The Real Monkey Island 3

[mindx2]

Ron Gilbert ‏@grumpygamer37s
My post this morning confirmed what I only suspect before: people like Monkey Island. Interesting data point. Interesting.

Kickstarter incoming....?

 

[Jaesun]

He does not own the IP or trademark. He could in "theory" approach Disney and ask to use the property, but he is chained to what ever cost and other conditions they would ask for.

 

[mindx2]

Who needs an IP just use the buzzword of the industry nowadays... "Spiritual Successor"

 

[Jaesun]

True. He COULD try to pull off a Fargo and do a spiritual successor and not use the name, but somehow I kind of doubt it.

 

[Alex]

I think he wats to continue his story from MI and MI2 as much as we (well, me, at least) want to play it. So I don't know if he would go for it without the rights for the game. I could see Disney going for some kind of Kickstrter deal, where they give their ok if he manages to secure at least X as funding and then gives them a part ofthe profits. But selling the rights back to him? That would probably cost way more than what he could kickstart for...

 

[Berekän]

I'd rather have him make a different game with all the points he made in his blog, in the vein of the old Lucasarts games. Getting the rights for MI might be too troublesome and the series has been raped further enough, I don't think it'd live enough for it's hype.


But a game with all the things that made all the games from the golden era great, including all the silly humour, the charm, the puzzles and the pixels? Yes, please. That's what I would like to assume most of the people pledging to the DF Kickstarter wanted.

 

[Alex]

Hey, I would love that too! I just think it is likely he won't do anything like that outside a new MI for fear of losing his chance. Or maybe he is already doing something and is just toying with us, which would be very nice!

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Don't be mean, Curse of Monkey island was great.

Monkey 1 and 2 weren't exactly grimdark serious or anything but there were limits to the silliness. Curse was a cartoon, not just in the art style, but in tone as well.

Someone needs to replay Monkey Island...

I played the special edition versions a few months ago. (New art style sucks, voice acting was welcome though.) If you can't see a difference in tone between Monkey 1+2 and Monkey 3+4+5 then I'm genuinely sorry for you. I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking of you.

Ron Gilbert wishes he could make a game as good as MI3. Most overrated designer after Sid Meier.

Hang yourself.

 

[felipepepe]

I'll still say that Curse of Monkey Island is true to the series, both in humour and quality. The 2 original Monkey Islands had some very silly stuff, especially on MI2. The presentation, however, was more due the graphics and lack of VA, but a person playing the Special Editions and them Curse will feel no difference at all.

 

[Infinitron]

I think the problem with CoMI was that the setting and story just weren't as interesting. It lacked the first two games' sense of mystery and general "WTF-ness". You spent a lot of time in MI1 and MI2 exploring these strange, abandoned areas and running into weird shit, while in MI3 you're almost always around people and everything makes too much sense. Even the town in SoMI had this desolate, sparsely inhabited feel to it. MI2's three towns felt more lived in, but the game made up for that by letting you explore the three islands all on your own.

 

[Alex]

I would like to comment, but I still haven't got around playing the third game. Everytime I try, I look at those graphics and find something else to play instead. I actually find that quite weird, since I remember thinking the graphics had improved when the game came out.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Curse of Monkey Island is definitely on par with the first two games.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

It is as good as them, just not for the same reason.

 

[taxalot]

Monkey Island 3's plot does have some holes.
If Big Whoop's was really a trap laid out by Lechuck, then why does he spend the whole second game trying to prevent Guybrush from falling into it ?

 

[Sceptic]

Because it clearly wasn't a trap by LeChuck, it was Guybrush's way out and a permanent escape from LeChuck. Voodoo Lady spells it out very clearly in MI2. Hence why LeChuck wants to stop it.

I love MI2's trippy ending, the whole final puzzle underground. It's Big Whoop starting to act - taking Guybrush out of the game and into reality, the two worlds merging weirdly together, until Guybrush does make it out - except so does LeChuck, and they're now stuck with each other in the real world just like they were in the game.

 

[cvv]

But a game with all the things that made all the games from the golden era great, including all the silly humour, the charm, the puzzles and the pixels? Yes, please.

MI 1/2 was a joint success though. I love the idea of Gilbert doing a real MI3 but not sure how charming, humorous and smart it'd be without Schafer and Grossman.
In a perfect world those three would do this thing together, one can only hope though...

 

[Zep Zepo]

Well, he had the chance to make a good MI like adventure game just recently...instead... he made The Cave.

