This is apparently how Ron Gilbert pretty much wanted to end Monkey Island right from the start but it got pushed into the second game. The ending of Thimbleweed Park was similar but maybe even more shite if that's even possible. I got so angry ovrer it. It felt so insulting. It insulted the player for getting invested in the story and characters. Like WTH?
Insulted - yep, thats kinda how it felt with that ending. Nothing was wrapped up, there was no grand finale. It felt like somebody had played a joke on me that they found highly amusing but had just wasted hours of my time.
I think Ron Gilbert's best ending was probably the one from Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue (aka the 2nd half of Deathspank). It wasn't a GREAT ending but at least it didn't go meta to reveal that Deathspank was just some loon in an insane asylum or whatever. It was a regular "sacrifice yourself for the greater good" / "choose to go mad with power" ending.
Seems to be a real sense of nihilism-tinged self hating bitterness at fans from Gilbert. As though his games are designed to repel you from the idea of enjoying light hearted fantasy.
I only ever recommend the first 3 MI games. I was so angry at the ending for RTMI. Ron Gilbert literally told the players to stop dreaming, stop caring, and stop investing time in the series because it's all fake. Time to grow up, accept that we're all old, and move on... that's what Ron Gilbert conveyed to the players in that letter at the end of the game. I love the world of MI, its islands, its adventures, its characters, and its stories... Ron Gilbert KILLED the entire MI world for me with this game. For what? I don't understand his logic... because he's tired of life?
I think he’s jealous and bitter over all the development and successes of all later MI games without his input. The ending really gives me a sore taste of him as a person.
Nah it happens to all authors who hate that one work he put some effort got too popular that now it's hard to make anything else. Just like Wizard of Oz author he was forced by strained times to make more Wizard of Oz books. Can't blame him, he completed the second monkey island game and just put the sequel bait because they had to sell more. But it was the end the MC got off the ride/park it was meant to end because there was no more analogy of a theme park to make anymore. No more material no more interesting jokes, the characters all played their roles. The more sequels you play the more angry you get that it will stray off the beaten path or not surprise you enough. Always play other games in the same genre than to play the sequels the only one I know that have amazing sequels is Kings Quest.
I think the worst part of Return is that it's completely pointless. It has no real value in the grand scheme of things. It's not Monkey Island 6 - it doesn't follow up on the unresolved plot threads from Tales of MI - namely the Voodoo Lady's plans for LeChuck's essence. In fact, the game goes out of its way to contradict previous instalments on purpose. It's also not the fabled Monkey Island 3a - the game that Ron Gilbert kept telling everyone he wanted to do since MI2 all the way back in 1991. And if it actually was, well, that's really sad. Because Curse did a way better job of salvaging that insulting MI2 ending than Return did. So yeah. This is neither MI6, nor MI3a. It's just a massive "take that" from Ron Gilbert. He was trolling us the entire time.
I feel glad now that I never got around to playing any of the MI games between 2 and this one. I imagine it would feel like watching a long-running TV series only for the final episode to mess things up so much that it would feel like all the time invested in the previous episodes was a total waste.
@@MarksGameReviewsI really do recommend Curse, if you only play one last Monkey Island, Curse is your best bet. It’s gorgeous with both the setting and characters, and the puzzles are solid. The character writing struggles in areas, but it really recaptures the certain goofy charm of the first two quite well. Also it’s got a decent ending. I can’t speak to anything after that, I still think going 3D was a mistake, both visually and mechanically, whether it be Escape or the Telltale games.
I just finished this game today, and I have to agree with you. I was having a fun time with all the nostalgia, but the ending crashes into a brick wall.
@@MarksGameReviews I had it accidentally spoiled because I was looking ahead at a guide, wondering when the final encounter with LeChuck would happen. It never came. Just so disappointing.
For decades, I wished that Ron Gilbert would make another Monkey Island game. Then he did and I played it. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for. It's not just the ending that's the problem, it's the ENTIRE game. It's complete and total garbage.
(I apologize for my English in advance) I bought it at day 1, also because it was advertised as "it contnues exactly where MI 2 left" But, as soon as the game started, at 2 minutes the first strange thing: the game doesn't start with the ending of MI2, since the children are not brothers, and the elder guys are not their parents. Ron changed the story and created a completely different sequence of eventes and he thinks it's good. That was the first hint something wasn't good, to me. Then, going on it felt like I was playing a bad remake of Monkey Island 1. Same things to do, find a crew, etc etc. Just mixed in different ways and some new basic puzzles. Then the ending... Ron insists saying "it was planned from the beginning", but after still saying "We rejected the ending of the theme park, back then, with MI2, then I brought it back again..." He admits "after MI2 has been released, we received only letters saying how bad was the ending, that when one letter was of somebody saying he liked the ending, it was like an event". He decides not to learn and to make the same mistake after 32 years, instead. He says "I could have made the Theme Park that was a spell from Le Chuck, but it's kind cheap." Understand? That is cheap when it is actually 1000 times better than "it was only an illusion", that is the cheapest of any ending in hystory of storytelling. Even with the "spell" solution, he could have had space for a lot of gags, directions, etc. He says "there are some hints here and there about we were not in pirate times, like the grog vending machine" (present in Mi1 and in MI2, at the end of the game). I challenge everyone on this planet to tell me, when they encountered the Grog vending machine, if they said "oh.. so we are not in a real pirate time, we are in modern times!!!".. NO ONE!. In a game like Monkey Island, with many jokes, strange situations, etc, everything was accepted as a gag. Otherwise, meeting the voodoo lady we should say "oohh, we are in a fantasy game full of magic". In Monkey 2 there is the librarian, with her technological chair. We should have said "ohhh. we are in the future!". ??? Since the game uses licenses for the gags, a piano could fall from the sky and the player would find it simply normal and funny. _ Ron says so many things one against the other. _ No, my guess is: Ron didn't know how to finish the game already 32 yars ago. This RTMI came during the pandemic during lockdowns. He wanted to make money. Created a basic story, with zero inventive, maybe because of getting older, tired. He filled the game and the ending letter with his feelings of age, etc etc, unecessarily, in my opinion. TO ME He found a team to make the game. After the lockdowns, people needed to go back to their own work, so, less time to remain on RTMI. He couldn't even finish various rooms or islands (the game appears empty, Terror Island, seemed the one you could gone crazy with locations etc, but it reveled itself as the most boring and empty. It was pretty clear that some parts were unfinished, like some parts, in the islands, he can examine, but he can't go there (never happened in the Monkey Island series). Anyway, he admitted, in the interview, he took out various parts they "created", because the game felt "too long" (WHAT?).... EDIT: there is an entire island, underwater, unfinished where the player can go in the map (location should be K-3). The Island can be visited and there are 5 rooms with a graphic pretty sketched and he left a sign where he says _"this island has been cut off due of time issues..etc etc..."_ _ Obviously, Ron, now needs to defend the product he did with Disney. Money are involved, he will say anything to justifiy the choices he did or forced to do.
