Ok, so i'm way too lazy to think of any comment right now about chapter 5 (even though i'm replaying it these days), i DO want to read lorn's review of it, so here's an useless post in the hopes he'll notice the thread and post it
Darn, I got all excited, thinking Lorn had posted his review finally!!
You know, a darker tone doesn't necessarily translate to a more atmospheric, or even scarier, experience. The light parts do work. Spinner Cay had an alluring charm that Monkey Island never hinted at, and it works. The puzzles in the game probably needed a bit more integration into the plot - I think Leviathan's success largely stems from this - but it was a different take on what made Monkey Island so special, and the whole thing was really quite beautiful.
I mean, I like a dark tone too, but there's been people suggesting that Guybrush wear a black coat. There's a YouTube comment complaining that the updated "LeChuck Theme" from SMI:SE is not "dark" enough, maybe with too strong a ska flavor. I'm sorry, do you want me to play a Birthday Party riff with that?
OK, sure: Guybrush works best when he's being both a snark and a baboon, and LeChuck should have some air of creepiness about him, but if you want eternal darkness then go play that. Light helps. You need contrast. It's what makes black comedy work so well. It's why the shock of Guybrush's death worked so well.
Just, avoid the repetitive jungle puzzles in the next game (integrate your plot in with your puzzles, alright?), add a bit of background and voila, you're good. Hell, drop the "three puzzle" structure if you can. Every little thing is a potential puzzle. You get a puzzle where you need to know how to talk to a manatee, now try figuring out how to understand it. There's a puzzle there: you can use the fact that the Voodoo Lady's manipulative and "conveniently" has the appropriate tarot cards in front of her. Voila! You've added to the story and created a puzzle.
I don't mean to sound like a jerk. Telltale's one of two or three companies whose games I genuinely look forward to, and I really just want them to put out the best they can. They have what could be the most talented team in the world right now. I'd hate to see it go to waste.
I think the tone of Tales had the balance just right, there were some genuinely dark moments but the game was still funny and didn't drown itself in angst. I definitely wouldn't want to see a shift to 'dark, gritty realism' because then the series would lose a lot of it's charm, certainly for me anyway.
Escape from Monkey Island - This bizarre entry in the series dropped the semi-serious nature of the storylines from the original games for full-on satire and social commentary. With a maddening interface, continuity botches (that were supposed to fix other continuity issues), and the most annoying minigame ever, this entry illustrated what NOT to do with the Monkey Island Franchise.
[...]
LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island 2 - The gold standard. This game successfully evolved the series, giving much greater depth to the characters and their conflicts. Each of the existing characters had aged and moved on from their "Secret" origins, and technical enhancements changed the nature of how we listened to our games. The soundtrack was endlesslyl hummable, the puzzles devilishly sadistic, and the spooky/haunting undertones pervaded the entire game. The ending generated endless controversy, fueling speculation and discussions about the meaning of it all for years.
I think this whole review is a tad bit exaggerated in criticism. The point of view is very subjective and the tone of this very review (sorry for the pun) is, to me, somewhat negative. But I won't go into detail because after 15 pages of comments, it would take a month to properly construct the right argument.
What I find absolutely angsty, however, is the p.o.v. you throw like this on readers, telling that EMI was clearly an epic fail and LCR was an epic win. Once again, the whole position is very debatable, but I personally wouldn't say that EMI "ruined the whole series". I think that it was an average game, a bit cliched, but still sticking to what was coming out as quests back then (think Discworld Noir, Post Mortem, Syberia, etc.) It was a pretty low standard of the series, but clearly not a complete abortion.
At the same time, I wouldn't call LCR so successful either. Sure, it was an overall improvement to the first game, but the series lacked cartoonism, which made it a realistic game with mood similar to that of Indiana Jones franchise (at least). Furthermore, the plot was already starting to get stale by LCR (not saying that it wasn't in EMI), but the lack of cartoonishness made it so that the whole game was probably perceived more mature than the developers had expected it to be.
CMI, on the other hand, had it all: the cartoonishness of an epic screen story combined to the verisimilitude of everyday situations. That and, of course, the whole effort of that drawing, voicing, animating and donut-devouring cast.
So to sum up my idea, though when compared all together, EMI does fall into the last place of overall reviews on the web, however, if you count each game in its time, they all had pretty good influence and some success, more or less. Therefore I think that throwing that much dirt into EMI's face would probably be wrong.
EMI is fine, really. It just has some misplaced ideas like a robot monkey, and is vastly overwritten in parts.
LCR would be the best of the bunch if it weren't for those sadistic puzzles. I'm re-playing it and stuck on finding the fourth map piece - helplessly stuck. It's frustrating and not fun at all.
Also, for something that is remembered for being so "dark", a decent chunk of LCR is pretty light-hearted. I mean, they do remind you every once in a while that a certain zombie pirate is out to get you (the cutscenes after getting each map, the scene with the dancing skeletons), but really, the game has you conning a guy of his prized fishing rod, picking up an old dog to get a map and even a scene where Guybrush falls, Chuck Jones-style, in a trapdoor, though admittedly into a room with a corpse.
EMI is fine, really. It just has some misplaced ideas like a robot monkey, and is vastly overwritten in parts.
I'd say its only major problem (beside problematic 3D graphics) was those inconsistencies in the plot. It's not just the robot, there's the whole how-come-Marley-is-Toothrot thing too, and Ozzie Mandrill that people go pretty much WTF is this at.
At one time Guybrush says to a monkey: "Oh ok, I'll do it for the kids", which made me think that probably EMI was also aiming younger audiences than the other series, which would also explain the whole inconsistency shtick.
The humor is ok as it is, maybe excluding some of the weirdest bits. (manatee love making)
But lets face it, the game looks childish. Its too cartoonish, it looks like a small kids` game. I mean the character desing is just a bit off, the heads are just waaaay too big in comparison with the rest of the body. (Morgan) Thats characteristic of games and tv shows targeted for small kids.
At one time Guybrush says to a monkey: "Oh ok, I'll do it for the kids", which made me think that probably EMI was also aiming younger audiences than the other series, which would also explain the whole inconsistency shtick.
That scene always summed up EMI for me. A moment or so before the "kids" line, Guybrush says: "Sometimes my life feels like an unending series of puzzles." That's one of the best lines in the series. But then he goes on...and on...and on, finally ruining the scene with the "kids" line.
But lets face it, the game looks childish. Its too cartoonish, it looks like a small kids` game. I mean the character desing is just a bit off, the heads are just waaaay too big in comparison with the rest of the body. (Morgan) Thats characteristic of games and tv shows targeted for small kids.
I thought the art direction impressively balanced the more "serious" look with CMI's cartoony look, but I will agree that the heads are too big. The guy who helps Guybrush on the beach - "My nose! My beautiful pirate nose!" - is an example of that.
That's one thing that irks me. A lot of the characters look straight out of Sam and Max, especially in the first two chapters. That guy may have actually been Leonard Steakcharmer. It's getting better, but I'd like to see more of it: characters that look different, preferably with different silhouettes. We'll see how it goes in future games.
But lets face it, the game looks childish. Its too cartoonish, it looks like a small kids` game. I mean the character desing is just a bit off, the heads are just waaaay too big in comparison with the rest of the body. (Morgan) Thats characteristic of games and tv shows targeted for small kids.
Up til you said "Morgan" I thought you were talking about EMI...
Well, the thing with Tales is that yes characters do look cartoonish (I wouldn't say more than in CMI thou), but unlike EMI characters, they are well-animated and drawn to be used to their full potential. How many times have I seen Guybrush or Elaine just stand there and do nothing but opening their mouths in EMI, seldom waving their hands from time to time (Guybrush's favorite was simply crossing them). And when they were walking or running, their legs sometime bent in a strange way.
In Tales, you don't have that. They move like humans, talk like humans, lips synch, and how many are there facial expressions, from eyebrow raising to this "I see what you did there" look. You tell me!
The humor is ok as it is, maybe excluding some of the weirdest bits. (manatee love making)
But lets face it, the game looks childish. Its too cartoonish, it looks like a small kids` game. I mean the character desing is just a bit off, the heads are just waaaay too big in comparison with the rest of the body. (Morgan) Thats characteristic of games and tv shows targeted for small kids.
I always found it sad when people associate cartooning with kids and kids only. I find that's the problem with video games as well.
So you know, I do still plan to write my review for the final chapter. I apologize for taking so long, and feel that you guys deserve an explanation.
My son was born on November 8th of last year. The doctors knew immediately that something was wrong, but it took them awhile to make a diagnosis.
Luke started his life with a series of blood draws, oxygenation, and two spinal taps.
An enlarged liver and spleen, and extremely low platelet counts also pointed to issues.
After a couple of transfusions, a diagnosis was finally made - he was born with a condition called Congenital CytoMegaloVirus.
Most folks are carriers of CMV, and never realize it. It mimics a severe cold or mono in adults.
It's only dangerous for infants who become infected in the womb. For most infants, this isn't a problem - most mothers have already contracted the virus prior to conception, and so pass on the immunity to their children.
In our case, Lukes mother had never contracted CMV in her life - she caught the virus during the pregnancy, and Luke had no protection against it.
He was born symptomatic, and there are a number of complications that arise from that.
While spending a month to absorb all of this, we found that there was also a chance that he was positive for Cystic Fibrosis.
CMV had seemed bad enough - CF was a potential death sentence.
We immediately scheduled a sweat-test for Luke to try and determine whether or not he was positive for CF as well.
Unfortunately, he didn't sweat enough during the appointment to make a diagnosis, and so we had to schedule another apointment - one month later.
We spent the entire month on pins and needles - trying to maintain optimism, but also painfully aware of how he kept hitting bullseyes with negative consquences.
Finally, at the start of last month, we performed a second sweat-test - and to our great relief, Luke was found to be negative for CF.
The good news is that we're slowly getting his CMV under control, and he's gaining weight. He thankfully has dodged the worst effects of the CMV (at least, it appears so, so far)...and is a very happy, jolly baby.
This last week has seen me dealing with a multitude of work issues which are also eating up my time...but rest assured that the final review WILL be written.
It's definitely going to be the hardest to write, as I have greatly conflicting feelings about the final chapter.
That said, I'm glad that you guys are still sticking around and have been patient with my lack of updates. It's been a great ride with all of you, and I hope you'll all stick around for Tales Season 2.
(It's coming - we all know it. Fess up, Telltale!)
I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what it would be like to go through that situation, but I'm glad that things are getting better and I wish the best of luck for you and your family in the future. 8D
Damn, that's rough. Must be a horrible situation... I can't imagine what it would be like if my son or daughter had been diagnosed with something like that. I wish you and your family all well and hope your son gets better and better by each passing day.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to write this review. Every time, I've begun typing away, only to find myself pausing, and then closing down the browser window.
I apologize for keeping you guys waiting for this review for so long...it wasn't my intention to draw it out this far, but the last episode left me with a variety of mixed emotions, and I'm still not sure that I can honestly say exactly how I feel about it.
However, with the weekend announcement of the LeChucks Revenge Special Edition, the announcement for the DVD Release of Tales Season 1, and the announcement for the next Sam and Max Season, now seems like the perfect time to finish this series of reviews.
Without further ado:
Ranking
As usual, here is my ranking of the original games in the series:
Escape from Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Curse of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChucks' Revenge
As in my last entry, I"ll refrain from giving my ranking for this latest episode until the end of the review. My ranking for the episodes leading up to the Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood are:
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Tales of Monkey Island - The Siege of Spinner Cay
The Secret of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Lair of the Leviathan
The Curse of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Story
Rise of the Pirate God opens on possibly the grimmest note of any Monkey Island Game in History - with Guybrush quite literally dead. (Well - mostly dead - he still clings to a shred of life, which may come in handy later.) After extricating himself from his own grave, he bargains with a strangely familiar ferryman to be taken to The Crossroads - where his ultimate fate will be decided.
Once Guybrush figures out a way to pay the ferryman, he goes on a short journey through the underworld to be dropped off at the Crossroads - where he meets Galeb, a strange old man who wants to sell him a spirit photo.
Due to lack of funds, Guybrush is unable to purchase the photo initially, but he is still able to glean some information from Galeb after some mind-bending conversation.
It is revealed that there are three areas of the Crossroads which contain trials that will help determine the Pirate Spirits ultimate fate - Trials related to Swordplay, Thievery, and er...Treasure-Hunt-er-y.
Guybrush also learns that only one person in history has ever escaped The Crossroads - The Ghost Pirate LeChuck - and that his secret may still be tucked away somewhere within.
After a series of minor puzzles, the spell (and the components needed to create it) are collected. With a little help of the spirit of Morgan, Guybrush is able to open a portal from the Crossroads back into the mortal realm, and confront LeChuck, who holds Elaine captive on his Ship of Doom.
