Return To Monkey Island - MI2 sequel from Ron Gilbert

[Mary Sue Leigh]

This is the kind of ending that might seem clever on first look.
If it's all about children's imagination playing in a pirate theme park explains the anachronisms. Why the troll is just a guy in a costume. Why the treasure is a t-shirt. Why no one dies or even gets hurt in a Caribbean pirate adventure (LeChuck excluded since he still exists as a ghost, zombie, whatever). Insult fights is something a child might actually play.
All the other stuff that doesn't make sense.
Elaine staying behind I used to think of that she wasn't a real existing person and thus stayed behind in the imagination until the kids would play again.

However, upon scrutiny this doesn't really work that well. For one, some questions might deserve more intelligent answers, like what is the secret of monkey island, what is big whoop, what is the deal with le chuck?
The things listed that it does explain, would work better comedically if they were actually NOT explained away, at least not in such a cheap way.
Also who is Stan, a real salesman trying to sell trash to children? A weird kid playing as used car salesman? An imaginary character that no child would actually make up? A weird sex pest in the park?

Honestly, making the new statement in the game be "It's just a game, don't think about it" may sound reasonable on first look too, but is in effect nothing but a giant copout.

 

[Silentstorm]

I also just hate the attempt to explain stuff...it's a cartoony game, i never once thought the anachronisms were strange and that it just fit a silly cartoony world with pirates, if anything, those out of place elements made the world more charming and fun, knowing it was just the imagination of some people rather than a strange pirate world is actually way more lame and less fun than...you know, a pirate world just randomly having future stuff.

Some people like it and say it's clever, maybe so, but for once i prefer the dumber option of a pirate era with theme park stuff and themes to it and the only explanation being "it's a wacky world, don't think too hard about it".

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[FuckLiefeldGiveMeChew]

How much is changed in the writer's cut? I am almost finished and want to see what is changed, but I hear conflicting reports: It either makes massive changes, or just a few characters at the beginning get changed.

 

[Boleskine]

Heard you guys like reviews of ReMI from adventure game youtubers.

 

[FuckLiefeldGiveMeChew]

I think the ending is clearly showing that nothing is anyone's mind: Depending on the choices you can see

Endings

Guybrush escaping back to Monkey Island, Lechuck and Murrray in Hell, the Voodoo Lady dealing with her destroyed shop, Guybrush's son playing with treasures or Guybrush disposing of the key or the chest. Stan was a huckster who would happily sell out Guybrush in exchange for protection from the authorities and Lchuck's magic could create a fake theme park.

Also, it looks like the writer's cut only has a significant effect at the beginning: Many major dialogues seem to be more or less the same.

 

[JarlFrank]

I also just hate the attempt to explain stuff...it's a cartoony game, i never once thought the anachronisms were strange and that it just fit a silly cartoony world with pirates, if anything, those out of place elements made the world more charming and fun, knowing it was just the imagination of some people rather than a strange pirate world is actually way more lame and less fun than...you know, a pirate world just randomly having future stuff.

Some people like it and say it's clever, maybe so, but for once i prefer the dumber option of a pirate era with theme park stuff and themes to it and the only explanation being "it's a wacky world, don't think too hard about it".

No matter how wacky and nonsensical, "it's a wacky world!" is a much more satisfying setup than "it's all just pretend in the minds of kids playing a game!"

"Hey guys, the game you are playing is - wait for it - just a game! It's not real! None of it actually happened! It's all just in someone's examination!" is never a satisfying setup. We know. When I play a game, read a book, or watch a movie, I am aware that the story is fictional. I don't need the author to be all clever and tell me "YOOOO IT'S NOT REAL BRO I'M JUST TELLING A STORY!!!!"
It's shit-tier bottom of the barrel writing. A cheap cop-out midwit writers who aren't smart enough to write a good conclusion fall back on, pretending to be clever while they're actually just retarded.

 

[Brancaleone]

"Hey guys, the game you are playing is - wait for it - just a game! It's not real! None of it actually happened! It's all just in someone's examination!" is never a satisfying setup. We know. When I play a game, read a book, or watch a movie, I am aware that the story is fictional. I don't need the author to be all clever and tell me "YOOOO IT'S NOT REAL BRO I'M JUST TELLING A STORY!!!!"
It's shit-tier bottom of the barrel writing. A cheap cop-out midwit writers who aren't smart enough to write a good conclusion fall back on, pretending to be clever while they're actually just retarded.

What kind of magician would, during his magic trick, start yelling "The trick is here! Look, here! I'm doing this and this in order to make it look like it works!"? An incredibly clever magician, or a magician who knows even too well that he's far too clumsy to successfully disguise his trick?