That ending sounds... oof... Kinda like ending the Witcher 4 with Gerald morphing into a stereotypical fat kid, standing up from a pen-and-paper session, saying bye to Trish, who is actually called Bob, and going home to sleep because he works at SevenEleven as a Cashier and needs to get out of Bed early the next day.
Oh god dont... I've already had one beloved franchise destroyed this month, I can't face another! One good thing about Witcher 3 is that it actually has a more satisfying ending than the books :D
Haha! Your ending for Witcher 4 is exactly how Ron Gilbert likes to end his games (3 in total now) :D Except that Ron also leaves a lot of plotlines completely unanswered. I mean it's not only that it was fake. There aren't any kind of conclusions whatsoever. The game just stops.
The first 3 games I've played through numerous times, and will probably play through again several more times in my life, and even possibly escape and tales again, but although I enjoyed most of this game while I was playing it, that ending was truly terrible and I have zero interest in ever playing it again because of it, I genuinely can't believe they made such an awful decision, and probably thought it was clever, it was nothing more than a rehashed, yet inferior, version of the second games ending, but without the ambiguity, massively disappointing
This ending made me so mad I wrote a Call of Cthulhu Tabletop game module that took place 20 years after the ending to the second game just for closure (chuckie and guybrush had gone all in on buying their childhood theme-park and got possessed by actual pirate ghosts). I should have known after thimbleweed park that ron gilbert doesn't have any other endings up his sleeves. Play Curse of Monkey island if you like the original games, it's a bit of a departure but it's still very fun.
Yeah. I was so mad about the ending of Thimbleweed Park. It felt so insulting to the player. And I had also spent so much effort into completing it without any hints whatsoever.
@@xFlareLeon I was pleasantly surprised at tales. It’s right above the fourth game for me which doesn’t sound like praise, but there is a huge rift between four and the other games that it sits pretty comfortably inside of. Honestly, my biggest complaint is that they reuse too much. That’s the same complaint Everybody has about telltale in general.
Absolutely love monkey island 1&2, so much nostalgia & the special edition was amazing too. This game however has a terrible art style & just seems lazy. I'm sure flooring inspector is a lovely job but Guybrush Threepwood will always be a mighty pirate to me.
I would be curious to know what you would have thought of the beginning and the ending of RTMI if you would have played through MI2. It made it even more disappointing to me. MI2 also had a controversial ending but to me it really WAS clever and intriguing in constract to the ending of the new one, trying so hard to be that.
Second worst ending ever after Danganronpa V3. Gilbert already did the meta thing in Thimbleweed Park (another not-so-good way to end things, but the game was amazing). This is a lazy retread with weak puzzles. Please, Ron, if you read this, get some fans to wrap things up for your games. You're the Stephen King of gaming.
Yeah, it looks like a bad job of cashing in on an OG series' fame and phoning it in for this installment. Graphics are not what I like, gameplay was a nostalgia trip, but it didn't save it. However, the in jokes and references to the early games make sense. The people who are likely to play the game are those who played the originals. Pity the devs cocked it up. (At least they kept Dominic Armato as the voice of Guybrush.)
The voices were one of the better parts, though I always felt like Elaine sounded less like a wife and more like a mother trying to coax along an errant 6 year old kid - though I'm sure a lot of wives probably think of their husbands like that :D
I bought it out of pure nostalgia and support for Ron Gilbert et al, but to be honest the game is not very good. The characters feel out of place, the puzzles are just odd and long, the story drags on. There are some funny parts, but it just feels off. It feels like they are trying to hurry somewhere, but yet it doesn't matter at all. Watched this ending spoiler before continuing the game, glad I did. Now I don't have to spend more time playing the game. Odd that they have to really make these odd endings.
The ending is just Ron being Ron. It's his nihilistic, postmodern - we have to deconstruct every trope and archetype and turn everything on it's head - influenced view on life. The actual Monty Python-esque humour sensibilities of the franchise (especialy the early period) is in line with this philosophy whether you realise it or not (SPOILER... : the - it's all a theme park - theme - no pun intented - is hinted at all over 1 and 2, yes 1 also, and ofcourse in the end of 2). He wanted it like that all the way from the begining. It's a shame that the characters and setting are so charming and endearing to the fans that it just doesnt't sit that well. People are designed in a way to see themselves in the stories they soak up and they have functioned as mirrors to our subconscious, to build us up and prepare us for life for thousands of years. Only recently has this disheartening ideology of accepting defeat before you even start something started creeping up in our culture. It's realy a shame. I don't blame Ron for how he is or God-forbid hate him, but I have to admit I realised that I love Guybrush and company in spite of it's creator, and unfortunately not because of him... You say you are reluctant to experience anything after 2 but the 3d one is actually the most pure classic pirate adventure out of all of them and the most devoid of this deconstructivist tendencies... and is actually the funniest one for me. Concept wise it's no where near 1 and 2 and 1 on it's own is a masterpiece of game design for the period it came out in.. it revolitionized the genre of adventure games. But there's just something special in the art style of Curse and how well it gels with the sense of humour, I played through it the most out of all of them and it never fails to make me laugh out loud to at least every other gag.
@@rivansan Thank you! After re-reading what I wrote: I was maybe a bit too harsh in describing what Ron's worldview and intentions really are, after all I'm not inside his head.. It's perhaps not actual nihilism or defeatism, but disillusionment could be a more accurate way to describe what I'm generally picking up listening to him and absorbing his work. In any case, my point was that it's not out of the blue and the ending to Return is not that inconsistent with his previous two entries as it appears to a lot of people.