Unfortunately, things don't go as planned. LeChuck plugs La Esponja Grande into the portal of the Crossroads, and transforms himself into the Pirate God - he also reveals that Guybrush has been dancing to his tune the entire time, and that the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu that was designed to kill him will now be used as LeChucks implement to dispatch the Voodoo Lady, whom LeChuck views as the grand puppetmaster of both of their lives. He has corrupted it's voodoo essence to destroy any mortal hand that touches it.
Hearing these words, Elaine turns to LeChuck and beseeches him to make her his undead bride. Using the power of Le Esponge Grande (and sucking power straight from the Crossroads), LeChuck converts Elaine into his willing bride, and challenges Guybrush...throwing the Cutlass of Kaflu into the mainmast of his ship.
Too late does Guybrush realize that his noncorporeal form can't grasp the sword...as LeChuck taunts him, Elaine shoots Guybrush with a stream of voodoo root beer, dissolving him...and transporting him back to the Crossroads and Morgan.
After a brutal pep talk, Morgan convinces Guybrush to fight on...and with a flash of inspiration, (and a little nudge given remotely by the Voodoo Lady) Guybrush conceives of a plot to locate the Voodoo Ladies Locket and re-possess his dead body, ressurecting himself in Zombie Form.
Using conveniently placed rips in the Crossroads, Guybrush must go through another series of puzzles which take place at familiar locations, to both possess (and bind) his spirit to his now undead body.
When he finally gets himself stuffed back into his corpse, he confronts LeChuck and Elaine once again. However, the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu burns his hand at the touch...
Taunting him a second time, Elaine pulls the sword from the mainmast and prepares to cut Guybrush down with it, but the timely arrival of Van Winslow with a flotilla and Vacaylian Reinforcements buys him some time.
Realizing that LeChuck is too powerful with the Sponge still drawing Voodoo Energy from the Crossroads, Guybrush intuits that he must shrink the previously embiggened La Esponja Grande.
Mocking him for his tenacity, LeChuck once again shoves him through the portal back into the Crossroads.
Galeb proves useful in concocting an anti-embiggening spell, and Guybrush sets off to collect the ingredients that will be necessary to put the Sponge on a diet.
Once the necessary reagants are collected and the Sponge is shrunken, Elaine reverts to her former self and Guybrush can confront LeChuck on his own ship.
Elaine reveals her suspicions of the Voodoo Lady, and how she has been trying to show Guybrush all this time that she's been manipulating him for years. Van Winslow and the Vacaylians attack, and LeChuck freezes them in place with his awesome voodoo might.
Finally annoyed enough to engage Guybrush directly, LeChuck knocks him around a bit, not noticing that Elaine is sneaking up behind him with the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu. While offering his misogynystic view of what marriage to Elaine would be like, Elaine moves in for the kill, and stabs LeChuck from behind, the sword plunging through his heart.
And that just pisses him off.
Guybrush is thrown (AGAIN!) through the portal back into the Crossroads.
LeChuck reveals to Elaine that he has drawn enough Voodoo Energy into himself to make him nigh-invulnerable. At this point, he can simply step through the rip into the crossroads and draw in as much energy as he desires.
While taunting Elaine, LeChuck prepares to do just that...leaping onto the edge of the portal...only to be stabbed by Morgan on the other side. Morgan quickly tells Guybrush that LeChuck can be destroyed, but he must be taken on in both the physical and the spiritual realm at the same time.
LeChuck strikes Morgan aside, picking up Guybrush and tossing him back through the portal (AGAIN) into the mortal realm.
Thus begins the Battle Royale, with Guybrush and Elaine having to simultaneously take on LeChuck on board his ship. Guybrush takes one hell of a beating, with LeChuck taking out his years of frustration on Guybrushes weary undead body.
Through a series of timed puzzles onboard the ship, Guybrush is shot from a cannon back through the portal (yet again) to arrive in the Crossroads.
As LeChuck persues Guybrush, he is positioned ideally to be attacked on both sides...Morgan stabs LeChuck, and tells Guybrush that he needs to be trapped.
Knowing that his shred of life can destroy the rips between the spirit and mortal realms, Guybrush sacrifices his shred of life to close the portal directly on LeChuck, who is held in place. Trapped by the portal, he is attacked in the spirit realm by Morgan, and in the mortal realm by Elaine. Shrieking in agony, Lechuck seems to be destroyed in a flash of blinding light.
When Guybrush awakens, he is utterly alone, at the center of the Crossroads. After a moments thought, it occurs to him that his wedding ring embodies everything that is needed to open the pathway out of the Crossroads. Placing it in the center, Guybrush is magically reconstituted and whole, reunited with his wife and friends on the Screaming Narwhal.
Roll Credits.
MEANWHILE -
Morgan approaches the Voodoo Lady, complete with a jar of voodoo essence and skull that moans suspiciously like LeChuck. After a bit of back-and-forth, it becomes clear that Morgan won her way free of the Crossroads with the help of the Voodoo Lady, whose plots apparently continue to wheel in the Monkey Universe. Can it be long at all before Guybrush once more has to face his fate?
Script
The script satisifes all the needs of the plot, in that it wraps up things and sets them up for the next installment in the Monkey Island Series.
In goes a step further in delivering on the menace of LeChuck...who finally takes his bloody vengeance on poor Guybrushes body.
However - this script left me feeling awfully flat. Many of the plot points that were resolved in this episode had been telegraphed ahead of time, which lessened their impact.
More problematic was the nature of the puzzles in this episode, which seemed to work directly against the narrative. More on that in a moment.
Dialogue
LeChucks incessant taunting on board the ship was beautiful - it made the battle feel personal - and LeChuck fully intended to take his bloody due from Guybrush for all the pain and suffering that he and the voodoo lady have caused him throughout the years.
Puzzles
Puzzles are probably my greatest disappointment about this episode, and the series as a whole.
A large part of the pay-off in these games (for me) is being able to complete puzzles to unlock additional content - usually in the form of new rooms, characters, and dialogue.
Make no mistake - the art design of the Crossroads is gorgeous...however, by the time we got done traipsing through portal after portal, location after location, to find item after item, I WAS SICK OF THE DAMNED CROSSROADS.
That in itself isn't enough to bring the puzzle elements down - until you consider two other irritants.
The first is the nature of a number of these puzzles - many of them are timed, or require a solution within a certain number of actions. Failure forces you to repeat the scenario again. This is a BIG adventure game no-no, particularly if used more than once.
Secondly, I encountered a bug in the game that had me tearing my hair out for over an hour, during one of these scenarios.
On board LeChucks ship (during the unholy beating he gives you), I was unable to use my hook on the mainsail. It was one of the first things I tried, reasoning that this is standard thing to do in pirate fiction. The game didn't crash or anything...it simply didn't perform the action. After trying multiple times, I reasoning that I must have to do something else.
I spent the next hour performing every other action necessary to move on with the story, only to finally have my rage stoked to the burning point at having to rewatch the sequences over and over again - and resorted to reading the walkthrough.
Lo and Behold - I had done the right thing - the game simply didn't respond. I alt-tabbed back into the game, tried it again - still no go.
Finally, I saved my game, exited out, came back in, loaded my saved game, and attempted the action again - this time it took.
I was NEVER able to replicate this failure...as near as I can tell, it was a one-time bug - but it certainly soured a good deal of this episode for me. Too much of this episode felt like repetition and punishment.
As a side note - personally, it also took the wind out of my sails to find out that after spending nearly an entire episode trying to get La Esponje Grande to grow, that I had to spend a large part of another episode to get it to shrink.
The players actions in the series are also undermined if another character "knew it all along" - as Elaine claims at the end of the episode.
Does Elaine always have a plan? Yes, she does. But her plan doesn't usually involve making the player feel like his actions have been a complete waste of time. In this case, she makes Guybrush look rather...foolish.
Art Direction
Nothing to complain about artwise - I just wish I wasn't seeing so much of it so often, over and over.
Characters
LeChuck: Can't say enough about the welcome return of Earl Boen. He still nails the character, and really makes the menace come through.
Morgan: Morgan continued to be her adorable self, and even gains a bit of a dark edge at the end of the series. This proves to be interesting when she shows up in Season 2.
The Voodoo Lady: Well...they've definitely thrown her motives into doubt, and it might be an interesting twist - but I'm not sure that I like the idea of "Voodoo Lady as villain." Call me sitting on the fence on this change - though the idea of LeChuck and Guybrush being eternally bound in a cycle of fate is interesting.
Elaine: Aside from being scripted as maybe a bit *too* smart for her own good, I have no complaints.
Music
No complaints about the music - I quite enjoyed the reprise of the LeChuck theme, but that's about all that stuck out for me. The music of this series has actually been a little underwhelming for me overall, simply because there weren't any major themes that really stuck with me (with the exception of DeSinges.) It's possible I've also been spoiled by having orchestral scores in the past as well - hopefully that will be possible if further seasons aren't produced on the Wii.
Voices
Can't give enough kudos to Earl Boen and Dominic, who got to especially stretch his vocal talents in the fight scene. Its really something to be able to FEEL the pain the character is in through nothing more than a vocal performance.
Technical
I encountered two bugs while playing this episode...the first being the aforementioned hook/mainsail problem, and the second involving getting the locket using bubbles from the clam. Fortunately, I tilted to the clam bug early, and was able to exit and restart and proceed. The second bug had me going for over an hour.
Judgement
God, this is a tough one. One of the struggles that I've had while writing this review has been that it almost can't stand as a review of the episode alone - it almost has to be a review for the entire series.
I feel that some of the story quibbles that I have are a case of Monday Morning Quarterbacking...but I can't help but feel that things wrapped up a bit too neatly, and too predictably.
Honestly, I was expecting a bit of a twist, and a little bit more impact at the end.
Someone else mentioned somewhere...wouldn't it have been interesting if the game simply ended at the Crossroads, with Guybrush all alone, and the camera slowly pulling back....?
Sure, it might enrage the audience with shock for the first few moments...but what a gutsy ending that would've made, and what an interesting starting point for the next season!
That said, even my story complaints are relatively minor.
The same can unfortunately not be said for the puzzles - the puzzles in this episode were repetitive enough that I found myself actually wishing for the game to end. I wasn't having fun anymore - I felt that the puzzles in this episode were actively punishing me, just as LeChuck was punishing Guybrush.
That's not to say they were hard...90% of the time I knew exactly what I had to do...but it was way too damned tedious to do it.
I'm afraid for me, Rise of the Pirate God stands only above the first episode - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal.
As for the series as a whole? Well...I can't say that I'm sorry to have played the season, and I think there were individual episodes that were pure brilliance. However, the series as a whole was awfully uneven, and most of the reason for that had to do with poor puzzle design and/or integration of the puzzles with the story.
This reminds me mostly of the first season of Sam & Max, so I'm hopeful that some of these issues will be smoothed over by the time of Season 2.
What Worked Best
Definitely LeChuck opening up the can of Whoop Ass. It's nice to see him as a credible villain again.
What was Missed
Much as I hate to say it, for me, in this episode - it was "the fun."
Advice to Telltale
The best advice I can give Telltale at this point is to trust your instincts. So far, you've done *mostly* right, but I think there's some definite room for improvement, particularly with puzzle design and implementation.
Quality control is also a bit of an issue - it might be wise to take a bit longer to design and bug-test each episode.
Conclusion
Sadly, for me, I'm afraid Season 1 was a mixed bag. That's part of why it's been so difficult for me to write this last review. I'm not sorry at all that we got more Monkey Island, and I do feel that if this were to be the last "game" in the series, that it definitely leaves it in a better place than Escape from Monkey Island did.
Unfortunately, I do think that they can do better - and I'm hoping they rise to the challenge in Season 2. Thanks for bringing it back though, guys. I hope this last bit of criticism isn't taken too harshly...I have a feeling I'm being harder on it than others were.
Ranking 2 (as indivdual episodes):
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Tales of Monkey Island - Rise of the Pirate God
Tales of Monkey Island - The Siege of Spinner Cay
The Secret of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Lair of the Leviathan
The Curse of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Ranking 3 (with all episodes treated as a single game)
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Season 1
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Curse of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Wow...I'm sorry you were caught out by a couple of bugs. If you weren't, I think it would mainly have been that trekking back and forth that annoyed you (it annoyed me too).
The trailer for the new Sam & Max game looks so rich - they must have made improvements to their engine and got more people aboard. How? They started on that game before TMI and they've done so well with TMI that they've been able to expand.
I am therefore confident they can do better with Monkey Island Season 2. They hadn't done MI for a long time when they did Season 1, had to modify the engine to be more Wii-compatible and didn't yet have any feedback from us.
Also, after Ghost Pirates, I think we can appreciate the way Telltale do things all the more. GPoVI looked very nice but dialogue was shoddy, inventory combination puzzles were repetitive and the marketing was terrible (not to mention the ending was so rushed they dropped a FMV - reminiscent of Curse).
I mostly agree with your thoughts, although as usual i didn't mind the puzzles too much.
You're definitely about LeChuck's full glory being finally back. I'm really glad they made him fearsome and dangerous again. This whole play on human lechuck was overall pretty well done, but it made you kinda doubt if it would be the case, and that made him even greater in the end.
