Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 390: Tales of Monkey Island

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Nearly a decade after the last entry, Telltale Games launched Tales of Monkey Island, an episodic take on the classic adventure series—and the first installment in nearly 20 years with input from creator Ron Gilbert. And while it suffers from some of the drawbacks of Telltale's format, this five-chapter adventure game swerves away from the expected formula to deliver some truly memorable Monkey Island moments. On this episode, join Bob Mackey and Nina Matsumoto as they explore the final stop on our tour of the Monkey Island series. And be sure to pre-order Nina's newest graphic novel, Sparks: Future Purrfect! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, we've got the pox of Lechuk, and the only cure is more Monkey Island. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and right now we are doing another episode in our Lucasarch retrospective miniseries. And we're heading towards the end of this. There's still a few more games left. But this is technically a LucasArts game, and it's definitely a Monkey Island game.

And yes, we're returning once again to Monkey Island. And who is here with me today to talk about this beloved series? That sounds like something my husband might say. It's me, Nina Matsumoto. Were you quoting Monkey Island there? Yes, I was. Okay, I don't remember that quote at all. Oh, it's at the very end of Secret of Monkey Island.

It's one of the things you can say. No, it's not one of the things Elaine says at the very end of Secret of Monkey Island. You know, remember when they're like watching the fireworks and you get to say something as Guybers, like don't pay more than $20 for an game or a computer game. And then whatever you say, she says, that sounds like something my husband would say. That game was about 300 podcasts ago for me. So I pushed that out of my brain. they repeat this in this game really okay interesting

I guess we'll get to it but thank you for making me look entirely bad and foolish up front with my lack of knowledge but yes we're gonna talk about this beloved series the final entry in monkey island which is Tales of Monkey Island and the last one we did in this series well we've done other LucasArts games in the series I think the last one that we covered was the dig

and yeah the last monkey island game we cover since we're going in order was escape from Monkey Island and it was so bad that we needed nine months of time off for Monkey Island before we got to this game, which is much, it's so much better. Wasn't there like nine years after Escape? Yes, yeah, almost a decade, almost a decade. So nine months, nine years, yeah, it tracks. But if you did-

Your Dig podcast, by the way, which is great. Oh, thank you. I loved your guest on it. It was almost dangerously closer turning to another Escape podcast. It's true. It was much shorter. And I re-listen to the Escape from Monkey Island podcast. just to make me remember why I disliked so much.

And even listening to that podcast put me in a bad mood because it put me back into the summer of 2020 when things seem hopeless and I was playing that game for some reason. All right for my podcast. And yes, this will be a much more positive podcast because we both really like this game. And I want to know, Nina, because I don't think I've ever asked you about this,

what your history is with Tales of Monkey Island and also just the telltale kind of games in general. I've played a few telltale games. I played this one. Back to the Future, a bit of the Walking Dead, which I couldn't get into. I just didn't like that format. I also didn't care about Walking Dead at all. And Batman, the first one.

Okay. And I enjoyed all those, except for Walking Dead, which I couldn't get into, even though that's what, you know, kind of made Telltale games super popular. I remember I was, back then, I was a bit scared of this game because of how disappointing escape was. And remember, I was also disappointed by Curse. although that's not nearly as bad as escape, of course. No, no, no. It's not a bad game.

I'm not saying it's bad. It's just, I was disappointed by two games, and it just kept getting worse for me. So I was so afraid of being bird again, though when I saw the designs for Guy Bricen-N-Layn, that made me cautiously optimistic. Like, it looked like they were getting the game back on track. But in 2009, which is when this game came out, I was extremely busy working on the graphic novel, the last Airbender prequel, Zuko's story. which is a tie-in to the film. So I actually didn't play this game until I had finished inking my book

in February 2010. And I just, I found my old tweets of when I was playing this game. And judging from it, I played through all of it in three days. Like, I didn't have to wait in between chapters, which is nice. And I only made four tweets about it,

which I'll read to you. Okay. This is before, you know, they increase the character limit. February 9th, 2010, I've been playing Tales of Monkey Island since I finished inking. I love it. I need to do more Monkey Island fan art, having the one in years.

Also, February 9th. Tails of Monkey Island thoughts, wow, a post-M-I-1 and MI2 game finally got Stan right. February 10th. I think I liked Tales of Monkey Island more than Curse of Monkey Island. And then February 11th, just finished Tales of Monkey Island. That was definitely better than Curse of Monkey Island, which was unexpected. And I think, from what I remember, when I first got to know you, didn't you have have a Tales of Monkey Island statue?

That wasn't Tales of Monkey Island. Oh, I thought it was. That was based on the special edition of the first game. The one of Guy Brish in his, I guess, not reboot design, high-definition design, fighting high-definition Lechuk with the bottle of the root beer. Okay, I didn't remember being that hideous, like the redesign for Guy Brush and the remastered version. And that's why I thought it was the Tales of Monkey Island statue. Yeah, I mean, it's cool that they release something like that.

But I also really don't like those designs. And I think I got rid of it a while ago when I moved. I was like, this doesn't bring me joy. This is when I was like going through my Maria condo phase. And I was like, this doesn't spark joy. Also, like, my ex gave it to me. So it also had those memories attached to it. I see.

Yeah, well, this is related because the. This is all, this series and other things surrounding it are all part of a Monkey Island Renaissance that happened over 10 years ago. And I'm looking at my old tweets now. And I started Twitter in like 2008. So I was looking, did I ever talk about Tales of Monkey Island? And yes, I had a blog post on one up that I don't remember writing. And of course, it's no longer online. And it's called Three Reasons Tales of Monkey Island got it right.

And it was written after the first episode came out. So I was playing these and writing about these professionally. And yeah, my experience with the series is I played the first one. and I did like it but I did have reservations and I think I bought the rest of them but I didn't end up playing them until I was horribly unemployed so I was basically unemployed from the time this game came out until about a year later

so in the middle of that I finally played through the rest of the games and I did love them a lot and I was a big telltale fan before that too because I didn't play their first game release the Venture game release which is Bone because I was a big Bone fan I was afraid they would get it wrong and I still haven't played it I don't know how good it is I know they abandoned that series

so it's not really finished but yeah I also love Bones still haven't played it but I love the first MMAX series I love the second and then I finally got around to playing this and yeah we'll talk about it throughout this episode

but it is a really really good adventure game and it's a very good monkey island game and I don't know because I haven't played it since we podcasted about it but I might like it more than curse but I still think curse is a very good game

but I feel like Okay. This is trying to do some different things in a respectful way. I'm surprised to hear that because I know you like Curse so much. And that was the first Michael game you play. So you obviously hold that dear to you. Yeah, I think Curse might win in the end just because of nostalgia. But this one is still very good.

But yeah, I don't know. Like I was still afraid. Like you, I was like, oh, no, well, they get it right. And then like you, I played through most of them in just like one long sitting basically over a few days. And I really, really got into it. yeah I haven't played it since it came out because you know I'm at this age where I don't replay games as much as I used to but and I thought you know I've always liked it and defended it I was almost afraid to play it again because I thought oh what if my expectations were so low back then post escape and I was just fooling myself but no I can confidently say I love this game and I know we can't discuss this yet but the ending really sticks with me and it stuck with me for uh it stuck with me 11 years ago when I first played it it and the impact is even greater now. Maybe it's because

you and I haven't seen each other you and I have seen each other just once during our our pox over here. Oh great. It's another fun take on a pandemic in this game. Another hilarious pandemic. I haven't seen you since January and I'm missing you. So like I'm

feeling like crushed to the clown after seeing the aging scratch cartoon about father and son when he's missing his father a lot. This game is so sweet. and it's a wonderful tribute to Guy Ritchin-Lay's relationship and this is the only game where I feel their relationship feels genuine and unbelievable Yes, and it's not the

We talked about an escape, it's not like the The kind of hen-pecked husband kind of thing they were going for in that game It does feel like they, you can see why they fell in love She's not just tolerating him And they really could have gone down that route again Especially with the introduction of kind of sort of a love rival not exactly but sort of a love rival

but they didn't yeah I love I love how they handle the marriage and the new character we'll get into more of the details later I do want to let our listeners know that the front half of this episode will be like production information

and just a broad overview of what this is and the back half will be more spoiler focused about different puzzles and up front also this game is still you can still buy it on Steam it's 1499 it's like

amounts to maybe a 15 to 20 hour experience across five chapters It's definitely worth it. Another company has purchased Telltale and is now distributing their games. So this is still online and it's still playable with a modern computer. Nina, you have a new computer and you had no problems playing it at all, I take it. Yeah, and when Telltale shut down and they started removing their games from online stores, I got scared and I immediately went on eBay and bought the DVD collection of it because I didn't back then.

And that's what I played it off of. Well, I installed it off of that. Ooh, fancy. I do have that DVD, but I was planning on show. checking it out for this podcast, but then I noticed that all the extras are on YouTube because that's where all DVD extras live now. So there's very little reason. I didn't even get to check those out. Oh, it's a lot of really good commentaries because telltale, so this is our telltale section. We'll talk about them. If you want to know a lot more

about telltale, go back to episode 366. I talked to two former telltale developers now with Skuncopae games or Skunk Cape Games, however you want to say it is fine. They recently put out the remastered version of Sam and Max Save the World. And yeah, we talk about, you know, the telltale tool, what the production of episodic games was like. So you can have some more insight onto the inside of telltale at the time through that episode. And I also recommend, you know, telltale shut down a few years ago. I believe it was 2018.

There's been a lot written about that, but there's a really great game informer article called The Rise and Fall of Telltale games. And you can see where that studio went and why it's gone today. And it's very unfortunate. And Monkey Island, Tales of Monkey Island, comes at, the end of the company's first arc and the second arc really kicks off with the Walking Dead and everything to follow in that

same more story-focused format but we're still in the era of Telltale where they are trying to make an adventure game revival in 2009 and they did a good job. I'm kind of disappointed that they went with the Walking Dead formula after that became a big hit. I don't know

how you feel Nina because I played all the same in Max episode season one games recently for that podcast and I walked away thinking Oh, this is the perfect format for an adventure game because you can finish it in one or two sittings and it is a manageable size and the puzzles can be tricky but it's never something that's unfair. I feel like they really figured it out and that's why I'm disappointed that they left this format behind and now they're just gone forever. Yeah, I like this format too. I mean,

we could talk about the design of the game more later but because of the episodic nature I like that you start off each chapter with like fresh inventory. Yeah. Things get cleared out in a natural way. And also because of the episodic nature, the story gets stronger too because they got to find a good cliffhanger at the end of each act. And that's something we didn't really have in the previous Monkey Island games. That's right.

Yeah, the previous Monkey Island games, they technically had chapters in them, but they didn't feel as distinct. as the chapters in this game. Because he knew you were going to keep playing. Yeah. So I want to talk a bit more about Telltale, just a mini history of them in case you miss them or in case you don't remember. So they were started in 2004 by some former LucasArts employees in the studio. Their main goal was to prove there was a viable marketplace for adventure games.

And the studio rose after the cancellation of high-profile adventure games at LucasArts, like Full Throttle 2 and Sam and Max freelance police. Those were the two big adventure games that were canceled. And really, the company was like, we are just making Star Wars games now and non-adventure. things and telltale rose as a response to that and yeah this was an era in which you know steam i believe was a 2004 release only publishing valve games at that point but still digital distribution was the future in 2004 and telltale saw it that way and the way that their marketplace worked at first at least is that you bought games episodically through their website uh one episode at a time and then when the

final episode released, usually you could order a DVD with all of them on there and extras and things like that. I think over time, TellTale would have you buy all the episodes up front. I forget if Monkey Island, Tales of Monkey Island worked like that, but at least initially it was you buy one episode at a time. They were like seven or eight bucks. And then at the end, there'd be a collection. No, I remember my friend gave to me the season pass from Tales of Monkey Island. Yeah, I think maybe with the Walking Dead it started. Like, no, you just buy the whole season up front and then we just drip feed it to you. But yeah, I think. think at this point they were still episodic and telltale's first game was actually a texas holdom game

because they were like we don't want to spend a lot of money on a you know production we want to see if how viable digital distribution is and apparently this was enough to you know keep them afloat so they could make things like c s i games and bone and eventually they would get the rights to saman max because lucas arts didn't know those rights steve percell did so they went for those first and the samomax season one came out in 2006 and really kicked off the revival of the same and of LucasArts' IP for them. It seems like from the very beginning, although I haven't played a lot of those early games, Telltale games was held up a lot by their writing and their voice acting.

Held up in terms of... Like, that was like a big draw to their game. Yes, yes. Very good writing, very good voice acting, and all done in the Bay Area too for the most part. But yeah, soon things would be changing for Telltale because this would be one of their final traditional adventure games because we have this. I'll tell you where this takes place in the timeline. So this comes before Sam and Mac's season three

and before the Back to the Future game, which those three releases were their last adventure game releases in the traditional model. In 2012 came the Walking Dead season one, and because of the success of that, they made every game basically take that format. It was a, I think there was just like one puzzle in the first Walking Dead season, but that was it.