@@jubito1000 I never finished the first game and only been a fan from afar of the games so I'm not that invested but I don't doubt many fans thought Ron would do proper fan service with his comeback game but all he did was finish what he started and what they didn't allow him to do in the 2nd game to begin with. Very interesting... at least he's true to his vision haha.
@@jubito1000 No, you're right. I saw how Ron closed his blog, and threw a worldwide tantrum over the bad behavior of 3 or 4 individuals out of hundreds of supporters, like myself. This victim mentality is really spreading around, and while back in the 90's, you just made a funny character into your game to mock that people that were being stupid in your life as a creator, now you post 3 hour video blogs about it, and go out of your way to punish the fans that love the stories you made in the past, by destroying that same thing you created. It's like George Lucas morphed into Kathleen Kennedy, the birth and destruction of a franchise all in one person. It's funny, but sad. I wish he can reconcile with himself and his good creative past somehow. Even nihilistic, he did seem to have some sort of faith in humanity.
@@MiguelBaptista1981 things are different when you're dealing with actual haters who address you personally. Ron is just a regular dude. Some fans expect too much and can get toxic. It can drive anyone mad. Creative people are even emotionally sensitive, and that's also where the creativity is tapped.
Wow .....just ....wow ....what a lazy, pathetic ending. Yeah I'd feel utterly ripped off too. And I feel like it damages the series as a whole. They could have wrapped up the series to say there won't be any more without poisoning everything like that.
I know, right? It didn't even feel like the game was ready to end. We were all expecting some cleverly scripted, puzzling final encounter with LeChuck followed by a humourous ending wrapping everything up, but instead... emptiness and nothing.
@@MarksGameReviews Yeah. It's not only that everything was "just a dream". They didn't conclude the game in any way. Everything just stopped. No conclusions.
After Monkey Island 2 it went UP in quality. Curse of Monkey Island is MILES better than LeChuck's Revenge. Escape is kinda rough but still funny, and then Tales was awesome.
@@MarksGameReviewsCurse is absolutely worth playing and can be had for cheap on GOG. As a fellow hater of "it was all a dream" endings I will be replaying that rather than getting Return.
Honestly I loved the game but that ending RUINED the whole game for me! Also Guybrush not being a pirate because his trails didn't count and he destroying the lives of his friends and love ones made me feel very mad! But I loved the art style and everything before act 4!
I agree with you on the ending. I adored the first three games, and had some fun with this, but the ending really felt like a slap in the face where the only comfort was seeing Elaine (love of my life since I was 5) as an older woman. Meta endings *can* be done well - Pathologic absolutely nails it imho - but the key to doing them well is that it’s not meant to make you feel like everything that happened beforehand didn’t matter.
@@MarksGameReviews I love it so I’m biased, but my honest thought is that it regularly goes on sale on Steam for less than five dollars, so if you don’t mind dealing with early 2000s jank for an interesting story with two fully complete character routes and one rushed one, it’s worth a gamble. I reckon if you get to the end of day one (which you can do in under two hours) and you’re more intrigued by the story than you are frustrated by the mechanics, you’ll probably enjoy the whole game. And the console commands are always there if you accidentally soft-lock yourself
the monkey island seires is about growing up. games 1 2 and 6 follow this theme. game one was all sunshine and rainbows. game 2 is more real. and game 3 you are in denial till you finally accept what's been true all along. also Ron has stated that it follows his experience with the pirates of the Caribbean ride
I have never played any of these, and I know myself. If I played the first one I would have to play all of them until the last one (even if I wouldn't love them). So that will be a pass for me. However the bad ending makes me want to play it more than anything :D Thanks for your great review as always!
Thanks! I think you can probably pretend that only the first two games in the series exist, as I'm pretty sure everything after that were just bolt-on afterthought cash-ins :D In fact the first game wraps things up enough and really should be on everyone's played list.
3 is actually the funniest one for me. Concept wise it's no where near 1 and 2 and 1 on it's own is a masterpiece of game design for the period it came out in.. it revolitionized the genre of adventure games. But there's just something special in the art style of Curse and how well it gels with the sense of humour, I played through it the most out of all of them and it never fails to make me laugh out loud to at least every other gag@@MarksGameReviews
Curse of Monkey Island Flanderized LeChuck a little too much, but I loved the art style and setting in the game. In that sense I think there were good games after 2.
Having played all the Monkey Island games & being a huge fan, the ending of this game not only feels like the ultimate insult to the entire lore; it feels as if it’s Ron’s way of revenging-ridiculing and insulting the gamers and the creators of all the MI games after MI2 and made them all obsolete. At least this is what the ending implied, which is extremely disappointing and shows a real lack of respect to the MI franchise and lack of empathy to the fandom. Ron did the same style of ending for Thimbleweed Park so maybe it’s just “his style”.. but to do that to such a well-developed & rich story as MI, this ending feels like a total slap in the face. If it wants to ruin my entire MI gaming experience and its fond memories for me, I’d rather this game does not exist.
finally got round to playing it today. my favourite game series of all time has been tarnished. really disappointing. found the puzzles very repetitive and that ending oh my days i thought it was a troll at first.
Any ending would had been impossible to write really, and if i'm 100% honest i can't think of one that would had been satisfying for me. I think Gillbert saw/knew this and wanted get that point across in the ending, along with the general sentiment of "its not where you go, it's how you get there". The problem is it was just very poorly executed, leaving you feeling empty... but hey, at least it made you feel something i guess, and thats what good art is meant to do.
@@Lonewanderer30 My point does remain; you literally can't deny that because what I said is a fact. The aesthetic of an art style is subjective. Simple as that.
there were some fun sequences at times, and some good puzzles, but the overall feeling I get is that too much of the story is fragmented, the parts don't work too well together. the art is unusual, but it works well enough for me. the game would benefit from letting you play through a story that is more knit together, even if that means removing some characters and locations. there is too little interaction with several locations and characters (the game could have been a lot bigger in order to utilize those). the ending scene is disappointing, but even some of the puzzles towards the end feel unthematic. the game, especially its ending, left me a bit confused about the series. 1, 2 and 3 were fun games, so why not capture some of that feeling and at the same time close it off with some elegance?!
