I forgot to mention Michel Creaton yes. As well as Godfather films with Mario Puzzos' input e.t.c. I did not claim that Curse destroyed MI. On the contrary it reboosted it. I just mentioned things I did not like and perhaps not a gospel but the original creator input is very important to the storyline. I started playing the games from MI1 in EGA version. I think that older fans and more sentimentaly attached than newer fans with no offense to anyone.
Demetris
You really can't be serious can you? For years and years Ron Gilbert has been saying that probably the ONLY thing he did not like in Curse was the way LA handled the relationship between Elaine and Guybrush as he said that Elaine sees Guybrush as her annoying brother and not as a lover!!!
This makes no sense. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it infuriates me.
I've played SoMI a LOT of times and did it seem then like they had a brother-sister relationship then?
In a word: NO. -.-
Guybrush : Who would have known, or even cared, if
you'd let me drown?
Governor : I would have, Guybrush.
Guybrush : (walks away) Oh, Governor...
Governor : (comes closer) Oh, Threepwood...
Guybrush : (comes closer) Oh, Elaine!
Governor : (comes closer) Oh, Guybrush!
Guybrush : (comes closer) Love muffin!
Governor : (comes closer) Sugar boots!
Guybrush : (comes closer) Honey pumpkin!
Governor : (comes closer) Plunder bunny!
Guybrush : Kiss me!
Governor : (turns away) No! We mustn't!
Guybrush : What?
Governor : Not here, where everyone can see us.
Guybrush : Why, are you ashamed of me?
Governor : No, no, it's not that at all... It's just that many of these
pirates have made advances toward me. And to avoid hurting their
feelings, I've always told them that my father made me promise
never to fall in love with a pirate. If they see us together,
they'll know I was lying.
Guybrush : Okay then, let's go to your place.
Governor : Okay.
(take some steps) But finish your trials first. I don't want you to
be... ...preoccupied.
Guybrush : But...
Governor : (walks away)
Guybrush : I feel this sudden urge to complete the trials... ...quickly.
This is not a brother-sister relationship. I totally agree with DonCopal saying that that aspect of MI2 makes little sense, while CMI got the relationship back where it should have been.
If Ron Gilbert thinks that CMI messed up their relationship because they should have had a more sibling type of relationship, then he shouldn't have had them making sexual advances toward each other in the first game! I mean, seriously. It makes me mad how stupid it sounds to suggest that they didn't love each other as consenting adults.
even in MI 2 Guybrush was saying how he wants to win her back with the love bomb and other lines mention guybrush having feelings for her. Elaine allmost got back with him till he mentioned the map. I never once thought of them as bro and sis relation more just a rough patch
If Ron Gilbert thinks that CMI messed up their relationship because they should have had a more sibling type of relationship, then he shouldn't have had them making sexual advances toward each other in the first game! I mean, seriously. It makes me mad how stupid it sounds to suggest that they didn't love each other as consenting adults.
If I remember Gilbert's quote right he was saying more that she saw him kind of like a little brother, not that they had a sibling relationship. The second game makes it pretty clear that Elaine has some attraction to guybrush but doesn't really respect him as an adult, hence the relationship not really working at all. The third game abruptly giving them a traditional trouble-free romance without even acknowledging the development of her character in the previous game was simply poor storytelling, there's really no two ways about it.
Well, I think that Curse, Escape and Tales fit more with the idea of their relationship that was developed in Secret than Revenge does. As was said earlier in this thread, he is a pirate after all. He's not a conventional pirate, but that was part of his charm: "Why do you want to be a pirate? You don't look like one, your face is too... sweet."
Personally, I don't feel that Revenge sufficiently explained why she was mad at him in the first place, and for him to want the map is just part an adventure he was on. In Secret, she didn't seem to care that he was working on the trials and so needed the idol. Why then should she be mad at him for wanting the map?
Also, in Revenge, she ridicules him for giving a too-long explanation, but I was always rather mad at her for not interrupting him long enough to get him out of that hole.To force him to explain himself in full before she even considers helping him was, I think, rather selfish. And again, it's not made entirely clear exactly why she's so mad at him as to make him do that. For him to want the map is just his modus operandi. She should know him well enough not to be mad about that.
Near the end of Secret, it's made clear that she felt she had the situation with LeChuck well in hand without Guybrush's help but I would think that, as a woman, she would appreciate the gesture and think it valiant and romantic. In Revenge, however, it seems that she thinks he's inept and is wasting his time with pointless adventures instead of paying more attention to her. She wasn't so selfish in Secret to treat him that way, she was more independent than that, and so the same for the later games where she seems to understand him better then.
In fact, I would add that at the end of Curse, she seems to have redirected the roller coaster, knowing full well that Guybrush would make his way there in an effort to stop LeChuck. Her doing so helped him in creating a way to stop LeChuck, which is in line with both Tales and Secret in that she seems to have been making plans. The only difference with Secret is that she had her own plans in that game, hadn't included Guybrush in them and so didn't expect him to mess them up. By Curse and Tales however, she knows him well enough to plan around and for his usual method of operation. It makes perfect sense to me.
I think Revenge is the one that doesn't make sense. In that game, she seems to be completely oblivious that he's been hanging by a rope over a giant hole for 3 days, makes no effort to help Guybrush or stop LeChuck after Guybrush falls (she only says "What could be keeping Guybrush? I hope LeChuck hasn't put some horrible SPELL over him or anything",) and gets mad at him for doing something that she ignored completely in Secret, perhaps even encouraged back then.
