FISH PEOPLE

Crazy that in the end b-mask revealed he was a themepark all along.

I don’t know why people were so hung up about the ending not revealing what the secret was. I mean, it’s pretty obvious what it is when you think about it.

It’s the three-headed monkey. Duh.

I love how we are getting a return of point and clicks in recent years with the Sam and Max remasters, Putt Putt on Switch, Grim Fandango on Switch, and now Monkey Island returning

I'm glad that you went into what LeChuck represents and the dark ways in which he reflects Guybrush, which I feel have gone a little under-analyzed. The game frequently points out how deluded and shallow his feelings about Elaine and The Secret are, and when you combine this with the lines that are frequently drawn between him and Guybrush it makes an interesting point about both characters. While LeChuck and Guybrush are both obsessive, destructive, and delusional (Flambe nailed it when he said "You two deserve each other"), Guybrush never lost his love of the fantasy. Guybrush wants to find The Secret because he wants to find a place in the world again, while LeChuck wants to find it because he thinks that it will arbitrarily get him what he wants. To LeChuck, Elaine and The Secret are only a means to a selfish end. This is why Guybrush gets to pass on the fantasy of Monkey Island to his son, while LeChuck is last seen either fighting Lila for The Secret in Hell forever or as a dilapidated animatronic doing the same motions over and over again.

The idea of Guybrush being the floor inspector of a pirate themed amusement park puts the goofiest grin on my face. To me one of the strengths of adventure games is anyone can be an adventure game protagonist. One of the most iconic adventure game protagonists of all time being something so specific and silly just feels right.

Arguably, the new transformation of LeChuck here is "cardboard cutout".

I just like the idea of monkey island being a funny story that Guybrush tells his kids even if they are inconsistent stories and having fun doing so it’s about a park worker who got so sucked into his job and loved every moment of it he got lost into the fictional side

I was about to write a LONG essay post on this, but I think this'll sum up my thoughts a bit more succinctly:

If MI1 is about being on the ride, and MI2 is about getting off the ride and seeing the animatronics, Return is about giving back in to the fantasy and craftsmanship of the ride.

And given what Ron wrote and what his vision for what MI3 would've been was...yeah that seems about right.

Especially for a LucasArts title. Like any theme park ride, things change over time and new people take over. I don't really see this as Ron being pretentious or glibbing people over getting too meta; it's too genuine and too understanding of what came before to take it that way, at least for me personally. It feels less like Ron and David abandoned plot threads from other games in favor of telling those stories, more like they aren't their stories to tell. ...Whether or not that was executed well is another story, but regardless:

It's not their ride anymore. They'll always have final say because they made it, but it's not theirs anymore. But so long as the core of the ride stays the same, I'm kind of okay with that. Hell, if nothing else, the fact that you not only unintentionally lived what Ron was probably experiencing/writing himself over the years, but to have it pretty much confirmed by the man himself, if not emblematic of the point he was making, has to feel at least somewhat cathartic.

EDIT: Also these games are just super cozy at heart. That's really the core: so long as IT has fun, I'll have fun. Again, kinda like a real theme park lol

I think it all clicked for me at the fishemen's society quest. How clear it all was when I realized one of the longest puzzles in the whole game which span a characters from all over the game is a puzzle about crafting an engaging story, with said characters explaining to you that just telling a story isn't enough, but how you craft it. I also noticed how the story itself was an event from Tales, which Ron gave creative input to. Fitting for a puzzle about telling a story, hearing feedback, and adapting It for the people's enjoyment.

I have always struggled with Monkey Island. I love the franchise and has ever since I was a young lad. the first one I played was funny enough MI2 on a pirated (heh) copy on my dad's ol computer, with the first played soon after and brought legitimately after seeing it at a store. As such, growing up and understanding the implications of the franchise always divided my brain: One part of me admires what ron tried to do and say while the other still felt hurt about the idea the ending making it feel like there was no worth on the characters. I feel this game does what rarely any game of it kind does and what, when you think about it, storytelling is all about: COMPROMISE

The ending, the talk with mini guybrush and Elaine at the end all add to what makes the ending so great: It allows ANYONE to craft their own canon and legitalizes any future MI game to still work in either narrative. Are any future instalments just more stories Guybrush the  theme park flooring inspector is telling to his family? Yes. Are they new events in the wacky magical piraty world Guybrush lives in, with the theme park is just another of Stan's schemes using Guybrush's adventures as a way to make profit? ALSO Yes. It can be molded in any way you want and I feel that's a beautiful thing. Monkey Island is about Stories, and the ways we interact with them be them real or fantasy

For your examples: the first scene in SOMI is Guybrush entering the Disney arch, meeting a greeter, then going on a rollercoaster down to the docks.