Concerning the bugs, i had another one when replaying the episode : When i waitecd to be keelhauled so i could pick up the keys, i got near the rope, and lechuck just wouldn't come. Since they're really not much else you can do at this spot, that was pretty frustrating. Had to reload just like you did, and i'm glad this didn't happen on the first playthrough or it would have been really weird indeed.
Oh, and concerning Elaine, while i still agree with you on the general, i have to disagree with this particular sentence :
Does Elaine always have a plan? Yes, she does. But her plan doesn't usually involve making the player feel like his actions have been a complete waste of time. In this case, she makes Guybrush look rather...foolish.
Well... That's exactly what happens at the end on Secret, ain't it ?
But it did feel a bit weird this time around. I didn't really understand what she was actually trying to do and it all felt a bit artificial. I consider it a rather minor part of the plot, but it's still a bit annoying.
I'm also not sure how i feel about the voodoo lady. Could be interesting, i guess, but i liked how she'd always been kinda neutral, knowing more than everyone else about what was going on but not saying much or really interfering with the situation. I definitely don't think she would work as an actual villain, but the idea of her manipulating everyone, maybe in order to preserve some balance of good and evil or whatever... Well, i dunno, why not, it just wasn't really developped enough in this season for me to really have any defnite opinion. Still might turn out cool, just not quite convinced right now.
Sadly, for me, I'm afraid Season 1 was a mixed bag. That's part of why it's been so difficult for me to write this last review. I'm not sorry at all that we got more Monkey Island, and I do feel that if this were to be the last "game" in the series, that it definitely leaves it in a better place than Escape from Monkey Island did.
Unfortunately, I do think that they can do better - and I'm hoping they rise to the challenge in Season 2. Thanks for bringing it back though, guys. I hope this last bit of criticism isn't taken too harshly...I have a feeling I'm being harder on it than others were.
This reminds me of what i thought after episode 1... Tales was overall pretty good, i think, but after having seen Sam and max getting better and better with each episode and especially how good they had gotten by the end of the second season, it did feel like a drop in quality. It had some great things and ideas, but it did leave me kind of thinking "well... this is all good, but i KNOW it could be BETTER".
Just like tbm1986, i'm sure they'll get better with the next season -they always do-, but that one was still a bit disapointing in that sense.
In the end, i'd rank the different games as (worse to better) :
Escape - Tales & Curse (really not sure which one's better) - Secret - Revenge.
I love the idea that many of you have had about the game ending with a panning back of the camera with Guybrush alone at the Crossroads.
I wonder if, now that episodic gaming is going strong for TellTale, they'll be more gutsy about stuff like that.
If we really want to think of these things as seasons with cliff hangers and so on, then we have to assume that they'll slowly start integrating those types of story telling elements into their work.
I do wonder if there would have been an outcry about that ending from gamers who want closure, and I wonder if they couldn't risk that sort of thing when they weren't sure if they'd ever make another Monkey Island. You can't have that kind of ending if you aren't certain you're "picked up" for another season.
I still think it would have been incredibly poignant closure for the story and it would have done what great novels and films do--leave you really puzzling through things for the months that you waited on the next installment. Instead we got traditional collapsing resistance--as if the sacrifice he made really meant nothing because it wasn't a sacrifice. That's probably my only complaint, and probably exists as much because it's what I do for a living.
It didn't take away from how much I enjoyed the game, or how many laughs I had, or how I went and bought a friend a copy just so that he could try it. But, if I were workshopping the story, I'd certainly have questioned the collapsed resistance at the end.
I love the idea that many of you have had about the game ending with a panning back of the camera with Guybrush alone at the Crossroads.
It's not a hard idea to think up. I mean, that's what I thought the ending WAS for a couple minutes, before I realized the scene had transitioned from cutscene to a playable scene. From there, I opened the inventory and made the logical conclusion that the developers were going for. As much as the puzzle itself was very heartwarming, it would have probably impacted me more just to leave him there.
It's not a hard idea to think up. I mean, that's what I thought the ending WAS for a couple minutes, before I realized the scene had transitioned from cutscene to a playable scene. From there, I opened the inventory and made the logical conclusion that the developers were going for. As much as the puzzle itself was very heartwarming, it would have probably impacted me more just to leave him there.
Exactly. It's not that I went "that doesn't make sense" or that I was angry for Guybrushe's good fortune.
I just would have had more to think about in the mean time. It's why Empire is such a great Star Wars film--it leaves everything in chaos and misery, which leaves the audience perpetually in suspended wonder.
I wanted to go back and reply to the various posts that had been made prior to my review...I've been terribly delinquent in managing this thread over the last months, and didn't want to leave comments un-replied to.
Here we go:
Darylman:
I really thought the end fight with Lechuck was "neat" but it was somehow hollow. It harkened back to MI1, but whereas in that scenario it was perfectly obvious what to do, this felt a little forced. I really thought the fact you had to get Elaine to do all the work was not a very well thought out puzzle.
I didn't mind so much that Elaine and Guybrush had to work together to position LeChuck between the mortal world and the Crossroads - but I did mind that Elaine had supposedly known what was going on all along, and was just trying to bring Guybrush around.
Astro Gnocci brings this point up later, asking "Isn't this exactly what Elaine does at the end of Secret of Monkey Island?"
Well...yes...and no.
In SOMI, Guybrush and Elaine were not yet an item. It's not surprising that they would be persuing parallel schemes independently of each other.
In LeChucks Revenge, they've been estranged...and even though Elaine has succesfully made her way to the "X" where Guybrush is perilously hanging from rebar, it doesn't destroy any of Guybrushes accomplishements for her to be there.
In Curse, she's flat taken out of the running by the Cursed Ring.
In Escape, she may boss Guybrush around a bit, but he's still relatively independent...and for all of her smarts, it's obvious that the couple love each other, and that Guybrush gets along fine when working on his own.
And that's the real problem here. For Elaine to have manipulated Guybrush this way, it basically underscores the problems in their relationship. Shouldn't she just have...I dunno...TALKED to him?
To NOT do so...and to basically ham-fistedly try and show Guybrush that he's been manipulated, shows that she doesn't really respect him, despite her words to the contrary at the climax.
This is one time when Elaines "plan" should've backfired on her.
Telltale does a GREAT job in the specialty puzzles. The Lechuck one included, just a great job. From being in Desinge's grips to the fight with Morgan, this is where Tellltale and the entire season shined, BRIGHTLY. The other puzzles were, usually, disappointing.
I think it depends on the puzzle. A lot of the action-oriented puzzles (such as the swordfights) were very clever. I think a large part of my problem with most of the puzzles in this series was that they felt rushed...almost as though the developers said "Well, we need a puzzle here...guess this will work well enough." In those episodes where the puzzles were integrated into the story (Specifically, Lair of the Leviathan and the Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood), I felt like I got a LOT out of them.
Rise of the Pirate God, on the other hand, felt like an excercise in tedium...and worse, required you to UNDO many of the actions you'd spent so much time doing in the previous episodes.
The Crossroads was "neat" I guess, but again, not really very monkey islandish. I thought when I saw that the boat was on what sounded like a roller coaster track that we were going somewhere interesting, but alas, we weren't. Was that ACTUALLY the crossroads? I sure hope not, because it was pretty dull. If it is somehow revealed that it is the Voodoo Lady's specific purgatory for a boring afterlife, that might redeem it somewhat.
I don't think I can agree with you here - at least, not from an Art Direction perspective. The Crossroads...partiularly where you meet Galeb...were almost exactly as I had envisioned it - a gray twilight realm, that represents limbo. Deaths waiting-room, as it were.
My complaints had mainly to do with the fact that there were no "gated" sections of the Crossroads...I didn't feel rewarded by discovering new sections of the afterlife, because you could freely travel through it from the start.
Also - Galeb was a bit of a letdown for me. I believe Galeb is also supposed to be Nor Treblig, who (I believe) is supposed to be standing in for Papa Legba, in Voodoo Mythology.
He's a very powerful figure in Voodoo, and you can see where the design for the symbol of the Crossroads in Tales came from here. Galeb is an anagram for "Legba", and his appearance perfectly matches how Legba is described.
But I almost would've liked to have seen Guybrush having to negotiate with Papa Legba...and perhaps taking on some curse himself in order to destroy LeChuck. (Or perhaps owing a favor to his spirt patron). That could've cast an interesting light on Guybrushes future, as well as been a more suitable (and real) sacrifice for him to make.
Telltale opted instead to treat Galeb as the Trickster, which is not wrong - but I felt that he could've had a more sinister/powerful side to him.
Kroms:
You know, a darker tone doesn't necessarily translate to a more atmospheric, or even scarier, experience. The light parts do work. Spinner Cay had an alluring charm that Monkey Island never hinted at, and it works. The puzzles in the game probably needed a bit more integration into the plot - I think Leviathan's success largely stems from this - but it was a different take on what made Monkey Island so special, and the whole thing was really quite beautiful.
I don't disagree - I'm not suggesting that Monkey Island needs to be all dark...just that it likewise doesn't need to be all light. BALANCE is the key...but I think the dark portions of the tone help to ground the characters such that you actually care for them. Even though they inhabit a goofy, semi-cartoon reality, they can still be scared, they can still be hurt, and this helps us to care about what happens to them.
When you stray TOO far from the Darkness, you get Escape from Monkey Island. That said - this isn't horror or film noir. The goofyness releases the tension for those dark moments that we have.
I mean, I like a dark tone too, but there's been people suggesting that Guybrush wear a black coat. There's a YouTube comment complaining that the updated "LeChuck Theme" from SMI:SE is not "dark" enough, maybe with too strong a ska flavor. I'm sorry, do you want me to play a Birthday Party riff with that?
Eh...that's ridiculous. Guybrush isn't a "black hat" kinda guy, and if folks think we need to go THAT dark, they need their head examined.
It's funny, but when I think about the Tone of Monkey Island, there are two touchstones for me that always come to mind - the first being the grog machine at Stans, and the second being LeChucks threats of what he will do with Guybrushes bones when he's done torturing him.
On one side of the equation, you have such a silly, out-of-place item - but you just accept it. Why? It doesn't make a lick of sense, but you laugh, and you just accept that of course there are Grog machines in this world.
On the other side, you have a dark, threatening, scary moment...that forever made me truly fear what LeChuck would do to Guybrush if given the chance. Why? Because he actually had a serious motivation, and the power to carry out his threat. To neuter that threat lessens the character.
These two extremes of tone need to be in balance with one another (and both must be serviced!) to succesfully carry off the Tone of Monkey Island, in my mind.
You need contrast. It's what makes black comedy work so well. It's why the shock of Guybrush's death worked so well.
Don't disagree with this at all.
Uzrname:
I think this whole review is a tad bit exaggerated in criticism. The point of view is very subjective...
Well, naturally. Any review is going to be subjective to the view of the reviewer. That said, it doesn't mean we can't find areas of commonality and other areas to debate.
...and the tone of this very review (sorry for the pun) is, to me, somewhat negative.
Hmm...are we talking about my views of the original games, or the review of the particular episode in question?
But I won't go into detail because after 15 pages of comments, it would take a month to properly construct the right argument.
Personally, I'd love to hear your comments...I certainly took longer than a month to return, so you've got time!
What I find absolutely angsty, however, is the p.o.v. you throw like this on readers, telling that EMI was clearly an epic fail and LCR was an epic win.
Nope. I didn't say that EMI was an epic fail. As many people have said, standing on it's own, without the baggage of the other games, it's a perfectly serviceable adventure.
The problem that I have with Escape has to do with it's sharp departure in Tone from the other games - and more specifically, the fact that it threw serious Monkey Wrenches (pardon the pun) into previous continuity. Rather than fixing errors, it actually introduced more. To my mind, this showed disrespect to the previous entries in the series.
Does that equal epic fail? No...but I do feel that the developers of Escape felt like they were in a bit of a story straight-jacket, and reacted by resorting to satire and commentary, as opposed to telling a consistent story.
I think you'll find very few people who don't see Escape as the "Black Sheep" of the family - that said, I don't hate it, and do accept it as canon.
Once again, the whole position is very debatable, but I personally wouldn't say that EMI "ruined the whole series".
I didn't say that either. I did say that I didn't think that it was the appropriate place to END the series, and thankfully, now that we have Tales, it isn't the place where it will end in any case.
At the same time, I wouldn't call LCR so successful either. Sure, it was an overall improvement to the first game, but the series lacked cartoonism, which made it a realistic game with mood similar to that of Indiana Jones franchise (at least).
I might need some clarification here - are you talking about the series up to that point, meaning SOMI and LCR, or...?
I'm not sure I could say either of those games werent' cartoony...it's not often that you deal with voodoo infested ghost pirates by spraying them with voodoo root beer?
Furthermore, the plot was already starting to get stale by LCR (not saying that it wasn't in EMI), but the lack of cartoonishness made it so that the whole game was probably perceived more mature than the developers had expected it to be.