In fact, I would add that at the end of Curse, she seems to have redirected the roller coaster, knowing full well that Guybrush would make his way there in an effort to stop LeChuck. Her doing so helped him in creating a way to stop LeChuck, which is in line with both Tales and Secret in that she seems to have been making plans. The only difference with Secret is that she had her own plans in that game, hadn't included Guybrush in them and so didn't expect him to mess them up. By Curse and Tales however, she knows him well enough to plan around and for his usual method of operation. It makes perfect sense to me.
I think Revenge is the one that doesn't make sense. In that game, she seems to be completely oblivious that he's been hanging by a rope over a giant hole for 3 days, makes no effort to help Guybrush or stop LeChuck after Guybrush falls (she only says "What could be keeping Guybrush? I hope LeChuck hasn't put some horrible SPELL over him or anything",) and gets mad at him for doing something that she ignored completely in Secret, perhaps even encouraged back then.
I agree with most of what you said. However, the reason why Elaine probably got so upset over him wanting the map piece was because she thought he truly wanted to apologize to her. In Secret, Guybrush came to the mansion solely for the purpose of wanting the idol and it makes more sense for Elaine not to get mad at him then because he didn't try to use his attraction to her as a disguise for what he really wanted. She does get upset though when he could not form a cohesive sentence, showing that even though she didn’t get upset for stealing the idol, she still wanted manners from him.
In Revenge, she had stopped seeing him, but obviously still had feelings for him. By the time of Revenge, she had developed a lot of feelings for him and for him to come in saying he is sorry only for her to find out that he wants the map was a crushing blow to her emotions. Even if many people think that she should’ve realized that it is part of who he was to want the map and should not have taken it personally, emotions always get the better of you. When you are emotional, it overrides any type of logic. People are much more prone to illogical actions when they are emotional, especially if it deals with intimate feelings, such as Elaine demonstrated when she threw the map piece out the window.
I did not claim that Curse destroyed MI. On the contrary it reboosted it.
I think I said the same thing above. Typical Guybrush is willing to ruin someones' life just to get his job done. Remember the cook and the rat? How about him stealing poor Wallys' monocle to get out of the island? Disturbing the dead for a piece of map? Stealing a dog for searching for a map piece to get his job done? Fooling the poor guy at Booty Island by blowing a ships horn just to change the flags? How about nailing a coffin seller into a coffin with no worry if anyone will find out or if he dies in the coffin? Or accusing Kate of being Guybrush and putting her into prison? Is our good Guybrush not such a good guy afterall?
I don't understand your point, or what you're referring to in quoting yourself.
The title of the thread says "Did Curse destroy Monkey Island," and there are people who say that Ron Gilbert says that CMI got off track with the Guybrush+Elaine relationship, while I believe that it's Revenge's depiction of their relationship that doesn't fit, rather than CMI. The other recent posts besides yours discuss that debate, so I'm not sure what you're agreeing with. I'm also unsure what Guybrush being a jerk on a regular basis has to do with "reboost(ing) CMI."
I do understand and can agree with the idea that, in Revenge, Elaine may have been hurt by Guybrush's insensitivity, but that still doesn't sufficiently explain why she made him completely explain himself in the hole (and rather than interrupting him long enough to help, she only chastized him later,) didn't help him or stop LeChuck when he fell, or why Ron would say that she sees Guybrush more as a little brother when she might as well have said she loved him and wanted to have sex with him in the first game when she came to rescue him after being thrown off the dock. This doesn't sound little-brother-ish to me.
In the second game she ditched him because she decided their relationship wasn't really going to work, and was angry about the business with the map back because it showed that she was right all along and he was more interested in his silly quests than in her. Nothing about this is inconsistent with the first game at all. She changed because sometimes fictional characters are allowed to, you know, develop.
Their relationship in curse is more or less consistent with the first game, yes. But the second game moved the characters and their relationship in a different direction, and if you do that it's bad storytelling to reset them to how they were before without giving any convincing motivation for them doing so. When the viewer is forced to come up with their own speculation to explain away inconsistencies in characterisation, the writers aren't doing a good job.
He spends days explaining his whole backstory while hanging from a rope because doing so is funny. And you're still taking the 'little brother' thing painfully literally.
The thing is that Curse had a hard task of revamping the series and HAD to come up with a valid story for the ending of MI2. And as I said, Guybrush is shown in a complete different way in the first two games rather than the later. In reality he is more... evil... shall we say in the first two games while in the later two he is shown more naive and silly like. I especially did not like the way LeChuck was treated in Curse as a woos. But I do not think that Curse destroyed MI. And I agree with the above poster regarding everything.
I would bet real money that, without CMI, there would only be 2 MI games made. Ever. I'm convinced that even if Ron did have an MI3 in mind (which I'm not sure I believe,) then he still would never have followed through with making it.
Consider that, even now, the last adult/family-oriented adventure game (ie. one not targeted for small kids) that Ron helped to make before Penny Arcade Adventures and DeathSpank (which isn't even out yet) was MI2 itself and that was 19 years ago. This says something to me about his intent (or lack thereof) to have ever followed up on MI2 with another sequel, even if CMI had never been made.
So I praise CMI both for continuing the series and for giving us Dominic and Earl.