And after that, it was like, it's uh you know dialogue and it's uh quick time events and it's making tough moral decisions and that's what every game was that format and because of that they were kind of hamstrung in that they really bit off more than they could chew a lot because they would buy a lot of expensive IP like i forgot they did a game of thrones adventure game that's something that they did and they and uh they never really were able to uh rework their engine it was a very old Krusty Engine by the end. They were never able to rework it because they just couldn't stop making things because they acquired so much IP. And they weren't able to change the format of their

games either because when they approach a studio or an IP holder, their pitch was always, we'll do for your series what we did for The Walking Dead and that was an easy pitch for them. They were not about to reinvent themselves after they found out what made them most successful. And that's personally where I stopped caring about the company because I love Walking Dead season one. I believe I reviewed it for one up and gave it an A plus. I thought it was really well done and worked on me. And I kind of stalled out halfway through Walking Dead season two. And then every other telltale game I tried, I just walked away saying, you know, I've done this. I've played this kind of experience before. And I can see the strings. I can see the behind the scenes,

what's happening here, and it doesn't really work on me anymore. And that's where I just fell off with their games entirely, just basically maybe like 2013. And there would still be things like Game of Thrones and Borderlands and what else. There's also... Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park. That is awful. I think that gave that game an F for one up.

Jurassic Park was a really weird game because it was delayed forever. And it was barely an adventure game. I think it was a series of quick time events. Yeah. Awful. I like the Back to the Future one enough that I wanted to try the Jurassic Park one, but then the reviews were bad. And then later I tried to watch a playthrough on YouTube, and it was just too boring to

watch. Yeah, I think I personally angered Telltale with my review because when they came, when they came to one up with the demo of Walking Dead, it felt like they had something to prove. And they did, they did like impress me. So that, they really recovered from that. But yeah, they no longer, oh, go ahead. It also feels like near the beginning, they're mostly doing humorous games, which works for this format. Because when you're playing an adventure game, it's always going to be a little bit weird. and goofy, it kind of has to be because

your character actions are so unnatural. You're going on stealing things. You feel like saying things just to like see what the person's reaction is. So when you shift to a more serious format like they did with Walking Dead and a lot of other games

onwards, then all of a sudden that format, it just becomes kind of silly. Yeah, yeah. A serious narrative. I don't remember. I remember when I was playing the first Batman game they released At some point So when you're doing the dialogue in those

They gave you a certain amount of time To think of a response And after a while I'll just start Like there's always one response That's just like dot dot dot Which is say nothing At a certain point I started just selecting that for everything

Like you play Bruce Wayne The Night Game More so Bruce Wayne than Batman And every conversation I would just like not respond But the character he's talking to Would keep talking anyway And it was just so funny.

Yeah, I mean, they can only do so much with your input in those games. And again, like, once you play enough of them, you realize like, oh, maybe a few major choices really matter, but a lot of minor ones, they are just to have no effect on what happens next. And again, like, for me, after I play Walking Den Seasons one, I was like, okay, I get it. This is really fun, but I kind of want something else now. But that's what put them on the map, and that's what made them go into overdrive, and that's eventually following that model is what killed them.

But thankfully, a lot of their games are still available. other companies have bought the rights and are re-releasing very well-done remastered versions and apparently whoever owns the rights to tell-tale stuff now whoever required the IP they announced the sequel

to The Wolf Among Us at the Game Awards in 2019 but I've never seen anything come of that yet Oh yeah, I forgot about that They were also going to do a Stranger Things game and that got canceled Right, yeah

And they also acquired the rights to Kings Quest But then Yes That one studio got it and I guess they use money for a homestuck game to make the Kings Quest game? Some kind of scandal happened there? Yeah. There's like a lot

of drama surrounding that. I don't completely understand it myself. I was excited when Telltale got the rights to Kings Quest. I thought well they did Monkey Island really well. They could probably do Kings Quest pretty well too. And it was disappointing when they lost the rights to that and then the odd gentleman one. I didn't

like it. I thought it was fine. I got the season passed through it but I never finished playing it. There's like two or three more chapters I got to play and just don't feel like playing it I reviewed the first one for US gamer

and I liked it and then they sent me a survey saying do you want to review the second game and I filled it out but they never actually send it to me

so it's their loss the first one was okay but I don't know the more I kept playing him like I don't like these action parts at all this is not what what King's Quest is

I really wish Telltale could have done it they should have made a punishing game with a horrible owl creature Cedric is in the game he is I guess I didn't know who Cedric was when I played it.

Now I'm way too familiar with Cedric from King's West Side. Oh, he's like in the third or fourth chapter. Okay. I only made it chapter one. But yeah, that is the telltale story. Now let's talk about Tales of Monkey Island, the production of this game. So before we begin, this over 10 years ago, it wasn't that long ago, but it's a much different time because this is right before Disney acquired all of the Lucas Arts and Lucas

properties. So in 2009, LucasArts is still an independent company. In October of 2012, that's when Disney buys all of Lucas IP. So we were right before that. And in 2008, LucasArts had a new president named Darrell Rodriguez, who had an interest in reviving some of their old IP. It had been eight years since Escape from Monkey Island. And basically, according to Dave Grossman, who worked on this game and worked on things like the original Monkey Island games and Day of the Tenicle, he said this came about because the right people on both sides were interested. Like, Teltale always had this in the back of their head.

Dave Grossman always wanted to do another Monkey Island game. but this president just had an interest in reviving some of their old IP, which is why we had a real Monkey Island revival between 2009 and 2010. So in those two short years, we had a new five-episode Monkey Island game and also a remake of Monkey Island one and two. We didn't know how good we had it, but that was like a great time for Monkey Island lovers. We were really spoiled.

And who knows and we'll see something like that again now that Disney has it. And we had a few things since then, like the Day of the Tenicle remastered edition, in the Full Throttle Remastered Edition and Grand Fandango, but there have not been new games for those series. There were just remakes, and they were well done, but still this felt like a real celebration of Monkey Island. People were talking about it. As someone who was a bit new to writing about games professionally,

I was having a good chance to blog about it and write about Monkey Island for money. I wonder if Telltale thought this would be the beginning of them doing a bunch of other LucasArts games, like Full Throttle, and they could probably do a good Green Fan Dan. mango as well. Yeah, I think ultimately what their downfall was. So I thought it was the Walking Dead. Walking Dead was a big success, a huge success. But in reading about their history, it was back to the future that really made them turn towards more known IP, more like mainstream IP. So back to the future, before the Walking Dead, that was their highest selling series. And that's, I think, getting back to the future is what made them seek out the Walking Dead. Because they're like, oh, people love this. They love Jurassic Park. Let's go for the big, name. So I feel like Tales of Monkey Island

everything was profitable for them seemingly but the amount of people who know about Tales of Monkey Island is much smaller than people who know about Walking Dead or Back to the Future or Game of Thrones or Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, it's been a long time since I played Back to the Future game. But I guess that was more narrative driven. There

weren't too many actual puzzles. It was light on puzzles. It was not quite like a Walking Dead or you know, that kind of experience but there was still some adventure game elements in there. That really feels like their last adventure game in this format for sure. So we can talk about people behind the project.

Dave Grossman, someone who I've interviewed in the past, he was with Tim Schaefer and Ron Gilbert, the three guys who basically wrote and put together Monkey Island one and two. He is the kind of coordinator of this series. And he, when he found out he had the rights to this or they could make this game, the first person he called was Ron Gilbert. Ron Gilbert, of course. He's been on Retronauts.

I've interviewed him plenty of times. I'm sure you've talked to him too, Nina, in your history. You did the Thimbleweed Park art cover art for that game. And yeah, so Dave Grossman said the first person I wanted to call was John Gilbert.

And getting him to work on this series was difficult because at the time he was creative director of Hot Head Games. He was making the Diablo like called Death Spank, but he was able to come down for a week to basically have a bunch of meetings and brainstorming sessions. And I think that really helps

make this game feel more official than the other Monkey Island sequels. Oh, yeah. Hothead games based in Vancouver, where I live. That's true. I know someone who worked on DesBank, actually. He had never played any of Ron Gilbert's games, and they asked him about it in his interview. He was just like, I don't know these games, I never played them. Well, he said that, like, it seems like a lot of people there were, like, super fanboys of Ron Gilbert.

But, you know, his personality, Ron Gilbert's personality, he's not, he doesn't like being, like, doden on, I guess. That's true. That's true. So I think that worked in his favor. Yeah, when I talked around Gilbert, he really downplays how much of an effect he had on this series when I asked him about it over, I think during like some of week park interviews, I just had a few questions about this series. He's like, oh, yeah, I really didn't have much to do with that. I just had a few meetings and that was it. But it sounds like he was there for a week and, you know, he really informed a lot of the decisions that went into this game. So I really feel like without him, this could be a much worse product.

And I feel like his stamp of approval does mean a lot to me as someone who's a fan of this game. Oh, totally. And if you'll remember my thoughts about Chris about Monkey Island is that it's a fine game. It's a good game. I just didn't like it as a monkey island game. I like this game a lot because it feels like a monkey island game. Yes, it really does. And one notable omission from this game is Tim Schaefer. So Dave said in some interviews, I got Ron to work on the project, but getting him to work for us while already employed another company was way too difficult to do. So I did not want to get to. him involved because of course Tim Schaefer at that point he had been a double fine the CEO or president or whatever for nine years and I think that's fine because what I'm learning over my history of playing games and I know Tim Schaefer's a very nice man who's done a lot for the world of gaming I don't think I like Tim Schaefer games very much I didn't like full throttle I tolerate Grim Fandango I don't like psychonauts that much although I do appreciate the writing and the arts and the music and stuff um I I

I don't know. Maybe there's a Tim Schaefer game I haven't played that I will love, but I feel like his sense of design is not something I'm as into as, you know, Dave Grossman or some of these other developers. Yeah, I like full throttle, but I understand the flaws with it. I totally agree with your podcast when we talked about all the flaws. I don't like Grim fan dango. I know that it feels like it feels like a sacrilegious thing to say as an adventure game

fan. I just never got into it. I didn't like Psychonauts either. I know, I mean, it takes all kinds and, you know, Tase is relative, but I played Psychonauts because of the Tim Schaefer connection, and I like some parts of it, but it was just a struggle to get through that game. So when people are fans of it, I'm just confused. But Psychonauts, too, could be very good.

I think it's not tied down to, like, bad 3D game technology. It could be a much better game. I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out. I think he's great at finding a good visual style for all those games. yeah he's good at finding the like the right people to put you know uh the artistic side together for sure yeah so yes wrong gilbert's on the game Dave grossen's on the game and uh there's some great interviews from this period that are still online thankfully about the production of this game and uh it seems like he he regretted saying this because a lot of people took it too literally but uh grossman says this is technically the sixth monkey island game because it opens with guy brush and elaine at the end of what would have been the fifth game which i think is a very i kind of love that Yeah, it's a super creative way to start a game, and I do like imagining just like, oh, what did they do to get into this situation?

It's a really great way to start off the game. I always find it hilarious in anything when characters reference things that we've never seen. Yeah. They do that a lot in the beginning of this game. I like anything that starts in media res as well. It was a great, yeah, it's a great little bottle puzzle to start off this first episode. And other things Grossman said is that this was the first Monkey Island game to be made in a, a world in which Pirates of the Caribbean, the movie series existed.

So, of course, that had a lot of influence on the design of this game. Not like they were explicitly borrowing things from the series, but when you live in the world of 2009, and this is like one of the most popular franchises on Earth, it cannot not affect you. And I find that very funny because it's such an incestuous relationship because Monkey Island 1, very much inspired by both Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ride, and the novel on Stranger Tides. And then in 2011, this is so confusing, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is an adaptation of the novel on Stranger Tides.

But they just put in characters from that series. So it all came together eventually. So did he say this in the commentary they listened to? I don't think it ever came up, but it is factual. Okay. Do they like elaborate like what exactly they were inspired by? Was it like the story or like visually or what? They just said they were, I mean, it was.

had an influence on them, I think it was what was said. There was nothing direct stated, but I just find it very funny that these, like, Monkey Island and On Stranger Tides came together as a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. And apparently, there was a Monkey Island movie in the works, just like how there's a movie for everything in the works. It doesn't really mean anything. But apparently the screenwriters for that Monkey Island movie, they might have changed that script into On Stranger Tides for the Pirates of the Caribbean fourth movie, which I have not seen. I have not seen. well as you know I watched all the Pirates of Carambine movie during the pandemic that was an interesting project and it kind of surprised me to hear this was influenced by the series because I don't see too much of a connection

aside from the whole pirate thing and undead thing which was there from the very beginning for both franchises I could kind of see how they could be inspired by the third movie which was the latest movie that had come out in that series by this point, because it's centered around love, love, death, and sacrifice and explores, like, Orlando

Bloom's character and Kieran Knightley's character's relationship some more. It's, this is, that's a movie where they, they get married and they get wedded during a huge sword fight and a ship, which feels like something, you know, Guy Ritchin Lane might do. Unfortunately, they didn't get to do that because of the rushed ending of Curse of Monkey Island. Yeah. But, yeah, like, on Stranger Tides, the fourth movie, which came out after this, there's this guy called, There's a character called Philip Swift, who falls in love with a mermaid. And his whole look and vibe really reminded me of Guybrish. Like the Garish from our first two games.