I think the jokes were bland (what jokes) and the puzzles were stale and unsurprising rehashes from previous games. I don't feel like there was any inspirtation or creative thought put into the dialogue. It's a tired, uninspired, rush job and certainly didn't progress the genre or push any boundaries. Very disappointing how creators lose their pizzaz as they get old.
The ending says "the ending is not important". So if you believe in the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood then they are true. If you dont then dont. However i would never play this game because i despise typical modern art style.
Endings are important, though. You could have had the most enjoyable day ever, all day on an amusement park. But at the end of the day you found out your car have been broken into, and some unreplaceable heirloom is missing. Now that otherwise perfect day will forever be spoiled in your memory.
I just call this Escape from Monkey Island II. It has the same shortcomings of escape from monkey island. Escape for awful 3D graphics and 80s level controls at best.
I played it for the first time last week and absolutely love the art style as well as the ending. I remember I was on the fence when I first saw the trailer, and I held off on playing until I finally bought my PS5. Enjoyed it so much that I watched some interviews with Ron Gilbert. That, as well as the letter that's added to the scrapbook in the game's menu, gave me a lot more context. This is what Ron Gilbert wanted since the first game, and replaying Monkey Island 1 and 2 after Return, I picked up on a lot of hints I didn't notice back in the 90s. Sorry for everyone that doesn't like it. But after both playing Return and replaying Monkey 1 and 2, Return has probably become my favorite. I'm not really familiar with Curse and beyond. Is there any way to speed up Guybrush' walk speed in Curse?
Every negative review I see convinces more that just a small amount of players ever touched the scrapbook, the game tells you at beginning and end to check it out and fills you in on a ton of stuff, and more importantly THE LETTER. Omg either reading comprehension is lacking or people straight up did not read it (despite the game pointing you towards it), sure the ending is a whiplash to all of the game but that was the intention and the point from the very beginning this game in particular is more of an author's game than it leeds on. Just try looking at the game with more of it's metanarrative in mind (or watch someone talk about it) because man this is a game that talks so much about art and stories we to each other
@@MarksGameReviews Yeah they could've frame it better like... IDK someone telling a story... It could be be framed as a conversation of a kid listening intently to a whimsical tall tale from his father's past... Oh wait
@@emigomez4295 I was referring to the scrapbook that you brought up and made sound so important to the intended narrative. By the time a player has realised they've missed finding the scraps it's too late to go back and look. I'm glad you liked the game and saw more in it than I did, but it didn't hit the spot for me.
I diametrically disagree with this criticism. The ending HAD to be ambiguous. Think about it a little more! Can you come up with ANY explicit THING the Secret could possibly be, that WOULDN'T be a total letdown? - A treasure? A weapon? A free wish? God?
@@MarksGameReviews Have you played a different game? In my game there's a narrative frame of Guybrush and his son sitting on a bench. Your disappointment is even spoken out loud by Guybrush's son, when he complains to Elaine, that "Dad won't tell me, what the Secret is". The amusement park is not THE one and only singular answer to the mystery of the Secret.
I just played and beat it yesterday. I really enjoyed it despite the ending. Also I don't get the hate for the art style I keep seeing. It looks really good to me and I was surprised to see Double Fine had no involvement in the game. It reminds me so much of Double Fines art style. The ending was kind of wack though. Theirs quite a few different endings but the one I choose to think of as canon is Guy took the key didn't open the chest and left with Elaine because the secret didn't matter.
Played it for "free" on gamepass, such a cheap game in most aspects, the only good thing about it was the voice cast returning, everything else about it stinks. It's just lazy, badly written, looks and plays like a free Flash game from 1998, and the ending was a massive "f*** you" to everyone that's not Ron Gilbert.
If you had played and completed MI2, knowing its ending you would be prepared for the ending of this game. This is the conclusion of a trilogy. MI1, MI2 and this. The other games were not made by the original game creator, whereas this one was. You really need to have played through the first 2 games to appreciate the ending. It concludes a mystery that was given to us at the end of MI2. We had to wait over 30 years to get the answer. This is probably why you dont like the ending. You didnt finish MI2 and have the question burning in your mind for 30 years. For the ppl who did play MI2 to the end, its a great relief to know what was half suggested all those years ago.
Not a fan of the look of this game... too stylized in a way I don't dig... looks too simple and just plain cheap. Hey at least we'll always have the OGs... the good ones at least haha.
This is apparently how Ron Gilbert pretty much wanted to end Monkey Island right from the start but it got pushed into the second game. The ending of Thimbleweed Park was similar but maybe even more shite if that's even possible. I got so angry ovrer it. It felt so insulting. It insulted the player for getting invested in the story and characters. Like WTH?
Insulted - yep, thats kinda how it felt with that ending. Nothing was wrapped up, there was no grand finale. It felt like somebody had played a joke on me that they found highly amusing but had just wasted hours of my time.
I think Ron Gilbert's best ending was probably the one from Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue (aka the 2nd half of Deathspank). It wasn't a GREAT ending but at least it didn't go meta to reveal that Deathspank was just some loon in an insane asylum or whatever. It was a regular "sacrifice yourself for the greater good" / "choose to go mad with power" ending.
Seems to be a real sense of nihilism-tinged self hating bitterness at fans from Gilbert. As though his games are designed to repel you from the idea of enjoying light hearted fantasy.
So many sad people online. Can’t you just enjoy things?
Many many years ago, he reportedly stated that the secret was NOT everything just being an amusement park
I only ever recommend the first 3 MI games.
I was so angry at the ending for RTMI. Ron Gilbert literally told the players to stop dreaming, stop caring, and stop investing time in the series because it's all fake. Time to grow up, accept that we're all old, and move on... that's what Ron Gilbert conveyed to the players in that letter at the end of the game.
I love the world of MI, its islands, its adventures, its characters, and its stories... Ron Gilbert KILLED the entire MI world for me with this game. For what? I don't understand his logic... because he's tired of life?
His life sucks so he's doing his best to ruin a part of ours haha. What a killjoy.
I think he’s jealous and bitter over all the development and successes of all later MI games without his input. The ending really gives me a sore taste of him as a person.
Nah it happens to all authors who hate that one work he put some effort got too popular that now it's hard to make anything else. Just like Wizard of Oz author he was forced by strained times to make more Wizard of Oz books.
Can't blame him, he completed the second monkey island game and just put the sequel bait because they had to sell more.