I would bet real money that, without CMI, there would only be 2 MI games made. Ever. I'm convinced that even if Ron did have an MI3 in mind (which I'm not sure I believe,) then he still would never have followed through with making it.
That's exactly what I wish had happened. MI2 should've been the end.
That's exactly what I wish had happened. MI2 should've been the end.
Blasphemy, sir.
Then we wouldn't have Tales either, and without Tales I wouldn't have bothered to investigate Telltale long enough to ever buy episodic Sam & Max, yet now I have all 3 seasons of it.
I like playing good original adventure games. Sequels that push things in interesting new directions are fine; sequels that just reheat the same old ideas I can live without. I love MI2 because it took what was established in the first game and expanded and built on it, and then finished in an interesting way. The rest of the series is generally enjoyable but basically needless.
The popular idea that every good thing needs to be a franchise extending into infinity kind of depresses me. What I used to love about vintage Lucasarts was that, until the later Monkey Islands, they never sequelized anything unless there was a solid creative reason to do so.
What I used to love about vintage Lucasarts was that, until the later Monkey Islands, they never sequelized anything unless there was a solid creative reason to do so.
So... you're saying you're glad that they cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police in favor of more Star Wars shovelware?
The fact is that Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones are the only things I can thing of right off the top of my head that they made sequels for at all. If there are more, I bet you could only count them on one hand. Star Wars doesn't count.
Besides, a person can make any excuse at all and call it a "creative reason" for doing something. More often, LEC would cancel something creative in favor of Star Wars and blame it on the gaming market.
Telltale doesn't need "creative reasons" to make Sam and Max or Tales, but I love these games and think it ridiculous to suggest they're a waste because the furtherance of the story is unneccessary. These aren't crappy direct-to-video Disney sequels we're talking about, these are wonderful guaranteed-classic adventure games.
If anything, I would say that the end of MI2 is so stupid and random that it required a sequel that I still am not convinced Ron would ever have made, even without CMI. CMI is necessary for the story to continue after what happened in MI2's ending, same as Tales is necessary to continue after EMI in general. As has been said that EMI is better as a black sheep if it's a middle title instead of at the end, so I would say that MI2's ending is more tolerable when it's not the end of the story either.
I've been told by instructors that when listening to/playing music, that "the first impression and the last impression are the most important." I would say the same goes for good storytelling, even in video games and as such, having the story end with MI2's carnival or EMI's monkey robot would be quite lame.
Tales works perfectly fine as an end to the series with how awesome it ended (though I really do want more games and keep the awesome going.) Sure, it has a cliffanger, but it's a good cliffhanger not a stupid one that makes you wonder what the hell just happened.
To further my previous post, I think I should add that there are games that do require a sequel, yet don't have one and suffer greatly for it. Torin's Passage is a good example. As it stands, I would never recommend this game. I liked it alot, but the ending is anticlimactic.
He learns that he's a prince and heir to the throne, and then he rescues his adoptive parents and goes home with them to their small farm house... and that's it. Roll credits.
Al Lowe, who is a great game designer by the way, has said himself that the game was designed with a sequel in mind.
So the same apparently goes for Ron Gilbert. Ron claims that he wrote MI2 with an MI3 in mind (again, I'm not convinced that he isn't just saying that, but still.) Yet, the MI3 that Ron claims to have originally planned for never got made, never will be made, and never would have been made even without CMI.
For the record, I love the MI universe. I love the characters, the voice acting, the humor and everything else. But with how random and nonsensical the end of MI2 was, if the MI series had stopped with that game, I would never ever tell anyone to play MI2. SMI, yes of course that game is awesome, but it can stand on its own. As it stands now though, I plan on getting my nephews (and my own kids when I have them) hooked on the entire MI series. I probably wouldn't even bother with telling anyone about any of it, if it were that MI2 was the last game.
So... you're saying you're glad that they cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police in favor of more Star Wars shovelware?
The fact is that Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones are the only things I can thing of right off the top of my head that they made sequels for at all. If there are more, I bet you could only count them on one hand. Star Wars doesn't count.
Did you even read what I said? I said I *liked* the fact that vintage Lucasarts was more interested in exploring original ideas and only tended to return to old games on special occasions.
I'm slightly more forgiving of something like Sam & Max being continued because the whole set up there is geared for a series format; only the two main characters have to be there and otherwise there's a lot of freedom in what can be done. Likewise as crap as most Star Wars games are, the universe itself is the only constant factor - the story itself can in theory be about pretty much anything. But post MI2, the Monkey Island series has had the same core characters in the same roles more or less playing out the same simple story with minor variations. There's no real point there beyond providing 'a bit more monkey island'.
I honestly don't get what was so nonsensical about the MI2 ending. There are hints throughout the games that all isn't quite what it appears, then in a twist it turns out that it was two kids playing in a theme park, with another hint that maybe it's all a magic spell - the player is left to decide. It's really not that hard to understand. Have you people never seen a movie with an ambiguous ending before? I get the sense that gamers have difficulty dealing with even mildly challenging or unexpected storytelling approaches. The painfully literal explanation for MI2s ending in Curse certainly didn't do either game any favours.
I honestly don't get what was so nonsensical about the MI2 ending. There are hints throughout the games that all isn't quite what it appears, then in a twist it turns out that it was two kids playing in a theme park, with another hint that maybe it's all a magic spell - the player is left to decide. It's really not that hard to understand. Have you people never seen a movie with an ambiguous ending before? I get the sense that gamers have difficulty dealing with even mildly challenging or unexpected storytelling approaches. The painfully literal explanation for MI2s ending in Curse certainly didn't do either game any favours.