Okay. Yeah, I don't know if I'll get around to the fourth Pirates movie watching it. Maybe I'll watch the first one eventually. I'm disappointed in myself, though, because I wanted to read on Stranger Tides before doing one of these podcasts. I just never got around to it. But I did add it to my Amazon wish list, the Tim Powers novel. So I think maybe the next time I fly out to Canada, I will read it on my flight. because I've always wanted to.

I want to see why this novel inspired Ron Gilbert so much, and I'm sure it's a very good and funny novel. We should go through all the Pirates of the Caribbean movie together when you're here. We have lots of time. It's true. It's true. If I have to quarantine, maybe, but we have to drink a lot of rum. You can, yeah, lots of rum, and you can look at your phone during the third way because that one goes on forever. Just give me the gist of it.

I'll be playing Candy Crush or something in the background. So, yeah, we can talk about other designers who worked on this. So I must correct myself. I made myself look foolish because this guy, we talked about him before another podcast, and I keep saying Mike Stemmel, his name, based on how it's spelled, should not be pronounced this way, but he chooses to. His name is actually Mike Stemly. So every time I've said Stemmel, I've said it incorrectly.

So if you want to be an industrious retronauts fan, go back and I'll say Stemly, you can just plop that into every time I miss said Stemmel, and then it'll be perfectly fine and correct. But the entire time, only until I heard the commentary did I hear him say, I'm Mike Stemley. I tried to find, you know, audio interviews where he said his name, but only when I've heard the commentary, he actually says his name. So that secret has been solved. Okay. Yeah, it's kind of like how you keep mispronouncing John Leth-Go is John Lethgal based on how it's

spelled. And that bothers you. I think I've got it now. In that Trek podcast I did for our other podcast series, I think I got it maybe 60% of the time. You mispronounced his name at least once. And I'll never forgive you for it. Well, I'll apologize to the man if I ever meet him. So I got to say, we were not very nice to Mike Stemley in our Escape for Monkey Island podcast

because Mike Stemley, until Tales of Monkey Island, I was not a fan of his games because Mike Stemley and Sean Clark were the two guys who made Escape from Monkey Island. Mike Stemley also worked on another adventure game that I like more than Escape from Monkey Island, but I think it's very flawed. You can hear the podcast about that. Mike Stemley and Sean Clark, Sam and Max hit the road, was really, their first game as directors. So, and then Mike Stemley was the director of Afterlife as well, that Afterlifson we talked about

in previous episodes. So I think he found the right people to work with because the, this series, I don't see any of the problems I had with his previous games at all. I think with Dave Grossman there and other developers, I think he found the right people to maybe calm down his bad design qualities or at least talk him out of certain puzzle ideas. So listening to your podcast series about these eventor games, made me, like, way more aware of the people who worked on these games. That's good.

And, yeah, and after listening to your, your podcast about those other games he worked on, I was really surprised to find out that he did this one. It doesn't feel like one of his games. Yeah, he's a major name on this, and he worked on a lot of tellstel stuff I do like. And, yeah, I just, again, I think he found the right people to work with. And the games he's worked on, I love them all. And he directed the first episode, had a major presence on the rest of the season. series. So yeah, that's Mike Stemley. Again, a LucasArts talent from way back in the day.

Some new talent on the series, though. So we're just going to go over the directors right now because there's a lot of designers, but I'm just going to talk about the directors up front here. So there's Mark Darren. So he's an adventure game designer who came from the very, very indie Nick Bounty series of adventure games. And I didn't know what this was. So I looked up videos, and they looked to me to be like New Ground style adventure games from the early 2000s. I don't know if you could purchase these. I think they were just playable in Flash in your browser. But yeah, based on his work on those, he was hired by Teltail, and he'd be with them for a decade and worked on a lot of their series. And I went on to Steam. That was the first place

I went to look for Nick Bounty. There's a new Nick Bounty game that came out in 2020. So if you were a fan of the series, he did work on a new one, Mark Darren. I looked up screenshots from it, and it looks pretty cool. It's black and white. It's very noir. It seems to the way you would like... It did look neat. Yeah, I want to check out the old games. I'm sure they're playable somewhere. And if you go onto YouTube to lookup playthroughs, there may be like 20 minutes long

because just one guy made them. So, yeah, that's where he came from, indie adventure game areas. And also Joe Penny, so he's another director on this series. He didn't have a lot of credits outside of Telltale. One I saw was he was producer on an adaptation of the movie Congo for the PlayStation.

And I'm not sure if that's just some guy with the same name or actually him because it's weird that he would have no credits and then work on Congo and then 10 years later work at telltale. But who knows, people's lives are weird. But he worked on their series from the Wallace and Grommet series

to the Game of Thrones series. So he was on a lot of telltale stuff as well. I feel like every time you bring up Game of Thrones, I'm surprised that they did that because I've completely forgotten about it. We collectively, as a society, like 2019 was just the end of so many things, including normal life.

There was a bad Game of Thrones finale and a bad Star Wars finale, and we're just, let's just forget about both of those things. Star Wars is now a bunch of TV. TV shows. And Game of Thrones, what's that? I'd never heard of it. So yeah, that's Joe Penny and Jake Rodkin. So number one, most important thing about Jake Rodkin, he was a retronaut's guest. So he is on that Sam and Max Save the World episode. So he was part of the enthusiast to developer pipeline, as a lot of people are, including me. So he started out

writing for websites like Adventure Gamers, International House of Mojo, and he was part of the Idle Thumbs podcast when that was around for about a decade. A lot of people love that podcast. In fact, because of their Kickstarter, that's where I got the idea, like, oh, we can have a Kickstarter for Retronaut. So you can blame or thank them for the fact that we've been around for so long. And Jake Rodkin would go on to found Campo Santo, who made Firewatch. And in 2018, they were required by Valve, and they've done work on things like Half-Life Alex. So that is where Jake came from and where he is now. And he was also on the, I believe, full throttle episode of Retronauts.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I got to wonder if he was a major. player when it came to getting this game right, like being someone who was a big fan. So he knew what worked and what didn't. I think his presence helped. He was on Telltale games I think from Sam and Max season one onwards

and a lot of the time he was doing UI stuff and web design for Telltale. They had a very nice looking website back in the day. But he eventually moved into design and I believe this is his first game as a director at Telltale or just a game as a game director at all. But yeah, I think

having a fan in someone who knew this series very, very well, did really inform the series, and he knows a lot about Monkey Island. And Escape from Monkey Island was also made by fans and kind of for fans, but there was too much fan service in a way, not in a good way, whereas this one has some fan service, but it doesn't go too far with it, and it still comes up with its own stuff. I agree with that, and we'll talk more about it and when we talk about the game itself, but I feel like what the series does best, or sorry, what this entry does best, Tales of Monkey Island, is I feel like curse and escape, although I love curse,

they were like, okay, what does a monkey island game do? Let's do all those things. This game was like, what does a monkey island game do? Let's find it an inversion or a subversion of all of those things. And I think they really do a good job of the like, they really surprise you throughout this series. And of course, we have the return of Michael Land to do the music. Like Curse of Monkey Island, this is just him doing it.

And I think now we can discuss about what we thought about the soundtrack. When I was playing it, Nothing really stood out to me, but I did enjoy it. But then when I was going back through videos of the soundtrack to pull music for retronauts to put in this episode, I was like, oh, this is actually really, really good. And I don't know why I didn't notice as much about playing the game, but I think this is a really good soundtrack. Okay.

I've never listened to the soundtrack on its own, unlike what I've done with the first three games. And kind of like Escape, it rehashes a lot of the same music and it doesn't stand out to me. Maybe I just need to listen to it on its own to really appreciate it. appreciate it. Yeah. And for me, Lechukch's, like, for me, Lechukh's Revenge is where the music peaked in the series. And it really hasn't been the same since. I don't think they can beat that, uh, Lechuk's revenge.

But in this game, I feel like the first episode does have the return of a lot of themes. But I also think they come up with a lot of new themes, or Michael Ann does, at least. And I do like, there's the Lechuk theme, but they find a new way to interpret it because he's a human and seemingly a good guy. So you get a different version of the Lechuk theme. And they've, I like, I like the theme for the new villain. I have it stuck in my head. I like the different variations on that. Like, if you go back and just listen to the soundtrack independently,

I think you might have a better appreciation of it just because it is kind of buried underneath, you know, all the dialogue. But it does, I think he did a really great job with all this music he had to write. It's funny that you bring those two up because those two tracks are the ones that stand out in my head. Lechuk's theme in a major key instead of a minor key is really cool. And the Marquis de Sanchez's theme, that definitely is one. can recall in my head if you ask me to think of a tales of monkey island song like i could think of that i can't think of anything else though i love i love the music in the area with uh inside the manatee

belly with all of the the brotherhood members it'll be in this episode it'll be in this episode if i just sing a song from the game i i just can't but you i the marquis de sange and the lechuk theme the marquis de sench thing uh theme is that it was one of the best songs in the game and i think it's hard to top like the character themes from the series but I think he made something on par

with you know the guy brushing a lane theme and the Lechuk theme and the main theme I think it's as as strong as those ones ever since they introduced

voice acting to the series the music kind of had to take a back seat that's true this is the only game in the series that I recall that takes away music

for emotional impact in certain scenes like there's a huge thing that happens at one point in the story and that it's eerily silent so you get the time to soak in what just happened and like silences

used especially well at the very end of the game during the very last thing you do and that's also for emotional impact yeah this game in terms of just the emotional quality of it I feel like it takes some risks in terms of there's actually a few moments of sincerity in the game

when even the best Monkey Island games like one and two they're incredibly sarcastic they're spooky they have somewhat like melancholy to them but I feel like they were never they never dared to try to be this sincere. So let's talk about the voice actors. And of course, Dominic Armato is back playing Guy Brush. This is a great time for him, of course, because we're doing this Monkey Island Renaissance. So he's not only revoicing Guy Brush in Monkey Island 1 and 2, which did Donna

voice acting originally. He is coming back to do Guy Brush throughout five chapters of this. He does sound a bit older, but I think he does a great job. And I think he's directed well. And I'm always happy to hear him playing Guy Bruch. It was a great choice. He was a great fine back in 1996, wherever they found him. so good at picking out little nuances and voices. Like, I didn't notice him sounding older at all. Well, we all sound older. And the last time he voiced Guy Brush was 10 years ago. And I've been on Retronauts for 10 years. So if you go back to a 10-year-old podcast to hear me on it, I'd sound a lot younger. Well, it kind of makes sense for this series. He is a little bit more mature in this one.

Yeah, it's supposed to take place a few years after Curse or, sorry, escape. But I can't really place how old Guy Brush is supposed to be in this game. He's got, like, kind of like, lines under his He looks a little older Like in his late 20s, early 30s maybe He does seem like he's aged a bit Since we saw him last He's got his beard back Yeah, he grew his beard back

We could talk more about the design later Yeah, like Dominic Romano is great As always, like absolutely zero complaints there If you want to interview him Like I know someone who's friends with him So maybe I think he's always game to talk about Monkey Island Like whenever I look up Monkey Island interviews

He's kind of done the most And yeah, I think he's an era Arizona. He's on Twitter. I just followed him on Twitter. And I think he just got out of the food reviewing game. But he, most of his, most of his posts are about food. And other voice actors that returned are, um, Alexander Boyd playing Elaine. So the American Elaine from Escape from Monkey Island is gone. And, uh, we're back to British Elaine, who I prefer. I do like British Elaine a lot more. I don't like the choice they made for escape. I don't know if she wasn't available or they didn't like what the previous, uh, designers and, and casters did for the previous game. But yes, and Curse,

was Boyd and escape it was somebody else and now we're back to Alexander Boyd and Elaine she's not in the game a lot but I do like how she's portrayed in this. She's in it a lot more than she was in Curse. I feel like they just didn't want to bring back anything from Escape

in here. It's for the best. You don't want to acknowledge that game. Yeah. Elaine didn't get to say a whole lot in Curse back when she Alexander Boyd voiced her last time. she has the most lines in the intro in curse and you get a bit of her midway through

but then at the end she's gagged and unable to speak and the ending is so abrupt no one gets to say anything at the end of that one yeah she's just waving like goodbye yeah exactly so I'm glad that Alexandra Boyd got to act way more in this

and go through a huge range of emotions yeah yeah she even becomes an evil pirate demon too towards the end of the game spoilers And one of the other major players is back, only for the final episode, though. So Earl Bowen comes back to play Lechuk. Earl Bowen, he retired actually in the mid-aughts. And if you see a picture of him, you've seen him in a ton of things.