But it was the end the MC got off the ride/park it was meant to end because there was no more analogy of a theme park to make anymore. No more material no more interesting jokes, the characters all played their roles.
The more sequels you play the more angry you get that it will stray off the beaten path or not surprise you enough.
Always play other games in the same genre than to play the sequels the only one I know that have amazing sequels is Kings Quest.
I think the worst part of Return is that it's completely pointless. It has no real value in the grand scheme of things.
It's not Monkey Island 6 - it doesn't follow up on the unresolved plot threads from Tales of MI - namely the Voodoo Lady's plans for LeChuck's essence. In fact, the game goes out of its way to contradict previous instalments on purpose.
It's also not the fabled Monkey Island 3a - the game that Ron Gilbert kept telling everyone he wanted to do since MI2 all the way back in 1991. And if it actually was, well, that's really sad. Because Curse did a way better job of salvaging that insulting MI2 ending than Return did.
So yeah. This is neither MI6, nor MI3a. It's just a massive "take that" from Ron Gilbert. He was trolling us the entire time.
I feel glad now that I never got around to playing any of the MI games between 2 and this one. I imagine it would feel like watching a long-running TV series only for the final episode to mess things up so much that it would feel like all the time invested in the previous episodes was a total waste.
@@MarksGameReviewsI really do recommend Curse, if you only play one last Monkey Island, Curse is your best bet. It’s gorgeous with both the setting and characters, and the puzzles are solid. The character writing struggles in areas, but it really recaptures the certain goofy charm of the first two quite well. Also it’s got a decent ending. I can’t speak to anything after that, I still think going 3D was a mistake, both visually and mechanically, whether it be Escape or the Telltale games.
I just finished this game today, and I have to agree with you. I was having a fun time with all the nostalgia, but the ending crashes into a brick wall.
Yeah its a shame. Did you already know what the ending was going to be, or was it a surprise for you?
@@MarksGameReviews I had it accidentally spoiled because I was looking ahead at a guide, wondering when the final encounter with LeChuck would happen. It never came. Just so disappointing.
The ending feels like the devs are saying "we don't give a crap about this series anymore, why should you?"
For decades, I wished that Ron Gilbert would make another Monkey Island game. Then he did and I played it. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for.
It's not just the ending that's the problem, it's the ENTIRE game. It's complete and total garbage.
(I apologize for my English in advance)
I bought it at day 1, also because it was advertised as "it contnues exactly where MI 2 left"
But, as soon as the game started, at 2 minutes the first strange thing: the game doesn't start with the ending of MI2, since the children are not brothers, and the elder guys are not their parents.
Ron changed the story and created a completely different sequence of eventes and he thinks it's good. That was the first hint something wasn't good, to me.
Then, going on it felt like I was playing a bad remake of Monkey Island 1. Same things to do, find a crew, etc etc. Just mixed in different ways and some new basic puzzles.
Then the ending...
Ron insists saying "it was planned from the beginning", but after still saying "We rejected the ending of the theme park, back then, with MI2, then I brought it back again..."
He admits "after MI2 has been released, we received only letters saying how bad was the ending, that when one letter was of somebody saying he liked the ending, it was like an event".
He decides not to learn and to make the same mistake after 32 years, instead.
He says "I could have made the Theme Park that was a spell from Le Chuck, but it's kind cheap."
Understand? That is cheap when it is actually 1000 times better than "it was only an illusion", that is the cheapest of any ending in hystory of storytelling.
Even with the "spell" solution, he could have had space for a lot of gags, directions, etc.
He says "there are some hints here and there about we were not in pirate times, like the grog vending machine" (present in Mi1 and in MI2, at the end of the game).
I challenge everyone on this planet to tell me, when they encountered the Grog vending machine, if they said "oh.. so we are not in a real pirate time, we are in modern times!!!"..
NO ONE!. In a game like Monkey Island, with many jokes, strange situations, etc, everything was accepted as a gag.
Otherwise, meeting the voodoo lady we should say "oohh, we are in a fantasy game full of magic".
In Monkey 2 there is the librarian, with her technological chair. We should have said "ohhh. we are in the future!". ???
Since the game uses licenses for the gags, a piano could fall from the sky and the player would find it simply normal and funny.
_
Ron says so many things one against the other.
_
No, my guess is: Ron didn't know how to finish the game already 32 yars ago.
This RTMI came during the pandemic during lockdowns. He wanted to make money. Created a basic story, with zero inventive, maybe because of getting older, tired.
He filled the game and the ending letter with his feelings of age, etc etc, unecessarily, in my opinion.
TO ME He found a team to make the game. After the lockdowns, people needed to go back to their own work, so, less time to remain on RTMI.
He couldn't even finish various rooms or islands (the game appears empty, Terror Island, seemed the one you could gone crazy with locations etc, but it reveled itself as the most boring and empty.
It was pretty clear that some parts were unfinished, like some parts, in the islands, he can examine, but he can't go there (never happened in the Monkey Island series).
Anyway, he admitted, in the interview, he took out various parts they "created", because the game felt "too long" (WHAT?)....
EDIT: there is an entire island, underwater, unfinished where the player can go in the map (location should be K-3). The Island can be visited and there are 5 rooms with a graphic pretty sketched and he left a sign where he says _"this island has been cut off due of time issues..etc etc..."_
_
Obviously, Ron, now needs to defend the product he did with Disney. Money are involved, he will say anything to justifiy the choices he did or forced to do.
No need to apologise for your English, it is excellent :)
Thanks for the post brother... kinda sucks the creator stop believing in his best creation.
That ending sounds... oof...
Kinda like ending the Witcher 4 with Gerald morphing into a stereotypical fat kid, standing up from a pen-and-paper session, saying bye to Trish, who is actually called Bob, and going home to sleep because he works at SevenEleven as a Cashier and needs to get out of Bed early the next day.
Oh god dont... I've already had one beloved franchise destroyed this month, I can't face another!
One good thing about Witcher 3 is that it actually has a more satisfying ending than the books :D
Haha! Your ending for Witcher 4 is exactly how Ron Gilbert likes to end his games (3 in total now) :D Except that Ron also leaves a lot of plotlines completely unanswered. I mean it's not only that it was fake. There aren't any kind of conclusions whatsoever. The game just stops.