 

[Boleskine]

Then when the audience begins to grow bored and question the skills of the magician, the magician kicks them out of venue and calls them illusion-fascists.

Afterward the magician complains to Magicians Weekly Magazine that it is very hard to be a magician and that when audience members say things like, "That trick sucks," it makes the magician very sad. Also, the magician says that the only reason those detractors didn't enjoy the trick is because they were actually expecting a different trick.

Other publications such as EuroMagician, Rock/Paper/Wand, and MagicianSpot go on to claim that magic audiences should just be appreciative that the magician is doing more tricks. They also uniformly declare that any criticism of the magician is tantamount to harassment, which allegedly occurred via notes pinned to the magician's bulletin board (the notes have since been destroyed, nobody can confirm having seen/read them), in order to discourage magic audiences from voicing less-than-favorable opinions about the magician's tricks.

edit - one more thing. This same magician once wrote an essay titled 'Why Magic Tricks Suck' complaining that some of them use the illusion of mortal danger, such as the 'sawing the assistant's body in half' trick. These tricks make the magician feel uncomfortable, so he declared that no magicians should use such tricks or concepts in their magic acts going forward. Over time the magician's arbitrary decree somehow became a core tenet of the magician community, despite the fact that other magicians may have different presentation styles or types of tricks that would justify the inclusion of mortal danger. Nobody bothered to question the usefulness of such a restrictive magic philosophy catering to the sensibilities of one particular magician who held no real authority over the magic community,

 

[Silentstorm]

Honestly, another issue i have with the ending is that the story ends in an anticlimatic way to get a kinda samey ending from Monkey Island 2...and i would have just preferred ending the normal story, i mean, there is an ending where Guybrush refuses to accept the truth...but congrats, it just cuts there and the story still isn't really finished because...well, because Ron Gilbert loves meta endings.

I have seen people defending it as genius or what not, but no argument has made me stop thinking it's just boring, also hated the ending of Thimbleweed Park, i guess meta endings can be done well, but when it's Ron Gilbert doing them, it just falls flat to me particularly because stuff ends when they are getting interesting or maybe we will get some answers just for a shock ending that doesn't have to actually explain stuff.

 

[JarlFrank]

I have seen people defending it as genius or what not

Only stupid people who have no imagination of their own believe that cop-out endings are "genius".

They're complete midwits who for some reason think that being slightly clever is a valid replacement for a real conclusion.

 

[Aeschylus]

I think the main takeaway from the ending is that Ron Gilbert is incapable of writing an ending that isn't shoved so far up its own ass it can see the sun.

Aside from that though I don't really see much justification for the hate the game is getting here. The art style is a bit off-putting at first, but mostly just fades into the background and becomes normal after an hour or two. The soundtrack, dialog, and voice performances I found to be mostly up to the standards of the originals. If there's a big criticism to level at the game it's that it is too easy/simplified, which leads to 90% of puzzles being pretty straightforward inventory puzzles. Ultimately though I think it has the bones of a classic MI game, just lacking the meat to make it really great. It's a pretty fun, shallow experience that needs to be about double the size and double the puzzle-design creativity to get to a higher level.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

"Hey guys, the game you are playing is - wait for it - just a game! It's not real! None of it actually happened! It's all just in someone's examination!

yeah invalidating pretty much every adventure you've ever been on as "they're just employees of a theme park so none of this even mattered anyway" is annoying. Plus it ruins Stan the most, He's the sort of guy you know is ripping you off but you don't care, versus now which is the context of he's just a minimum wage lackey for some themepark.
Ugh. I want to believe that Melee Island was a tourist trap that scammed people as opposed to just a section of a theme park. And reusing the T-Shirt joke was just lame.

I still think the secret all along was "Never pay more than $20 for a compuer game" because they proved it here.

 

[Darkozric]

The art style is a bit off-putting at first, but mostly just fades into the background and becomes normal after an hour or two

The taste of my cat's poop is a bit off-putting at first, but mostly fades away into the background and becomes normal after an hour of chewing. It becomes even better and more healthy if you mixed it with honey and cereals.

"The puzzles are shit, but "voice performances" are gud, I found myself fapping while listening to Dominic's performance, and we all know that adventures were always about voice performances.

Aside from that though, I don't really see much justification for the hate the game is getting here!"

No wonder why this pathetic coprolagnistic faggot has me on ignore.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

Return to Monkey Island was released less than ten days ago, yet it has already fallen to spot #67 on Steam's global top sellers list.

https://steamdb.info/stats/globaltopsellers/

I think MRY might have to revise his prediction that RTMI will be the most successful adventure game ever produced.

