the park that is causing this world to be created or something like that. Like Chuckie is possessed by the spirit of the actual infamous pirate LeChuck. Maybe it ends with them continuing this game and keeping the world alive as long as they can.
@@JMandJJ7797 LeChuck himself says that they have a sister (in one of the dialogue options in the tunels). Have you seen the brand new interviews with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman at mixnmojo and at Adventure Gamers? Very interesting stuff! They showcase the first screenshots of the game. What do you think about the screenshots? I would really like to know what do you think about the interviews!
@@Goury1 Don't know, never played the Monkey Island games besides seeing one person I follow on Twitch stream and play through the first one for the first time, but I haven't saw the whole thing of that and I don't know if she ever got to play the second.
You're right it's not Monkey Island 3...
It's Loom 2 baybeeeeee!
🤣 Ay
I wish.
Yes, what happened with Rusty?
you know it's a minor video because this times : there is no fish people.
It's kinda sorta the Klonoa situation, the main series is literally a dream where all of the memories of Klonoa (aka the player) are fake, with a melancholy ending where the player has to leave the game for the real world. The spinoff games then that came after are just sequels where the downer endings and the meta elements are dismissed for more standard platformer fare. So there's this weird divide in the series even though they're all canon
I haven't played any monkey island games, or even experienced it beyond your video, but it makes me happy to see your enthusiasm for the series is going to be shown off to us once again. Its a very interesting series and I love how you cover it.
Really appreciate hearing that, thank you.
I second this. Not really a fan of a lot of stuff B covers (except MI and Sam and Max), but his enthusiasm is highly infectious.
Maybe it is time to change that hehehe
My exact position and thoughts!
Recommend watching a playthrough.
Personally, I think it will be an evolved version of of his 3. The same idea he had back then, but left to stew for 30 years with bits n pieces of the other games finding their way in as seasoning.
I'm kinda hoping for this. Like, I don't wanna get ahead of myself, but if that's the case then I would be very satisfied.
@@BMask agreed. We'd get closure, but without really sacrificing things. Like when Halloween kills references the moves after Halloween 2.
I'll just make a simple wordplay joke that probably summarises what the game will be. The new Monkey island game's full title could be rewritten as "Ron Gilbert's Return to Monkey Island" and that's what I'm thinking we'll be getting.
Genius
Make a video about how much you want a new Jak & Daxter game so it can happen
Agreed!
I was gonna make the same comment
100%!!!!!!
Ironically, getting a new Jak and Daxter game is how we got The Last Of Us so it'd be funny if making a video about J&D caused a TLOU Part 3 announcement or something.
I don't think he cares for that series much but I could be wrong.
One thing i can say about Money Island, for those who really don't like the "it was all a dream":
The solution has been introduced by... Sea of Thieves, who has been partnering with Disney for the Pirate of the Caribbean crossover.
After some lore research, The Sea of thieves would be a place like "Never Land", as Captain Hook, and Tinker Bell exist here, and are one of the ways to cross the shroud.
Now what do we find inside the Sea of the Damned, in the Pirate life adventure is .... a crashed ship, with the music of the game, and a journal by Captain Kate Capsize!
Making both sides happy, with it's an imaginary land, but it's still real.
The first two games don't make any references to any specific time period, but include 20th century things and references. It feels like it is a contemporary corner of the Caribbean where people haven't changed much in three hundred years. Which is plausible. It also has ghosts and zombies and magic spells, so it doesn't really matter if it is a particular time period. However, the characters in the game very obviously try to create the Carribbean pirate flair deliberately for some unexplained reason.
The one thing I am certain about, however, is that Melee Island is the same island where Cygna's son Bobbin is summoned to the Loom.
There's a great interview with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman where they talk about the game. How it STARTS post-Monkey Island 2 but it takes the other canon into account as much as possible.
Not *exactly* what was said. They were very tight lipped but they mentioned how it incorporates canon in a way that, through the deliberate use of the word 'amorphous', suggests this is mostly about the unique story they now want to tell. No clue yet how much 2 covers this beyond the opening.
Thunderbolts! Thunderbolts! Thunderbolts! Thunderbolts! Thunderbolts! Thunderbolts!
🤔
I just hope the game is released on Talk like a Pirate Day.
You will get your wish!
This is not Monkey Island 3
This is just a tribute
Couldn't remember the greatest game in the world
This is a tribute.
Would be cool if Jack and Kyle would appear as guest vocals for no reason 😅
@@maddo7192 For me they could play spanish inquisition any time.
i gotta tell my dad, that they're making a new game
what did he say?
@@elismart13 he's not home yet but im sure he'll be excited, they're some of his favorites
@@fybso3057 But what did he say?
You have to continue this story
I just hope the game doesn't become insufferably meta and self-referential. Like, sure, Monkey Island always had meta humor, but it was sprinkled on a plot that took itself somewhat seriously.
I liked that, and it was good, but some franchises take it too far.
What I would hate is if the plot itself became more interested in *talking about* how it's a long-awaited game that finally continues an old cliffhanger... rather than just BEING the long-awaited game that finally continues an old cliffhanger.
The meta parts weren't driving the experience in the first two games, they were supplementing it.
So I just hope they don't derail the story in this one.
I didn't like Thimbleweed Park that much, because of the overly excessive use of self-referentiality. My hope for the new Monkey Island is that Dave Grossman will balance things out here. I'm looking forward to the new game, but I don't have too high expectations.
I've been doing a series replay myself. I ONLY played the original two games back in the day and have just finished those and am now started with Curse. But I already have thoughts, and they deal not just with the fanbase split but also with a reason why the original Ron Gilbert titles were not enormous hits initially and built their legacy over a longer period: It's a question of whether Monkey Island is really a "pirate adventure" game - and therefore should flesh out our expectations of old swashbuckling tropes in a marketable, crowd-pleasing form - or if it's a "subversion of pirate adventures" - and therefore should be trying to surprise us at the expense of the trope.
MI1 threads the balance a bit since it does do the things it says on the tin: you become a pirate, you find treasure, you get in swordfights, you sail the ocean blue, you get the girl. It's a mix of convention and quirkiness, and the subversion is there, but also something you can overlook as just being "weird". You can easily imagine a Sierra-ized version of MI1 where Guybrush is slightly more hunky, everything is a played little more dry and you can die by walking off cliffs or starving on your voyage to Monkey Island or something. It's sort of testing the waters, both in the storytelling and the unconventional approach to puzzle design. MI2, on the other hand, goes out of its way to make Guybrush into a more despicable, amoral character who uses everyone he meets to advance his goals - a pirate, but not a chivalrous or romanticized one. You wouldn't see Errol Flynn sawing off peglegs, nailing people shut in coffins, or robbing graves, to name just one puzzle chain. It's thematically robust. Replaying it as an older and wiser self has only made it more clear that Guybrush and LeChuck are similarly villainous in depiction in this game. While it doesn't outright say, "actually, you, player, were the bad guy all along", the ending creates the kinds of broad implications that never sit well with audiences who want their media to normalize their beliefs about right and wrong.