I honestly don't get why people make the ending out to be this huge deep thing when it was just a corny Star Wars reference and intentionally anti-climactic beyond reason. I'm fairly certain that Tim has even said at some point that it was supposed to be anti-climactic and not mean anything. It's not like Ron, Tim and Dave were like "oh man, this would be so epic if we had this killer ending open to interpretation" It was ridiculous and over the top to make fun of movies that have big "reveals" at the ending (for example, Darth Vader being Luke's father, blatantly referenced in the ending scene of MI2), but it was still a crap ending.
There aren't "hints" throughout the games. You're finding hints where there are none, because the ending was made as a joke, not some super-serious conclusion to some amazing dramatic storyline. The storyline in MI has always existed solely to provide the possibility of jokes. It was never meant to have some deep serious story that would blow your mind or something ridiculous like that, and if "oh, uh... they're kids in a theme park" blows your mind, you're pretty easy to amuse. (Not to mention that Ron has publicly stated that the whole kids in a theme park thing isn't a correct theory at all)
I don't know why is it so hard to accept that the MI2 ending is deliberately anticlimatic and parodic. For me it's brilliant and ingenious because it is so simple and yet almost 20 years later we still discuss it over and over again
The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the best in the series. More than a game, I treat that part as a work of art. It *is* a work of art. Beautifully hand-drawn animations and backdrops, a brilliant soundtrack (Michael Land FTW), funny, clever. Jesus, that game rocked. It is my number two on the "Best Games of All Time" list. I understand some people have a purist view on the subject, wanting future games (>= 3 (CMI)) to be canon to the story of the previous part, but I reject the notion that CMI ruined the series. It brought the series into the modern age and I believe it shows what LucasArts is capable of if the just stop making those god-damned Star Wars games all the time!
Did you even read what I said? I said I *liked* the fact that vintage Lucasarts was more interested in exploring original ideas and only tended to return to old games on special occasions.
Yes, and what I said in response was that, most often, they wouldn't not-create-sequels to games merely because the story didn't require it, but rather they didn't create them because LEC thought Star Wars was more worth the effort of milking the hell out of. This is to say that I'd have preferred more classic adventure game sequels and less Star Wars shovelware.
I loved Curse myself, just as I love all of the MI games (yes, even EMI, although it was definitely the low point of the series), and I honestly couldn't care less whether Ron has a hand in making any more MI sequels. He made his own decision to kick that license to the curb years ago, and we've all seen how a director with a few great works of art can try to recreate the magic years later and fail horrendously (the LucasArts namesake...what a coincidence).
Man, and I thought I had the weirdest preferences on these forums (since only a few here seem to agree with me on Escape being awesome or Tales' soundtrack being lacking, for example), but this Barnabus guy easily beats me.
Curse was just a bit pointless. MI2 ended the story perfectly, although I realise a lot of people like nice neat conclusions.
It's not a bad little game, don't get me wrong, but to me it's not Monkey Island. I don't treat it or anything after it as canon. Its feel, its (cartoonish) graphical style, the characterisation, even the fact that the characters are voiced rather than having text, well it all feels wrong somehow.
I almost group it in the same category as Quest for Glory 5 or Gabriel Knight 2: a graphical adventure from the end of the genre's golden age, when games companies were trying to do new things with them to make them more appealing in a very different landscape and, for the most part, failing.
I honestly don't get what was so nonsensical about the MI2 ending. There are hints throughout the games that all isn't quite what it appears, then in a twist it turns out that it was two kids playing in a theme park, with another hint that maybe it's all a magic spell - the player is left to decide. It's really not that hard to understand. Have you people never seen a movie with an ambiguous ending before? I get the sense that gamers have difficulty dealing with even mildly challenging or unexpected storytelling approaches. The painfully literal explanation for MI2s ending in Curse certainly didn't do either game any favours.
I completely agree. It's quite a daring concept in a computer game, I think. It's almost like some people would rather not have any depth or experimentation in storytelling, from the violent reactions against it.
I honestly don't get why people make the ending out to be this huge deep thing when it was just a corny Star Wars reference and intentionally anti-climactic beyond reason. I'm fairly certain that Tim has even said at some point that it was supposed to be anti-climactic and not mean anything. It's not like Ron, Tim and Dave were like "oh man, this would be so epic if we had this killer ending open to interpretation" It was ridiculous and over the top to make fun of movies that have big "reveals" at the ending (for example, Darth Vader being Luke's father, blatantly referenced in the ending scene of MI2), but it was still a crap ending.
There aren't "hints" throughout the games. You're finding hints where there are none, because the ending was made as a joke, not some super-serious conclusion to some amazing dramatic storyline. The storyline in MI has always existed solely to provide the possibility of jokes. It was never meant to have some deep serious story that would blow your mind or something ridiculous like that, and if "oh, uh... they're kids in a theme park" blows your mind, you're pretty easy to amuse. (Not to mention that Ron has publicly stated that the whole kids in a theme park thing isn't a correct theory at all)
It's not meant to be "super serious", and the themepark theory doesn't exclude it ALSO being intended as a funny Star Wars reference. I think the hints throughout actually introduce another level of fun, making you see the games in a new light as well.
I think you're doing the series a bit of a disservice, to be honest.