I'm guessing that you're talking about cartoonishness in reference to the Art Style, prior to COMI. I don't think I can agree with you on these points...I don't know that you could say that the plot was getting stale by only the second game (which differed in significant ways from the first one), or that the game could ever be mistaken for being serious. (We do stuff enormous things in his pockets throughout the game, and the spitting contest alone is pretty cartoony.)
CMI, on the other hand, had it all: the cartoonishness of an epic screen story combined to the verisimilitude of everyday situations. That and, of course, the whole effort of that drawing, voicing, animating and donut-devouring cast.
In terms of art style, yes. COMI had reached film-level quality animation by that point, and was gorgeous. I don't feel that it had really changed tone in the plot, however - with the possible exception of making LeChuck somewhat less vicious. That said, I never had any questions abou the tone of COMI.
So to sum up my idea, though when compared all together, EMI does fall into the last place of overall reviews on the web, however, if you count each game in its time, they all had pretty good influence and some success, more or less. Therefore I think that throwing that much dirt into EMI's face would probably be wrong.
I think you may've over-read my comments about Escape. I do feel that Escape clearly illustrates what NOT to do with Monkey Island, but I can respect it for what it is...a flawed game that has some entertainment value, but (for me) is the least enjoyable in the series. Heck, no matter which series you play, SOME title has to come in in last place.
Kroms:
EMI is fine, really. It just has some misplaced ideas like a robot monkey, and is vastly overwritten in parts.
God, that damned Robot Monkey. I think that was the last straw for me in Escape, simply because I always wanted to take another delve down that Monkey Head.
If we ever DO return to Monkey Island again, I hope the Monkey Head will be back. They don't need to explain it. Just let me take another dive down its gullet into the underworld.
BTW...one of the things I liked BEST about Escape was the Church of LeChuck on the Island. It was creepy, and in a way foreshadowed the Rise of the Pirate God.
LCR would be the best of the bunch if it weren't for those sadistic puzzles. I'm re-playing it and stuck on finding the fourth map piece - helplessly stuck. It's frustrating and not fun at all.
Really? I don't remember ever having gotten stuck in LCR for very long, but then again, it's been some number of years since I've played it. I'm looking forward to playing it again with the release of the SE soon.
lso, for something that is remembered for being so "dark", a decent chunk of LCR is pretty light-hearted. I mean, they do remind you every once in a while that a certain zombie pirate is out to get you (the cutscenes after getting each map, the scene with the dancing skeletons), but really, the game has you conning a guy of his prized fishing rod, picking up an old dog to get a map and even a scene where Guybrush falls, Chuck Jones-style, in a trapdoor, though admittedly into a room with a corpse.
...and it's that juxtaposition of moods and tones that I find so hilarious. The game succesfully balances laugh-out-loud funny with horror. (Think Rap Scallion in the burned-down weiner hut.) That's a tough balancing act.
Uzrname:
I'd say its only major problem (beside problematic 3D graphics) was those inconsistencies in the plot. It's not just the robot, there's the whole how-come-Marley-is-Toothrot thing too, and Ozzie Mandrill that people go pretty much WTF is this at.
At one time Guybrush says to a monkey: "Oh ok, I'll do it for the kids", which made me think that probably EMI was also aiming younger audiences than the other series, which would also explain the whole inconsistency shtick.
Exactly...that lack of consistency actively pulls the player OUT of the immersion...it's almost like being splashed in the face with cold water. In this way, I felt escape actually worked against itself in a way that none of the other games ever did. It was simply TOO self-aware, and too eager to provide commentary on a variety of things (politics, commercialism) than to simply just exist as itself.
Kroms:
I thought the art direction impressively balanced the more "serious" look with CMI's cartoony look, but I will agree that the heads are too big. The guy who helps Guybrush on the beach - "My nose! My beautiful pirate nose!" - is an example of that.
I actually love the art design of most of the characters in the Telltale Series. Like most of you, I got tired of seeing re-used character models, but I actually sorta looked forward to seeing that guy punched in the first episode again.
For some reason, that line really cracked me up..."My nose! My beautiful Pirate nose! I'll get you for this!" I kept expecting this guy to pop up somewhere in a later episode and somehow sabotage some intricate plan of Guybrushes at the worst possible moment. Sadly, it was not to be.
Uzrname:
In Tales, you don't have that. They move like humans, talk like humans, lips synch, and how many are there facial expressions, from eyebrow raising to this "I see what you did there" look. You tell me!
This is one area where I can't give enough Kudos to Telltale. They do some AMAZING things with facial expressions in this series (particularly with the eyes.)
In the first episode, when Guybrush is about to spray the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu with the Fizzy Root Beer, and drops the bottle...
"Whoops!" His cringe is amazing, and his facial expression conveys everything you need to know...embarassment, shame, fear, the whole nine yards. These character models really are acting through physical movement.
tbm1986:
I am therefore confident they can do better with Monkey Island Season 2. They hadn't done MI for a long time when they did Season 1, had to modify the engine to be more Wii-compatible and didn't yet have any feedback from us.
I am too...Sam and Max only got better as they progressed from Episode to Episode, and in Season Two everything tied back to every other episode in a very smooth, tightly written way.
I'm hoping the same effect will be seen with Tales. I think a lot of the reason there was the unevenness in this season is largely because of the different teams producing the episode. This is a given with them producing these games so quickly, but there did oftentimes feel like there were differences in Tone even between the episodes, or different design philosophies. Smoothing those over in Season 2 will improve the experience greatly, I imagine.
Astro Gnocci:
I mostly agree with your thoughts, although as usual i didn't mind the puzzles too much.
You're definitely about LeChuck's full glory being finally back. I'm really glad they made him fearsome and dangerous again. This whole play on human lechuck was overall pretty well done, but it made you kinda doubt if it would be the case, and that made him even greater in the end.
No question. They've brought LeChuck full circle, and restored him as a credible threat. That had to be tough, after playing a second banana through most of Escape.
Concerning the bugs, i had another one when replaying the episode : When i waitecd to be keelhauled so i could pick up the keys, i got near the rope, and lechuck just wouldn't come. Since they're really not much else you can do at this spot, that was pretty frustrating. Had to reload just like you did, and i'm glad this didn't happen on the first playthrough or it would have been really weird indeed.
I won't lie...it went a long way toward souring me on the episode. I understand that's not really a problem with the way the episode was scripted...so it's hard to count that as a mark against it. However, even when replaying the episode, covering the same ground over-and-over and undoing events from previous episodes that we'd worked so hard to accomplish left me growling at the last episode.."GET ON WITH IT."
Well... That's exactly what happens at the end on Secret, ain't it ?
But it did feel a bit weird this time around. I didn't really understand what she was actually trying to do and it all felt a bit artificial. I consider it a rather minor part of the plot, but it's still a bit annoying.
I've given my misgivings for Elaines behavior above, but I wanted to mention another thing about it here. It DID feel artificial...and solely for the convenience of the plot. By making Elaine practically omniscient with regards to the Voodoo Lady and LeChuck, it conveniently explains her behavior in the rest of the episodes. Unfortunately, that's not terribly realistic...particularly when you consider that as half of a loving couple, she REALLY should've talked to her husband about her concerns, instead of manipulating him to see things her way. In this way, I felt like I could only chalk this up as "lazy writing."
It's not a hard idea to think up. I mean, that's what I thought the ending WAS for a couple minutes, before I realized the scene had transitioned from cutscene to a playable scene. From there, I opened the inventory and made the logical conclusion that the developers were going for. As much as the puzzle itself was very heartwarming, it would have probably impacted me more just to leave him there.
As the Monkey Island series belongs to LucasArts and we are licensing it, we could not easily leave the end of the game in an irreversible place. I don't know if we ever seriously considered leaving Guybrush trapped in the crossroads, but I also don't know if any of us would be opposed to it. This came up on the DVD commentary track but I can't remember exactly what was discussed. (Get the DVD to find out! ... or I will try to remember.)
She should be ultimately a force of balance in the universe, though it makes sense that both LeChuck and Guybrush would view her as pulling their strings, and resenting her for it.
[...]
Making her a villain would be a mistake.
Agreed, at least in my opinion. Seeing the Voodoo Lady in Tales as a force of balance in the MI universe is exactly right. Guybrush and LeChuck seeing her as pulling the strings, too. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have never seen her as a villain and still don't after Tales. I do think that from some points of view (eg Elaine's) she appears to go too far and tread into antagonistic territory, but from her perspective (and surely from certain outside perspectives) she is a disconnected party who is trying to keep things level and safe, if at a cost.
I've been suspicious of her as a character ever since it was noticed that she's shipping supplies to LeChuck in MI2, though. She always presents herself on the most surface level as being benevolent (or won't commit either way), and even in the early games her story was never straight when you tried to confirm it from person to person (she told Largo she was the one who did in LeChuck's ghost). It's clear that to some degree she deals in misinformation and playing multiple sides for her own means, even if the scale isn't always as large as Tales (though maybe the story of Tales only blew up the way it did because this is the time the characters in the universe noticed that this double dealing was going on). 3 and 4 largely dropped this and made her into a more benevolent adviser, but it's not like that weirdness and not-fullly-trustworthiness is a new thing if you look back.
Yeesh, you Monkey fans with all your clamoring for darkness and despair. It's a pirate game, not the Holocaust.
This. Making something 'dark' and 'edgy' =/= better game. ETA: Having said that, I'd also like to add that I think Tales reached a really good balance with Episodes 4 & 5, which both had genuinely dark moments yet managed to keep the game feeling like Monkey Island. I'm not averse to a game having dark elements, but IMO, with Monkey Island it can't lose its humour either.
This as well. I don't see the Voodoo Lady as a villain, but I also wouldn't class her as a 'good' character. She's trying to preserve some kind of cosmic balance known only to her, using whatever means necessary. Either that or it's all part of a scam to make sure that business is always good, that voodoo lifestyle isn't free after all...
As the Monkey Island series belongs to LucasArts and we are licensing it, we could not easily leave the end of the game in an irreversible place.
This is sort of what I expected...but at the same time, I can't help but re-read the sentence and put the emphasis on the word "easily." That means that it wouldn't have been impossible, no?
After all, as I understand it, the scripts did have to be approved by Lucasarts beforehand...
That said, I'm sure they wouldn't have made any decisions about a second season of Tales until the first season had concluded.
I hope they'll have gained the confidence to give you a bit more leeway in future Seasons.
I don't know if we ever seriously considered leaving Guybrush trapped in the crossroads, but I also don't know if any of us would be opposed to it. This came up on the DVD commentary track but I can't remember exactly what was discussed. (Get the DVD to find out! ... or I will try to remember.)
I can't wait to hear this on the commentary track...I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during those story discussions.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have never seen her as a villain and still don't after Tales. I do think that from some points of view (eg Elaine's) she appears to go too far and tread into antagonistic territory, but from her perspective (and surely from certain outside perspectives) she is a disconnected party who is trying to keep things level and safe, if at a cost.
That's the part I'm interested in finding out in Season 2. If she is indeed a force that attempts to keep things in balance, surely there is some opposing force she is working against. That means that the greater danger would be not maintaining that balance. I'd like to see exactly what it is that scares the Voodoo Lady enough to keep LeChuck and Guybrush in this endless cycle.
I've been suspicious of her as a character ever since it was noticed that she's shipping supplies to LeChuck in MI2, though.
I always viewed that as just good business sense. May as well profit from both sides of the fence.
Kroms
Yeesh, you Monkey fans with all your clamoring for darkness and despair. It's a pirate game, not the Holocaust.
Who's clamoring for darkness and despair?
Look at it another way...in my discussion above, I mentioned that these characters will have dealt with some scars and need some time to heal, but I'm not meaning that in a literal way - nor am I suggesting they should be angsty about it.
What I AM suggesting is that the characters should grow and have doubts.
Way back when Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air, I remember having a long discussion with a fellow fan about the novels. I enjoyed reading them at the time, but he countered that it was pointless because they didn't affect continuity within the universe. For that matter, episode-to-episode continuity on the show could get dicey.
But the novels were worse...it was fore-ordained that no story could have a lasting impact on the characters. By the end of the novel, everybody had to be returned to their starting position - this made every novel a zero-sum effort.
After that, I never could quite enjoy reading the Star Trek novels.
Contrast that with the Star Wars novels. While their quality has varied over the years, later in the Bantam line, the publishers realized they were falling into the same trap that the Star Trek novels did - and they decided to do something about it.
They started killing a few minor characters. "Dark", you might say...but it had the intended effect. It showed that the characters were now considered mortal...and that not even major characters were exempt from being impacted by death or loss.
Now suddenly, the outcome of every novel was not assured before you read it...and it made the investment in the characters greater.
We already know that characters in the Monkey Island universe can grow and change...Guybrush has undergone major changes throughout the series - I just think it's important to continue that trend. (And letting him keep his hook might've been a great way to do it - he was even disappointed to lose it!)
ETA: Having said that, I'd also like to add that I think Tales reached a really good balance with Episodes 4 & 5, which both had genuinely dark moments yet managed to keep the game feeling like Monkey Island.