And then Curse begins...and you can tell, pretty quickly, that it's trying to be a pirate adventure. Guybrush is now a proto-Dreamworks everyman protagonist. The darker elements of MI2 are handwaved away as an evil spell. And this works! There's nothing wrong with this direction, but it's definitely not Ron Gilbert's vision at that time. It makes for a more straightforward game and probably a better, more marketable product release back in the 90's.
And in the intervening period, Gilbert has had time to do other things and probably work through some fragments of his vision for MI3 on other projects. Thimbleweed Park really did nail the same kind of vibe. So when faced with the prospect of a new one, it's almost a blank slate: the goal is not to do what he wanted to do then, but to take the additional source material that was made and give it a new spin in his usual style. Plus some room to indulge whatever ideas he still has in the backlog.
In LeChuck's Revenge, I like how on arrival on Phatt Island, the game lists all the crimes you have committed to get to this point, and it's a long list. While solving the puzzles you probably don't think about it, you just try to move the plot along and get to the next part. You can still tell yourself that you're the good guy, especially vis-a-vis Governor Phatt himself.
But nailing Stan into the coffin is just cruel. Sawing off the peg-leg is a puzzle I don't like mostly because it involves sailing back and forth between islands (which is implied to take a long time, even though it only does the first time) for small items that you would have no way of knowing what you would need them for at first and only make sense after the fact. You have to be deliberately mischievous to solve those puzzles.
At that point you can't have any illusions about being the good guy.
And then the confrontation with Marley, which is weird because the story is framed as being told to Marley. Why would he tell Marley about the conversation he has with her? She was there!
The monkey wrench puzzle doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know what that is about. And the escape from the torture chamber is similarly illogical, although I like how Wally asks what he is even there for.
>my tweet made it in a b-mask video
I'd like to thank everyone but the Academy.
Your a great video essayist. But your weird series revival ability is scary.
I'm still kinda digesting the whole experience, but after playing the latest game, I thought a bit about the points you made in your MI vid and it certainly puts a lot into perspective.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say on Return to Monkey Island.
I really liked it after belly aching online about the graphics. I felt like an ahole and went to all those comments and edited them to say I was wrong
I've waited with hope that Ron would get to finish his vision, so much so that I promised myself that if I ever became super rich and famous I'd try and buy the IP from Disney to give back to him. Now that it's finally happening, I'm glad he's willing to incorporate elements of what came after his era into this game, as well as work with the . While later instalments aren't as memorable, they all had gems within their own rights, and I really dug what Grossman did in Tales with the voodoo priestess, so I'm stoked to see him back and collaborating too. This should be an absolute banger of a game.
My guess for this Part and Rons Meta Games... We Beginn as Guybrush in his 50s in the "real world". He struggles Depression and Working a Boring 9-5 Job. Then Something Happens and He remembers that He must Go Back to Monkey Island. Back we're there fun was. Because He wanted to be a pirate. Like a Hook/ grown Peter Pan Story. I think that would fit Rons Meta Ending of Part 2 and make a good Story about Beeing a Kid again. Just Like the Feeling WE old farts had as He anounced Part 3. ;-) so a mixture between a deep and a fun game.
Really nice script you thought about this a lot and I appreciate the effort you put into this. Thanks
Thank you! I just hope I can continue to do so with videos moving forward, we'll see how it goes!
@@BMask Welcome dude, You just mentioning the notion they might make the old school pixel version in this made my night. I know there's no such plans, but just expressing that was cool. If they did that it would honestly be hard to express how cool that would be. I subscribed by the way.
To keep the metaphor of the original ones without destroying the new games and giving it a new spin after 30 years, this Return could represent the point of view of the son/daughter of an old Guybrush. After listening to the stories created by his father and his uncle when they were children (mi1 and 2) and after retelling the same story multiple times in multiple ways to his friends (mi3, 4 and tales), now he's brought to the park himself and he experience "the ride of Monkey Island" for the first time by creating his own story.
Would definitely be open to a take along these lines!
Holy crap you were right! :0
@@Torrybobs I was blown away myself that I guessed right. :-D
@@DaniloSalvadori go you though! I’m glad you were right, it was the best possible way to start the game 😊
Just came back to this holy balls my dude
3:03 oh hey that's me
I'm honestly deeply curious what Ron has planned for this game. Like he's said, the game he planned to make back then isn't the same as the game he'd make now. I get a sense from what we're seeing that this could end up being a celebration of the series from Ron's point of view. I think the name in itself kinda indicates that---like it's a return to Ron's ideas of what Monkey Island can be as a franchise and what it can stand for as a story. There's a lot of uncertainty, but also a lot of possibility. Looking forward to your video covering it when we finally get our hands on it!
P.S.: I'm not even really a Monkey Island fan, I just find your videos and opinions very refreshing and educational. Keep up the amazing work!
You weren't too far off.
The music in curse is incredibly good. The ost is on UA-cam
It's a peculiar thing that Disney is by and large viewed as a draconian IP holder. They are, if nothing else, incredibly on the ball and active in keeping their videogame properties available. They've relicensed Tales of Monkey Island to return to digital PC storefronts recently, developed a Zombies Ate my Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol collection with dotemu, and continue working with Aspyr media to remaster and rerelease Star Wars catalog titles on the LucasFilms Games/LucasArts front. Not to mention giving clearance to Sony and Microsoft to include references to Moneky Island with Uncharted 4 and Sea of Thieves, respectively. They've relicensed and rereleased a bunch of Marvel and Fox games like Aliens vs Predator for home arcade collections such as Capcom's plug and play arcade machine and arcade 1up cabinets. With their own properties, they've worked with Digital Eclipse and publishers such Capcom to release collections like the Disney Afternoon Collecion and Disney Classics Collection with Aladdin and Lion King all while keeping a huge catalog of DIsney PC games on steam, and have gone through efforts to relicense the Duck Tales Remake to return to digital storefronts. Those are just a few examples. I'm happy they reunited Ron Gilbert with Monkey Island, but I'm not as surprised it was an acquiescent process.