Another YouTube video clued me into that, it was released a week or so before he return was, with then very correctly predicting the outcome

In my mind, there was never a single doubt about what the secret was...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
FISH PEOPLE

I didn't realize how toxic people had been about Return. Also: The state of media literacy is so abysmal. 😂 I'm so glad I picked this review as my first bit of MI content since I first finished playing the series yesterday. Very insightful and echoed a lot of what I took away from the game, but from a different perspective I hadn't considered! ❤

Monkey Island is what you want it to be. It definitely means a lot of things for different people. I personally do view the whole theme park thing as one of Guybrush's flights of fancy (and he has plenty of them), and the secret being "I Found the Secret of Monkey Island and all I got was this stupid t-shirt" being a perfect "full circle" as it were. I much prefer to think of him and Elaine (and Guybrush Jr.) off exploring the high seas, rather than Guybrush just going off and selling fine leather jackets. It can ALSO be an allegory at the same time though.

There was always something underlining about the series to me that I couldn't ever put the finger on it, specially when listening the main theme song. Then, watching your video, it clicked me in the outro: this cozy, comfortable feeling of fantasy and joy, this storytelling experience to share your thoughts -- both the wonder and the snarky -- shared among people. Sure, not everything is perfect, executed well or hit with everyone, but it is always a fun ride that stays with you and always brings new experiences in each revisit.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Also it can not be understated how much that last letter when you finish the game feels like the most warm hug ever to the player the fans. Comes out from the screen and touches our souls.

You touch on the point yourself, but what I loved most about the game was that it really includes Curse, Escape and Tales as legitimate entries in the series, whilst also giving us a pretty clear portrait of what Ron's third game was originally conceived as.

It would have been so easy to portray games 3, 4 and 5 as 'what ifs' that 'didn't really happen' and say "Here's what REALLY happened". In fact, I think I might like those games MORE in retrospect now that they sit more comfortably alongside Ron's entries.

I'm 49 now - played the original game when I was 15 when I played The Secret of Monkey Island, gathered around my A500 with my 3 best friends trying to work all the puzzles out - it took us quite a few weekends to get through it.  By the time M2 came out I was 17, this time we gathered around my friends 386, and being a little bit older and wiser, it didn't take us so long to finish it - we were all quite puzzled by the ending at the time, and spent many hours discussing it and piecing together all the clues from both M1 and M2 - none of us hated it, we all thought it was clever and funny - but meta endings weren't very common in the early 90's - now every franchise seems to do it constantly.  It was undoubtedly a game that in some way changed all 4 of us in the way only really good art can - and we would often talk about it years later.
I missed the following games - I had followed R+Ds advise from the end of M2 by that point and started talking to girls and lost interest in gaming.
In 2022 I heard about Return, and was mildly interested, but just too busy with life to play games - so it wasn't until early last month, realizing I was on the verge of burning out, I decided I needed to do something fun that I hadn't tried in years - and picked up this game.
I loved every minute of it - no doubt a big part of it was the nostalgia - but I honestly think it was very much up to the standards of Monkey 2.  Agree I found the puzzles very easy even on the difficult level - I finished the game in 3 sessions, probably no more than 6 hours - not including replays to try out the different endings and dialogue options etc. - but it was genuinely fun and touching, and made me think - just like the first two games.

Makes me appreciate the Disney Parks storytelling even more. I love the classic, "stumbling onto an adventure and existing story you expected anyways" Pirates, Haunted Mansion, and Splash Mountain. I wish they did this more than just doing recaps of existing stories.

Monkey Island taught me a very valuable lesson.


Never pay more than twenty dollars for a video game.