He's been in a ton of movies, a ton of TV shows. He is a recognizable character actor. But when I started playing the series, or replaying it rather, recently for this podcast, when Lechuk is at the beginning of Chapter 1 as, you know, the demon form, I was like, oh, they couldn't get Earl Bowen back. That's a bummer. I had memories of him being in this But when I got to chapter 4 at the end of that one

When he does come back I was like oh it's him They got him somehow They finally got around to getting him So apparently he was retired But he was convinced to come back To play little Chuck in one chapter And I assume that if they ever make more of these games

He probably won't be back I was surprised to find out Earl Bowen Didn't reprise his role at first Because it sounds a lot like him to me Yeah they found a guy who could do a reasonable imitation But I have a good year for voice acting So I know I could tell when it's Earl Bowen when it isn't. Yeah, so that doesn't bother

me because to me it sounds like him, but also it kind of makes sense if he doesn't sound entirely like his previous self, because he isn't entirely his previous self, because he's human in this game. That's true, yeah. Yeah, you know what? I do like how I mean, it was just, it was not their choice, but I like how it's a different voice actor for the human form,

because Earl Bowen is an older man and he's really putting on a voice for Lechuk. And when he is, in Monkey Island 2, when he's disguising his voice as a fester shine top, I think we talked about that in the in the podcast where it's like you can definitely tell it's him because it's just Earl Bowen voicing a different character. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the mystery is not really there. It's just like,

oh, why is Earl Bowen doing this character? I wonder why. And other people, so like, I believe Telltale just hired out of the Bay Area to do a lot of their voice acting. So it's not like LA talent like LucasArts would get for their games. So other returning characters are Stan and the Voodoo Lady. And they are voiced by Bay Area voice actors and they were not any of the original voice actors from either curse or escape. So these are entirely new actors for both characters. And Nina, how did you feel about the portrayals of Stan and Voodoo Lady? As I said on my tweet from 2010, they got Stan right. This is probably my favorite voice Stan, not just in the voice, but visually as well. They really nailed it. And it's funny that

we envision him as a Lionel Hutz character when he does play an attorney in this. He's a prosecutor. He's not a defense attorney, but still, they did find a good place for him. Yeah. Voodoo Lady. I got to wonder if they kind of want to go for Alaino Hutz vibe. It seems like it. They do seem informed by that. And one thing I will say is that the voodoo lady is voiced by a white woman, just like how Bosco and Sam and Max is voiced by a white man. And I feel like if there is a remaster, I wonder if they'll recast her because they did

that for the remaster of Sam and Max. But they were not doing like racial appropriate casting back in the day. And now I kind of could tell when playing things like, oh, that's not because previously the voice actor for Voodoo Lady was black, but now they have a white woman putting on this voice, which, you know, it's something they wouldn't do these days. Yeah, I like her performance, though. It works. Yeah, yeah.

And she also has a lot of lines in this game, the Voodoo Lady. I like her intros, too, when she intros every chapter in the series. Yes, that's perfect. With a purposeful grimace and a terrible smile, join Nikki and Wyatt, as we stomp our way through the history of Toho's Dai Kaiju films in Discuss All Monsters. me, we're going to discuss all monsters.

We won't stop until there isn't a monster left to discuss. Smash that play button like Godzilla and King Kong smash an 18th century Japanese pagoda. Only on the Greenlit podcast network. And we're back, folks, with another episode of

Nasty Labs. Nasty Labs. It's a show hosted by me, Kinsey Burke, and my dumb-ass friend, Mark. Nasty Labs. This twice-monthly show about game development, Japan life, Be nice to people, and hey, maybe a few other things. Nasty Labs is a product of ChewaiLabs Brand Incorporated,

and now available for three easy payments of 4269, only on the Greenlit Podcast Network. So now let's talk about general stuff about the game and then we'll get into our more spoiler-heavy discussion and we're almost an hour into the podcast, so we really love talking about this game. So this game came out between July. in December of 2009 in five installments and I want to go over the

basic elements of this game so the interface let's talk about that first so we're at the point in history in which tell tell games are beginning to get more console friendly so this game is technically designed to be played with the controller and it's much much easier to play than Escape ever was

so just erase all memories of how hard to play that game was from your brain but I never played it with the controller it's perfectly playable with a mouse and essentially what happens is when you you hold in the left mouse button a little ring appears around guide brush and you just drag him in whatever direction

you want him to go and it's very, very simple. I prefer just to point and click and have him go there himself. But in terms of steering him around, it was never a pain. He never went where he wasn't supposed to go. It didn't feel like steering a boat

like it did with Escape from Monkey Island. So I say thumbs up to this movement interface. How did you feel about it? Oh yeah. I mean, if we're going to compare everything in this game to escape, this game is just superior. to escape in every single aspect.

I don't want to go on too long about that comparison. But I've seen some people say like, oh yeah, Skip from Mika Island wasn't great, but at least it wasn't like Tails. But after playing this, I'm like, how could you like Escape more than Tails? Like this is so much better in every single way. And controls are so important in an adventure game.

Yeah, they did a really good job with this. I didn't like using Just a Mouse. I used the YST keys, and I use Shift to run while they're looking with my master game. house. Maybe it's because I played so much FF14 during the lockdown, but I like to using the two together. Yeah, I forgot you could use WOSD, but yeah, it's perfectly fine

and I'm glad you brought up Escape because it just shows you how much we learned about 3D controls in 10 years. Like, we figured it out. Escape was just like, well, tank controls are the one solution for this kind of movement, let's just do it. But here, it's easy to do. It's also a one-click interface. There's

no verbs. There's kind of a cheat in which when Guy Brush gets a hook in the game, the hook is often used as a verb. It's like a verb that's hidden in your inventory, kind of. That's how you think of it. But it's fine. I'm not going to knock points off for that. And throughout this adventure game discussion, we've been talking about the issue of the inventory and that for the inventory, it's always like it's going to either be, you know, a bar at the bottom of the screen or you're going to have an icon on the screen at all times. I like the solution for this in which the inventory does not appear until you mouse all the way over to the right side of the screen. And then you can pull it out like a map. I really think it's a great solution. You don't always have an ugly icon on the screen at all times. My problem with Curse was that the inventory box took up the entire screen. That too, yeah. My problem with escape was how you had to scroll through a ring menu.

That's awful. I forgot about that until I listened to that podcast. I'm like, I forgot the menu, the item interface was like Tomb Raider in that game. Yes. The old Timerator box. It's more like a shopping basket you see on some online stores where it pops them from the side. And I love the feedback you get from this interface.

So when you mouse over to the right side of the. the screen, you pull out the inventory, and then to combine items, you drop them into two different slots, because a lot of the puzzles in this game involve combining items you have in your inventory. And I love the feedback you get when it doesn't work, and I love the feedback you get when it does work. Like, it feels very satisfying when you actually can combine items successfully. It just, the little sound effect it makes and the little pop it makes into your menu, I love it. Yeah, the way you combine them is, like, very intuitive. And you're right, it's super satisfying when you get it right. Just that noise it makes. Yes. And watching the two items

combined, that's great, too. It's like a magic trick almost. Yeah. I also notice you never end up with too many inventory items in this game. Mm-hmm. And I think there are zero red herrings. Like the episodic nature, like I said, help because you generally start fresh at the beginning. Mm-hmm.

I didn't have to carry a use of prosthetic butt with me until the end of the game, like an escape. Or like a number of prosthetic pieces, like that you can actually get in that. I think, spoilers, when you play as another character, you do have red herring items, but they're just as a joke later in the game. Oh, right, yeah. But they're not actually used on anything, and it's not there to screw with you or anything like that. But in general, the UI in this game is really well done. This is a very simple thing, but I love when you go to the option screen or you go out to the menu. I love how it pulls out through a jungle.

And then when you go back to the game, it pushes back into the game. It's such an easy effect, but it's so, so well done. It just feels neat. And, yeah, just like a thumbs up on all the UI and the interface on this game. It's really, really well done. I did not have to fight it in any way. Like, there was no struggle. it never got in the way of me doing anything

and that's really important in an adventure game. I think my only complaint about this game is the jungle maze can be a little bit annoying but getting to warp to the beginning at any point was super helpful. Yes, I'm glad they put that in there and we'll talk more about mazes. There's a little too much of a reliance on mazes

in the first half of this game but yeah, that's one of my few issues with it. But we can move on talk about graphics. So it's 2009. This is kind of a budget game. Tell Tell, tell games. are beginning to look a lot more sophisticated compared to where they began a few years ago

and this is important to note because this is one of the few Wiiware releases by Telltale. I believe the other one was the strong bad game and because they chose to be on Wiiware their design was constrained by the 40 meg limit of a Wiiware release.

In 2009, you had 40 megs available to you to launch a Wiiware game. That seems ridiculous. And that is what why in Flotsam Island the club is called Club 41 because it was named after the mythical 41st

Meg they couldn't use because this game was a weird release so yeah I feel like in terms of what they were working with to make each chapter only 40 megs for Wiiware they really got the most out of the incredibly restrictive amount of space

they could use for each chapter. Okay I was wondering if there is some kind of joke behind that club name. That's great. Yeah and I feel bad like out of all the titles I wish they would not have chosen this one to release on Wiiware because nobody cared about Wiiware and this game maybe could have been a tiny bit more polished if it wasn't also a Wiiware release

because it does look good and I think the graphics went up res they hold up really well but it does still look like a budget game although they do as much as they can to cover up the fact that it is a smaller budget release I'm sorry but what is Wiiware is that the game engine? Weware now exactly

you asking about weware explains why nobody cares about weware weware was the short-lived digital marketplace for the we in which is different than virtual console weware is when you downloaded individual games onto your we but there was a 40 meg limit and it was very short-lived

but telltale released a strong bad game on weware and they released this on weware along with other platforms and there were some weware exclusive titles and maybe there will be a We wear Retronauts in the future because it is lost to time. I guess I'll have to listen to that because I had no idea what that is. Yes, you're right to ask that question. In fact, many people at home were like, Weware.

What's Weewear? Why was it limited to 40 megs? A lot of marketplaces had very small file size limits back in the day, way early on. Like Xbox Live Marketplace, I believe, Castlevania Symphony of the night was the first one to break their incredibly small size restriction. Okay, well, that definitely explains a lot about the graph. Yeah. Yeah. Like they wanted to actually have more in certain chapters. Like chapter one was designed to have you go inside the Club 41, but they ran into that size restriction. And I assume that the PC versions that we played are uncompressed because the audio does not sound compressed. It just, it doesn't look like a 40 meg game. When you download them, I think they're much bigger than that. Okay. Well, like throughout the series, there have been jokes about Guy Bisch going into a place and you don't see what's happening. You just hear what's happening. I thought they were just playing off of,

that. I thought so too, but apparently they wanted you to go in. And, uh, yes, so this game is designed not even for, uh, the 360 PS3 generation, but for the previous generation. It was built to run on Wii, which is not technically of the same generation, even though it kind of is. It's, it's lesser hardware. So based on that, uh, I still think it holds up rather well for, uh, 12 years later. Yeah, I mean, it definitely looks a little dated, but it holds up pretty well thanks to the style they used, unlike escape. I keep compared to escape. but it's hard not to. We can't stop talking about it because this game is such a departure from that.

In that escape. Yes. In some small ways, it was inspired by the curse art style and like the swirly clouds. This one is a great mix of the extreme exaggeration of curse and the more down-the-earth style of two, Monkey Island, too. I think they found a great compromise between those two, and that is evident in the design of Guy Brush, who, he Guy Brush is lanky like he is in Curse, but he has the coat and the beard and the ear. earrings of Monkey Island, too. Yeah, even though I still prefer a slightly more realistic depiction of Guy Brish, like in the first two games, I was surprised by how much I like him in this version of him.

They got rid of his dumb fancy lad coat and Trump Pence logo, uh, vocal in Escape. He's too much of a fancy lad in Escape. I don't like that. I went back to look at him and I was like, ah, I can't believe I played as this character for 20 hours. I know. It just doesn't feel right. Plus, he's wearing a red coat, which I don't like.

And he's wearing his secret monkey island. outfit through a lot of the game, which also does make sense. Yeah, like this looks mostly like, uh, like Chuck's revenge guybrish, my favorite design, but it does take his lankier stylization into account as well. And it's a great evolution of his cartoonier design overall. Like I love the multiple earrings and like he gets a hook at one point. This is the most pirity guy bridge has ever seen, uh, has ever looked. Yeah, I also like the mutilations he goes through like in, uh, these are not spoilers, by the way,

In chapter one, you have a Lechuk hand for your left hand. In chapters two through four, you have a hook instead of a left hand. And like I said before, his beard is back. That's right, yeah. His beard, which only appeared to Monkey Island, too, right? Yes, and he was so proud of it, and then he lost it in the next game for some reason. Beards were not in. And this is also, like, I'm not sure if this is my favorite guy brush.

It's really up there, like, I think two is still my favorite. But I think this is my favorite version of Elaine. Hmm. And why is that? She just looks very sweet and I like her outfit. She also is less fancy compared to the previous game. I guess because she stopped becoming governor and she's more of a pirate now. And like she has this big green eyes that she apparently uses against Skybridge when she wants something.

Yes. Anything is cute. And the animation, I think more attention is paid to major characters. They're more well animated. They have more animations. I will say the game starts off in a bad place because I think and they talked about this in the commentary briefly

they thought they could use the same model and dress them up in different ways to make different NPCs but then it was evident like no, these characters look too similar so I believe in chapter in chapter one you have three characters that basically are the same model with like some slight variations and then you have two taller characters

who are the same model with different variations and it just doesn't work which is why from chapter two onwards they find ways to make characters more distinct, the MPCs you talk to. Yeah, that is another complaint I have about this game, just the template they use for all the NPCs. But you're right, they do work with it better. And now especially understanding the great limitations they had,

file size-wise, it totally makes sense. But by the fourth chapter, when some of those characters come back, it was getting kind of confusing. I couldn't, like, tell some of the characters apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're basically like the stout, round model of the pirate and then like the tall skinny pirate and they find different variations of those and i was like are you the thief or are you the newspaper guy i don't remember yeah yeah but you know what i think they do a really good job taking advantage of the fact that these are this is the most

expressive characters have been because i think this is the only game where when characters are talking you zoom in on their faces yeah and uh facial expressions play a big part in this game it does work really well which is why I kind of want to see a new Monkey Island movie because I feel like all this lip sync stuff and all this facial animation stuff could now be a lot more automated instead of like individually animated

and I feel like they were just on the cusp of that happening to them but it still works very well in this series Let's like What's like by design. So, uh, each episode runs about three to four hours. So if you want to play through this, it's about a 15, 20-hour experience. So about the size of a Monkey Island game.