Incredibly insightful comment, and put a lot of the last few years in perspective for me. I think there's a shift in video games generally that people are still mentally coming out of that Disney wasn't as noticeably active in, and now are better equipped to address as the technology becomes more ubiquitous. I guess with Monkey Island I just assumed, because Ron was so vocally out there about how hopeless getting back to it seemed, I just thought it was too tangled up but the way he's detailed it since lines up with everything you've mentioned.
While true, the vast majority of those examples are recent rereleases of old games. They aren't new games based on the cgi Lion King or sequels to Episode 1 Pod Racing or another Epic Mickey. I do think that is a fundamental difference between this, a new title in a legacy IP, and those, mere ports they pulled out of the vault, and why it seems more surprising to most observers than you seem to think it is
QUICK B-MASK say Herdy gurdy will get a sequel!
The entire monkey island fandom back and forth over the potential of some sense of closure reminds me of when season 5 of Samurai Jack was being teased. Obviously it's not a one to one, but I have a sense of deja vu over the impossible dream of returning to something widely loved, and the inevitably of reality that so much time has passed for people making the thing and the Industry that those people work in, that the incoming compromise is more of a reflection of the team currently than a perfect return to form. Like, I'm more of a king's Quest fan. The shifting perspectives and sudden halt after bad games only to resurrect out of nowhere isn't new to me (even though I played KQ games as a teenager in the mid 2010s), so yeah, I can only hope that whatever is delivered with Return is worth it on its own terms. Nice video Bmask!
What's your opinion on The Silver Lining?
@@shards-of-glass-man That's the episodic fan made KQ game right? My plan was to wait until all of the episodes were out, but I guess that's not happening anytime soon. But from what I've seen, it's exactly what I want out of a new KQ game if Mask of Eternity hadn't happened
@@NeptuneCactus Yeah, that's the one. It has been so long, and the devs (who have also, it turns out, made that jank anniversary Gabriel Knight remake) have been quiet for a few years, so I've basically concluded that it wouldn't be finished.
Wanted an opinion since I'm likewise procrastinating on playing it
The ability to unconsciously predict media announcements…..is it possible to learn this power?
Not from a Jedi.
MI4 was my first and only experience with the franchise and I loved it. I'd probably love the rest.
MI4 was my first and I had a great time back in the day - so I think it's a safe bet to say you'd like these even more.
There's a good chance. As far as I've seen 4 is just about universally regarded as the weakest in the series.
You have no idea how much I agree with all you've said. Really intelligent analysis, great work. One note though, in the original manifesto Ron DID say he's "not above using characters from the later games", so the inclusion of Murray doesn't immediately mean that it's not what he wanted to make, though I'm also certain it won't be. At the very least I hope he'll talk about all he wanted to do back in 1992 after it comes out
Thanks! And don't worry, I'm well aware of that point in the manifesto, I even showed it on screen in the video- it was the point that solidified my reason for making this and just affirming to people that, even when 3a was planned, he was never going to make exactly what he wanted in 1992. Murray himself was always a symbol of compromise.
I think people worry too much about canon. No matter what happens in Return, Curse will still exist. In an interview I saw with Stephen King he said that while he didn't like Kubrick's The Shining, it didn't 'ruin' his book. He pointed to the bookshelf and said his version was still right there, exactly as it always was.
This is late but every once in a while I come back to this video and one beautiful line in here for me is when you say that even if Monkey island isn’t “real” as in like an actual place, it is to guybrush and that’s important to the story
I've never even understood the arguments, because the ending is very explicitly not a dream or a fantasy. there's a mid-credits stinger where it cuts back to elaine, who is still real, wondering if LeChuck cast a spell on Guybrush. "Chuckie" has the classic 70s horror movie or thriller music video ending stinger of looking directly into the camera with glowing red eyes. The line about silent hill, maybe, sure, maybe both the carnival and the tri-island archipelago are both real. but the game is pretty straightforward about the setting being "real", as in, it exists in a physical reality somewhere, even if it seems artifically constructed.
Like, yes, maybe Monkey Island is a theme park. But it's not an imaginary theme park, all that weird stuff still happened and the other people are still people, not figments of Guybrush's imagination. There's no evidence to assume the theme park at the end is "real" and monkey island is "not real". maybe its the other way around. maybe both of them are real. maybe nothing is real. maybe its all at once. but one thing lechuck revenge's ending is clearly not saying in my opinion is that guybrush was just a kid dreaming of adventures and running away from his family the whole time in his imagination.
The ending with elaine was apparently added in later, either for a second print of the game or late in development, to tease a return to that world for a sequel, but there were a lot of sources to adhere to then and now that showed an intention for it to have always been a theme park brought to life by a child's imagination/magic, from ron's own admission in an interview on the original (before 2 had even been developed) and in an admission by Bill Tiller (going off on what he had been told Ron's plan was).
This was what surprised me the most when I finally played MI2. I had been lead to believe that only the ending was about this, and you're right, it's absolutely a satire on 70's horror endings, we even do a riff on star wars. But what was never explained and yet so painfully obvious was that the *entire game* built to that ending, and to a mystery surrounding Guybrush's parents and relationship to Chuck. It's told in a funny way, yes, but 2 was absolutely giving the impression of pulling back the curtain on the entire conceit of the franchise.
If that's not the case now, sure, but it's still an entirely plausible take on what was intended.
EDIT: I notice you edited the comment and yeah, I never felt what happened was a dream, I certainly felt Guybrush's time in that park or whatever wasn't real or that the people he met didn't exist, just like the Wizard of Oz. That's never really been the argument presented to me so I hope that wasn't you suddenly deciding to cover your tracks haha
@@BMask and yeah, absolutely the entire original game and lechucks revenge lead up to it. i think the intent was always that both worlds are as real as the other
The theme park is a dimension of infinite pain.
I found it so hard to articulate to people why LeChuck's revenge is so good until you made your video. The people who see the subtext as just "lol random, quirky pirates" still have a fun time but they don't see what sets it apart from Curse. You're a fuckin legend for that video.
Thanks for the kind words man, I was just like them before I completed that game for myself in full. Had to try and illustrate why in a video and I'm glad there are people who got where I was coming from, makes it worthwhile.
CLEARLY, as can be seen in Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine’s finale, “Aetherium,” all of the LucasArts games exist side by side across parallel dimensions, so there’s plenty of room for the Monkey Island games to co-exist as one big, cross-cosmic family.
Preach!
The gift of prophecy is intense
I think its fascinating that in-between mi2 and now we've had the whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a series that was long rumored to have taken elements from an unmade MI script and is itself named for a theme park ride.
Worth mentioning that the writers of the movie have since come out and spoken on the connection and that a lot of it was just being inspired by the same source materials and stock characters. Nothing specifically taken from the games at all, just natural coincidences.