Day 15

Spot #114 on Steam.

Whining about toxic fandom and "retro fascists" apparently doesn't improves sales.

One month has passed since release.

Spot #253 on Steam sales charts.

That is all.

 

[Darkozric]

That is all.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Did 1 and 2 even have any voiced lines? I'm thinking no because one of the reasons I did not want to play Curse was that the voices annoyed me something fierce especially Guybroosh.
Add to that I read faster than the VAs talk (I guess as does anyone) and I get too bored waiting for them to say what I've already read and just skip it anyway.
Pirate song was funny but not worth all the annoyance. These special editions also added voices to 1 and 2 and it absolutely didn't work for me, especially the bone song with the awkward screeching voices.
I'd be more favorable towards Return if it wasn't voiced.

 

[vota DC]

There weren't voiced lines in the original games.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Did 1 and 2 even have any voiced lines?

Only the special editions did.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

I guess I should have said "I would be more favorable to Return if it had an option to switch it to a graphical MI 1/2 like style" , then.
Voices can probably be switched off already.

 

[JarlFrank]

Add to that I read faster than the VAs talk (I guess as does anyone) and I get too bored waiting for them to say what I've already read and just skip it anyway.

This is why I utterly despise the full voice acting trend in RPGs.

Games like Pillars of Eternity 2 and Divinity Original Sin 2 which have a LOT of text (and a lot of filler text) with full voice acting... ugh. Having a few lines voiced like Baldur's Gate or a few characters like Fallout was perfect. But full VA? Gotta switch that shit off.
Even Disco Elysium, which used to do it like Baldur's Gate with only a few voiced snippets, changed to full voice acting later in the extended edition patch. Because fuck you, I guess.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Having a few lines voiced like Baldur's Gate or a few characters like Fallout was perfect.

I really like the idea too because it means you set the character's tone with the opener lines, then you can basically write whatever you want, even have it dynamic because its all text. Morrowind did this well too which is why I'll never understand why they went full voice acting.
Its either you go heavy with dialogue in which then you do tone setting VA or go light with the dialogue and follow something similar to Deus Ex.
I think with VA it has to be justified that you're using it for the right reasons and not just chucking it in for the sake of having it, because mainstream won't touch your game unless it has full VA.

If mainstream won't touch it because of that chances are they weren't going to anyway.

Spot #253 on Steam sales charts.

Oh hey look at that.

 

[Darkozric]

Even Disco Elysium, which used to do it like Baldur's Gate with only a few voiced snippets, changed to full voice acting later in the extended edition patch. Because fuck you, I guess.

When I played this a part of its charm was to imagine those voices, but they had to ruin this aspect too. What DE actually needed was a gameplay expansion, not additional voice acting. They are cretins.

 

[80s Stallone]

Did 1 and 2 even have any voiced lines? I'm thinking no because one of the reasons I did not want to play Curse was that the voices annoyed me something fierce especially Guybroosh.
Add to that I read faster than the VAs talk (I guess as does anyone) and I get too bored waiting for them to say what I've already read and just skip it anyway.
Pirate song was funny but not worth all the annoyance. These special editions also added voices to 1 and 2 and it absolutely didn't work for me, especially the bone song with the awkward screeching voices.
I'd be more favorable towards Return if it wasn't voiced.

Imagine, turn Off speech in the options. I did.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

"Hey guys, the game you are playing is - wait for it - just a game! It's not real! None of it actually happened! It's all just in someone's examination!" is never a satisfying setup. We know. When I play a game, read a book, or watch a movie, I am aware that the story is fictional. I don't need the author to be all clever and tell me "YOOOO IT'S NOT REAL BRO I'M JUST TELLING A STORY!!!!"
It's shit-tier bottom of the barrel writing. A cheap cop-out midwit writers who aren't smart enough to write a good conclusion fall back on, pretending to be clever while they're actually just retarded.

What kind of magician would, during his magic trick, start yelling "The trick is here! Look, here! I'm doing this and this in order to make it look like it works!"? An incredibly clever magician, or a magician who knows even too well that he's far too clumsy to successfully disguise his trick?

I find this comparison an interesting one, because by and by large magicians suffer from the same kind of issues that adventure games do. Modern attitudes and the internet have made it very difficult for people to properly enjoy it, since you can find out how someone does it by looking it up and if you can do that what's so special about it? What do the magicians do? They try to do something that will blow the minds of the few people who actually bothered to show up. Meanwhile, in adventure games are doing something akin to a lame card trick and hoping someone will finally show up.