The first 3 games I've played through numerous times, and will probably play through again several more times in my life, and even possibly escape and tales again, but although I enjoyed most of this game while I was playing it, that ending was truly terrible and I have zero interest in ever playing it again because of it, I genuinely can't believe they made such an awful decision, and probably thought it was clever, it was nothing more than a rehashed, yet inferior, version of the second games ending, but without the ambiguity, massively disappointing
This ending made me so mad I wrote a Call of Cthulhu Tabletop game module that took place 20 years after the ending to the second game just for closure (chuckie and guybrush had gone all in on buying their childhood theme-park and got possessed by actual pirate ghosts). I should have known after thimbleweed park that ron gilbert doesn't have any other endings up his sleeves. Play Curse of Monkey island if you like the original games, it's a bit of a departure but it's still very fun.
Kind of glad to hear it wasn't just me that took issue with the ending!
Yeah. I was so mad about the ending of Thimbleweed Park. It felt so insulting to the player. And I had also spent so much effort into completing it without any hints whatsoever.
What does everyone have against Tales?
@@xFlareLeon I was pleasantly surprised at tales. It’s right above the fourth game for me which doesn’t sound like praise, but there is a huge rift between four and the other games that it sits pretty comfortably inside of. Honestly, my biggest complaint is that they reuse too much. That’s the same complaint Everybody has about telltale in general.
Absolutely love monkey island 1&2, so much nostalgia & the special edition was amazing too. This game however has a terrible art style & just seems lazy. I'm sure flooring inspector is a lovely job but Guybrush Threepwood will always be a mighty pirate to me.
Same here!
I would be curious to know what you would have thought of the beginning and the ending of RTMI if you would have played through MI2. It made it even more disappointing to me. MI2 also had a controversial ending but to me it really WAS clever and intriguing in constract to the ending of the new one, trying so hard to be that.
I just wish they brought back the style of the third game. None of this 3d rubbish. Hand drawn 2d was good.
Second worst ending ever after Danganronpa V3. Gilbert already did the meta thing in Thimbleweed Park (another not-so-good way to end things, but the game was amazing). This is a lazy retread with weak puzzles. Please, Ron, if you read this, get some fans to wrap things up for your games. You're the Stephen King of gaming.
Yeah, it looks like a bad job of cashing in on an OG series' fame and phoning it in for this installment. Graphics are not what I like, gameplay was a nostalgia trip, but it didn't save it.
However, the in jokes and references to the early games make sense. The people who are likely to play the game are those who played the originals. Pity the devs cocked it up. (At least they kept Dominic Armato as the voice of Guybrush.)
The voices were one of the better parts, though I always felt like Elaine sounded less like a wife and more like a mother trying to coax along an errant 6 year old kid - though I'm sure a lot of wives probably think of their husbands like that :D
I bought it out of pure nostalgia and support for Ron Gilbert et al, but to be honest the game is not very good.
The characters feel out of place, the puzzles are just odd and long, the story drags on. There are some funny parts, but it just feels off.
It feels like they are trying to hurry somewhere, but yet it doesn't matter at all.
Watched this ending spoiler before continuing the game, glad I did. Now I don't have to spend more time playing the game.
Odd that they have to really make these odd endings.
I think the ending is supposed to be a really funny joke, but if it is then the devs of this game have a very different definition of humour to me!
So thoughts on that ending from anyone who has played it?
The ending is just Ron being Ron. It's his nihilistic, postmodern - we have to deconstruct every trope and archetype and turn everything on it's head - influenced view on life. The actual Monty Python-esque humour sensibilities of the franchise (especialy the early period) is in line with this philosophy whether you realise it or not (SPOILER... : the - it's all a theme park - theme - no pun intented - is hinted at all over 1 and 2, yes 1 also, and ofcourse in the end of 2). He wanted it like that all the way from the begining. It's a shame that the characters and setting are so charming and endearing to the fans that it just doesnt't sit that well. People are designed in a way to see themselves in the stories they soak up and they have functioned as mirrors to our subconscious, to build us up and prepare us for life for thousands of years. Only recently has this disheartening ideology of accepting defeat before you even start something started creeping up in our culture. It's realy a shame. I don't blame Ron for how he is or God-forbid hate him, but I have to admit I realised that I love Guybrush and company in spite of it's creator, and unfortunately not because of him...
You say you are reluctant to experience anything after 2 but the 3d one is actually the most pure classic pirate adventure out of all of them and the most devoid of this deconstructivist tendencies... and is actually the funniest one for me. Concept wise it's no where near 1 and 2 and 1 on it's own is a masterpiece of game design for the period it came out in.. it revolitionized the genre of adventure games. But there's just something special in the art style of Curse and how well it gels with the sense of humour, I played through it the most out of all of them and it never fails to make me laugh out loud to at least every other gag.
Good insight Jubito thanks!Q
@@rivansan Thank you! After re-reading what I wrote: I was maybe a bit too harsh in describing what Ron's worldview and intentions really are, after all I'm not inside his head.. It's perhaps not actual nihilism or defeatism, but disillusionment could be a more accurate way to describe what I'm generally picking up listening to him and absorbing his work. In any case, my point was that it's not out of the blue and the ending to Return is not that inconsistent with his previous two entries as it appears to a lot of people.
@@jubito1000 I never finished the first game and only been a fan from afar of the games so I'm not that invested but I don't doubt many fans thought Ron would do proper fan service with his comeback game but all he did was finish what he started and what they didn't allow him to do in the 2nd game to begin with. Very interesting... at least he's true to his vision haha.
@@jubito1000
No, you're right.
I saw how Ron closed his blog, and threw a worldwide tantrum over the bad behavior of 3 or 4 individuals out of hundreds of supporters, like myself.
This victim mentality is really spreading around, and while back in the 90's, you just made a funny character into your game to mock that people that were being stupid in your life as a creator, now you post 3 hour video blogs about it, and go out of your way to punish the fans that love the stories you made in the past, by destroying that same thing you created.
It's like George Lucas morphed into Kathleen Kennedy, the birth and destruction of a franchise all in one person.
It's funny, but sad.
I wish he can reconcile with himself and his good creative past somehow. Even nihilistic, he did seem to have some sort of faith in humanity.