I'm just gonna ignore most of the posts in here cause really, I don't need to read every last theory out there. Most fans have their own take, and since this thread is called "Did CoMI destroy Monkey Island?" I'll give my own take.
The short answer: No.
The long answer: Nooooooooooo- okay, sorry, had to toss that joke in there.
In all seriousness, I actually enjoyed Curse of Monkey Island the most. It had just the right amount of difficulty, even if a couple of the puzzles left me agonizing for an hour or more before I had to - in frustration - go and quickly look it up, then slap myself on the forehead going "how the hell did I miss that?". Where as when I played Monkey Island 2 Special Edition, I sadly found myself having to get a "hint" on about a third of the puzzles, cause I just wasn't able to put 2 and 2 together on a number of them. They were, again, more of those "how did I miss this?" moments, but a few of them I just didn't even know I could do a couple of those things. I think one of the more humbling ones was not realizing I could use the bucket of mud on Largo's door; I so rarely ever close doors, it never even occurred to me to have anything to do with it.
Someone I recall once threw out the phrase "Monkey Island Logic", and I think that really does apply. Monkey Island 1, however, I never needed a single hint. That felt good. I felt .. well, I honestly felt like I was trying to run up a very steep hill with Monkey Island 2, and the tedious back-tracking was rather annoying. I enjoyed the commentary where they even admitted that "having to visit all islands to solve all puzzles" was something they weren't super happy about afterwards.
Honestly, if you listen to the commentary, you'd quickly realize that Ron Gilbert not only was okay with the sequels, but they all even stated that Monkey Island 2 is listed as both one of the Top 10 Best Endings AND Top 10 Worst Endings. They pretty much stated they simply came up with an idea over dinner one night and started putting several twists onto it and came up with the ending. They were both rather pleased with it, but also disappointed because they knew, later on, that it was gonna divide the fans down the middle. That wasn't what they'd intended, but it was what happened, and they were saddened by it.
I will also make a confession. While I had played all the King's Quest games in the late 90's via the King's Quest Collection, I never was able to get copies of Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, or many other great games of the genre. So the first game I finally got to play (although I'd long known about the series) was Escape From Monkey Island.
To sum it up, I loved the game, hated Monkey Fu or whatever it was called, and desperately wanted to play the others. Sadly, it wouldn't happen for years. While I chuckled and even laughed out loud playing Monkey Island 1 and 2 on the Xbox 360 for the first time, Curse of Monkey Island made me laugh the hardest, really sealed up most of the plotholes, and enjoyed poking a bit of fun at the ones that remained. I loved the artwork, the voice acting was great, and I loved all the nods and references to the previous games.
In no way did Monkey Island 3 hurt the series. If anything, it saved it, because love it or hate it, there's no question that Monkey Island 2 had.. as TVTropes would call it.. a GAINAX Ending. Where there are almost NO answers to the many questions, more questions are made, and in general the player is left feeling unsatisfied, disappointed, and likely wanting to know WTF just happened.
Monkey Island 2 is essentially like Monty Python & the Holy Grail. It's super, fun, and great all the way up until the heavily WTF ending, and it just feels.. almost like a cop-out, I guess. If anything, it feels like the odd man out in the series. I loved playing it, I enjoyed the humour, and I still like the notions and theories that have sprung up to explain it..
But guys (and gals), you have to face facts. Curse, Escape, and Tales ARE official canon. Ron was in no way upset by their creation, and unlike Metroid when it's creator left, the sequels to Monkey Island have only made the characters more interesting, more endearing, and given the series exactly what it needed.
EDIT: Noticed someone mentioned Lucas and StarWars in conjunction with Ron and Monkey Island. I should point out that Lucas has pretty much destroyed StarWars with constant retcons, remakes, and expanded universe crap which, in my opinion, watered down so much of what made the original trilogy great.
Don't always say the creator would do better, or that the creator always knows best. The example of Lucas and StarWars is the other side of the Author Coin. I personally think Nintendo has destroyed the Metroid series after Gunpei was dishonoured and left the company. I did find Fusion to be good, but after knowing that Sakamoto had Other M's storyline in mind back when Fusion was made.. I can't even play it without thinking of that abomination, and what the bastard did to a series (and a character) I loved growing up.
So yeah.. be careful what you wish for guys. Ron seems like a pretty intelligent guy, I doubt he'd make all the mistakes some have made, and I would think he's happy people still play new Monkey Island games and love the characters he created.
Responses like those make me feel all warm and demonic inside.
In-joking aside, if I can make a post like that and not only remain unflamed, but actually agreed with, it certainly makes me feel better about the MI community. I've been in other communities where people just don't know how to handle posts like mine. Many thanks.
Comments
Demetris
This makes no sense. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it infuriates me.
I've played SoMI a LOT of times and did it seem then like they had a brother-sister relationship then?
In a word: NO. -.-
This is not a brother-sister relationship. I totally agree with DonCopal saying that that aspect of MI2 makes little sense, while CMI got the relationship back where it should have been.
If Ron Gilbert thinks that CMI messed up their relationship because they should have had a more sibling type of relationship, then he shouldn't have had them making sexual advances toward each other in the first game! I mean, seriously. It makes me mad how stupid it sounds to suggest that they didn't love each other as consenting adults.
even in MI 2 Guybrush was saying how he wants to win her back with the love bomb and other lines mention guybrush having feelings for her. Elaine allmost got back with him till he mentioned the map. I never once thought of them as bro and sis relation more just a rough patch
If I remember Gilbert's quote right he was saying more that she saw him kind of like a little brother, not that they had a sibling relationship. The second game makes it pretty clear that Elaine has some attraction to guybrush but doesn't really respect him as an adult, hence the relationship not really working at all. The third game abruptly giving them a traditional trouble-free romance without even acknowledging the development of her character in the previous game was simply poor storytelling, there's really no two ways about it.