I didn't know ETA meant something else apart from "Estimated Time of Arrival". What does it stand for here?
This is sort of what I expected...but at the same time, I can't help but re-read the sentence and put the emphasis on the word "easily." That means that it wouldn't have been impossible, no?
With enough time and enough money you can do almost anything.
That's the part I'm interested in finding out in Season 2. If she is indeed a force that attempts to keep things in balance, surely there is some opposing force she is working against. That means that the greater danger would be not maintaining that balance. I'd like to see exactly what it is that scares the Voodoo Lady enough to keep LeChuck and Guybrush in this endless cycle.
As of right now "what it is" is totally ambiguous in my mind, and in a good way. Are there external forces within the world of MI? Other, less good pirates? The MI version of the Spanish armada or more imperial colonialism? An army of kung-fu trained monkey robots? :rolleyes:) Or is this actually a fantasy/construct which is coming apart at the seams, but will keep existing as long as the wheel is turning? I don't particularly know or care, which is maybe bad? Maybe not. Fortunately it's not my job to know or care in a canonical way, as I got to help out with story and direct some episodes, but never had to deal with the burdens of fully holding the keys to the kingdom of MI myself. It lets me continue to have and push crackpot theories both on the forums and amongst the design team, free of the weight of actual final responsibility.
Even with inverted personalities i cant imagine a "good" LeChuck.
Now that he is human and powerless, he is more vulnerable. So my thought is that maybe he will be acting as a changed person, only to protect himself, take advantage and wait for his turn to attack.
What prize did Ignatius win for absolutely nailing this?
I was very enjoyed by TOMI. You really managed to respect the original spirit of the two first episodes and to push the intrigues a little further. Nonetheless, in my opinion, there are some lacks, and inappropriate deviations in TOMI.
- The three last tales are masterpieces, but the two first are not so cool. I think the trap not to fall in is to try to make Monkey Island too weird. Monkey Island are serious pirate worlds in which funny things happen. For example the D’Oro intrigue seems inappropriate, whereas the Winslow seizing intrigue is wonderfull. The idea of an ancient civilizations sounds too much like Indiana Jones. Mermaids could have been a good idea, but I would have preferred regular ones. I mean in the two first episodes we had to solve pirate intrigues, find map pieces, hunt for a treasure, master swordfighting. The all vacylian apparatus doesn’t look like a pirate story.
- The map views of the islands are not beautiful and it’s a pity. Very little island is a good idea. I’m a bit fed up with new islands, I want to go back to mêlé, the phatt, booty and scabb islands. It’s cool to come back in one place. You’ve done it with floatsom and it was good (particularly at night) but the island the island didn’t look piraty enough in the first place.
- Cemeteries and swamps are important.
- Le Marquis de Singe doesn’t seem appropriate neither. The idea of a crazy scientist opposed to the vaudoo lady is interesting but the design of the character disturbed me, when Morgan Leflay is really refreshing. I’ve always thought that a second woman were needed in monkey island (like Kate capsize ). Anyway, the crazy scientist theme is closed to the maniac mansion saga, I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to monkey island.
- Generally monkey island games miss something: pirates. In SOMI there were a lot of pirates just hanging around, or drinking at the scumm bar, they contributed to the ambiance.
- I really liked the search and the use of books in MI2. This aspect was not emphasized enough in TOMI.
- It’s really cool to go underwater. Guybrush should go more often, or more longer.
- I really like in MI2 to begin in one island and then that the intrigue moved to the three islands, enlarging the initial environment instead of moving from one island to another.
- Stan in TOMI is not funny enough. Stan always comes with a new franchise; in TOMI he was not important enough.
- Love intrigues (Leflay/threepwood vs. Lechuck/Marley) in TOMI really improved the narrative.
- The place accorded to the vaudoo lady is really interesting in TOMI.
- The afterworld and the daemon bride are awesome.
- The jungles may be larger and like mazes. It’s cool to draw oneself a personal map of a jungle or a forest. The size of the forest in SOMI was good.
- TOMI missed sword fights. Even if grimaces were funny, monkey islands needs sword fights.
- Shipwrecks were never used enough.
- Maybe the circus theme of SOMI is underestimated.
- Guybrush acting like a child from times to times is really funny.
- pieces o'8 are missing. In SOMI and MI2 we had the opportunity to make a little money.
As I read messages throughout the forum something disturbs the winds of my mind. I don't think there are any anachronism in SOMI and MI2.
I think Guybrush is a child lost in the theme park. He is evolving in D. Winnicot potential space: the wolrd of illusion. It means that the world he sees is a combination of his imagination and real objects of the theme park (like a coke machine + Guybrush = Grog machine). So this world is in part a creation of Guybrush, but he pretends not to know that, so he seems to found the things he plays with. What I really like I think, is guybrush own perception of the theme park.
So, there is no anachronism in the first Monkey Island, because for Guybrush this world is important and he plays with it "seriously", he doesn't want to put things that shouldn't be in a pirate world. Unfortunatly, as a child, he makes some mistakes. There would be anachronism if Monkey Island events really took place in the past, but I don't think so.
To me there are "good anachronisms" in monkey island follow-up, for example the dioramas at the end of COMI, and there are bad ones, like people sunbathing at the beginning of COMI, or the sushi Bar in EFMI.
Oh god, i've been trying to mention the subject of tone (mostly the handling of anachrosnisms/sillyness) in several threads but i had completely overlooked this one...
Silly me :eek:
Another thing that bugged me was this "esponja grande" thing. Okay, it's only the first episode and we have no idea of how it will turn out, but... A giant sponge ? Am i the only one to think it's exactly the kind of "wrong" sillyness that was all over EMI ?
I think my main thing at this point is that I don't want TellTale to take on more MI unless they start working for a higher denominator. Working for the Wii severely compromised so much that was critical to maintaining the legacy of pure excellence. The graphics looked dated, models were repeated, landscapes were bare and simple, the sound quality was straight up awful, the music was all MIDI, incredibly low bitrate, etc. At the very least I'd like to see much more detailed, active environments. And the puzzle design was also "lowest common denominator." I want to see Monkey Island in full budget 2010, no corners cut. Maybe that's too much to ask, but I feel the legacy deserves it.
I think my main thing at this point is that I don't want TellTale to take on more MI unless they start working for a higher denominator. Working for the Wii severely compromised so much that was critical to maintaining the legacy of pure excellence. The graphics looked dated, models were repeated, landscapes were bare and simple, the sound quality was straight up awful, the music was all MIDI, incredibly low bitrate, etc. At the very least I'd like to see much more detailed, active environments. And the puzzle design was also "lowest common denominator." I want to see Monkey Island in full budget 2010, no corners cut. Maybe that's too much to ask, but I feel the legacy deserves it.
That won't see the light of day in 2010 because of Sam & Max. Maybe they'd start work on it late 2010 but we certainly wouldn't hear about it until summer next year at the earliest.
Comments
Darn, I got all excited, thinking Lorn had posted his review finally!!
I mean, I like a dark tone too, but there's been people suggesting that Guybrush wear a black coat. There's a YouTube comment complaining that the updated "LeChuck Theme" from SMI:SE is not "dark" enough, maybe with too strong a ska flavor. I'm sorry, do you want me to play a Birthday Party riff with that?
OK, sure: Guybrush works best when he's being both a snark and a baboon, and LeChuck should have some air of creepiness about him, but if you want eternal darkness then go play that. Light helps. You need contrast. It's what makes black comedy work so well. It's why the shock of Guybrush's death worked so well.
Just, avoid the repetitive jungle puzzles in the next game (integrate your plot in with your puzzles, alright?), add a bit of background and voila, you're good. Hell, drop the "three puzzle" structure if you can. Every little thing is a potential puzzle. You get a puzzle where you need to know how to talk to a manatee, now try figuring out how to understand it. There's a puzzle there: you can use the fact that the Voodoo Lady's manipulative and "conveniently" has the appropriate tarot cards in front of her. Voila! You've added to the story and created a puzzle.
I don't mean to sound like a jerk. Telltale's one of two or three companies whose games I genuinely look forward to, and I really just want them to put out the best they can. They have what could be the most talented team in the world right now. I'd hate to see it go to waste.
I think this whole review is a tad bit exaggerated in criticism. The point of view is very subjective and the tone of this very review (sorry for the pun) is, to me, somewhat negative. But I won't go into detail because after 15 pages of comments, it would take a month to properly construct the right argument.
What I find absolutely angsty, however, is the p.o.v. you throw like this on readers, telling that EMI was clearly an epic fail and LCR was an epic win. Once again, the whole position is very debatable, but I personally wouldn't say that EMI "ruined the whole series". I think that it was an average game, a bit cliched, but still sticking to what was coming out as quests back then (think Discworld Noir, Post Mortem, Syberia, etc.) It was a pretty low standard of the series, but clearly not a complete abortion.
At the same time, I wouldn't call LCR so successful either. Sure, it was an overall improvement to the first game, but the series lacked cartoonism, which made it a realistic game with mood similar to that of Indiana Jones franchise (at least). Furthermore, the plot was already starting to get stale by LCR (not saying that it wasn't in EMI), but the lack of cartoonishness made it so that the whole game was probably perceived more mature than the developers had expected it to be.
CMI, on the other hand, had it all: the cartoonishness of an epic screen story combined to the verisimilitude of everyday situations. That and, of course, the whole effort of that drawing, voicing, animating and donut-devouring cast.
So to sum up my idea, though when compared all together, EMI does fall into the last place of overall reviews on the web, however, if you count each game in its time, they all had pretty good influence and some success, more or less. Therefore I think that throwing that much dirt into EMI's face would probably be wrong.
A pinch is okay thou
LCR would be the best of the bunch if it weren't for those sadistic puzzles. I'm re-playing it and stuck on finding the fourth map piece - helplessly stuck. It's frustrating and not fun at all.
Also, for something that is remembered for being so "dark", a decent chunk of LCR is pretty light-hearted. I mean, they do remind you every once in a while that a certain zombie pirate is out to get you (the cutscenes after getting each map, the scene with the dancing skeletons), but really, the game has you conning a guy of his prized fishing rod, picking up an old dog to get a map and even a scene where Guybrush falls, Chuck Jones-style, in a trapdoor, though admittedly into a room with a corpse.
I'd say its only major problem (beside problematic 3D graphics) was those inconsistencies in the plot. It's not just the robot, there's the whole how-come-Marley-is-Toothrot thing too, and Ozzie Mandrill that people go pretty much WTF is this at.
At one time Guybrush says to a monkey: "Oh ok, I'll do it for the kids", which made me think that probably EMI was also aiming younger audiences than the other series, which would also explain the whole inconsistency shtick.
But lets face it, the game looks childish. Its too cartoonish, it looks like a small kids` game. I mean the character desing is just a bit off, the heads are just waaaay too big in comparison with the rest of the body. (Morgan) Thats characteristic of games and tv shows targeted for small kids.
That scene always summed up EMI for me. A moment or so before the "kids" line, Guybrush says: "Sometimes my life feels like an unending series of puzzles." That's one of the best lines in the series. But then he goes on...and on...and on, finally ruining the scene with the "kids" line.
I thought the art direction impressively balanced the more "serious" look with CMI's cartoony look, but I will agree that the heads are too big. The guy who helps Guybrush on the beach - "My nose! My beautiful pirate nose!" - is an example of that.
That's one thing that irks me. A lot of the characters look straight out of Sam and Max, especially in the first two chapters. That guy may have actually been Leonard Steakcharmer. It's getting better, but I'd like to see more of it: characters that look different, preferably with different silhouettes. We'll see how it goes in future games.
Up til you said "Morgan" I thought you were talking about EMI...
Well, the thing with Tales is that yes characters do look cartoonish (I wouldn't say more than in CMI thou), but unlike EMI characters, they are well-animated and drawn to be used to their full potential. How many times have I seen Guybrush or Elaine just stand there and do nothing but opening their mouths in EMI, seldom waving their hands from time to time (Guybrush's favorite was simply crossing them). And when they were walking or running, their legs sometime bent in a strange way.
In Tales, you don't have that. They move like humans, talk like humans, lips synch, and how many are there facial expressions, from eyebrow raising to this "I see what you did there" look. You tell me!
WHAT? How can you not like the way Morgan looks? I mean, look at her, she's great.
I always found it sad when people associate cartooning with kids and kids only. I find that's the problem with video games as well.
So you know, I do still plan to write my review for the final chapter. I apologize for taking so long, and feel that you guys deserve an explanation.
My son was born on November 8th of last year. The doctors knew immediately that something was wrong, but it took them awhile to make a diagnosis.
Luke started his life with a series of blood draws, oxygenation, and two spinal taps.
An enlarged liver and spleen, and extremely low platelet counts also pointed to issues.
After a couple of transfusions, a diagnosis was finally made - he was born with a condition called Congenital CytoMegaloVirus.
Most folks are carriers of CMV, and never realize it. It mimics a severe cold or mono in adults.