Zep--

 

[MRY]

The ending puzzle in Monkey Island 2 is, I believe, not only the best puzzle in an adventure game ever, but so much so that the only thing I can even put in the same league as it is the "a-ha" puzzle solution midway through Spider & Web. What both of them share is that they build upon a game's worth of puzzle logic and narrative weight. Monkey Island 2 achieved a "boss battle" in an adventure game, which is a remarkable and essentially unique thing. Generally speaking, it's quite hard to have a final puzzle in an adventure game that feels sufficiently grand to compare to the finales of other genres. (Even if one likes the way Primordia ends, its final puzzles are easier, not harder, than those that came before. The Scraper courtroom sequence is the closest to a MI2 finale puzzle the game has, and it's woefully weaker.) For the ending puzzle alone, I suppose all the madness of MI2's ending plot is defensible. (Am I overlooking anything else comparable out there? Plenty of adventure games have boss battles at the end, but they tend to use distinctive mechanics that aren't really puzzle-solving and, if they are puzzle-solving, don't rely upon lessons the player learned earlier.)

That said, when I played the game as a kid (maybe late middle school or early high school), I found the ending deeply unsatisfying and even offensive because, among other things, it seemed to break two compacts that exist between an audience and the creator. The creator asks, "Will you suspend disbelief and buy into my fantasy?" If the audience agrees, then the creator (I believe) has two obligations. First, the creator has to also believe in the setting -- within the creator's work, the setting must be treated as something real. Second, and more importantly, the creator should not make fun of the audience for agreeing to suspend disbelief. By ending with the dismissal of the entire setting I'd invested myself in and a lame Star Wars joke that seemed to be deliberately stupid, MI2 seemed to violate these rules.

Now, compacts can be broken to great effect when the point is to convey to the audience, "Don't be so trusting! Suspension of disbelief and investment in a setting and the POV character can be a bad idea." (I guess The Iron Dream might be an example of this.) But in that case, there has to be some message that you're trying to convey to the audience that is best conveyed -- perhaps only conveyed -- by breaking the compacts. Simply ending a story with "It was all a dream!" because that makes the ending trippy is kind of lame.

So I was all prepared to post a super-negative evaluation of the ending, until I read Taxalot's post that the "twist" ending is actually integral to the content of the story that leads up to it. If Taxalot is right, then Gilbert was not laughing or dismissing the preceding content. Instead, the unsatisfying ending asks the audience to try to engage more deeply with the story to understand what just happened and how it fits with the overall themes, etc.

The problem is, bad creators often put in twist endings to suggest there is more to the work than what is actually there, and overzealous fans often then do the work of filling in the gaps. (Even with Primordia, I've been delightfully stunned by how diligently a few fans have tried to make my "12 parsecs" sows' ears into silk purses.) Without replaying the game, I can't tell whether Taxalot has simply picked out a few coincidental details that work with the ending or whether -- if I replayed the series with MI2's ending in mind throughout -- everything would fit together seamlessly.

That said, Gilbert's negative "I wouldn't have done it that way" without concretely saying what he would have done is kind of annoying, though. I'm not saying he should write a design doc or 20-page game summary or something, but a single paragraph explaining how the game would start and dovetail with the ending of MI2 would spoil nothing if he ever made the sequel and would give fans a chance to judge whether MI3's solution was a bad one or not.

Meh.

 

[Sceptic]

Spider & Web

Who are you and why do you even know of Spider & Web?

Am I overlooking anything else comparable out there?

I don't know if it counts, but Pandora Directive had an "adventure boss battle" midway through, not at the end. Almost the entirety of Day 7 involves dealing with the weird anomaly that has killed everyone, in a way kinda reminiscent of MI2's ending (puzzle-wise, not story-wise). It's not an endgame puzzle though. Lucas were pretty good about this though - Sam & Max also had its toughest, most involved and best puzzles woven into the endgame (the four totem poles).

Simply ending a story with "It was all a dream!" because that makes the ending trippy is kind of lame.

Only if you DO interpret MI2's ending as "just a dream", which you don't necessarily have to, and as I mentioned already there are elements of the game that you point to an entirely different (and much more satisfying) explanation.

That said, Gilbert's negative "I wouldn't have done it that way" without concretely saying what he would have done is kind of annoying, though. I'm not saying he should write a design doc or 20-page game summary or something, but a single paragraph explaining how the game would start and dovetail with the ending of MI2 would spoil nothing if he ever made the sequel and would give fans a chance to judge whether MI3's solution was a bad one or not.

Gilbert's spent the last 21 years (including the years BEFORE MI3 was made) refusing to explain the ending. He's not gonna change his mind. And if he does I'll be very very disappointed.

He's pulling a David Lynch here - ie "here's the ending, and it means exactly what you want it to mean". Although I'm pretty confident of my own interpretation and have always stuck to it, I'm convinced it isn't Gilbert's because I'm convinced he doesn't have one and nor does he care. He just put in enough elements for a number of interpretations to work without any of them being completely dismissible (except, ironically, the one MI3 picks) and it's up to you to pick whichever one you want. I like that.