He's called it 3a because it's the plan "a" of what should have happened before Curse. (3b) rather than it being monkey island 3 that would have happened years ago...
He has made the story work but it's not his true original idea of '92.
I knew what 3a meant, but this isn't even 3a anymore. This is Ron and Dave trying something else.
Don’t forget about when you made the Villainous video and really wanted Gaston put into the game. A scant few months later…
B I don't know if I can make it another year without the Desperate Housewives video. Look me in the profile picture and tell me that it's coming.
Can't say that I'm not a little jealous that franchise revivals from properties you're a fan of keep falling into the lap of people who care. Tell me that Bucky o' Hare's coming back why don't ya?
WE MISS YOU
but yes of *course* it's coming
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was confused by Murray lol
Should also do a game based on Grim Fandango universe too (not Manny's story, I think his story is done)
I'm so looking forward to your future video on Return! Your analysis of the other games was spot on. You managed to capture exactly how I felt about them, especially the ending of MI2. Return truly lived up to my expectations for a Ron Gilbert's MI3. The prologue and ending, in particular, deeply connected with me - I loved how the game developed the themes of storytelling, obsession, nostalgia, and moving forward. Such a fantastic game.
I think that you perfectly encapsulated the core themes of RtMI! For me, it's a game about the art of storytelling, and how a storyteller can embellish or change his stories over time. Yet the themes of obsession, nostalgia, and moving forward are certainly present and crucial in the game as well. It's a beautiful game and I loved all of it! The Prelude and the Ending resonated with me in a particularly deep way as well! I see that RtMi caused a divide in the fanbase - some people hate the ending. However, I loved that the game's final moments are purposefully ambiguous. Ron Gilbert gave us some answers, yet he presented them in a way that is open to debate and speculation. You are very correct, it is a game about letting go and moving on. I feel that if we got a simpler and more conclusive ending, then the game wouldn't be half as impactful and memorable as it is!
I always dislike whenever a new revival ignores some of the "worse" aspects of its franchise. The Star Wars sequels ignoring any influence of the prequels, Dragon Ball Super setting itself before the controversial end of Z, half of the Halloween franchise, the Terminator movies desperately trying to make another Terminator 3...all of these things are good in their own rights (well, except Terminator) but their disrespect of the crappy things that came before always rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like a sequel should always try to redeem or excel things that came before, not sweep them under the rug because they're ashamed of it or something. One of my favorite games is Sonic Generations, which remixes levels from a lot of previous Sonic games, even ones with rather...middling reception. Including Sonic 06, often considered one of the worst games ever made. But Sonic Generations didn't joke about how bad it was. It didn't mock it or shame it or ignore it. What it did was acknowledge it was a part of the franchise's history, and embraced it the same way it embraced the other more famous games. And it was a great pair of levels!
A sequel should embrace its history! Return to Monkey Island doesn't need to ignore the previous games in order to be a "proper followup" to the second. There's no reason to ignore them! They're part of the series and they helped evolve it. Pretending like they didn't exist, or just brushing them off with some dumb joke, would be a huge mistake in my opinion. Monkey Island 6 can be a great followup to Monkey Island 2 just like it can also be great to 3, 4, and 5. I hope Ron Gilbert respects these titles as much as he respects his own.
Calm down please
@@andreassmed2255 ???¿
Not everything can be redeemed, some aspects really should be removed or just ignored.
@@thereseemstobeenanerror1219 Not everything need to be removed or ignored
Love your insights and thoughts on the games you cover. You have every right to ask for Likes and Subs when your videos are of this calibre. Look forward to your future vids!
Thanks! Plenty more vids on the way, hopefully you'll see them in the near future...
Watching this knowing the intense divide that happened with the new release's artstyle is fascinating.
I'm glad Ron is honest about changing as a person. It think it's important. Making a sequel exactly as if nothing happened in between would kinda feel... hollow. Like if the game wants to make any point (especially when you can argue there's a strong meta aspect about his games), it has to acknowledge that time has passed and other games came since. It has to touch it on at least some level. And you can extend that sentiment to any other stuff really. The world has changed so much since monkey island 2. And it's important for creators to also evolve their ideas along with it. So yeah, the game won't be written as it would have been in the 90s. And that's.... normal.
I think it can be done successfully and has been done on several franchises. It's just all relative in context here. All we can hope is Ron is telling the story he genuinely wants to tell.
LeChucks Revenge is my all time favourite game i cant wait to see what Ron has to offer im looking forward to it.
I'm actually also one of those people who like Curse a lot (although I'm not certain if I like it better than Secret) and didn't like Revenge AS much (although I still liked it). But my dislike was never from the "real or not" meta-elements of the story, but the padded gameplay and convoluted puzzle design.
I once read an inteview with somebody on the development team (maybe Ron himself?) where they explained that they specifically designed every puzzle chain intentionally so you would have to jump from island to island to solve them. And I just hated that. I can see the need to have SOME longer quest chains move from island to island, especially to make the world feel bigger and more interconnected... but to have the player constantly jump back-and-forth between disjointed locations for every. Single. Quest... It's just mindless padding to artificially extend the game's runtime. It's the worst part of the tedious boat sequence in the first game, extrapolated to the max. (Also, the "monkey wrench" puzzle can absolutely GO F**K ITSELF!)
Uh... that was a way bigger rant than I initially intended. Either way, even liking (some of) the sequels, I would have been completely fine with Ron going back to his baby and finishing the story the way he wanted, simply because I'm curious as hell how it would look like. I wouldn't have seen it as betrayal, it wouldn't have nullified my enjoyment of the other games, and I'd have bought it day one anyways, just like I will with Return.
I feel the same way, although the island jumping is necessary for the cut-scenes between the map pieces. Otherwise you could get several pieces at once.
It still feels unnecessarily convoluted how you have to go to one island to get one item to got to another island to get another item to get another item at the first island again, with no hint at any point which item you need or what you need it for or how to get it or where. The string in the swamp is a strange enough choice, it's not where I would look for a string, but at least that's on the same island.
I also started the games with Escape From Monkey Island, which I bought a used copy of on a day trip with my dad from a now defunct game resale shop in a mall somewhere. I was probably 10 years old, and neither of us knew what Monkey Island was, but the game fit our family's warped sense of humor, so it was something we ended up bonding over. For that reason it will always be my favorite of the series. That said, I own the (soon to be incomplete, go figure) collector's set now and every game is very special to me in its own way, and they are each unique enough for me not to have strong feelings one way or another.