It's only dangerous for infants who become infected in the womb. For most infants, this isn't a problem - most mothers have already contracted the virus prior to conception, and so pass on the immunity to their children.
In our case, Lukes mother had never contracted CMV in her life - she caught the virus during the pregnancy, and Luke had no protection against it.
He was born symptomatic, and there are a number of complications that arise from that.
While spending a month to absorb all of this, we found that there was also a chance that he was positive for Cystic Fibrosis.
CMV had seemed bad enough - CF was a potential death sentence.
We immediately scheduled a sweat-test for Luke to try and determine whether or not he was positive for CF as well.
Unfortunately, he didn't sweat enough during the appointment to make a diagnosis, and so we had to schedule another apointment - one month later.
We spent the entire month on pins and needles - trying to maintain optimism, but also painfully aware of how he kept hitting bullseyes with negative consquences.
Finally, at the start of last month, we performed a second sweat-test - and to our great relief, Luke was found to be negative for CF.
The good news is that we're slowly getting his CMV under control, and he's gaining weight. He thankfully has dodged the worst effects of the CMV (at least, it appears so, so far)...and is a very happy, jolly baby.
This last week has seen me dealing with a multitude of work issues which are also eating up my time...but rest assured that the final review WILL be written.
It's definitely going to be the hardest to write, as I have greatly conflicting feelings about the final chapter.
That said, I'm glad that you guys are still sticking around and have been patient with my lack of updates. It's been a great ride with all of you, and I hope you'll all stick around for Tales Season 2.
(It's coming - we all know it. Fess up, Telltale!)
Lorn
Oh, you did~ NOT, post her pose in Lair of the Leviathan! Damn, she was just LOVABLE there.
Damn, that's rough. Must be a horrible situation... I can't imagine what it would be like if my son or daughter had been diagnosed with something like that. I wish you and your family all well and hope your son gets better and better by each passing day.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to write this review. Every time, I've begun typing away, only to find myself pausing, and then closing down the browser window.
I apologize for keeping you guys waiting for this review for so long...it wasn't my intention to draw it out this far, but the last episode left me with a variety of mixed emotions, and I'm still not sure that I can honestly say exactly how I feel about it.
However, with the weekend announcement of the LeChucks Revenge Special Edition, the announcement for the DVD Release of Tales Season 1, and the announcement for the next Sam and Max Season, now seems like the perfect time to finish this series of reviews.
Without further ado:
Ranking
As usual, here is my ranking of the original games in the series:
Escape from Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Curse of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChucks' Revenge
As in my last entry, I"ll refrain from giving my ranking for this latest episode until the end of the review. My ranking for the episodes leading up to the Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood are:
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Tales of Monkey Island - The Siege of Spinner Cay
The Secret of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Lair of the Leviathan
The Curse of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Story
Rise of the Pirate God opens on possibly the grimmest note of any Monkey Island Game in History - with Guybrush quite literally dead. (Well - mostly dead - he still clings to a shred of life, which may come in handy later.) After extricating himself from his own grave, he bargains with a strangely familiar ferryman to be taken to The Crossroads - where his ultimate fate will be decided.
Once Guybrush figures out a way to pay the ferryman, he goes on a short journey through the underworld to be dropped off at the Crossroads - where he meets Galeb, a strange old man who wants to sell him a spirit photo.
Due to lack of funds, Guybrush is unable to purchase the photo initially, but he is still able to glean some information from Galeb after some mind-bending conversation.
It is revealed that there are three areas of the Crossroads which contain trials that will help determine the Pirate Spirits ultimate fate - Trials related to Swordplay, Thievery, and er...Treasure-Hunt-er-y.
Guybrush also learns that only one person in history has ever escaped The Crossroads - The Ghost Pirate LeChuck - and that his secret may still be tucked away somewhere within.
After a series of minor puzzles, the spell (and the components needed to create it) are collected. With a little help of the spirit of Morgan, Guybrush is able to open a portal from the Crossroads back into the mortal realm, and confront LeChuck, who holds Elaine captive on his Ship of Doom.
Unfortunately, things don't go as planned. LeChuck plugs La Esponja Grande into the portal of the Crossroads, and transforms himself into the Pirate God - he also reveals that Guybrush has been dancing to his tune the entire time, and that the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu that was designed to kill him will now be used as LeChucks implement to dispatch the Voodoo Lady, whom LeChuck views as the grand puppetmaster of both of their lives. He has corrupted it's voodoo essence to destroy any mortal hand that touches it.
Hearing these words, Elaine turns to LeChuck and beseeches him to make her his undead bride. Using the power of Le Esponge Grande (and sucking power straight from the Crossroads), LeChuck converts Elaine into his willing bride, and challenges Guybrush...throwing the Cutlass of Kaflu into the mainmast of his ship.
Too late does Guybrush realize that his noncorporeal form can't grasp the sword...as LeChuck taunts him, Elaine shoots Guybrush with a stream of voodoo root beer, dissolving him...and transporting him back to the Crossroads and Morgan.
After a brutal pep talk, Morgan convinces Guybrush to fight on...and with a flash of inspiration, (and a little nudge given remotely by the Voodoo Lady) Guybrush conceives of a plot to locate the Voodoo Ladies Locket and re-possess his dead body, ressurecting himself in Zombie Form.
Using conveniently placed rips in the Crossroads, Guybrush must go through another series of puzzles which take place at familiar locations, to both possess (and bind) his spirit to his now undead body.
When he finally gets himself stuffed back into his corpse, he confronts LeChuck and Elaine once again. However, the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu burns his hand at the touch...
Taunting him a second time, Elaine pulls the sword from the mainmast and prepares to cut Guybrush down with it, but the timely arrival of Van Winslow with a flotilla and Vacaylian Reinforcements buys him some time.
Realizing that LeChuck is too powerful with the Sponge still drawing Voodoo Energy from the Crossroads, Guybrush intuits that he must shrink the previously embiggened La Esponja Grande.
Mocking him for his tenacity, LeChuck once again shoves him through the portal back into the Crossroads.
Galeb proves useful in concocting an anti-embiggening spell, and Guybrush sets off to collect the ingredients that will be necessary to put the Sponge on a diet.
Once the necessary reagants are collected and the Sponge is shrunken, Elaine reverts to her former self and Guybrush can confront LeChuck on his own ship.
Elaine reveals her suspicions of the Voodoo Lady, and how she has been trying to show Guybrush all this time that she's been manipulating him for years. Van Winslow and the Vacaylians attack, and LeChuck freezes them in place with his awesome voodoo might.
Finally annoyed enough to engage Guybrush directly, LeChuck knocks him around a bit, not noticing that Elaine is sneaking up behind him with the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu. While offering his misogynystic view of what marriage to Elaine would be like, Elaine moves in for the kill, and stabs LeChuck from behind, the sword plunging through his heart.
And that just pisses him off.
Guybrush is thrown (AGAIN!) through the portal back into the Crossroads.
LeChuck reveals to Elaine that he has drawn enough Voodoo Energy into himself to make him nigh-invulnerable. At this point, he can simply step through the rip into the crossroads and draw in as much energy as he desires.
While taunting Elaine, LeChuck prepares to do just that...leaping onto the edge of the portal...only to be stabbed by Morgan on the other side. Morgan quickly tells Guybrush that LeChuck can be destroyed, but he must be taken on in both the physical and the spiritual realm at the same time.
LeChuck strikes Morgan aside, picking up Guybrush and tossing him back through the portal (AGAIN) into the mortal realm.
Thus begins the Battle Royale, with Guybrush and Elaine having to simultaneously take on LeChuck on board his ship. Guybrush takes one hell of a beating, with LeChuck taking out his years of frustration on Guybrushes weary undead body.
Through a series of timed puzzles onboard the ship, Guybrush is shot from a cannon back through the portal (yet again) to arrive in the Crossroads.
As LeChuck persues Guybrush, he is positioned ideally to be attacked on both sides...Morgan stabs LeChuck, and tells Guybrush that he needs to be trapped.
Knowing that his shred of life can destroy the rips between the spirit and mortal realms, Guybrush sacrifices his shred of life to close the portal directly on LeChuck, who is held in place. Trapped by the portal, he is attacked in the spirit realm by Morgan, and in the mortal realm by Elaine. Shrieking in agony, Lechuck seems to be destroyed in a flash of blinding light.
When Guybrush awakens, he is utterly alone, at the center of the Crossroads. After a moments thought, it occurs to him that his wedding ring embodies everything that is needed to open the pathway out of the Crossroads. Placing it in the center, Guybrush is magically reconstituted and whole, reunited with his wife and friends on the Screaming Narwhal.
Roll Credits.
MEANWHILE -
Morgan approaches the Voodoo Lady, complete with a jar of voodoo essence and skull that moans suspiciously like LeChuck. After a bit of back-and-forth, it becomes clear that Morgan won her way free of the Crossroads with the help of the Voodoo Lady, whose plots apparently continue to wheel in the Monkey Universe. Can it be long at all before Guybrush once more has to face his fate?
Script
The script satisifes all the needs of the plot, in that it wraps up things and sets them up for the next installment in the Monkey Island Series.
In goes a step further in delivering on the menace of LeChuck...who finally takes his bloody vengeance on poor Guybrushes body.
However - this script left me feeling awfully flat. Many of the plot points that were resolved in this episode had been telegraphed ahead of time, which lessened their impact.
More problematic was the nature of the puzzles in this episode, which seemed to work directly against the narrative. More on that in a moment.
Dialogue
LeChucks incessant taunting on board the ship was beautiful - it made the battle feel personal - and LeChuck fully intended to take his bloody due from Guybrush for all the pain and suffering that he and the voodoo lady have caused him throughout the years.
Puzzles
Puzzles are probably my greatest disappointment about this episode, and the series as a whole.
A large part of the pay-off in these games (for me) is being able to complete puzzles to unlock additional content - usually in the form of new rooms, characters, and dialogue.
Make no mistake - the art design of the Crossroads is gorgeous...however, by the time we got done traipsing through portal after portal, location after location, to find item after item, I WAS SICK OF THE DAMNED CROSSROADS.
That in itself isn't enough to bring the puzzle elements down - until you consider two other irritants.
The first is the nature of a number of these puzzles - many of them are timed, or require a solution within a certain number of actions. Failure forces you to repeat the scenario again. This is a BIG adventure game no-no, particularly if used more than once.
Secondly, I encountered a bug in the game that had me tearing my hair out for over an hour, during one of these scenarios.
On board LeChucks ship (during the unholy beating he gives you), I was unable to use my hook on the mainsail. It was one of the first things I tried, reasoning that this is standard thing to do in pirate fiction. The game didn't crash or anything...it simply didn't perform the action. After trying multiple times, I reasoning that I must have to do something else.
I spent the next hour performing every other action necessary to move on with the story, only to finally have my rage stoked to the burning point at having to rewatch the sequences over and over again - and resorted to reading the walkthrough.
Lo and Behold - I had done the right thing - the game simply didn't respond. I alt-tabbed back into the game, tried it again - still no go.
Finally, I saved my game, exited out, came back in, loaded my saved game, and attempted the action again - this time it took.
I was NEVER able to replicate this failure...as near as I can tell, it was a one-time bug - but it certainly soured a good deal of this episode for me. Too much of this episode felt like repetition and punishment.
As a side note - personally, it also took the wind out of my sails to find out that after spending nearly an entire episode trying to get La Esponje Grande to grow, that I had to spend a large part of another episode to get it to shrink.
The players actions in the series are also undermined if another character "knew it all along" - as Elaine claims at the end of the episode.
Does Elaine always have a plan? Yes, she does. But her plan doesn't usually involve making the player feel like his actions have been a complete waste of time. In this case, she makes Guybrush look rather...foolish.
Art Direction
Nothing to complain about artwise - I just wish I wasn't seeing so much of it so often, over and over.
Characters
LeChuck: Can't say enough about the welcome return of Earl Boen. He still nails the character, and really makes the menace come through.
Morgan: Morgan continued to be her adorable self, and even gains a bit of a dark edge at the end of the series. This proves to be interesting when she shows up in Season 2.
The Voodoo Lady: Well...they've definitely thrown her motives into doubt, and it might be an interesting twist - but I'm not sure that I like the idea of "Voodoo Lady as villain." Call me sitting on the fence on this change - though the idea of LeChuck and Guybrush being eternally bound in a cycle of fate is interesting.
Elaine: Aside from being scripted as maybe a bit *too* smart for her own good, I have no complaints.
Music
No complaints about the music - I quite enjoyed the reprise of the LeChuck theme, but that's about all that stuck out for me. The music of this series has actually been a little underwhelming for me overall, simply because there weren't any major themes that really stuck with me (with the exception of DeSinges.) It's possible I've also been spoiled by having orchestral scores in the past as well - hopefully that will be possible if further seasons aren't produced on the Wii.
Voices
Can't give enough kudos to Earl Boen and Dominic, who got to especially stretch his vocal talents in the fight scene. Its really something to be able to FEEL the pain the character is in through nothing more than a vocal performance.