And something I noticed about the design of this in general is that each episode follows the same format. But in a way, that's not repetitive. And it's not like every episode does this strictly. But I notice that in most of these episodes, there is a self-contained puzzle and then a more open set of puzzles in the middle. And then at the end, there's another smaller self-contained puzzle. It's sort of like a reverse hourglass design in terms of how the game flows. with each chapter. Yeah, like, I didn't notice that myself, but now that you bring it up, that is true,

they must have done it well then if I didn't notice while playing it. I think it's a good idea because the game starts off, each chapter starts off with a self-contained puzzle to get you into the, like, the puzzle solving move. There's not a lot of, you know, variables to play with. You're kind of locked down to one area, and it gets you into the mood to solve puzzles, and then you can go off and solve the bigger chains of puzzles. And then at the end, you're ready for the game to be over. So it's like, all right, you're locked down to this area now.

Here's another self-contained puzzle to get through. I think it's a very smart way to build these chapters. Yeah, this game doesn't give you as much, as many chances to explore compared to some of the past games, but that also helps make it easier to play and not in an overly easy way. That's fine with me because I kind of like the self-contained chapters a lot more. Yes. Especially the third and the fourth one where you're really locked down. I just feel like they find more creative puzzles than sending you out to random islands to wander around and look for things.

Somehow, without making it too hand-holdy, this game makes it clear when something doesn't work or you're not allowed to do a thing. Yeah, Guy Brush will often comment on it in a way that prevents you from getting stuck. Sometimes he'll be like, oh, I can't, I don't think I should get this now. Or like, I don't know if I can do this now. Like comments like that. And one thing I will say, if you want to play this game, turn off, turn way down the hit frequency because their idea of a hint system in this game is to have Guy Brush just say things out loud. while you're playing if you're stuck. There's no way to just opt into it

and then opt out of it. You have to either turn it up or turn it down. So if you want to not be spoiled for any puzzle, as soon as you start playing, turn it all the way down. Otherwise, he might spoil a puzzle for you. Okay, yeah, I never played it with the Hint system on. I was wondering about that.

Yeah, I did at first because I forgot it was even an option. I was like, why is he telling me these things? And I was like, oh, right, let's turn it down. Also, like, each chapter follows the same format in that. And this is something I didn't notice until thinking about. it every chapter is about guy brush trying to get away from the place he is and that's how each chapter flows so like he's stuck in uh flotsam island in chapter one he's stuck on spinner k in chapter two he's stuck inside a manatee in chapter three he's stuck on flotsam again in chapter four and in chapter

five well he's stuck in another place and he wants to get out of that so they they're able to play with that idea a lot in a way doesn't make it sound does make it feel repetitive when you're playing through the series. That works well because I think when you play an adventure game in general, like any adventure game, your goal is to go to the next place, find the next screen to explore as a player. Yeah, the flow is very well done. And I do want to talk about some light spoilers here before we talk about the individual episodes themselves.

So to kick things off, I want to know, Nina, what was your favorite episode of the five-episode series? well um first of all i want to say the first chapter is definitely the weakest which is unfortunate because it might kind of turn people away from it if anyone hasn't played it yet definitely go past that one like play of course you have to but um don't let that like deter you because it does get better from there it really picks up it does yeah and the the last three chapters are are so strong that they rank very close together for me but for me my favorite is three the the last chapter the very last chapter is a very close second but But three, Lair of the Leviathan, I thought it was clever and I had a lot of fun figuring out the puzzles.

And it was also the funniest. Like there were some genuinely hilarious moments in there. That one, it was my favorite when I played it, but then four became my favorite because I like the courtroom stuff. And there were some very clever puzzle ideas in there. We'll talk about later. And that was the one chapter where I didn't have to look up a hint for anything. I got through it all on my own. So the other ones, I wouldn't have looked for a hint if I wasn't doing this for a podcast.

and I had a deadline, but for four, I felt like everything was so well designed and I felt so smart. But I feel like every chapter just gets better from the beginning. So again, you're right. Don't let chapter one throw you off. It's not bad, but it's not indicative of where the series will go. Yeah. And like I said, just because I like the third one, the middle one, the most, doesn't mean it peaks there and then gets worse or anything. I love the last three. And especially chapter five, the last one, I love because it's super dark. and the events that lead to it are so bold and unlike anything I've ever seen in the series

up to this point and having to deal with the aftermath of those events left like a big impact on me. Yeah, I want to talk about that brings you to like the formula of Monkey Island where like I said earlier, curse and escape felt like, okay, what do monkey island games do?

Let's do all of those. This game is different in that there's not insult sword fighting. They don't find a variant of that. There's like parodies of it kind of. but they're not annoying I feel like they couldn't find of a new interpretation

and they thought monkey combat sucked we will not want to do monkey combat again nothing like that so the two things I can think of is just like the puzzle where you're trying to romance a manatee or trying to bring two manatees together to find romance

it's sort of like insult sword fighting because you have like a predetermined amount of responses that are canned and you have someone talking to you and you have to spout those back and also later in the game you have sort of like compliment sword fighting or like reassurance sword fighting

in the fifth chapter but they don't try to be like oh let's find our version of that I'm glad they didn't do that yeah it does an amazing job coming with variations on the insult sword fight variety of puzzle where you have to give

the correct retort to a line it did it way better than escape did I'm going to break up escape again with its arm wrestling which was just nothing yeah I forgot about that that. Yeah, because I was just like insult sword fighting's greatest hits.

And then the Australian slang fight, which should have been a real puzzle, but it wasn't. Yeah. Again, we talked about it, but I was like, that should have been the ultimate insult sword fighting where you're trying to respond to this Australian slang that you don't understand. But yeah, it's funny that you bring up those two puzzles that you did because those were what I wrote down as being my favorite puzzles, like language puzzle. That was really clever, clever. and the one where you're fighting two people at the same time

and one is saying like self-deprecating things the other is doing legit insults sort of fighting and you have to cheer up one character while insulting the other by saying one line. You've got to find a one line that works for both of these. It's very, very well done. And in terms of other things they subvert or play with, so yeah, we don't have a version of insult sword fighting.

They just find creative ways to kind of riff on the idea that aren't irritating. Also, it's like, okay, we've had, We've had four Monkey Island games in each one, Lechuk is a different thing. What is he in this game? He's a human. I like how they did that. He's not, I mean, he will become something else that's not that different than being a demon.

But for most of the game, Lechuk is a human. And I think that's a great, fun idea that I was not expecting when I first walked into this game. Yes, human pirate Lechuk. Yeah. Did you like him? Yeah, I liked the idea of Lechuk being a good guy who's just trying to understand what it's like to be a human and how he just can't kill people anymore. Would you call him a hembo? I wouldn't, but I could see how other people would.

It's weird because the female characters in this game, say woof when they see him. I guess he's supposed to be a big hunk, which I didn't really get. Yeah, I wonder if that's what he looked like when he was alive or just a new design entirely, but I do like the idea, I like your interactions with him, and I like the new characters too,

because I feel like the villain of Monkey Island 4, Escape from Monkey Island, he sucked. Ozzy Mandrill, not good, not threatening. They kind of forget about him. And this villain, Marquita Singe, I think he is a threatening villain. He is an interesting villain. You don't know what he's up to. He does seem threatening, and he seemingly commits murder in this series.

And I do like, I think he's a very strong villain that sticks out throughout most of the chapters. Yeah, I think he is a decent villain. I like that he's a bit of a body horror weirdo. He loves to amputate people. And his motivations are very clear. He is well written. He's not super memorable to me, though. Like, when I played this, I thought, oh, right, this guy.

Like, I completely forgot about him. For some reason, I thought he was only in the first chapter, but then I realized, like, oh, no, he is, like, the first major villain in this game. And he's the second French villain in the series. Oh, wait. Who's the other French villain? Captain Renee Rondingham. Oh, right. Yes, that's right.

In the rhyming and self-fighting, which I like. Yeah. And it's always a foreign character, I guess. It's true. We hate the French. And also, another major character in this is, I feel like one of the, it does feel like they're going for a new idea here in that there's sort of like a foil to guy brush who is almost always around you, at least in some chapters. That's Morgan LaFleigh, a very clever pun on Morgan Lafay.

and I do like her because she is a pirate hunter who is also a Guy Brush fanboy in a way They took a big risk by introducing a character like Morgan because she had the potential to be very annoying or to be labeled as a Mary Sue and she's cute, spunky, she's great at fighting and like I said before she becomes sort of kind of a love rival

and her character type of adoring fan has been done before not in this series but it's kind of a trope that I think people generally find annoying usually and I like that Guy Brish is clearly uninterested in her romantically because he's firmly in Elaine's sexual when this came he's a he's a wife guy he's a pirate governor wife guy yeah no it was this isn't this isn't Guy Brish from escape like I keep breaking it up he never hits on her and there are no like moments where they like you know reach for the same thing at the same time and

accidentally touch hands and blush or anything like that. She clearly has a crush on him for part of the game at least. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. We don't take it very far, though. Just there's like glances, there's like little looks and things like that. Like it's mainly body language. But yeah, I feel like in previous Monkey Island games, once Skybrush was done with characters,

he would just leave them behind. But it feels like this is the first time they've had a recurring not non-villain. Well, she's kind of villainous in a way, but it's like one of the few recurring characters I can think of that is so prominent in one of these games. I like her a lot I want to see more of her if they make another one There is kind of a cliffhanger

at the end of the series that kind of shows you where she ends up so I assume that if they make another game she's so prominent in this game they could really not ignore her I'm kind of surprised

they didn't bring back some of the characters in the series like Otis Carla the Swordmaster and Herman Toothrot there's no Herman It's true

yeah I think after Escape was a big family reunion and they really are more reserved in this one because it's really just Elaine Guybrush, Lechuk Voodoo Lady and Stan. There's no Wally, there's no Herman, there's no Kate capsize, there's

I feel like they were really being conservative in that way but in a good way because Escape did feel too much like fan service because it did feel like oh it's the 10th anniversary of Monkey Islands, bring all the gang back together. Let's start you on Mele Island. Yep, I'm perfectly fine with not seeing those characters again. Me too. They had their moments.

I'm sure Wally is fine So now we can talk about the individual episodes And hopefully not go on for three hours But we could because we really enjoyed these And that the first episode is Launch of the Screaming Narwhal And very interesting beginning to this one In that again

This game Basically the first puzzle is the end of the Unmade Monkey Island 5 You are fighting Lechuk You need to kill him with the curse Cutlass of Kuflu But the first puzzle is one of the classic monkey island puzzles in which you are getting a substitute recipe for something. That goes wrong. Instead of killing Lechuk, you make him human, you curse Guy Bruss's hand,

and then the pirate pox spreads throughout the Caribbean. Notice that since Curse, every game is started up with a sea battle and firing a cannon. That is true, yeah, yeah. And curse you're in a ship, in Escape, you're on a ship, and in this one you're on a ship. But in Escape, you weren't even fighting Lechuk's pirates. It was just random pirates. Yeah, that's true. I guess it's a good place to start off from because it is very pirity

and it starts you in a very confined location with very few things to do just to get you used to the mechanics of the game. I love how the ultimate insult which you spent an entire game pretty together is now just an ingredient in a root beer cocktail. Yeah, in fact, I think all of the ingredients for this cutlists are just the mcuffins from previous games.

There's like the ring and the voodoo doll are part of it, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. So they're playing with the idea in that, well, this game is not about that. I mean, it kind of is, but it's not as much about that as the previous games were. And once you get to the first location of this series, which is Flotsam Island, this game, and Rod Gilbert's correct, puzzles of threes are the best kind of puzzles ever. And every adventure game should follow this logic, because this game does them so well. and your first set of puzzles on this island is you need to make news on the island

so the newspaper guy will let you meet Deep Guts, who is the voodoo lady, and she knows how to get off the island. So it's a puzzle of threes. You need to, A, get in a bar fight, B, find a treasure, and C sees a ship, and it's all done so, so well. And I always love when I see this in an adventure game. It's Ron Gilbert's basically Bible. This is written in there, but puzzles of threes are always rule.

Yeah, and I love how it starts off with Garbage having an evil hand. that kind of has a mind of its own because it almost feels representative of the player controlling him You know, I never thought of that. Like you're making him do things Yeah, I kind of wish he played a bit more

for that actually, like having him steal things and being like, oh, I don't need this item, what am I doing? Yeah, that only comes into play in the last puzzle of this in which you have to point at the map to tell your first mate where to go and your hand won't let you. So they only really have the evil handplay into one puzzle, I think.