Personally, I don't feel that Revenge sufficiently explained why she was mad at him in the first place, and for him to want the map is just part an adventure he was on. In Secret, she didn't seem to care that he was working on the trials and so needed the idol. Why then should she be mad at him for wanting the map?
Also, in Revenge, she ridicules him for giving a too-long explanation, but I was always rather mad at her for not interrupting him long enough to get him out of that hole.To force him to explain himself in full before she even considers helping him was, I think, rather selfish. And again, it's not made entirely clear exactly why she's so mad at him as to make him do that. For him to want the map is just his modus operandi. She should know him well enough not to be mad about that.
Near the end of Secret, it's made clear that she felt she had the situation with LeChuck well in hand without Guybrush's help but I would think that, as a woman, she would appreciate the gesture and think it valiant and romantic. In Revenge, however, it seems that she thinks he's inept and is wasting his time with pointless adventures instead of paying more attention to her. She wasn't so selfish in Secret to treat him that way, she was more independent than that, and so the same for the later games where she seems to understand him better then.
^ Yes.
I think Revenge is the one that doesn't make sense. In that game, she seems to be completely oblivious that he's been hanging by a rope over a giant hole for 3 days, makes no effort to help Guybrush or stop LeChuck after Guybrush falls (she only says "What could be keeping Guybrush? I hope LeChuck hasn't put some horrible SPELL over him or anything",) and gets mad at him for doing something that she ignored completely in Secret, perhaps even encouraged back then.
I agree with most of what you said. However, the reason why Elaine probably got so upset over him wanting the map piece was because she thought he truly wanted to apologize to her. In Secret, Guybrush came to the mansion solely for the purpose of wanting the idol and it makes more sense for Elaine not to get mad at him then because he didn't try to use his attraction to her as a disguise for what he really wanted. She does get upset though when he could not form a cohesive sentence, showing that even though she didn’t get upset for stealing the idol, she still wanted manners from him.
In Revenge, she had stopped seeing him, but obviously still had feelings for him. By the time of Revenge, she had developed a lot of feelings for him and for him to come in saying he is sorry only for her to find out that he wants the map was a crushing blow to her emotions. Even if many people think that she should’ve realized that it is part of who he was to want the map and should not have taken it personally, emotions always get the better of you. When you are emotional, it overrides any type of logic. People are much more prone to illogical actions when they are emotional, especially if it deals with intimate feelings, such as Elaine demonstrated when she threw the map piece out the window.
I think I said the same thing above. Typical Guybrush is willing to ruin someones' life just to get his job done. Remember the cook and the rat? How about him stealing poor Wallys' monocle to get out of the island? Disturbing the dead for a piece of map? Stealing a dog for searching for a map piece to get his job done? Fooling the poor guy at Booty Island by blowing a ships horn just to change the flags? How about nailing a coffin seller into a coffin with no worry if anyone will find out or if he dies in the coffin? Or accusing Kate of being Guybrush and putting her into prison? Is our good Guybrush not such a good guy afterall?
The title of the thread says "Did Curse destroy Monkey Island," and there are people who say that Ron Gilbert says that CMI got off track with the Guybrush+Elaine relationship, while I believe that it's Revenge's depiction of their relationship that doesn't fit, rather than CMI. The other recent posts besides yours discuss that debate, so I'm not sure what you're agreeing with. I'm also unsure what Guybrush being a jerk on a regular basis has to do with "reboost(ing) CMI."
I do understand and can agree with the idea that, in Revenge, Elaine may have been hurt by Guybrush's insensitivity, but that still doesn't sufficiently explain why she made him completely explain himself in the hole (and rather than interrupting him long enough to help, she only chastized him later,) didn't help him or stop LeChuck when he fell, or why Ron would say that she sees Guybrush more as a little brother when she might as well have said she loved him and wanted to have sex with him in the first game when she came to rescue him after being thrown off the dock. This doesn't sound little-brother-ish to me.
Their relationship in curse is more or less consistent with the first game, yes. But the second game moved the characters and their relationship in a different direction, and if you do that it's bad storytelling to reset them to how they were before without giving any convincing motivation for them doing so. When the viewer is forced to come up with their own speculation to explain away inconsistencies in characterisation, the writers aren't doing a good job.
He spends days explaining his whole backstory while hanging from a rope because doing so is funny. And you're still taking the 'little brother' thing painfully literally.
I really, really do very much agree with this.
I would bet real money that, without CMI, there would only be 2 MI games made. Ever. I'm convinced that even if Ron did have an MI3 in mind (which I'm not sure I believe,) then he still would never have followed through with making it.
Consider that, even now, the last adult/family-oriented adventure game (ie. one not targeted for small kids) that Ron helped to make before Penny Arcade Adventures and DeathSpank (which isn't even out yet) was MI2 itself and that was 19 years ago. This says something to me about his intent (or lack thereof) to have ever followed up on MI2 with another sequel, even if CMI had never been made.
So I praise CMI both for continuing the series and for giving us Dominic and Earl.