Technical
I encountered two bugs while playing this episode...the first being the aforementioned hook/mainsail problem, and the second involving getting the locket using bubbles from the clam. Fortunately, I tilted to the clam bug early, and was able to exit and restart and proceed. The second bug had me going for over an hour.
Judgement
God, this is a tough one. One of the struggles that I've had while writing this review has been that it almost can't stand as a review of the episode alone - it almost has to be a review for the entire series.
I feel that some of the story quibbles that I have are a case of Monday Morning Quarterbacking...but I can't help but feel that things wrapped up a bit too neatly, and too predictably.
Honestly, I was expecting a bit of a twist, and a little bit more impact at the end.
Someone else mentioned somewhere...wouldn't it have been interesting if the game simply ended at the Crossroads, with Guybrush all alone, and the camera slowly pulling back....?
Sure, it might enrage the audience with shock for the first few moments...but what a gutsy ending that would've made, and what an interesting starting point for the next season!
That said, even my story complaints are relatively minor.
The same can unfortunately not be said for the puzzles - the puzzles in this episode were repetitive enough that I found myself actually wishing for the game to end. I wasn't having fun anymore - I felt that the puzzles in this episode were actively punishing me, just as LeChuck was punishing Guybrush.
That's not to say they were hard...90% of the time I knew exactly what I had to do...but it was way too damned tedious to do it.
I'm afraid for me, Rise of the Pirate God stands only above the first episode - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal.
As for the series as a whole? Well...I can't say that I'm sorry to have played the season, and I think there were individual episodes that were pure brilliance. However, the series as a whole was awfully uneven, and most of the reason for that had to do with poor puzzle design and/or integration of the puzzles with the story.
This reminds me mostly of the first season of Sam & Max, so I'm hopeful that some of these issues will be smoothed over by the time of Season 2.
What Worked Best
Definitely LeChuck opening up the can of Whoop Ass. It's nice to see him as a credible villain again.
What was Missed
Much as I hate to say it, for me, in this episode - it was "the fun."
Advice to Telltale
The best advice I can give Telltale at this point is to trust your instincts. So far, you've done *mostly* right, but I think there's some definite room for improvement, particularly with puzzle design and implementation.
Quality control is also a bit of an issue - it might be wise to take a bit longer to design and bug-test each episode.
Conclusion
Sadly, for me, I'm afraid Season 1 was a mixed bag. That's part of why it's been so difficult for me to write this last review. I'm not sorry at all that we got more Monkey Island, and I do feel that if this were to be the last "game" in the series, that it definitely leaves it in a better place than Escape from Monkey Island did.
Unfortunately, I do think that they can do better - and I'm hoping they rise to the challenge in Season 2. Thanks for bringing it back though, guys. I hope this last bit of criticism isn't taken too harshly...I have a feeling I'm being harder on it than others were.
Ranking 2 (as indivdual episodes):
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Tales of Monkey Island - Rise of the Pirate God
Tales of Monkey Island - The Siege of Spinner Cay
The Secret of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Lair of the Leviathan
The Curse of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Ranking 3 (with all episodes treated as a single game)
Escape from Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island - Season 1
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Curse of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
The trailer for the new Sam & Max game looks so rich - they must have made improvements to their engine and got more people aboard. How? They started on that game before TMI and they've done so well with TMI that they've been able to expand.
I am therefore confident they can do better with Monkey Island Season 2. They hadn't done MI for a long time when they did Season 1, had to modify the engine to be more Wii-compatible and didn't yet have any feedback from us.
Also, after Ghost Pirates, I think we can appreciate the way Telltale do things all the more. GPoVI looked very nice but dialogue was shoddy, inventory combination puzzles were repetitive and the marketing was terrible (not to mention the ending was so rushed they dropped a FMV - reminiscent of Curse).
I mostly agree with your thoughts, although as usual i didn't mind the puzzles too much.
You're definitely about LeChuck's full glory being finally back. I'm really glad they made him fearsome and dangerous again. This whole play on human lechuck was overall pretty well done, but it made you kinda doubt if it would be the case, and that made him even greater in the end.
Concerning the bugs, i had another one when replaying the episode : When i waitecd to be keelhauled so i could pick up the keys, i got near the rope, and lechuck just wouldn't come. Since they're really not much else you can do at this spot, that was pretty frustrating. Had to reload just like you did, and i'm glad this didn't happen on the first playthrough or it would have been really weird indeed.
Oh, and concerning Elaine, while i still agree with you on the general, i have to disagree with this particular sentence :
Well... That's exactly what happens at the end on Secret, ain't it
But it did feel a bit weird this time around. I didn't really understand what she was actually trying to do and it all felt a bit artificial. I consider it a rather minor part of the plot, but it's still a bit annoying.
I'm also not sure how i feel about the voodoo lady. Could be interesting, i guess, but i liked how she'd always been kinda neutral, knowing more than everyone else about what was going on but not saying much or really interfering with the situation. I definitely don't think she would work as an actual villain, but the idea of her manipulating everyone, maybe in order to preserve some balance of good and evil or whatever... Well, i dunno, why not, it just wasn't really developped enough in this season for me to really have any defnite opinion. Still might turn out cool, just not quite convinced right now.
This reminds me of what i thought after episode 1... Tales was overall pretty good, i think, but after having seen Sam and max getting better and better with each episode and especially how good they had gotten by the end of the second season, it did feel like a drop in quality. It had some great things and ideas, but it did leave me kind of thinking "well... this is all good, but i KNOW it could be BETTER".
Just like tbm1986, i'm sure they'll get better with the next season -they always do-, but that one was still a bit disapointing in that sense.
In the end, i'd rank the different games as (worse to better) :
Escape - Tales & Curse (really not sure which one's better) - Secret - Revenge.
I wonder if, now that episodic gaming is going strong for TellTale, they'll be more gutsy about stuff like that.
If we really want to think of these things as seasons with cliff hangers and so on, then we have to assume that they'll slowly start integrating those types of story telling elements into their work.
I do wonder if there would have been an outcry about that ending from gamers who want closure, and I wonder if they couldn't risk that sort of thing when they weren't sure if they'd ever make another Monkey Island. You can't have that kind of ending if you aren't certain you're "picked up" for another season.
I still think it would have been incredibly poignant closure for the story and it would have done what great novels and films do--leave you really puzzling through things for the months that you waited on the next installment. Instead we got traditional collapsing resistance--as if the sacrifice he made really meant nothing because it wasn't a sacrifice. That's probably my only complaint, and probably exists as much because it's what I do for a living.
It didn't take away from how much I enjoyed the game, or how many laughs I had, or how I went and bought a friend a copy just so that he could try it. But, if I were workshopping the story, I'd certainly have questioned the collapsed resistance at the end.
Exactly. It's not that I went "that doesn't make sense" or that I was angry for Guybrushe's good fortune.
I just would have had more to think about in the mean time. It's why Empire is such a great Star Wars film--it leaves everything in chaos and misery, which leaves the audience perpetually in suspended wonder.
Here we go:
Darylman:
I didn't mind so much that Elaine and Guybrush had to work together to position LeChuck between the mortal world and the Crossroads - but I did mind that Elaine had supposedly known what was going on all along, and was just trying to bring Guybrush around.
Astro Gnocci brings this point up later, asking "Isn't this exactly what Elaine does at the end of Secret of Monkey Island?"
Well...yes...and no.
In SOMI, Guybrush and Elaine were not yet an item. It's not surprising that they would be persuing parallel schemes independently of each other.
In LeChucks Revenge, they've been estranged...and even though Elaine has succesfully made her way to the "X" where Guybrush is perilously hanging from rebar, it doesn't destroy any of Guybrushes accomplishements for her to be there.
In Curse, she's flat taken out of the running by the Cursed Ring.
In Escape, she may boss Guybrush around a bit, but he's still relatively independent...and for all of her smarts, it's obvious that the couple love each other, and that Guybrush gets along fine when working on his own.
And that's the real problem here. For Elaine to have manipulated Guybrush this way, it basically underscores the problems in their relationship. Shouldn't she just have...I dunno...TALKED to him?
To NOT do so...and to basically ham-fistedly try and show Guybrush that he's been manipulated, shows that she doesn't really respect him, despite her words to the contrary at the climax.
This is one time when Elaines "plan" should've backfired on her.
I think it depends on the puzzle. A lot of the action-oriented puzzles (such as the swordfights) were very clever. I think a large part of my problem with most of the puzzles in this series was that they felt rushed...almost as though the developers said "Well, we need a puzzle here...guess this will work well enough." In those episodes where the puzzles were integrated into the story (Specifically, Lair of the Leviathan and the Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood), I felt like I got a LOT out of them.
Rise of the Pirate God, on the other hand, felt like an excercise in tedium...and worse, required you to UNDO many of the actions you'd spent so much time doing in the previous episodes.
I don't think I can agree with you here - at least, not from an Art Direction perspective. The Crossroads...partiularly where you meet Galeb...were almost exactly as I had envisioned it - a gray twilight realm, that represents limbo. Deaths waiting-room, as it were.
My complaints had mainly to do with the fact that there were no "gated" sections of the Crossroads...I didn't feel rewarded by discovering new sections of the afterlife, because you could freely travel through it from the start.
Also - Galeb was a bit of a letdown for me. I believe Galeb is also supposed to be Nor Treblig, who (I believe) is supposed to be standing in for Papa Legba, in Voodoo Mythology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papa_Legba
He's a very powerful figure in Voodoo, and you can see where the design for the symbol of the Crossroads in Tales came from here. Galeb is an anagram for "Legba", and his appearance perfectly matches how Legba is described.
But I almost would've liked to have seen Guybrush having to negotiate with Papa Legba...and perhaps taking on some curse himself in order to destroy LeChuck. (Or perhaps owing a favor to his spirt patron). That could've cast an interesting light on Guybrushes future, as well as been a more suitable (and real) sacrifice for him to make.
Telltale opted instead to treat Galeb as the Trickster, which is not wrong - but I felt that he could've had a more sinister/powerful side to him.
Kroms:
I don't disagree - I'm not suggesting that Monkey Island needs to be all dark...just that it likewise doesn't need to be all light. BALANCE is the key...but I think the dark portions of the tone help to ground the characters such that you actually care for them. Even though they inhabit a goofy, semi-cartoon reality, they can still be scared, they can still be hurt, and this helps us to care about what happens to them.
When you stray TOO far from the Darkness, you get Escape from Monkey Island. That said - this isn't horror or film noir. The goofyness releases the tension for those dark moments that we have.
Eh...that's ridiculous. Guybrush isn't a "black hat" kinda guy, and if folks think we need to go THAT dark, they need their head examined.
It's funny, but when I think about the Tone of Monkey Island, there are two touchstones for me that always come to mind - the first being the grog machine at Stans, and the second being LeChucks threats of what he will do with Guybrushes bones when he's done torturing him.
On one side of the equation, you have such a silly, out-of-place item - but you just accept it. Why? It doesn't make a lick of sense, but you laugh, and you just accept that of course there are Grog machines in this world.
On the other side, you have a dark, threatening, scary moment...that forever made me truly fear what LeChuck would do to Guybrush if given the chance. Why? Because he actually had a serious motivation, and the power to carry out his threat. To neuter that threat lessens the character.
These two extremes of tone need to be in balance with one another (and both must be serviced!) to succesfully carry off the Tone of Monkey Island, in my mind.
Don't disagree with this at all.
Uzrname:
Well, naturally. Any review is going to be subjective to the view of the reviewer. That said, it doesn't mean we can't find areas of commonality and other areas to debate.
Hmm...are we talking about my views of the original games, or the review of the particular episode in question?
Personally, I'd love to hear your comments...I certainly took longer than a month to return, so you've got time!
Nope. I didn't say that EMI was an epic fail. As many people have said, standing on it's own, without the baggage of the other games, it's a perfectly serviceable adventure.
The problem that I have with Escape has to do with it's sharp departure in Tone from the other games - and more specifically, the fact that it threw serious Monkey Wrenches (pardon the pun) into previous continuity. Rather than fixing errors, it actually introduced more. To my mind, this showed disrespect to the previous entries in the series.
Does that equal epic fail? No...but I do feel that the developers of Escape felt like they were in a bit of a story straight-jacket, and reacted by resorting to satire and commentary, as opposed to telling a consistent story.
I think you'll find very few people who don't see Escape as the "Black Sheep" of the family - that said, I don't hate it, and do accept it as canon.
I didn't say that either. I did say that I didn't think that it was the appropriate place to END the series, and thankfully, now that we have Tales, it isn't the place where it will end in any case.
I might need some clarification here - are you talking about the series up to that point, meaning SOMI and LCR, or...?
I'm not sure I could say either of those games werent' cartoony...it's not often that you deal with voodoo infested ghost pirates by spraying them with voodoo root beer?
I'm guessing that you're talking about cartoonishness in reference to the Art Style, prior to COMI. I don't think I can agree with you on these points...I don't know that you could say that the plot was getting stale by only the second game (which differed in significant ways from the first one), or that the game could ever be mistaken for being serious. (We do stuff enormous things in his pockets throughout the game, and the spitting contest alone is pretty cartoony.)
