[Razengan]

After how he basically gave the middle finger to fans waiting 100 years for the "real" ending to Monkey Island 2, my reaction is

meh -_-

Though Thimbleweed Park 1 was awesome in every way

I wish/hope someone else would take up the mantle of continuing the -spirit- of Monkey Island and make a new franchise with a similar rename: call it Ape Archipelago or something :)

[dark-star]

Even though Monkey Island now has a real (i.e. canonical) ending, it sucks. I prefer the original continuation of MI3 to the 25-years-late official, canonical sequel

[Razengan]

It's not just the ending, but the flat humor, the lazy puzzles (like clicking multiple times on multiple objects to open the porthole) and the meagre number of interactions on each of the islands after the first one..

It's like his heart just wasn't in it anymore

It felt like a "ehh let's get this over with" at best

or a medium-effort nostalgia-pandering money grab at worst.

[account42]

It's not even decent nostalgia-pandering, more like an expression of disdain towards the fanbase complete with "art" that can only have been designed to offend.

[tarkin2]

I pretty much saw the ending an effort to put the story to end and move on after all the years of speculation.

[agos]

it's clearly in that direction (and that's fine), but I would debate the "effort" part

[tarkin2]

The link given elsewhere here about the multi-layered aspect of the stories from 1, 2 and RMI gives it a bit more depth. Obviously if you take it on the surface level only it's low effort.

[agos]

that's a nice fan theory which does involve some very real elements from the game (the meta narrative, the genre awareness, the nearly constant fourth wall breaking, the multiple layers, the ambiguity) but speculates a lot and veers towards some wild hypothesis ("Stan is LeChuck" makes no sense however you put it).

I do appreciate the multi layered aspect, and it's the number one element which keeps me coming back to MI games, and I especially appreciated the way in which RMI felt like a fading dream, with stuff being ever more "slightly off" than before.

But if this is indeed the intended "meaning" of the whole thing, the authors didn't do a great job at it. We get only bits and pieces of this purported hidden "reality", and on the other side we have a couple of very easy to read narrative levels where The Secret is clearly a MacGuffin (a trope the authors love: see the rewards for the three trials, and the treasure being literally called "Big whoop"), the absurdity and the anachronisms are the point, and once it's over the only thing they can say is... the game is over, now turn this off and go do something more interesting, which is a nice joke and sufficiently meta. The issue is that it's ok the first time, but after the third time it's an overused trope

[manbash]

> We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an orange.

[amiga386]

> My skills with a sword are highly venerated!

> Too bad they're all fabricated.

[vunderba]

Ughh... door hinge? Guess the song's over.