Oh yeah, your first mate, Reginald Van Winslow. Did you like that character? Yes. He's one of the three identical pirate styles that they have there on the island, but they eventually find things to do with him, and I do like him. He's a reference to Reginald Val Johnson, right? Yes, and also Carl Winslow. Yeah.

I forgot to mention at the very, very beginning, when the game is teaching you how to play, basically. I like that he's kind of teamed up with Elaine at the very very. beginning. It's the tone for the whole story. And like when I started up this game again, like, I remember like how much I like their relationship in this and they show genuine affection towards each other without being like schmopey about it. There's no like snarky jabs like in some of the past games. I like how whenever Elaine says something sassy to him, like she's never angry. She's kind of smirking. Like she's amused by his idiocy. It's very playful. And this is more of a

comment about the game in general, but this game in general just feels very more positive. All the characters are pretty friendly. Although, I guess because, that's because they want to contrast it to when they have the possible Chuck and they're nasty to you.

Yeah, that could be. Including Elaine. But yeah, it's a more, it's not, less of a cynical and sarcastic game than previous ones for sure. Oh, totally. Yeah. And yeah, other puzzles in this chapter that I like are there's this stationary puzzle where you're captured by DeSinge and you have to basically free yourself,

but you're locked down into a chair and you can rotate the chair and make it go back. And based on like what kind of position you're in, it determines what you can interact with. And I really like the puzzles like that where you are just stuck in one spot and you have to play with all the variables and see what works. Oh, yeah. That was another good puzzle. That felt like being in one of the Chuck's death traps. Yeah.

Yeah, like when you're hanging in Monkey Island 2, I think. Yeah, except this is at the beginning of the game. yeah i always love puzzles where it's not about like roaming around and looking for things it's like you're one room or you're in one one like lockdown in one place figure it out and uh and this is a this is a good puzzle that used a monkey yes exotic store one yes and i think they were saying trauma from that game i'm sorry i'm trying to forget but i think they said on the commentary for this they could only get away with electrocating the monkey if the monkey liked it so that's why the monkey enjoys being electrocated too that was a good dark joke

otherwise it would be too cruel and another really good puzzle of three is in this chapter is that you basically so the marquee is using this this wind summoning device to suck all the wind onto the island so no one can escape and you basically have to go around and alter these idols in different ways to get them to stop the machine from working and the first one is a gimmie you basically put this weather vein on top it shows you how to arrange the parts of the idol that kind of spin around um And there's three different ones you have to alter in different ways. One, you put this nose sconce on that you pull off of a wall. One is that you put a cheese wheel on it, that you have to put the imprints from some other wall. Another one is you just have to look at the weather vein because there's no other clues around. So you just look at one of the designs on the vein and know how to turn to different parts of the idol. I thought that was really well done. And again, another puzzle of threes.

I didn't like navigating the jungle because it actually took me a while to realize you're supposed to listen to the sounds. that's right and this uh this chapter and chapter two have uh they're not as bad as old school mazes but they are mazes still and a lot of them are just uh they feel like busy work they feel like padding because you're right so there's a map and you have to listen to the sounds because the the map shows you like which sound to go to next so what you have to go to yeah animal sounds yeah you have to go to where the border of the screen is and make sure it's making the right sound before you move on so it's it's not like something that's hard to hard to do. It just requires a lot of busy work to do it. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of sound puzzles. I think

this might be like the only puzzle that really relies on that in the series, like sound. It feels kind of like missed in that way. I think so. But if you have captions on, it does tell you like, oh, crickets chirping or birds chirping or whatever. So. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. Okay. Well, that's not so bad then. No. And then, uh, going through more things happened in this in this first chapter uh there's a final bottle puzzle when you're on the ship and you basically have to find a way to stick your hand to the ground so you can use your other hand to point at the maps because winslow will not go anywhere unless you point at the map he's very map a very map obsessed man he's got a weird map kink yeah he's a kinky guy i like the how they explore

all the weird things he's into because at first he just seems like a pompous weirdo but then they just like oh if you're going to be stuck with winslow this entire time we need to do more things with him. So on chapter two, the Siege of Spinner K, I love how it begins because this is where we meet Morgan Le Fay. And for the first chapter, you have the Lechuk hand. At the beginning of this chapter, she cuts your hand off. And now Guy Brisch has a hook that will figure into a lot of things, mostly unlocking chests and doors. Yeah, I just don't like how you have to select the hook every time when you want to use it on something. I, yeah, like I said earlier, it does feel like they're trying to work a different verb into this one-click interface. So it's not super-success. It's not super

satisfying, but it's a cheat that I'll allow because it still is a fun thing to use. I like that there's really not a trick. Like the hook usually always works when you want to unlock something. Yeah, but because of that, I wish he would just like make him automatically unlock things. Every single lock, you have to use hook on the item. You would think that Guybridge would know what to do by that point. He should just say, I'll use my hook. After you click on it once. Yeah, exactly. This one, it's, I think it's better than the first one. It's not super memorable, though, but again, it breaks down to another puzzle of three in which you have to find these three summoning artifacts

in order to find La Sponja Grande, which you hear about in the first chapter. So the story is you need the Espunga Grande to absorb all of the voodoo pox. And the first half of the game is basically you trying to find this sponge, this magic sea sponge, to eliminate the pox that you cause to spread throughout the Caribbean.

And in this chapter, you are getting these summoning artifacts in order to find the location of the sponge. And this chapter also introduces the vacalians, the Mur people. Yes. And you know what? It was the year 2009. I was expecting some kind of off-color

jokes about them because you don't know what gender they are, but they mostly avoid that, and I was surprised. Yeah, it's not too bad. I feel like they're kind of a gay joke sometimes. A little bit, yeah. They don't go as far as I'm expecting for this era, though.

That's true. I mean, Guy Bisch isn't sure what their genders are, but he He's pretty okay with them flirting, which they do a lot. And I think he tries to flirt back at one point. And then Winslow is like super into them. Like this is where he becomes kind of pansexual. Yeah. You find out about his romance much later in the game with one of these fake aliens.

He also thinks Gaiber says, I love you to him at some point. And Winslow's just like, oh, we can discuss that later. Right. Because one of the- He's down for anything. One of the things on the map is the Isle of You. So when you point to it, Giver says, I love you

and then he goes Oh sir I didn't know Not a lot of puzzles Stick out to me In this one There's another jungle maze Not really as annoying

As the one in the first one In the first chapter This is something I don't like as much And that it's not as tied down To one location And that you can do a lot of sailing around

To different little islands But there's not a lot On those islands And I think it just makes A lot of A lot of busy work Just traveling around One puzzle that stood out

To me though Is I really like the puzzle In which You are helping Lechuk Solve a puzzle puzzle because it's like you're trying to help someone play an adventure game, but they don't want you to give away the entire answer. So you just kind of coach him through an adventure game puzzle and give him different like verbs and items to use. And I love that because Lechuk, he doesn't

know how to solve puzzles because in previous games, all he does is kill people and use violence to fix things. So he's new to this and as Guy brush a season puzzle solver, you're helping him through this. Oh yeah, that was great. I like dumb human Lechuk because he always has been a bit of an idiot throughout the series. Another thing from the first game that's like throughout the entire season of these games is the the Pirate Parrot of Petaluma. Yeah, they have him in the first chapter and then they have to figure out different ways to use that character in every one.

He keeps coming back, yeah. He just, he squawks, I'm Guy Brous Threepwood, Mighty Pirates, and they find various different ways for him to return and I do like that. He's kind of like this game's Murray, although Murray does show up. up in this chapter. I'm sorry, in this, in this episodes. So as a parrot owner, you're okay with this representation. Yes, but I think the joke is like, this thing is annoying. It's true.

But parrots can't be annoying by your parrot. It's true. Yeah. He doesn't say I'm Bob Mackey, Mighty Podcaster, though, so I'll teach him that. Anything else from this chapter? It doesn't really stand out to me. I had fun playing it, but the final three chapters are really the best chapters. I feel like the first two are just a little bit lukewarm, but still fun. But chapter two, not a lot stands out. to me in this one. I do like how Elaine has written this one

because Guy Britch thinks she's in danger but it turns out she's just been with Lechuk helping him return all the monkeys he's kidnapped and she does like ask him to do things for her. This is where she uses her eyes and just says please. Yeah. Which I think is

it's just their variation on all the times Guy Bruch has said please over and over to another character. So this is a fun subversion of that. He's someone on the other receiving end this time. And there's like again, there's there's maybe hints for the player like, oh, our Guybrush and Morgan are thing now. And now there's even hints in this chapter like, oh, Elaine is, Elaine wants to hang out with human Lechuk so much. I wonder why. But

in the end, you find out why. Right. Yeah. I forgot that they do kind of play the jealousy aspect here too, but not too much. The garbage isn't going to like storm up to her and go like, oh, what are you doing with him or accuser of anything? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you could tell like they they genuinely like he love each other and she makes them do things well ask them to do things but it's not like um in a certain other past game where she's just like commanding him and he's like going shopping for her or whatever yeah while she's doing important things she's sending you off to run errands or whatever yeah i like this and i also think that um this is really elaine's most prominent chapter and this is the chapter she has the most

interaction with with guy brush and i think that's because is like, there's not a lot to really mind from that anymore because they've done that so much. So I feel like they still want to lane in the game, but there's not a lot of new material to get out of her and Guy Brush together. So there's really more of a focus on Guy Brush and Morgan. Yeah, she's good at handling political matters. And that's what she does in here. Yeah. And in most fiction, I'm sure there are other examples.

But whenever the couple actually gets together, like, that's when their story becomes boring. Like, it's always like the act of them getting together is what's exciting. and then when they're so they're boring. I mean, we're boring now. I've come to terms with that. No, like, I can't think of any other game where the protagonist is married and you see a lot of their spouse.

Yeah, usually in a game of protagonists is married, their spouse is killed and it's like, I must get revenge. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. No, I just love how you get to see them interact and they're sweet to each other.

It's a good example, I think. So at the end of this chapter gets walled by a leviathan, or sorry, Manatee, and then you end up in chapter three, layer of the Leviathan, your favorite chapter, Nina. a lot too and I like how tied down you are to basically two rooms of this area of this inside of a Leviathan and there's a lot of like puzzle density

in this chapter that I do really like I also forgot to bring up you learn a lot about the voodoo lady in this game yeah yeah because she's not any of the other games she's not just around to dispense wisdom because you leave her location rather quickly

and she plays a lot more into the later part of the series but I do like what they do with her in this one and you find out about her lost love who is in this chapter Coronado de Kava who actually he was his explorer he went off in search of the sea sponge that you need to cure the Lechuk pox and you find him inside of the manatee he's gone kind of mad his crew is mutinyed and now lives in the stomach I love what they do with this and I love again how it's tied down and it starts off with a fun bottle puzzle in which when you start the chapter Morgan is unconscious from what happened to her you know

getting knocked out from going to this manatee and while you're like you know searching her and she's babbling to herself. You're learning things about her that will let play off because you have to pretend that you're married to her and then you play this version of a newlywed game with Coronado where he asked you things about her and you have to answer them based on what you remember when you were searching her body and hearing her babble to herself at the beginning of this chapter. Yeah, that's fun. And when they have to pretend to be married, it doesn't get very awkward either. Like they don't have guy brush creep on her like I said

and she's not all like bashful around him they're just like yeah there's a thing we got to do we just got to rule with it it's great that they don't make guy brush like horny for her at all like he's annoyed by her but there's never any like oh hmm what about Morgan it's it's like

he does not even consider her like a sexual or romantic partner in any way and I think they got that completely right yeah even though she's like very cute and pretty yes she's a very cute character and I think even like in the escape from monkey island which will bring up again like guy brush was using that dumb Barry white voice on a lot of female characters in the game wasn't he

oh yeah and they don't make him do that in this game no thank god i mean it's funny uh it was funny in 2000 uh briefly but not in 2009 he hits on every female character in that game it's ridiculous it was a weirdly horny guy brush but he's back down to earth now well they have to pretend to be married because uh coronado thinks he's after the voodoo lady right him and the voodoo lady have something going on together there's a lot of weird love triangles in this game or potential love triangles in this game. But I really like how you learn about the

Gouda lady's past a little bit. Like she has a life outside of her little hut. You eventually learned that she can't stand up though. This is also my favorite design of her too. Oh, you like the skull makeup that she has? Yes, it's awesome. And I was going to say you actually learn that she can't stand up. Oh, yeah. When you take over her body.

Yeah, this chapter has another puzzle of threes in that you go into the stomach of this manatee and basically you have to convince them all to let you join their brotherhood so they let you know how to find the cochlea, which you need to put back in the manate to steer it back to its mating ground where the sponge is. And it's a puzzle of threes because you have to convince all of them and also the dead member of the crew to vote for you in this brotherhood so you can learn where the cochlea is.

And I love all of these characters, how you interact with them, how you convince them all. And yeah, what did you think about this? You like this chapter the most. Yeah, I like those characters too. Like I said, this was the funniest chapter to me. me. And I really like how these characters were written and voice acted. That's a muteness crew of Coronado, Moose, Nugi, and Bug Eye. And Santino's the dead one. He's just a skeleton. And Bug Eye is my favorite of all of them. Like, he's the most of all developed, of course. And I also, I like the return of Murray here. Like, I think I mentioned on the curse podcast that Murray is a big fan favorite, but he never really did much for me.