In terms of art style, yes. COMI had reached film-level quality animation by that point, and was gorgeous. I don't feel that it had really changed tone in the plot, however - with the possible exception of making LeChuck somewhat less vicious. That said, I never had any questions abou the tone of COMI.
I think you may've over-read my comments about Escape. I do feel that Escape clearly illustrates what NOT to do with Monkey Island, but I can respect it for what it is...a flawed game that has some entertainment value, but (for me) is the least enjoyable in the series. Heck, no matter which series you play, SOME title has to come in in last place.
Kroms:
God, that damned Robot Monkey. I think that was the last straw for me in Escape, simply because I always wanted to take another delve down that Monkey Head.
If we ever DO return to Monkey Island again, I hope the Monkey Head will be back. They don't need to explain it. Just let me take another dive down its gullet into the underworld.
BTW...one of the things I liked BEST about Escape was the Church of LeChuck on the Island. It was creepy, and in a way foreshadowed the Rise of the Pirate God.
Really? I don't remember ever having gotten stuck in LCR for very long, but then again, it's been some number of years since I've played it. I'm looking forward to playing it again with the release of the SE soon.
...and it's that juxtaposition of moods and tones that I find so hilarious. The game succesfully balances laugh-out-loud funny with horror. (Think Rap Scallion in the burned-down weiner hut.) That's a tough balancing act.
Uzrname:
Exactly...that lack of consistency actively pulls the player OUT of the immersion...it's almost like being splashed in the face with cold water. In this way, I felt escape actually worked against itself in a way that none of the other games ever did. It was simply TOO self-aware, and too eager to provide commentary on a variety of things (politics, commercialism) than to simply just exist as itself.
Kroms:
I actually love the art design of most of the characters in the Telltale Series. Like most of you, I got tired of seeing re-used character models, but I actually sorta looked forward to seeing that guy punched in the first episode again.
For some reason, that line really cracked me up..."My nose! My beautiful Pirate nose! I'll get you for this!" I kept expecting this guy to pop up somewhere in a later episode and somehow sabotage some intricate plan of Guybrushes at the worst possible moment. Sadly, it was not to be.
Uzrname:
This is one area where I can't give enough Kudos to Telltale. They do some AMAZING things with facial expressions in this series (particularly with the eyes.)
In the first episode, when Guybrush is about to spray the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu with the Fizzy Root Beer, and drops the bottle...
"Whoops!" His cringe is amazing, and his facial expression conveys everything you need to know...embarassment, shame, fear, the whole nine yards. These character models really are acting through physical movement.
tbm1986:
I am too...Sam and Max only got better as they progressed from Episode to Episode, and in Season Two everything tied back to every other episode in a very smooth, tightly written way.
I'm hoping the same effect will be seen with Tales. I think a lot of the reason there was the unevenness in this season is largely because of the different teams producing the episode. This is a given with them producing these games so quickly, but there did oftentimes feel like there were differences in Tone even between the episodes, or different design philosophies. Smoothing those over in Season 2 will improve the experience greatly, I imagine.
Astro Gnocci:
No question. They've brought LeChuck full circle, and restored him as a credible threat. That had to be tough, after playing a second banana through most of Escape.
I won't lie...it went a long way toward souring me on the episode. I understand that's not really a problem with the way the episode was scripted...so it's hard to count that as a mark against it. However, even when replaying the episode, covering the same ground over-and-over and undoing events from previous episodes that we'd worked so hard to accomplish left me growling at the last episode.."GET ON WITH IT."
I've given my misgivings for Elaines behavior above, but I wanted to mention another thing about it here. It DID feel artificial...and solely for the convenience of the plot. By making Elaine practically omniscient with regards to the Voodoo Lady and LeChuck, it conveniently explains her behavior in the rest of the episodes. Unfortunately, that's not terribly realistic...particularly when you consider that as half of a loving couple, she REALLY should've talked to her husband about her concerns, instead of manipulating him to see things her way. In this way, I felt like I could only chalk this up as "lazy writing."
As the Monkey Island series belongs to LucasArts and we are licensing it, we could not easily leave the end of the game in an irreversible place. I don't know if we ever seriously considered leaving Guybrush trapped in the crossroads, but I also don't know if any of us would be opposed to it. This came up on the DVD commentary track but I can't remember exactly what was discussed. (Get the DVD to find out!
Agreed, at least in my opinion. Seeing the Voodoo Lady in Tales as a force of balance in the MI universe is exactly right. Guybrush and LeChuck seeing her as pulling the strings, too. I can't speak for anyone else, but I have never seen her as a villain and still don't after Tales. I do think that from some points of view (eg Elaine's) she appears to go too far and tread into antagonistic territory, but from her perspective (and surely from certain outside perspectives) she is a disconnected party who is trying to keep things level and safe, if at a cost.
I've been suspicious of her as a character ever since it was noticed that she's shipping supplies to LeChuck in MI2, though. She always presents herself on the most surface level as being benevolent (or won't commit either way), and even in the early games her story was never straight when you tried to confirm it from person to person (she told Largo she was the one who did in LeChuck's ghost). It's clear that to some degree she deals in misinformation and playing multiple sides for her own means, even if the scale isn't always as large as Tales (though maybe the story of Tales only blew up the way it did because this is the time the characters in the universe noticed that this double dealing was going on). 3 and 4 largely dropped this and made her into a more benevolent adviser, but it's not like that weirdness and not-fullly-trustworthiness is a new thing if you look back.
*SNICKER* Haha! Well put, Kroms.
This. Making something 'dark' and 'edgy' =/= better game. ETA: Having said that, I'd also like to add that I think Tales reached a really good balance with Episodes 4 & 5, which both had genuinely dark moments yet managed to keep the game feeling like Monkey Island. I'm not averse to a game having dark elements, but IMO, with Monkey Island it can't lose its humour either.
This as well. I don't see the Voodoo Lady as a villain, but I also wouldn't class her as a 'good' character. She's trying to preserve some kind of cosmic balance known only to her, using whatever means necessary. Either that or it's all part of a scam to make sure that business is always good, that voodoo lifestyle isn't free after all...
This is sort of what I expected...but at the same time, I can't help but re-read the sentence and put the emphasis on the word "easily." That means that it wouldn't have been impossible, no?
After all, as I understand it, the scripts did have to be approved by Lucasarts beforehand...
That said, I'm sure they wouldn't have made any decisions about a second season of Tales until the first season had concluded.
I hope they'll have gained the confidence to give you a bit more leeway in future Seasons.
I can't wait to hear this on the commentary track...I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during those story discussions.
That's the part I'm interested in finding out in Season 2. If she is indeed a force that attempts to keep things in balance, surely there is some opposing force she is working against. That means that the greater danger would be not maintaining that balance. I'd like to see exactly what it is that scares the Voodoo Lady enough to keep LeChuck and Guybrush in this endless cycle.
I always viewed that as just good business sense. May as well profit from both sides of the fence.
Kroms
Who's clamoring for darkness and despair?
Look at it another way...in my discussion above, I mentioned that these characters will have dealt with some scars and need some time to heal, but I'm not meaning that in a literal way - nor am I suggesting they should be angsty about it.
What I AM suggesting is that the characters should grow and have doubts.
Way back when Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air, I remember having a long discussion with a fellow fan about the novels. I enjoyed reading them at the time, but he countered that it was pointless because they didn't affect continuity within the universe. For that matter, episode-to-episode continuity on the show could get dicey.
But the novels were worse...it was fore-ordained that no story could have a lasting impact on the characters. By the end of the novel, everybody had to be returned to their starting position - this made every novel a zero-sum effort.
After that, I never could quite enjoy reading the Star Trek novels.
Contrast that with the Star Wars novels. While their quality has varied over the years, later in the Bantam line, the publishers realized they were falling into the same trap that the Star Trek novels did - and they decided to do something about it.
They started killing a few minor characters. "Dark", you might say...but it had the intended effect. It showed that the characters were now considered mortal...and that not even major characters were exempt from being impacted by death or loss.
Now suddenly, the outcome of every novel was not assured before you read it...and it made the investment in the characters greater.
We already know that characters in the Monkey Island universe can grow and change...Guybrush has undergone major changes throughout the series - I just think it's important to continue that trend. (And letting him keep his hook might've been a great way to do it - he was even disappointed to lose it!)
I didn't know ETA meant something else apart from "Estimated Time of Arrival". What does it stand for here?
Here it means "Edited To Add", I see it used quite frequently on forums and messageboards.
With enough time and enough money you can do almost anything.
As of right now "what it is" is totally ambiguous in my mind, and in a good way. Are there external forces within the world of MI? Other, less good pirates? The MI version of the Spanish armada or more imperial colonialism? An army of kung-fu trained monkey robots? :rolleyes:) Or is this actually a fantasy/construct which is coming apart at the seams, but will keep existing as long as the wheel is turning? I don't particularly know or care, which is maybe bad? Maybe not. Fortunately it's not my job to know or care in a canonical way, as I got to help out with story and direct some episodes, but never had to deal with the burdens of fully holding the keys to the kingdom of MI myself. It lets me continue to have and push crackpot theories both on the forums and amongst the design team, free of the weight of actual final responsibility.
What prize did Ignatius win for absolutely nailing this?
I was very enjoyed by TOMI. You really managed to respect the original spirit of the two first episodes and to push the intrigues a little further. Nonetheless, in my opinion, there are some lacks, and inappropriate deviations in TOMI.
- The three last tales are masterpieces, but the two first are not so cool. I think the trap not to fall in is to try to make Monkey Island too weird. Monkey Island are serious pirate worlds in which funny things happen. For example the D’Oro intrigue seems inappropriate, whereas the Winslow seizing intrigue is wonderfull. The idea of an ancient civilizations sounds too much like Indiana Jones. Mermaids could have been a good idea, but I would have preferred regular ones. I mean in the two first episodes we had to solve pirate intrigues, find map pieces, hunt for a treasure, master swordfighting. The all vacylian apparatus doesn’t look like a pirate story.
- The map views of the islands are not beautiful and it’s a pity. Very little island is a good idea. I’m a bit fed up with new islands, I want to go back to mêlé, the phatt, booty and scabb islands. It’s cool to come back in one place. You’ve done it with floatsom and it was good (particularly at night) but the island the island didn’t look piraty enough in the first place.
- Cemeteries and swamps are important.
- Le Marquis de Singe doesn’t seem appropriate neither. The idea of a crazy scientist opposed to the vaudoo lady is interesting but the design of the character disturbed me, when Morgan Leflay is really refreshing. I’ve always thought that a second woman were needed in monkey island (like Kate capsize ). Anyway, the crazy scientist theme is closed to the maniac mansion saga, I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to monkey island.
- Generally monkey island games miss something: pirates. In SOMI there were a lot of pirates just hanging around, or drinking at the scumm bar, they contributed to the ambiance.
- I really liked the search and the use of books in MI2. This aspect was not emphasized enough in TOMI.
- It’s really cool to go underwater. Guybrush should go more often, or more longer.
- I really like in MI2 to begin in one island and then that the intrigue moved to the three islands, enlarging the initial environment instead of moving from one island to another.
- Stan in TOMI is not funny enough. Stan always comes with a new franchise; in TOMI he was not important enough.
- Love intrigues (Leflay/threepwood vs. Lechuck/Marley) in TOMI really improved the narrative.
- The place accorded to the vaudoo lady is really interesting in TOMI.
- The afterworld and the daemon bride are awesome.
- The jungles may be larger and like mazes. It’s cool to draw oneself a personal map of a jungle or a forest. The size of the forest in SOMI was good.
- TOMI missed sword fights. Even if grimaces were funny, monkey islands needs sword fights.
- Shipwrecks were never used enough.
- Maybe the circus theme of SOMI is underestimated.
- Guybrush acting like a child from times to times is really funny.
- pieces o'8 are missing. In SOMI and MI2 we had the opportunity to make a little money.
I think Guybrush is a child lost in the theme park. He is evolving in D. Winnicot potential space: the wolrd of illusion. It means that the world he sees is a combination of his imagination and real objects of the theme park (like a coke machine + Guybrush = Grog machine). So this world is in part a creation of Guybrush, but he pretends not to know that, so he seems to found the things he plays with. What I really like I think, is guybrush own perception of the theme park.
So, there is no anachronism in the first Monkey Island, because for Guybrush this world is important and he plays with it "seriously", he doesn't want to put things that shouldn't be in a pirate world. Unfortunatly, as a child, he makes some mistakes. There would be anachronism if Monkey Island events really took place in the past, but I don't think so.
To me there are "good anachronisms" in monkey island follow-up, for example the dioramas at the end of COMI, and there are bad ones, like people sunbathing at the beginning of COMI, or the sushi Bar in EFMI.
That won't see the light of day in 2010 because of Sam & Max. Maybe they'd start work on it late 2010 but we certainly wouldn't hear about it until summer next year at the earliest.