That's exactly what I wish had happened. MI2 should've been the end.
http://n4g.com/news/539624/legendary-game-designer-to-reveal-new-project-on-gttv
Blasphemy, sir.
Then we wouldn't have Tales either, and without Tales I wouldn't have bothered to investigate Telltale long enough to ever buy episodic Sam & Max, yet now I have all 3 seasons of it.
0% chance that it's Ron Gilbert with his "Monkey Island 3"
You apparently hate playing good adventure games.
The popular idea that every good thing needs to be a franchise extending into infinity kind of depresses me. What I used to love about vintage Lucasarts was that, until the later Monkey Islands, they never sequelized anything unless there was a solid creative reason to do so.
So... you're saying you're glad that they cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police in favor of more Star Wars shovelware?
The fact is that Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones are the only things I can thing of right off the top of my head that they made sequels for at all. If there are more, I bet you could only count them on one hand. Star Wars doesn't count.
Besides, a person can make any excuse at all and call it a "creative reason" for doing something. More often, LEC would cancel something creative in favor of Star Wars and blame it on the gaming market.
Telltale doesn't need "creative reasons" to make Sam and Max or Tales, but I love these games and think it ridiculous to suggest they're a waste because the furtherance of the story is unneccessary. These aren't crappy direct-to-video Disney sequels we're talking about, these are wonderful guaranteed-classic adventure games.
If anything, I would say that the end of MI2 is so stupid and random that it required a sequel that I still am not convinced Ron would ever have made, even without CMI. CMI is necessary for the story to continue after what happened in MI2's ending, same as Tales is necessary to continue after EMI in general. As has been said that EMI is better as a black sheep if it's a middle title instead of at the end, so I would say that MI2's ending is more tolerable when it's not the end of the story either.
I've been told by instructors that when listening to/playing music, that "the first impression and the last impression are the most important." I would say the same goes for good storytelling, even in video games and as such, having the story end with MI2's carnival or EMI's monkey robot would be quite lame.
Tales works perfectly fine as an end to the series with how awesome it ended (though I really do want more games and keep the awesome going.) Sure, it has a cliffanger, but it's a good cliffhanger not a stupid one that makes you wonder what the hell just happened.
So the same apparently goes for Ron Gilbert. Ron claims that he wrote MI2 with an MI3 in mind (again, I'm not convinced that he isn't just saying that, but still.) Yet, the MI3 that Ron claims to have originally planned for never got made, never will be made, and never would have been made even without CMI.
For the record, I love the MI universe. I love the characters, the voice acting, the humor and everything else. But with how random and nonsensical the end of MI2 was, if the MI series had stopped with that game, I would never ever tell anyone to play MI2. SMI, yes of course that game is awesome, but it can stand on its own. As it stands now though, I plan on getting my nephews (and my own kids when I have them) hooked on the entire MI series. I probably wouldn't even bother with telling anyone about any of it, if it were that MI2 was the last game.
In short, I think MonkeyMania said it best with:
Did you even read what I said? I said I *liked* the fact that vintage Lucasarts was more interested in exploring original ideas and only tended to return to old games on special occasions.
I'm slightly more forgiving of something like Sam & Max being continued because the whole set up there is geared for a series format; only the two main characters have to be there and otherwise there's a lot of freedom in what can be done. Likewise as crap as most Star Wars games are, the universe itself is the only constant factor - the story itself can in theory be about pretty much anything. But post MI2, the Monkey Island series has had the same core characters in the same roles more or less playing out the same simple story with minor variations. There's no real point there beyond providing 'a bit more monkey island'.
I honestly don't get what was so nonsensical about the MI2 ending. There are hints throughout the games that all isn't quite what it appears, then in a twist it turns out that it was two kids playing in a theme park, with another hint that maybe it's all a magic spell - the player is left to decide. It's really not that hard to understand. Have you people never seen a movie with an ambiguous ending before? I get the sense that gamers have difficulty dealing with even mildly challenging or unexpected storytelling approaches. The painfully literal explanation for MI2s ending in Curse certainly didn't do either game any favours.
I honestly don't get why people make the ending out to be this huge deep thing when it was just a corny Star Wars reference and intentionally anti-climactic beyond reason. I'm fairly certain that Tim has even said at some point that it was supposed to be anti-climactic and not mean anything. It's not like Ron, Tim and Dave were like "oh man, this would be so epic if we had this killer ending open to interpretation" It was ridiculous and over the top to make fun of movies that have big "reveals" at the ending (for example, Darth Vader being Luke's father, blatantly referenced in the ending scene of MI2), but it was still a crap ending.
There aren't "hints" throughout the games. You're finding hints where there are none, because the ending was made as a joke, not some super-serious conclusion to some amazing dramatic storyline. The storyline in MI has always existed solely to provide the possibility of jokes. It was never meant to have some deep serious story that would blow your mind or something ridiculous like that, and if "oh, uh... they're kids in a theme park" blows your mind, you're pretty easy to amuse. (Not to mention that Ron has publicly stated that the whole kids in a theme park thing isn't a correct theory at all)
Yes, and what I said in response was that, most often, they wouldn't not-create-sequels to games merely because the story didn't require it, but rather they didn't create them because LEC thought Star Wars was more worth the effort of milking the hell out of. This is to say that I'd have preferred more classic adventure game sequels and less Star Wars shovelware.
His ship sailed off into the sunset long ago.