@@MiguelBaptista1981 things are different when you're dealing with actual haters who address you personally. Ron is just a regular dude. Some fans expect too much and can get toxic. It can drive anyone mad. Creative people are even emotionally sensitive, and that's also where the creativity is tapped.
Wow .....just ....wow ....what a lazy, pathetic ending. Yeah I'd feel utterly ripped off too. And I feel like it damages the series as a whole. They could have wrapped up the series to say there won't be any more without poisoning everything like that.
I know, right? It didn't even feel like the game was ready to end. We were all expecting some cleverly scripted, puzzling final encounter with LeChuck followed by a humourous ending wrapping everything up, but instead... emptiness and nothing.
@@MarksGameReviews Yeah. It's not only that everything was "just a dream". They didn't conclude the game in any way. Everything just stopped. No conclusions.
Yeah the characters look like they were drawn by 9 year olds.
I think I might actually prefer that - I mean it worked for Peppa Pig and thats great :D
After Monkey Island 2 it went UP in quality. Curse of Monkey Island is MILES better than LeChuck's Revenge. Escape is kinda rough but still funny, and then Tales was awesome.
Thats good to know. I lost track of the series after 2 so have never paid them much attention. Do you think they are still worth playing?
@@MarksGameReviewsCurse is absolutely worth playing and can be had for cheap on GOG. As a fellow hater of "it was all a dream" endings I will be replaying that rather than getting Return.
@@MarksGameReviews Their adventure games so it depends... the way you seem to have fond memories of 1&2 I'd say they are worth trying out for sure.
Finally, a fellow Tales defender. I don't even know why people seem to dislike it in favor of Curse.
The way they drew Guybrush's nose makes me aggravated, agitated, and infuriated.
we should all feel devastated, mutilated and perforated
Honestly I loved the game but that ending RUINED the whole game for me!
Also Guybrush not being a pirate because his trails didn't count and he destroying the lives of his friends and love ones made me feel very mad! But I loved the art style and everything before act 4!
I agree with you on the ending. I adored the first three games, and had some fun with this, but the ending really felt like a slap in the face where the only comfort was seeing Elaine (love of my life since I was 5) as an older woman.
Meta endings *can* be done well - Pathologic absolutely nails it imho - but the key to doing them well is that it’s not meant to make you feel like everything that happened beforehand didn’t matter.
I've never played Pathologic, is it worth a look?
@@MarksGameReviews I love it so I’m biased, but my honest thought is that it regularly goes on sale on Steam for less than five dollars, so if you don’t mind dealing with early 2000s jank for an interesting story with two fully complete character routes and one rushed one, it’s worth a gamble.
I reckon if you get to the end of day one (which you can do in under two hours) and you’re more intrigued by the story than you are frustrated by the mechanics, you’ll probably enjoy the whole game. And the console commands are always there if you accidentally soft-lock yourself
the monkey island seires is about growing up. games 1 2 and 6 follow this theme. game one was all sunshine and rainbows. game 2 is more real. and game 3 you are in denial till you finally accept what's been true all along. also Ron has stated that it follows his experience with the pirates of the Caribbean ride
Agreed. The ending is atrocious.
You have to wonder who was sat round the table when somebody said "Hey Guys, listen to this, I've got this hilarious idea for and ending... "
@@MarksGameReviews I bet the person was Ron lol
@@MarksGameReviews I feel like the ending might as well have said "we don't know how to end this, so... screw you players!"
I have never played any of these, and I know myself. If I played the first one I would have to play all of them until the last one (even if I wouldn't love them). So that will be a pass for me. However the bad ending makes me want to play it more than anything :D
Thanks for your great review as always!
Thanks! I think you can probably pretend that only the first two games in the series exist, as I'm pretty sure everything after that were just bolt-on afterthought cash-ins :D In fact the first game wraps things up enough and really should be on everyone's played list.
3 is actually the funniest one for me. Concept wise it's no where near 1 and 2 and 1 on it's own is a masterpiece of game design for the period it came out in.. it revolitionized the genre of adventure games. But there's just something special in the art style of Curse and how well it gels with the sense of humour, I played through it the most out of all of them and it never fails to make me laugh out loud to at least every other gag@@MarksGameReviews
Agreed it was disappointing and I hate the art
The ending made me depressed
Curse of Monkey Island Flanderized LeChuck a little too much, but I loved the art style and setting in the game. In that sense I think there were good games after 2.
Having played all the Monkey Island games & being a huge fan, the ending of this game not only feels like the ultimate insult to the entire lore; it feels as if it’s Ron’s way of revenging-ridiculing and insulting the gamers and the creators of all the MI games after MI2 and made them all obsolete. At least this is what the ending implied, which is extremely disappointing and shows a real lack of respect to the MI franchise and lack of empathy to the fandom.
Ron did the same style of ending for Thimbleweed Park so maybe it’s just “his style”.. but to do that to such a well-developed & rich story as MI, this ending feels like a total slap in the face.
If it wants to ruin my entire MI gaming experience and its fond memories for me, I’d rather this game does not exist.
I agree, but there are really so much references about monkey island 3 and 5 !
finally got round to playing it today. my favourite game series of all time has been tarnished. really disappointing. found the puzzles very repetitive and that ending oh my days i thought it was a troll at first.
Same here with the ending, I was so sure it was some sort of joke as there was no way they could end the game so badly.
@@MarksGameReviews i thought u described my gripes quite eloquently so i felt a bit vindicated by your review, so that for that lol
Any ending would had been impossible to write really, and if i'm 100% honest i can't think of one that would had been satisfying for me.
I think Gillbert saw/knew this and wanted get that point across in the ending, along with the general sentiment of "its not where you go, it's how you get there".
The problem is it was just very poorly executed, leaving you feeling empty... but hey, at least it made you feel something i guess, and thats what good art is meant to do.
The art style is awful. Curse of Monkey Island, which was released about 26 years ago, looks far better....
That's subjective. Some really like the art style.
@@googlewolly Most don't.
@@Lonewanderer30 Whether or not that's true (which I doubt that it is), my point remains.
@@googlewolly No it doesn't. A simple search will confirm what I said.