I never really beat the game, though, I would repeatedly get to the end and quit, because like all the other entries in the series I find they get weaker the further along you get, both in humor and in puzzle complexity. Ironically enough, usually the most boring part to me would always be about the time you actually get to ***Monkey Island*** .The first time I beat a Monkey Island game would end up being some 5-6 years later, when the Monkey Island Special Edition titles were released on Xbox Live Arcade. And after that I beat them all, in order.
I think the order you play these dramatically changes your view of what all the imagery and references are supposed to satirize or represent. In "Curse" and Escape from Monkey Island, you miss out on the context of the ending of LeChuck's Revenge. They make allusions to it, but don't acknowledge the twist. So my first experiences with the franchise made me think that it was simply a quirky critique of American consumerism. It's supposed to be this daring pirate adventure, but you just have this strange manchild of a guy walking around commenting on licensed merchandise, there's trademark logos on everything, endless products to examine that are often disgusting and useless, 4th wall breaking pop-culture references and self-nods, a pre-occupation with bureacracy and the mundane. I loved that.
Looking back now though, it does make sense that what Ron Gilbert was doing was meant to make you look a bit deeper and question the reality of the game itself, and there's something to be said for that vision. I don't think ultimately whether or not the story was "real" is important in that case, though, at least not anymore. Because debating about what is canon and not canon is a matter of plot. And the major takeaway here is dealing with theme. The ambiguity is honestly a blessing, and I expect a sort of compatibilistic approach to the new game. One where we can feel satisfied that all our favorite fictional characters weren't just figments of imagination of another fictional character, but still explores the ideas that Ron Gilbert originally wanted to.
From the perspective of someone very much into the ending of the second- and I say this also as someone who also had exactly your approach where I didn't play the originals first, and had the same thoughts until I played the second- I think the only reason I would have been interested in the original idea of any canon is not for plot, but for resolving a specific character thread. The mystery around Guybrush's parents, whether or not the islands are real, yeah, it's become a commentary on the Disney experience for sure across all the games- but I wanted to know *why* this kid wanted to escape his reality. What was so bad, what with his allegedly new family was *so* terrible that he felt the need to escape into a fantasy and become, as explained in the second game, such a desperate, markedly worse person? Curse and Escape swear he's the guy he says he is. Curse even regresses him to who he used to be, and Escape gets him married, something Ron never wanted to happen. So why? What was the payoff for that initially?
I doubt I will ever see the fruits of that ending, I'd like to think I would, but I think there was something there established in one (where a random guy with a made up name turned up out of nowhere bragging about his sone-to-be reputation) that I would have liked to have seen resolved. To me exploring the manifestation of a child's sense of adventure and a longing for the past is why the Disney parks are still such powerful places, for better or worse, and I felt an ending to that statement was inbound the moment the veil across the game was pulled down.
@@BMask Yeah that's true, from a character study perspective LeChuck's Revenge is doing a lot that I think most players aren't being mindful of as they play the game. We see Guybrush sort of go off the rails a bit and see him as a much more insecure, desperate person.
Interestingly enough, I went back and opened the Monkey Island Chronicles book after watching this video, which is basically the design works book in the collector's set if you haven't had a chance to look at it (I don't think it's available in print and a quick Google didn't bring up any e-books) and David Grossman and Ron Gilbert both have pretty similar memories of making the end of that game. I won't go into too much detail if you'd like to read it, but if it's not available online I can type something up.
@@Wereskeleton Purchased the collectors set as soon as it was announced! I'd heard variations on how the ending came together before but it was great to see the actual discussion of how it escalated. Probably for the best that Ron didn't use it for the original in the end for that very reason.
Wow. I’m in the video! So proud… Thank you so much. And great video, btw.
this is my favourite game of all time. thank you for using your power to create a new game for me.
People hated Empire Strikes Back when it first came out, too, saying it ruined Star Wars.
really why?
@@guybrushthreepwood4758 It was darker and it ended in a cliffhanger, which was kind of unprecedented at the time. Then it got reevaluated when ROTJ came out and people decided they liked it after all.
friggin epic video
Can't wait for Zombies ate my neighbors to come back!
I’m always subscribed smooch.
THIMBLEWEED SPOILERS DOWN BELOW
I really like your takes on the MI games, seeing how you came from the 4th one - which at the time felt like a total betrayal to me of what those games were originally going at - and still managed to get a very good grasp of the series' essence. (btw:My first was the 2nd, so I kind of started with the whole "what is real?" state of mind)
As you said, that you don't care for Monkey Island anymore but for Ron's Return, I discovered myself feeling the same way.
Ron Gilbert has this formula of breaking the formula. Taking a known premise and changing something about in a hopefully unexpected way to give the player not only a new experience but also one that let's them think and evaluate about the presented topics.
He did that in a more innocent way with the first MI (the heroes path that doesn't take itself to seriously), then way more mature with the second, and then over and over again (there is some depth in those humongous entertainment Kidsgames for example, people would be surprised by) until Thimbleweed Park, in which the game gets selfaware of being a game.
That, while being an awesome and challenging concept a it's best, can on the other hand take people away from the established game world and back to reality (haven't played Thimbleweed Park ever since my first playthrough). That's not necessarily bad, but I understand how some people like Bill Tiller were afraid that Ron's original idea would break people's will to stay in this goofy pirate world and therefore go outside and do something else than playing (something that MI2 also already suggested). Challenging Ideas are still challenging and against the comfort zone - therefore not everybody's favorite choice.
I'm glad Ron goes this way anyhow. What boring and pointless everything would have been without him...
So of course we don't just get Monkey Island 3a. That game is born dead.
And we could be sad about how things have gone.
OR we look at everything like it was supposed to happen this way, in which we kept the save and whole piratey mold of monkey Island for far to many decades and be prepared because no matter in what way: Ron is finally going to break it!
PS maybe, because all of those decades, Guybrush is going to be an old man in this one (who is still a child in the real world), maybe the knock-into-water of a post Gilbert-Game-Character is a very literal hint on how things willd go - we'll see!
Predictions seem to have their way on this channel...
I just think TW idea of "It's just a game" quite hollow in it's execution. Plot just doesn't built up in any meaningful way and twist just feels to be quirky for sake of it. Monkey Island 2 ending is iconic because of how it ties with commentary of the second game and I'm happy it wasn't ending of 1,because then it would ring as hollow as Timberweel and wouldn't actually engage in anything substantial.
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 yeah, agreed. At first I really was in love with TW - Feld a bit like a playable 'Gravity Falls' untill it unraveled in not mattering at all because everything was a lie and so on...
Still kind of a courageous way to do that twist - you know a lot of people will be unsatisfied.
Yes Monkey Island I was better of without that ending.