It's not a bad little game, don't get me wrong, but to me it's not Monkey Island. I don't treat it or anything after it as canon. Its feel, its (cartoonish) graphical style, the characterisation, even the fact that the characters are voiced rather than having text, well it all feels wrong somehow.
I almost group it in the same category as Quest for Glory 5 or Gabriel Knight 2: a graphical adventure from the end of the genre's golden age, when games companies were trying to do new things with them to make them more appealing in a very different landscape and, for the most part, failing.
I completely agree. It's quite a daring concept in a computer game, I think. It's almost like some people would rather not have any depth or experimentation in storytelling, from the violent reactions against it.
It's not meant to be "super serious", and the themepark theory doesn't exclude it ALSO being intended as a funny Star Wars reference. I think the hints throughout actually introduce another level of fun, making you see the games in a new light as well.
I think you're doing the series a bit of a disservice, to be honest.
The short answer: No.
The long answer: Nooooooooooo- okay, sorry, had to toss that joke in there.
In all seriousness, I actually enjoyed Curse of Monkey Island the most. It had just the right amount of difficulty, even if a couple of the puzzles left me agonizing for an hour or more before I had to - in frustration - go and quickly look it up, then slap myself on the forehead going "how the hell did I miss that?". Where as when I played Monkey Island 2 Special Edition, I sadly found myself having to get a "hint" on about a third of the puzzles, cause I just wasn't able to put 2 and 2 together on a number of them. They were, again, more of those "how did I miss this?" moments, but a few of them I just didn't even know I could do a couple of those things. I think one of the more humbling ones was not realizing I could use the bucket of mud on Largo's door; I so rarely ever close doors, it never even occurred to me to have anything to do with it.
Someone I recall once threw out the phrase "Monkey Island Logic", and I think that really does apply. Monkey Island 1, however, I never needed a single hint. That felt good. I felt .. well, I honestly felt like I was trying to run up a very steep hill with Monkey Island 2, and the tedious back-tracking was rather annoying. I enjoyed the commentary where they even admitted that "having to visit all islands to solve all puzzles" was something they weren't super happy about afterwards.
Honestly, if you listen to the commentary, you'd quickly realize that Ron Gilbert not only was okay with the sequels, but they all even stated that Monkey Island 2 is listed as both one of the Top 10 Best Endings AND Top 10 Worst Endings. They pretty much stated they simply came up with an idea over dinner one night and started putting several twists onto it and came up with the ending. They were both rather pleased with it, but also disappointed because they knew, later on, that it was gonna divide the fans down the middle. That wasn't what they'd intended, but it was what happened, and they were saddened by it.
I will also make a confession. While I had played all the King's Quest games in the late 90's via the King's Quest Collection, I never was able to get copies of Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, or many other great games of the genre. So the first game I finally got to play (although I'd long known about the series) was Escape From Monkey Island.
To sum it up, I loved the game, hated Monkey Fu or whatever it was called, and desperately wanted to play the others. Sadly, it wouldn't happen for years. While I chuckled and even laughed out loud playing Monkey Island 1 and 2 on the Xbox 360 for the first time, Curse of Monkey Island made me laugh the hardest, really sealed up most of the plotholes, and enjoyed poking a bit of fun at the ones that remained. I loved the artwork, the voice acting was great, and I loved all the nods and references to the previous games.
In no way did Monkey Island 3 hurt the series. If anything, it saved it, because love it or hate it, there's no question that Monkey Island 2 had.. as TVTropes would call it.. a GAINAX Ending. Where there are almost NO answers to the many questions, more questions are made, and in general the player is left feeling unsatisfied, disappointed, and likely wanting to know WTF just happened.
Monkey Island 2 is essentially like Monty Python & the Holy Grail. It's super, fun, and great all the way up until the heavily WTF ending, and it just feels.. almost like a cop-out, I guess. If anything, it feels like the odd man out in the series. I loved playing it, I enjoyed the humour, and I still like the notions and theories that have sprung up to explain it..
But guys (and gals), you have to face facts. Curse, Escape, and Tales ARE official canon. Ron was in no way upset by their creation, and unlike Metroid when it's creator left, the sequels to Monkey Island have only made the characters more interesting, more endearing, and given the series exactly what it needed.
EDIT: Noticed someone mentioned Lucas and StarWars in conjunction with Ron and Monkey Island. I should point out that Lucas has pretty much destroyed StarWars with constant retcons, remakes, and expanded universe crap which, in my opinion, watered down so much of what made the original trilogy great.
Don't always say the creator would do better, or that the creator always knows best. The example of Lucas and StarWars is the other side of the Author Coin. I personally think Nintendo has destroyed the Metroid series after Gunpei was dishonoured and left the company. I did find Fusion to be good, but after knowing that Sakamoto had Other M's storyline in mind back when Fusion was made.. I can't even play it without thinking of that abomination, and what the bastard did to a series (and a character) I loved growing up.
So yeah.. be careful what you wish for guys. Ron seems like a pretty intelligent guy, I doubt he'd make all the mistakes some have made, and I would think he's happy people still play new Monkey Island games and love the characters he created.
I second that. A post like that make me wish this forum had a 'like' option.
me too!
Can you make a new tomi happen?
Purty please?
Man, that game ruled.
In-joking aside, if I can make a post like that and not only remain unflamed, but actually agreed with, it certainly makes me feel better about the MI community. I've been in other communities where people just don't know how to handle posts like mine. Many thanks.