 

[Alex]

(...snip)
That said, when I played the game as a kid (maybe late middle school or early high school), I found the ending deeply unsatisfying and even offensive because, among other things, it seemed to break two compacts that exist between an audience and the creator. The creator asks, "Will you suspend disbelief and buy into my fantasy?" If the audience agrees, then the creator (I believe) has two obligations. First, the creator has to also believe in the setting -- within the creator's work, the setting must be treated as something real. Second, and more importantly, the creator should not make fun of the audience for agreeing to suspend disbelief. By ending with the dismissal of the entire setting I'd invested myself in and a lame Star Wars joke that seemed to be deliberately stupid, MI2 seemed to violate these rules.
(snip...)

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103537/will-i-dream

 

[aris]

MI3 was one of the best thing to ever happen. Ever.

 

[Keshik]

At the very least we got Murray out of it.

 

[cvv]

MI3 was one of the best thing to ever happen. Ever.

 

[MRY]

Spider & Web

Who are you and why do you even know of Spider & Web?

I'm sure pretty much any halfway serious indie adventure game story writer (err, all fifteen of us) is going to be familiar with interactive fiction, and thus with Spider & Web, Photopia, Anchorhead, Metamorphoses, etc.

Lucas were pretty good about this though - Sam & Max also had its toughest, most involved and best puzzles woven into the endgame (the four totem poles).

True, but (as I recall) they typically weren't "bosses" in the sense of a recurring antagonist, and they didn't do as good a job of building upon prior puzzles.

Only if you DO interpret MI2's ending as "just a dream", which you don't necessarily have to, and as I mentioned already there are elements of the game that you point to an entirely different (and much more satisfying) explanation.

I'm not sure I understand your alternative explanation -- is it that the Big Whoop is like a portal to an alternative dimension, which is "the real world" (i.e., our world, or something like it), and Guybrush and LeChuck go through it? If so, why do they emerge as children? Have they possessed the bodies of real children? Or is a whole world built around them in some sense? Like I said, not sure I understood your (pretty brief) description of it earlier in the thread, or what the in-game evidence is for it.

Gilbert's spent the last 21 years (including the years BEFORE MI3 was made) refusing to explain the ending. He's not gonna change his mind. And if he does I'll be very very disappointed.

It's obviously his prerogative. I'm very reluctant to criticize Ron Gilbert, whose games played a pretty integral part of my childhood (we have a shout out to Zack McKracken in Primordia, even!) and whose blog had many insights I've drawn upon in game design, and who generally seems like a good guy. BUT! When, after 21 years, you feel obliged to keep reminding someone that you had this really awesome idea, but you're not going to tell people what it is, but trust me, it's totally great, it feels a little bit . . . lame? Especially when the implicit message (somewhat explicit) is a criticism of CMI, which is really quite a good game, if no MI2. Also especially when, excepting his role in DOTT, he hasn't done anything as good as MI2 (or Zack McKracken, or CMI, frankly) in the interim. Still, if ever there were laurels a man deserved to rest on, it's Gilbert's early series of games.

Still, I found his post refreshingly hardcore retro.

He's pulling a David Lynch here - ie "here's the ending, and it means exactly what you want it to mean".

I'm not a huge Lynch fan, and I think there's a considerable difference in that Lynch's works have always seemed to be about the mutability of reality and unreliability of perception, which I never took to be a theme in Monkey Island.

I'm convinced he doesn't have one and nor does he care. He just put in enough elements for a number of interpretations to work without any of them being completely dismissible (except, ironically, the one MI3 picks) and it's up to you to pick whichever one you want. I like that.

I guess as a writer I feel like the writer should have his own interpretation of his work. And I feel like there's a distinction between a reader deciding what meaning to ascribe to a work and a reader having to figure out "what the heck just happened" in a context where you can't really come to an answer.

 

[taxalot]

Because it clearly wasn't a trap by LeChuck, it was Guybrush's way out and a permanent escape from LeChuck. Voodoo Lady spells it out very clearly in MI2. Hence why LeChuck wants to stop it.

I love MI2's trippy ending, the whole final puzzle underground. It's Big Whoop starting to act - taking Guybrush out of the game and into reality, the two worlds merging weirdly together, until Guybrush does make it out - except so does LeChuck, and they're now stuck with each other in the real world just like they were in the game.

Not what they say in MI3. First thing Lechuck does is bringing Guybrush back there. The place is fiddled with Lechuck's goons, and he uses it to make his army of undead. So there are inconsistencies in MI3.