In Therms of Doing this 'It was all a Dream'-Ending thing well: just thought of Zelda Link's awakening. That one was just good without taking anything away from the player.
@@Maddismukke Driver: San Francisco is a classic in how you do "you're in coma" twist so well. Like, second view mission with ambulance chase are absolute classics and break what you expect from regular racing game.
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 Haven't played that one yet, but I'll look into it. Thanks man!
I'm kind of expecting a similar approach to how the Halloween film series got rebooted in 2018, where canonically it ignores certain installments but can still wink at the audiences who are familiar with them. Considering how meta the Monkey Island games are I wouldn't be surprised if this happened.
Look I'm not saying that that e-ticket from MI2 is the key to everything, but Ron did recently describe Return as an 'e-ticket ride' and Return to Monkey Island is an anagram of "On To Dinky's E-Realm, Runt" so, I mean, draw your own conclusions.
I see the whole series like a theme park. Every game is a different kind of ride and i enjoy every game for what it does. Even part 4 although it is on the bottom of my list because of the consolisation.
Now it's the unreleased sam and max game's turn!!! Go on! Say it'll never come out and jinx it so we can play it already!!! They even said it was mostly done, but we never got to see it, and I think that's the crime of the century!!!
This is assuming that Murray wasn't an idea of Gilbert that was co-opted by the Curse team. We wouldn't know that.
Gilbert's admitted Murray wasn't his and that he's very okay with taking the concept. One of the few well documented facts.
Your video made me excited for a game in a series I never had interest in. I must now play the other games
hey. can you make a video on my childhood innocence? I want it back ;_;
Now I finally have a good video to timestamp to explain why I never cared much about Curse
Well for me this new game just means I should go ahead play the games already (I've had the whole series in my steam library for a while now lol), I've had no wait and I have no expectations :)
This is like me complaining about the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine - I wanted the promise of a whole new unknown quadrant of the galaxy fulfilled and we got run of the mill aliens and a war story instead. On the other hand, the show became a milestone in serialized storytelling and rightfully created an army of fans.
The Dominion War really doesn't fit with anything from the earlier seasons, or TNG, and blatantly spits in the face of TOS.
SPOILERS
Excuse me, I know that I already wrote a comment below a few months ago, but I just can't stop thinking about RtMI, particularly its opening and ending. Ron devised this game in a specific way that gives us some answers, and yet lives us with some questions to ponder upon... When does the framing story of Guybrush and Boybrush take place? Were Guybrush's adventures real or completely made-up stories? Is Guybrush a pirate or a contemporary flooring inspector? Ron made the opening and the ending purposefully vague. And everyone can have their own interpretation with enough evidence to back it up. I find this game fascinating, and I would love to know your take on it!
(sorry for my English, in advance)
To me, Ron messed it up.
He really didn't know how to actually start the game to make a REAL continue from MI-2.
So he made a new "ending" of Mi-2, as an opening for RTMI, to match it with a story that basically is copy of MI-1, just rivisited a bit.
And at the end he went also for the same ending of the Mi-2!
The story looks a mess to fill some holes here and there (some of them look really unfinished, like some room in Terror Island or some locations on the map of the single islands, like they were intended to be something, then didn't finished them) just to create some obstacle to arrive at the end of the story that takes to no where again justifinying it letting say to boybrush "you are bad with endings" so everything looked as planned.
I perfectly know that he released an interview where he says "everything was planned from the beginning". Of course.
He cannot say otherwise, because it would create even more mess with the game sellings , and people wouldn't like a rushed non finished game, so he just say "I thought it like that".
It's a plain lie, to me, of course.
We are talkiing about a game, we're going to live, anyway, of course, but since we are debating it, I think that we can consider we are not that stupid to believe everthing just because hypnotized from the first Monkeys and the respect to Ron Gilbert.
He is changed for sure, he probably doesn't consider Monkey Island as important as the fans do, and money appeal everybody. Ron is not immune.
@@superpos Thanks for sharing your opinion! I personally loved RTMI, but I perfectly understand that it's a very divisive game!
I don't know if anyone else saw it this way, but the thing I took away from MI2's ending was that the theme park was built on top of cursed ground somehow, like a pirate graveyard that's slightly akin to how Link falls into a tree and ends up in Termina in Majora's Mask, not as a 1 to 1 but along those lines. Also it's, at least to me, a possible story beat they could have gone or maybe even WILL go with following MI2. That's just my thoughts though, I mean after all, the ending still gives the idea that Le Chuck still has powers, not just with the creepy lightning eyes/Michael Jackson Thriller ending look at the camera, but in the fact that your choices get overridden by Chuck's responses.
Granted, I haven't played any of the games and my only exposure to the series is through B-Mask's videos and Guybrush's costume appearance in the Force Unleashed games or the appearance in Uncharted 4, so I'm missing a lot of the detailed context if my suggested plot point is implied in the other games. I FEEL like it was implied near the end of ToMI, but I don't know/am entirely sure.
Plus not to mention there was a whole recent section of a reference to the games in Sea of Thieves, won't spoil where you find it but it's part of the collab story in an interesting location.
for what it's worth, Ron did recently say in an interview that Return will pick up right where LeChuck left off, in the theme park. And then we'll go from there.
@@mattb6616 Gotcha, I was curious where it was gonna start off.
In a recent interview with adventure gamers Ron said that the most important thing about Monkey Island was that it's a great pirate adventure. The characters, the music, the world, the impeccable script and design are what compels me to play Secret of Monkey Island at least once a year. The meta aspects in 2 are cool, but they're not end all be all. It's interesting seeing the series through the yes of someone with a completely different perspective. But, yeah, I don't relate to what you consider to be the enduring aspects of MI at all.
I've read the interview and I understand the point. I have a lot of pirate adventures in my life I can enjoy. A lot of point and clicks, a lot of stories that are what they say they are and we all have fun and go home and get back to living our lives.
But nothing made me feel the way 2 did. Nothing. Ron has discussed that aspect, too.
@@BMask He certainly has. And even though I consider those to elements to be icing on the cake, and the pirate adventure to be the beating heart of the series, I'm glad you make these videos despite me not relating to them.
Of course the biggest split in the MI fandom are those who acknowledge that Curse Guybrush looks like Doug Funny, and those who acknowledge it while championing that fact.
@@sadpotato4931 Oh god he *does*
realistically I don't care about either faction. I loved all the games (not 4) for their own unique reasons.
I just personally think that it's fun to hype this new one up as THE ORIGINAL CREATOR LEADER OF THE MONKEY ISLAND UNIVERSE HAS TOOK HIS RIGHTFUL PLACE AT THE HELM OF THE RIGHTFUL SUCCESSOR TO THE ORIGINAL DUOLOGY
Let’s face it, You have the ability to predict the revival of stuff.