@@Lonewanderer30 My point does remain; you literally can't deny that because what I said is a fact. The aesthetic of an art style is subjective. Simple as that.
there were some fun sequences at times, and some good puzzles, but the overall feeling I get is that too much of the story is fragmented, the parts don't work too well together. the art is unusual, but it works well enough for me. the game would benefit from letting you play through a story that is more knit together, even if that means removing some characters and locations. there is too little interaction with several locations and characters (the game could have been a lot bigger in order to utilize those).
the ending scene is disappointing, but even some of the puzzles towards the end feel unthematic. the game, especially its ending, left me a bit confused about the series. 1, 2 and 3 were fun games, so why not capture some of that feeling and at the same time close it off with some elegance?!
I was expecting it with trepidation, but it has greatly disappointed me, sadly...
That's a shite ending :(
Yeah, it was a proper cheap and lazy ending. They don't make em like they used to!
@@MarksGameReviews Indeed
Just finished it, and I loved 90% of it... until the end. Which, I get where Ron was coming from, but it left me feeling hallow.
I was sooooo sure i knew what was in the box infact im positive I know what it is lol.
I think the jokes were bland (what jokes) and the puzzles were stale and unsurprising rehashes from previous games. I don't feel like there was any inspirtation or creative thought put into the dialogue. It's a tired, uninspired, rush job and certainly didn't progress the genre or push any boundaries. Very disappointing how creators lose their pizzaz as they get old.
The ending says "the ending is not important". So if you believe in the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood then they are true. If you dont then dont.
However i would never play this game because i despise typical modern art style.
Endings are important, though. You could have had the most enjoyable day ever, all day on an amusement park. But at the end of the day you found out your car have been broken into, and some unreplaceable heirloom is missing. Now that otherwise perfect day will forever be spoiled in your memory.
Watching the animation and characters, I feel like it should be named Return to Epstein Island.
It looks insufferably woke. Won't buy.
👏🏻👏🏻 someone with integrity
I just call this Escape from Monkey Island II. It has the same shortcomings of escape from monkey island. Escape for awful 3D graphics and 80s level controls at best.
Even if it didn't reach the heights of the first three games, Escape was still great, and the last good Monkey Island.
I agree.
Wonderful 👑
I played it for the first time last week and absolutely love the art style as well as the ending. I remember I was on the fence when I first saw the trailer, and I held off on playing until I finally bought my PS5. Enjoyed it so much that I watched some interviews with Ron Gilbert. That, as well as the letter that's added to the scrapbook in the game's menu, gave me a lot more context. This is what Ron Gilbert wanted since the first game, and replaying Monkey Island 1 and 2 after Return, I picked up on a lot of hints I didn't notice back in the 90s. Sorry for everyone that doesn't like it. But after both playing Return and replaying Monkey 1 and 2, Return has probably become my favorite. I'm not really familiar with Curse and beyond. Is there any way to speed up Guybrush' walk speed in Curse?
I thought it was crap also, crap and boating.
Only the first three games are good and imo the second game is the pick of the bunch.
Every negative review I see convinces more that just a small amount of players ever touched the scrapbook, the game tells you at beginning and end to check it out and fills you in on a ton of stuff, and more importantly THE LETTER. Omg either reading comprehension is lacking or people straight up did not read it (despite the game pointing you towards it), sure the ending is a whiplash to all of the game but that was the intention and the point from the very beginning this game in particular is more of an author's game than it leeds on. Just try looking at the game with more of it's metanarrative in mind (or watch someone talk about it) because man this is a game that talks so much about art and stories we to each other
If the whole premise was to tell a story about art and storytelling then it was a bit of a silly idea to hide it.
@@MarksGameReviews Yeah they could've frame it better like... IDK someone telling a story... It could be be framed as a conversation of a kid listening intently to a whimsical tall tale from his father's past... Oh wait
@@emigomez4295 I was referring to the scrapbook that you brought up and made sound so important to the intended narrative. By the time a player has realised they've missed finding the scraps it's too late to go back and look.
I'm glad you liked the game and saw more in it than I did, but it didn't hit the spot for me.
I love the old games.
They were great. I also loved Day of the Tentacle which was done in the same style. Ah, the good old days...
Typical video made by someone who hasn´t even completed the second game. Obviosly the ending caught you by surprise then.
I diametrically disagree with this criticism. The ending HAD to be ambiguous. Think about it a little more! Can you come up with ANY explicit THING the Secret could possibly be, that WOULDN'T be a total letdown? - A treasure? A weapon? A free wish? God?
The ending wasn't ambiguous, it was just shit and an anti-climax.
@@MarksGameReviews Have you played a different game? In my game there's a narrative frame of Guybrush and his son sitting on a bench. Your disappointment is even spoken out loud by Guybrush's son, when he complains to Elaine, that "Dad won't tell me, what the Secret is". The amusement park is not THE one and only singular answer to the mystery of the Secret.
@@phantomology404 I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I didn't.
I just played and beat it yesterday. I really enjoyed it despite the ending. Also I don't get the hate for the art style I keep seeing. It looks really good to me and I was surprised to see Double Fine had no involvement in the game. It reminds me so much of Double Fines art style. The ending was kind of wack though. Theirs quite a few different endings but the one I choose to think of as canon is Guy took the key didn't open the chest and left with Elaine because the secret didn't matter.
Played it for "free" on gamepass, such a cheap game in most aspects, the only good thing about it was the voice cast returning, everything else about it stinks. It's just lazy, badly written, looks and plays like a free Flash game from 1998, and the ending was a massive "f*** you" to everyone that's not Ron Gilbert.
People complaining about Ron Gilbert's endings sound like people complaining when David Lynch doesn't explain plainly what he means.
If you had played and completed MI2, knowing its ending you would be prepared for the ending of this game. This is the conclusion of a trilogy. MI1, MI2 and this. The other games were not made by the original game creator, whereas this one was. You really need to have played through the first 2 games to appreciate the ending. It concludes a mystery that was given to us at the end of MI2. We had to wait over 30 years to get the answer. This is probably why you dont like the ending. You didnt finish MI2 and have the question burning in your mind for 30 years. For the ppl who did play MI2 to the end, its a great relief to know what was half suggested all those years ago.
The art style is ugly and the game feels woke-washed and modernized in a way.
Not a fan of the look of this game... too stylized in a way I don't dig... looks too simple and just plain cheap. Hey at least we'll always have the OGs... the good ones at least haha.