And I think the way he was used in this chapter was great. Yeah, they don't make him come back. And then in future chapters, Guy Brich is afraid he'll come back. And actually, during the credits of this one, he floats down next to the credits and makes fun of them. I like how they use him only in this chapter. It's sort of like, it's sort of like hypnote and Futurama where it's like you got to, you know, you got to like go light on hypnototode because it's only so, it's only funny for so long. But Murray, they use them just enough in this. And this also has the face-off mini game, which I am.

enjoyed. Yeah, I like the little system they built because instead of an insult sword fighting contest, you have a facemaking contest, and the way you win is to make a different face based on different variables, and you have to learn how to make different faces from both people and also things you see around the environment. So you're like learning a facemaking vocabulary as you go through the game. I guess the only thing I don't like about this chapter is they don't give Morgan a whole lot to do. Yeah, she kind of just is like pouting a bunch inside the stomach and you

use her to go on a date with Nogi. I like that puzzle too because you have to tell her what to do but it also has to sound like a date to the character. So like you're telling her to interrogate him but to him you have to make it seem like he's on a date

with her. So your instructions have to be both an interrogation and what could potentially be a date and I like that. I guess I play with that a lot in this game where you're trying to do one thing but your tools are limited like the language puzzle with a manatee yeah I really like that

you only have you have to communicate to the manatee with stock travel phrases when you're trying to woo the manatee like let's go to the library or where's the police station or things like that you yeah you learn the manatee language

but you only know enough to get through this travel phrase book and I actually failed this a few times and not in a frustrating way where it's like oh this is a lot more nuanced than I thought it would be because you have different categories of responses like food and entertainment and travel and things like that. But there are only so many things you can say back and you have to find something that would match what the manatee is saying to you.

And I really liked how much, again, how much nuance there wasn't that puzzle. Nothing seemed immediately obvious. It was a lot of playing around with the language to figure out what would work. Yeah, it's so funny. And it's like a reversal of the insult sword fight because they're trying to intimidate you and you have to be charming in return in a way that makes sense. with these tall travel phases yeah i uh i really like that puzzle a lot and another puzzle i liked in this one was you uh eventually have to transport yourself to the voodoo lady's body and there's a fun puzzle with these three cards on them each card is a character and each card

also has a verb on it and you have to arrange the characters and the cards in a way to make the effect you want happen and i found a lot of fun just to play with the different cards and see what you could do. Yes, getting to temporarily become the voodoo lady was amazing. I love how Garbage kind of enjoys being in her body. He is slightly horny. He kind of horny. He kind of horny when as soon as he gets into her body, he makes her breast bounce

a little. Yeah. I mean, there's her fun. They jiggle. I mean, yes, I guess if you're transported into that kind of body, be like, okay, what's going on here? What's, what's down below? He's so used to being skin and bones.

He doesn't know what it's like to have, like, jiggly parts. It's true. It's true. He's a bird boy. And then at the end of this chapter, there's another bottle puzzle where you're strung up by Dekava, who realizes, like, you know, you're a traitor. And it's all about, like, the logistics of moving these two cages so Morgan can cut yours free. It's not difficult, but I love, again, these, like, lockdown puzzles where there are only so many things to do and just, like, playing with all the available options. There are lots of puzzles in this chapter. Lots of, like, very clever puzzles.

and I think that's why I like this one so much. Yeah, I like it. There's not a lot of like running around. It's a very puzzle, dense chapter, and I thought this was my favorite going into it, but I really like the fourth one now. Do you want to go on to talk about that one, or is there anything else you want to hit on Layer of the Leviathan?

We can move on to the fourth one, which I also like a lot. It's really good, and this chapter begins because Morgan knocks you and Wilson out at the end of this chapter at Chapter 3. So you basically find out a very well-named chapter, the trial and execution of Guy Broush Thiebwood. You are brought back the Flotsam Island. Morgan is going to deliver you to Singe to be dissected, but you find out before that can happen,

Guy Brush needs to go on trial for a bunch of different crimes he's committed, seemingly. And I think this is playing with the idea that most adventure game protagonists are criminals that should be punished for what they do. Although Guy Bruch didn't do any of these things. Despite all the crimes he's committed in the past,

he is being set up for all of these things. Yeah, that's true. And this is a return of Stan. It's the best stand, like I said. He's fast-talking and Philharman-esque, and it's perfect that he's a lawyer in this. It's great, and they found a way to make it. I think they did in the last game too,

but I like how his creepy jacket works in this design as well, where the pattern doesn't move, but he moves. I always like that. And they later make it part of a puzzle solution, obtaining a scrap of that fabric. You have to steal a bit of his garish fabric. So again, another puzzle of three is.

Technically, there's four parts, but the first one is a gimmie that you can get out of very easily. So Guy Brush is on trial. He's locked down to the courtroom and the prison, but you can easily get out of the prison to explore a few more areas. So the crimes he's guilty for are for stealing an X, for burning someone's thigh with nacho cheese, for spooking a cat, and for stealing the Spongue Grande. And this is all about, like, it's kind of like Phoenix Wright style, and I think they might have been inspired by Phoenix Wright, because this game came out, like, after the original trilogy came out in America, because it's not the same design sense at all, but it's all about putting people on the stand, presenting information to them, asking them questions, and yeah, I really love this as a Phoenix Wright fan, even though the games play out

very differently. If they were inspired by Phoenix Wright, I wish you would lean into that a little bit more by maybe having a dialogue puzzle where you have to find the contradiction in what they're saying. Yeah, I can see that. But I do like how all these play out, because you have to find out. why they're lying. I love the amount of fluids you carry around with you in this chapter

because you're trying to find out why the woman, like how the woman got the burn on her leg and to do that, you basically need to collect every kind of fluid you can on the island. So before you solve this puzzle, you have like eight little jars of fluid

with you, eight shot glasses full of fluid with you. And thank God, they don't make you refill those every time you use them. Yes, I'm so glad. You've got to go through a lot of accommodations. For some reason,

I was worried at first. like, oh no, what if I have to go back and get these? But no, they always stay in your inventory and that's very smart. It's little touches like that that make this game so playable and fun. And the puzzle I like the most in this chapter is the Feast of the Senses, which is another recipe puzzle in that. So you have the sponge and you have to decide how to make it grow and you have to basically feed the sponge six different things that represent the six senses and you have to decide

to figure out what those are based on the things around you. And I thought that was a very, very good puzzle. And I like how they do that same puzzle in the next chapter, but in a different way. I would have liked this chapter more if we didn't have to return to the jungle again. This is the one time I think the jungle is used well in that you have a foldable map. And based on the way you fold the map, that is how the layout of the jungle changes, which is something I was not aware of the first time I played the game. That's the one time I got stuck in this originally, where they don't make it obvious enough that the layout of the jungle changes.

There's like a bit of a rumble when you do it, but to me, that's not significant. that land is changing. Okay, I thought that was a good indicator, actually, because it only happens when you fold a map. I wish it happened outside of the jungle as well. Yeah. The rumble only happens when you're in the jungle and you fold the map. That's probably what threw me off.

But this time around, I had a lot of fun folding the map in different ways to find what I needed to find. And it was fun. But I love just the ways that this Feast of the Senses puzzle is like interpreted in the game in terms of the things you have to put on the sponge in order to feed it. And this chapter ends with another lockdown puzzle. You are fighting to singe. You have to figure out ways to get him basically sucked into this wind-generating machine. And it's a fun puzzle.

Again, I like every lockdown puzzle. But what this chapter ends with is a very shocking thing in which Guy Brush is killed. And then earlier in the chapter, Morgan is killed. So you find her body. And that's a moment that really stuck out to me in this game. I'm sure it did to you too, Nina, because it's a moment of like actual sincerity in Monkey Island, which is rare, even in the very best of the series, where you find Morgan's body, there's no music, Guy Rush has nothing funny to say. It's like a scene of tragedy,

and I think it's handled really well. Yeah, it's great. It really surprised me. There's a lot of death in this one. There's Morgan DeSange who is like obliterated. He's grown up into a lot of pieces, yeah. Yeah, and Guy Brish. And I think this is the first time in the game series that you see characters legit dying on screen yeah i think so yeah i mean i can't think of any other times where a character just straight up dies lechuk like explodes and things like that but uh he's not living yeah yeah like um morgan dying had a big impact uh you know what i was thinking morgan might be the character with the most character development in the entire series, an entire

my content series. It's true, she could think about it. Because like I said earlier, most characters, they don't stay with you for the entire game. Like, you visit them,

you do their things, then you move on to the next set of characters. But in this one, she's usually hanging around after the first chapter in some way. Yeah, and like, aside from like Guy Brish,

obviously, because he's a main character. She's, she's a character that you, um, you see chain most. Yes. Like at first, she's all about the money.

That's all she cares about. But then she feels really bad about the things she did to Guy Brish. And she tries to redeem herself in this chapter and then is killed for it. And Guy Brish is as well. And when I played this again, I was like, oh, I kind of forget what happens. This is a fake out. But no, because Chapter 5 opens with Guy Brush dead. You are now the ghost pirate Guy Brush in the afterlife.

And I love, I feel like that's like a really big risk. I mean, death is inconsequential in a world in which there's a ghost pirate that comes back to life in every game. But I feel like that was a big risk. Like, oh, no. you're dead for almost all of this chapter. You've got to figure out how to get out of the situation. Yeah, the ending to this is great. When Guy Brich gets killed, it happens so fast that you don't even see it coming. So it's legitimately shocking. Because Lechuk has never been one to be so quick with the killing in the past. Like usually he puts Guy Brich as some sort of death machine, then leaves. In this one, he just comes up and stabs him. That's it.

Yeah, and it's a reveal that Lechuk is behind all of this because in chapter four, there's a bit of red hair. in that human Lechuk is like, oh, the voodoo lady is behind this. This is why we're trapped in the cycle of fate. She sets us against each other and we need to break free of this. But then you find out, oh, no, Lechuk was, this is all a long con. He needed Guy Brush to get the sponge because Guy Bruch can hold his breath for 10 minutes underwater. And Lechuk needs the sponge in order to suck the voodoo power out of the pirate afterlife so he can become a pirate god. And that was the big long con he was running for this entire chapters of the game.

This is also the chapter where Guy Rish finally trusts Lachuk because he's very skeptical that Lichuk is a good guy up until this point. Yeah, it's true. And he's all like, hey, hey, buddy. Did you believe that Lichok is legitimately good up to this point? You know what? I forgot the twist of this game and I thought he was. I forgot that he's actually the villain, the true villain of the game.

Yeah, I think I kind of went through the same thing Gyrich did where I didn't trust him. And then by this point, I was like, oh, maybe. it was like starting to loosen to the idea of maybe Lechuk is actually a good guy because we kind of see that in The Simpsons and Seizio Bob he's always trying to kill Bart and then one time he's actually like not after him

like it is actually him trying to be good yeah I think oh maybe they're doing the same thing here I think they did a good job of you know fooling the player into thinking that maybe Lechuk has reform maybe the fact that he's a human now means he's no longer evil but no he's still evil. And he's kind of creepy at the end, too, when he's, like, briefly, still a human, but he's

evil. He's saying evil things, but in a very cheery way. Yeah, and it was a big surprise for me. I forgot this is where this episode starts off, because you basically have to, you dig yourself out of your own grave in the pirate afterlife. And I love the atmosphere of this, uh, of this whole location. And I love what they do with it. I love like the weird, uh, mythology they put into this area. And it all ties back into the first game as well. You find out, like, this is where Lechuk escaped from to come back to the land of the living. So now we're, in the fifth chapter. Yes, Rise of the Pirate God. Okay. I like any time

you go to the land of the dead in a game. I know you haven't played this or seen this, but a similar thing happens in King's Quest 6. Like, you don't die, you just enter the land of the dead. And I just find that whole environment super cool. But this is a great place to start this game, because I don't think the other

games would make this risky choice to be like, well, you're dead. You might not come back to life. When you do come back to life at a point in this chapter, you are a zombie. So, like, how do you get your body back? It's rotting. Your body is like a corpse in the real world. Like, what do you do?

Guy Britch grows through a few character design changes and tails. He does, yeah. Like, he, I like his ghostly design. It's pretty much the same, but you can kind of see his bones. I do like that, yeah. And he does get his hand back when he's a ghost. Right, yeah. So that ferryman at the beginning, is that supposed to be like the fairerman and curse?

I think it's supposed to be just like the myth mythological ferryman to cross the river sticks or whatever but he sounds so much like the fairy man in the curse and Garber just keeps asking him like hey how aren't we met before

are you sure? I think about it was kind of supposed to be a nod to that I think maybe it might be but they're just barred from that mythological idea of the you know paying the ferryman to take you across the river

but that's where this episode starts there's a bottle puzzle and that you need to you weren't buried with the pieces of aid over your eyes to pay the ferryman so you have to find a way to get it. And that involves stealing his tip jar and using the grog machine to make change,

which I really liked. There's a grog machine in the afterlife, much like the grog machine it stands in Monkey Island One. Yeah, I think there's a grog machine in every game. Is there one in the third game, actually? Maybe not. I don't think so. But what you need to do, you basically have to solve the puzzles in each of these three areas of the afterlife. There's the sword fighting area, the fevery area, and the treasure hunting area. So it is a puzzle of threes. And you're using it to get four items to put in a ring in order to go back to land of living. That does not mean you get your body back. It just means you can go there.