In MI1, there are two different endings depending on whether or not Guybrush destroys his ship with the rock or not. In EMI, the canon ending is confirmed to be that Guybrush destroyed the ship. Maybe RMI takes place in an alternate timeline where Guybrush did not destroy the ship and CMI/EMI/Tales did not happen. It could also be possible to have the to timelines merge somehow, not unlike the Swamp of Time puzzle in EMI, solving any plot inconsistencies.
Now you can make a Portal retrospective :DD
You know, one of the things I actually really like about your videos is how nuanced they tend to be. Excited to see the new Monkey Island, and what you will take from it as well.
I love them all too. Some more than others are better but it's a franchise that I wish were easier to pick up and play. The Nintendo switch needs the entire series
Yeah, I agree. It would be great if the switch at least got the MI1 and 2 remakes and tales. Luckily I still have them on my PS3 at least. And MI3 and 4 are able to run on my old shitty laptop. At least the chances of return getting released on the switch are pretty big.
I loved point and click games as a child and i got back into it with sam and max save the world remastered, replaying Freddi fish games and now finishing Sam and Max through time and space.
I guess it depends on where your exposure to MI started for most people. Mine was right at the start on the Amiga500 as a child so tbh I never gave it much thought other than Priates are cool back then, then onto MI2 as a teenager and it really does have a different feel about it all the way through, like it's more grown up. MI3 although I still rate it was like playing a movie I guess and lost something, but by the time I'd played it (needed a PC remember) I'd played and completed so many others, one of note was Discworld II which felt very similar art style wise but dare I say it was actually the better game imo due to it's source material...
I've totally forgotten where the story went in the next MI games, which says something as it held top spot as my favourite game for a lot of my younger gaming life.
If you don’t remember it too well, I think Tales is worth giving another playthrough. Escape is… okay.
Tales twist at the end was amazing and I was hoped another one would be made to answer the plot twist but I guest it’s not to be.
@@WorldofWarcraftfan02 Hopefully someday it'll get a follow up.
I am also in the "I liked them all" camp, just wasn't that big on MI4 and MI2s ending. it's not that I can't accept that it was "all a dream", it's more that I feel like it's a cheap, unsatisfying ending that avoids answering interesting questions brought up that dragged me into the game in the first place, in favor of bring up some uninspired meta plot twist, that pretends to be deeper than it actually is. I feel like this about Thimbleweed park, too. MI2 and Thimbleweed park are amazing games, just didn't like the ending. Doesn't mean the games are bad.
Honestly, no matter what camp you're in, I think none of us need to worry. It's gonna be a great game. Chances are, I will hate the ending but I'll still love my journey there.
Genuine question- you're aware the ending carries through the entirety of 2, right? Who did you think the skeleton parents were supposed to be? Why do you think LeChuck turns into guybrush specifically at the tree? Did you not find it interesting that half of the islands makeup is directly based on theme park iconography, if not directly mapped over existing rides from Disney parks?
I think too many people assume the meta nature of the ending is a random element thrown in at the end, when it's built into the very foundations of both games. The ending, as with Thimbleweed park, tells me so much about the nature of games and how we perceive them, confronting us with the idea of whether or not these things live beyond us or should simply because we aren't there. I don't want this in every game, but that I got those feelings from both games is something I just can't get anywhere else.
They're so deliberate that I can't even begin to entertain the idea that they're lazy, somebody carefully planted that reveal, and in no way do I accept it as cheap or uninspired. If you don't like it, fine, but to label it as something it's not is what frustrates me, nothing worse than something put down merely because it's misunderstood.
@@BMask I am aware of that, but I didn't like the ending either way. I enjoyed the weird stuff happening and MI2 and was interested in how they would explain it.
Granted, this is the first video I've seen from you and it has been a while since I've played MI2, so the details are probably slipping my mind right now,
but no matter how well it is set up the "It was all a dream" still feels cheap to me. Also note, nowhere did I say it was lazy, I said it was uninspired.
Edit: Oh yeah I said it was "it pretends to be deeper than it is". I didn't mean it's lazily implemented throught the story I meant that I personally didn't feel like it was very interesting. Bad choice of words there.
@@Nyghtfall The thing about Ron though is that he's very interested in the nature of the relationship between games and the player, and I don't think he's just doing it because he wants people to bask in the glow of how deep he is. I think it's just how he likes telling stories and while some may consider his predilection for meta stuff uninspired- let's face it, there's a lot of meta stuff that doesn't work- I really don't think he's doing it without great purpose.
@@Nyghtfall Also you gotta understand that Ron pretended to make Monkey Island 2 in 1992 but he left the company. He wasn't going to leave the franchise with that final.
To be honest B-Mask, I didn’t get any of that from Thimbleweed Park. The ending definitely felt kind of out of nowhere for me. I like meta-commentary that explores the relationship between the game and player (like in Spec Ops The Line, Undertale, and Metal Gear Solid 2), but I didn’t get that at all from Thimbleweed Park. Still a good game though. Perhaps a video on that would be in order, as I certainly would like to understand better your viewpoint.
Curse was the peak of the series. Blood Island just oozes atmosphere.
We're getting a new Monkey Island game and it's got the creators involved. I'm just happy we're getting another one.
You're so damned lucky that I can't put up gifs in UA-cam comments because I'd be spamming you with The Holy Grail bit with "HE'S A WITCH! BUUUUURN HIM! BURN HIM!"
Also, I mean... The point is that this brings up the discourse of fandom. Fandom is silly. Let's take a hypothetical of Sonic the Comic. You'd get people who say "Nigel Kitchens Sonic the Hedgehog is the best!!" and others (who are probably quite evil and probably deserve to be behind bars) "Lew Stringer was the best Sonic writer!"... Both camps are valid, it's just dependent on whatever the hell you grew up with and preferred. I love most of the Monkey Island games. I JUST want a good time.
But yeah, good take as always B
Damnit, I was really looking forward to that Desperate Housewives video!
All I ask is you use your power for good and talk about more things you like so we get more announces on them.
releasing this on April Fools originally was cruel
You read it here first: both the Monkey Island world and the amusement park "real" world exist and both are real, as parallel universes/dimensions. Originally the MI world was magically created by the Big Whoop ticket, but it is now a real dimension. The ticket allows travel between worlds/dimensions.
Depending on how much of the rest of the canon Ron wants to explain, the ticket could lead to even more dimensions including one where Guybrush can hide from Le Chuck, and one dimension corresponding to hell, in which Le Chuck gained his powers.
The new game will begin at MI2's end and somewhat end in a way that allows Curse to happen (Guybrush in a car and probably hit with a partial loss of memory).
Le Chuck is Guybrush's brother but only in the amusement park dimension.
D̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶i̶̶̶n̶̶̶g̶̶̶ ̶̶̶R̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶u̶̶̶r̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶o̶̶̶ ̶̶̶M̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶k̶̶̶e̶̶̶y̶̶̶ ̶̶̶I̶̶̶s̶̶̶l̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶d̶̶̶,̶̶̶ ̶̶̶w̶̶̶e̶̶̶'̶̶̶l̶̶̶l̶̶̶ ̶̶̶g̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶a̶̶̶ ̶̶̶c̶̶̶r̶̶̶o̶̶̶s̶̶̶s̶̶̶-̶̶̶o̶̶̶v̶̶̶e̶̶̶r̶̶̶ ̶̶̶w̶̶̶i̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶ ̶̶̶N̶̶̶e̶̶̶t̶̶̶f̶̶̶l̶̶̶i̶̶̶x̶̶̶'̶̶̶s̶̶̶ ̶̶̶"̶̶̶T̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶O̶̶̶A̶̶̶"̶̶̶ ̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶a̶̶̶s̶̶̶o̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶̶̶3̶̶̶.̶̶̶
*source*
@@BMask My brain. It's my theory.
But on this game being an interquel: grumpygamer (,) com (slash) just_to_clarify_point_12
@@denis480 Lmao but I definitely didn't read that here first! smh
Not a bad take, of course, maybe you've got something there...
@@BMask Oh. Okay. I just never read it anywhere else (on the contrary I've read countless binary statements like "the MI world is a child's dream" OR "the amusement park is a Le Chuck trick/spell/curse").
I played 1 and 2 first and I fell in love with them, but I adored curse.
I realized I adored Curse because I could actually beat it, but then I returned to 1 and beat it, and loved it more than Curse, then I beat 2 and also loved it
If you want another pretty good point and click series in the mean time, have a look at Deponia and Edna and Harvey by Daedalic. Both have a lot of charm to me, and generally go for pretty cheap.
Otherwise fun vid, and I hope you use your powers for good in the future. Maybe let Sly rest though
And The Whispered World! It's such a beautiful game with amazing art direction and atmosphere
Yeah okay you're a good person
4:03 hey, my comment!
Funny thing is, in 2020 I applied to the art director job that Devolver Digital was offering without knowing I was applying to a new Monkey Island game. I sent my pixel art stuff hoping that I would at least get a minor job on Ron's new game.
I'm so glad I was wrong. 😊
Great video, by the way.
you basically stated my view in many more words of its not being made in the particular time and place and without all the people who worked on the originals it will have to be different it can't be what could have been.
I dunno man, for me including Murray in the trailer seems like Gilbert saying openly that he is aware about what happened during those years, but by throwing him into the sea he highlights that he rejects all of this and wants to tell his story, not spoiled by what this franchise was representing over the last two decades.
I mean, just look how surprised Murray is and how the violin ghost girl is annoyed by his rambling, not even allowing him to end the sentence.
It is probably sadly true that this will not be the 1992 MI, but I have this funny feeling that the new title will not address (unless to mock it) any of the stuff that took place in Curse and onward. Amd that this just might be the satisfying conclusion we all expect and deserve.
It was Ron knocking aside the fans going 'but I thought Ron would only work on Monkey Island if he owned the IP'. On account of Murray saying that, and it no longer being true at all. New interviews exist where he goes into more detail about how it doesn't knock Curse and the other games out of canon which I highly reccomend checking out, fascinating stuff on his current mindset.
Hope it's good.
It's not like alternate sequels are new. Like Nier. Those had a more solid explanation though.
Not sure what they mean by "difficult". Monkey Island was medium at most.
He does enjoy his meta humour and commentary so if this whole canon shake up gets made a point of.
15:45 - no, man, it does not. I don't understand why people think it works, when someone asks me to like / subscribe, I unsubscribe immediately just in spite. No one tells me what to do.
Nice vid, btw, always looking forward for them!
See, that's my fear of asking- but in doing so I've netted way more subs than my usual videos. I don't understand how it works, but I have evidence now it's a risk worth taking.
@@BMask I', just a jerk, don't pay attention to me, everything will be great ;)
@@Mafon2 Lmao just as long as you know, cause honestly I get your reaction, because it would be mine, too. UA-cam be whack.
Each of the Monkey Island games made by Ron represent who he was at the time and he's world view at that moment. It's like that with a lot of writers which is why it's often difficult to recreate the magic of there original works.
There are a lot of conflicting expectations regarding RTMI. Some fans are happy that it involves COMI as Canon, while others would prefer COMI was left out. I personally hope that Ron might incorporate COMI into his original idea. I also think that the world of Monkey Island is part of the BIg Whoop Amusment Park. If it is so, then Guybrush may easily find Murray while walking through the theme park and bring him to life with the power of his imagination. Heck, he may even find a giant monkey robot in the fun-park, who knows? Maybe he will encounter themes and characters that will come to play in COMI, EFMI and TOMI. Maybe, by the end of RTMI we will get a choice to leave the amusment park or continue playing in the world of Guybrush's imagination - this is where the begining of COMI would come in. I suspect that Guybrush, Chuckie and Elaine are just two brothers and a sister playing pretend in the amusment park. This is just my guess, we'll see if anything of it turns out to be true.
Anyhow, this is another great video, B-Mask! I would love if you shared your thoughts on RTMI once it comes out!
Elaine cause also easily be a childhood friend that he knows from school or something. I do like the idea of like there is something supernatural in the background of the park that is causing this world to be created or something like that. Like Chuckie is possessed by the spirit of the actual infamous pirate LeChuck. Maybe it ends with them continuing this game and keeping the world alive as long as they can.
@@JMandJJ7797 LeChuck himself says that they have a sister (in one of the dialogue options in the tunels).
Have you seen the brand new interviews with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman at mixnmojo and at Adventure Gamers? Very interesting stuff! They showcase the first screenshots of the game. What do you think about the screenshots? I would really like to know what do you think about the interviews!
@@Goury1 Don't know, never played the Monkey Island games besides seeing one person I follow on Twitch stream and play through the first one for the first time, but I haven't saw the whole thing of that and I don't know if she ever got to play the second.
@@JMandJJ7797 I wholeheartedly recommand playing the Monkey Island games for yourself! It's a great rxperience! :)
oh shit, Bandicoot mask is getting shredded
I hope the new Monkey Island is similar to Spy-Fox 2