The three areas are a nod to the first game as well. Because it's thievery, what was it, thievery, sword fighting, wait. Thievery, sword fighting, and treasure hunting. Yeah, no, sword fighting, thievery and treasure huntry. Yes. Are those the three tests that the pirates make you do in the first game? Yes. That's exactly what it is, and that exact wording.

And they set this up early in the series because when you go to the voodoo ladies' huts, there's her rug that has the pirate voodoo crossroads or whatever, and that's where you are at the end of the game. I wish he brought back Nord Treblig from her hut. Oh, yeah. He does not appear in this. Although I think Galeb says that's his name, the lying guy. Oh, yeah, at one point.

Yeah. Yeah. But he's an interesting character as well. Yeah, I do like him. There's sort of like a sad quality to everybody. in this afterlife area which I like I like the melancholy of it Morgan is dead she will not come back to life

she has a lot of regrets surprisingly yeah and she ends the series as a ghost but the main puzzle of this after you get those four items to go back to reality is you have to do a reverse feast of the senses which it's sort of like a diet of the senses so in the previous chapter you had to feed the sponge

now you have to find ways to basically starve the sponge and again it is all about finding six different items to give to the sponge that have a meaning in terms of like sight, sight, sound, touch, six sense, and smell and taste. I don't know if I said that before, but how did you feel about this? It's sort of a repeat puzzle, but I love the inversion of feeding the sponge in this final chapter. Oh, I loved it. In some of the past games, when you have to go through a voodoo spell, a gathering ingredients,

usually you then have to repeat the same thing, but with limited items or, um, substitutions that aren't as good and I felt like they were they kind of wanted to touch on that but do an inversion of that which I thought was really clever yeah I did like it and I like how in this section of the game

there are a bunch of tears in the fabric of reality between the afterlife and the real world and it involves like going into them in different states like you can temporarily get your body back when you're in the real world as a zombie and you have to do that to do certain things I just love playing with the two different worlds and what you can do in each one as a ghost and as a zombie. Because as a ghost, you can't actually touch things or pick them up, which I thought was an interesting choice.

No, that was great. When you're a ghost, you kind of have to do like dialogue puzzles instead. And I guess we can talk about where this all wraps up in that essentially you can starve the sponge, but you still have to fight Lechuk at the end of the game. And I don't like this puzzle because I felt like I, I just never had enough time to figure out what to do in each station. But essentially, like, they try to replicate your Lechuk fights in the other games in that you are, uh, he's, he's pursuing you and you have a limited time in each area to make a decision about what you want to do with limited items in each area. But in this one, I felt like I had to find a hit because I was just getting too frustrated about what to do in each little station he knocks you to. Uh, this is my, my biggest complaint about this chapter for sure. By this point, I was like, looking like, looking,

up these solutions because I just wanted to get it over with. Yeah. I don't want to go through the same things over and over and over again to figure it out. It felt like it took too long to move you between each station too because how it works is that like Lechuk, you have a limited time in each area, you can't move and you have a limited time to decide what you want to do before Lechuk shows up and just punches you to the next area. And I just felt like there was never enough time for me to figure it out and how it actually solves itself is not very satisfying

so I know they're trying to do the Lechuk Showdown like there is in every game but in this one it doesn't feel as snappy it just feels a bit tedious to me but I do like how Guyberish is genuinely suffering yes he sounds like he's like severely beaten up because

he is and like his voice acting is very well done he's very strained and it's good that Elaine is very proactive in this as well and helps him yeah it's good you think that she has fallen into the spell with Chuck but it's all like a long con right for her too as well

oh yeah this is where she like deliberately gives herself up to Lachuk saying oh yeah I'll be your demon bride and then she gets a really cool makeover where she becomes a goth Elaine and Guy Bras thinks she's hotter like that is what she what he says I think it's some dialogue

I'm sorry what and Guy Bruch thinks she's hotter like that she's like actually pretty attractive oh yeah he says he says I thought you were sexy when you were all poxed up yeah and the way this solved is that you have to get Lechuk stuck in the Rift between worlds so Elaine can stab him on one side and Morgan can stab him from

the other side because you have to destroy both his physical and spiritual forms and what you do in this and I think it's very thematically interesting is that Guy Brush when he's a ghost he has a shred of life as an item he's holding onto a shred of life and in order to close the rift on Lechuk

and destroy him Guy Bruch has to sacrifice his shred of life seemingly trapping himself as a ghost forever in the afterlife but there's a there's a fun like little play with the puzzle in that before you had to arrange a ring of items in order to open that rift originally and in this one when you get to this part of the game you sacrifice your wedding ring in order to go back to the other world which because it's a ring of sacrifice and courage and what are the other verbs looking for sacrifice courage uh guide anchor

those four qualities make up your ring as well your wedding ring that final puzzle is so incredibly sweet i get emotional just thinking about it Yeah, and it's great because you've defeated Lechuk, and then you're stuck in this one area, there's no music, and you don't know really what to do. Like, oh, is this the end of the game? Like, did I mess up? Did something go wrong? Yeah, and you don't have, like, anything left to your inventory except for your ring, right? Yeah, I think that might be it.

There may be a few other things, but, I mean, eventually you will find the solution, but it was obvious to me what it was. Yeah, once I realized what the final solution was, I was just like, oh, that's so sweet. And we got a real ending in this game. I was also surprised by how brief it was, though, because it does wrap up really quickly. At least there's dialogue, but they just kind of sail away. Yeah, they sail away. Elaine tells them they've been pronouncing a sponger wrong the entire time. That's the joke.

And the sort of the stinger at the end is that we see that Morgan is now working for a voodoo lady. Morgan is a ghost. So she's a ghost pirate hunter now. And I guess that was because they wanted to give her some purpose, because it's kind of a bummer that she does die and can't come back, but now she has a purpose in life, or death, rather. And the final stinger in this game is very perplexing because it came out in 2009 and that if you wait past the credits, past the Morgan scene, you'll see Sam and Max 2010.com, which is not a real upside anymore. Don't go there. So it ends with a stinger for the next Sam and Max game.

They raise a Max pirate flag and they're just previewing the next game. That really kind of ruined the mood for me at the very end. Yeah, I always hate when I go to, I play an old video game and they advertise a website that does not exist. Like, renew your domain name. It's not hard. It's not that expensive. I can do it. I wish they didn't have that at the very end of this after such a nice ending.

If they re-release it, they should just patch that out because that's no longer true. You can buy Sam and Max season three now. It's great. And we'll talk about that maybe in the future. But that's the end of our Tales of Monkey Island podcast. We went into great detail about these episodes. Again, I hope you didn't listen to this before playing. But if you did, forget what we said and play through the series.

And you'll really enjoy it. I think they did such a good job. And my question for you, Nina, as a fan, do you think the series has anywhere to go from here? Like, what could another game be in the Monkey Island series? I think they've done all they can with La Chuk, and any more of him would just be repetitive. So I would like to consider this the end of the La Chuk arc.

And let's bring it a new villain. Like, there's lots of potential there. Keep doing the ghostly supernatural stuff because I love that, especially with the voodoo lady, possibly being a mastermind who's been manipulating everyone, I wouldn't mind seeing more of that explored. And also, let's bring back Morgan.

Maybe her mentor can be a new villain because he's a big pirate hunter. Or, well, I guess she's a pirate hunter. Her mentor isn't necessarily one. I was thinking about how the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series kept coming up with new antagonists. And the fifth one, played by

Javier Bardem, was great. Like, he played an undead pirate hunter. who wants the trident of Poseidon to kill every pirate. That feels very monkey islandish to me. So come up with something like that. Like, let's just not do Lechuk anymore. Yeah, I'm totally with you there. I feel like this is, I don't know if Earl Bowen's going to come back.

I don't want anyone else to play Lechuk, and I think they've done everything they can. There's no other form for him to take. And if Monkey Island comes back and who knows if it will, I feel like the series really shows you don't have to go down the Monkey Island checklist to make a Monkey Island game. you can kind of do your own thing while still being respectful and make a very fun experience

that is still a monkey island game but also is something new. You're not just retreading old ground and I hope if it ever comes back and I mean we hit the 30th anniversary nothing happened. I guess this is technically the 30th anniversary of Monkey Island 2. Nothing is happening now. Maybe if Ron Gilbert gets the IP back

there could be something happening but I feel like there's still places to go for this series for sure. But still like if this is the last game, last Monkey Island game ever, I would be satisfied enough with this ending. Yes, I agree. Like I said, it's a great tribute to Garbage and Elaine in general.

This could be the good final game of the series if it ends up being that, and it's not the final game that Escape was, where Guy Brush's last words are Jar Jar. That could have been Guy Brush's final words on this planet is Jar Jar. It's interesting what a sweet note this game ends on, because that wasn't really the tone of the game at the very beginning of the series. I think it was a perfect storm because Ron Gilbert was there Dave Grossman was overseeing everything

We have old LucasArts guys working on the project And a fan like Jake Rodkin And other people working on the series So it was a mix of old talent And Monkey Island fans Trying to make the best possible sequel That they assumed probably could never happen Yeah I love this game

I gotta say Yeah thumbs up You know what Sometimes when I do Retronauts I have to play games I don't like and that's been happening a lot recently or games that are just not exciting are kind of a chore

but one day I was like you know what I'm not going to work today but I couldn't not play this series because I was like I don't want to work today I want to take time off but I really want to play Tales of Monkey Island so that's how good this game is

like it made me do work even though I didn't want to yeah I totally agree I kept wanting to play more and more of this game I finished it like way sooner than I had to because I just wanted to keep playing it It leaves me feeling good about games. You're like, yeah, I really like adventure games.

I really like Monkey Island. Yeah, after playing The Dig and then this, I'm like, oh, yeah, you can actually make a good adventure game. Yeah, this is great. When it comes to ranking the whole series, Lechukh Revenge is still my favorite. Then it's secret, tales, curse, and all the way at the bottom is Escape. Escape is on a different list for me. Just like, I don't even want it on the same list. There's no comparing.

Yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you enjoy yourself playing this because you've been having a rough time having to consume media that you really dislike. Yeah, you know what? It's not as good as this, but I'm looking forward to doing the Back to the Future episode with those episodic games because I do, again, like playing these episodic releases, I'm like, God, I miss this format so much. It's fun to just sit down and finish a game in one day or two days. It's just a good feeling, and you can be done with it and move on. So, Nina, thanks for being on the show. Oh, any final thoughts? Any other final thoughts?

I don't know. I just wanted to say this this game left me feeling good. Yes, me too. It's just like a nice uplifting ending and you know this game like says like your bond to your life partner is made up of guide, anchor, courage and sacrifice. And like that's how I feel about you. Oh, you're like guide and anchor. You give me courage and marriage is about being selfless and you give me life through these things. And I think this game makes me feel good about being married. Aw, that's so sweet. I didn't know this is going to have such a happy. be ending this podcast. But thank you, Nina. I appreciate that. And please let everyone know out there where they can find you and support you and everything that you do. I'm on Twitter at Space Coyotero. That's Space Coyote with an L at the end instead of an E. You can check out my art at SpaceCayu.com. Go to Fangamirrador.com, navigate collections for by artist Nina

Matsumoto to see all my video game merch. I'm still waiting for Disney to give up Monkey Island so that there's a chance in hell that I can make Monkey Ali merchandise. Go to Sparkscomic.com to learn about my children's graphic novel Sparks, which is published through Scholastic. It's about two cats that pilot, a robotic dog suit to save people.

And the third book, which I've spent, most of the pandemic drawing, is coming out February of next year. And I might have snuck in a certain pirate in one of the scenes. Ooh, legally. Yeah, it's not guy-bush. It's a fibrous Greekwood.

Yes. all know him. So thank you for being on the show, Nina. As for us, as for us, as retronauts, of course. You can find us online at retronauts.com. We're on Twitter as Retronauts. And of course, the show is completely supported by patrons like you, possibly.

So if you want to be a patron and sign up and get some bonus stuff, please go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Sign up there for three bucks a month. You get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free. And for five bucks a month, you get a lot of bonus stuff. You get two exclusive full-length bonus episodes every month for five bucks a month. And also a weekly column and podcast by Diamond Fight. It's a lot of bang for your buck, and there are higher tiers on top of that.

And again, that is patreon.com slash retronauts. We couldn't do it without all of our great patrons out there. As for me, I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackey. I'm on Twitter as Bob Serbo, and you can find me other places, too, like the Talking Simpsons. My other podcast network that I do with Henry Gilbert, that is at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up there. You get access to everything one week at a time and ad free like we do here. But we also have lots of bonus miniseries like Talking to the Hill, our King of the Hill miniseries.

Talking Futurama, Talking Mission Hill, Talking Critic, over a hundred miniseries episodes are waiting for you behind the $5 paywall at Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. We do a lot of stuff over there. Check it out. And that is all for us for this episode of Retronauts. We will see you next time. Take care.

I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be.