… and since the ending of MI2 doesn’t explain anything, I assume that the secret has yet to be revealed.
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I just had another (dreadful) idea: maybe in RTMI you start in the real world, but each action you take is reflected in the pirate world. Every thing has a counterpart. You act on some object in the real world, and you see the corresponding object change in the pirate world. You can also switch to the pirate world, and take actions there, to change something in the real world.
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From a design standpoint, after the big revelation in the end of MI2, I don’t see how the real world could be relegated just to the intro, and then be disposed of, and we play a game completely in the pirate world. Now the illusion is broken, it might not work. So it’s possible the real world might follow us throughout the game.…
…and maybe the secret of Monkey Island will be to understand what caused this duplication of worlds. Maybe Guybrush will eventually understand that he did something specific to cause the pirate world to exist. (like, I don’t know, eat bad food off the ground 
). And this might well be “the secret”…
I like this idea. It reminds me of DOTT.
Die unendliche Geschichte going on up there guys? Probably.
Anyway Mark Ferrari talks about defining existance as storytelling, through natural processes of our brain that costantly rebuilds our memories and intentions in the interview I’ve posted in those other threads, claiming that is - essentially - the Secret of Monkey Island, basically that everyone of us is capable of imagining and living his own story, and becoming aware of that means discovering the secret.
I’ve always thought the Secret of Monkey Island was the fact that the story of Guybrush was just a fantasy from a guy of our times (that justifies all the anachronisms), and this was developed in the sequel as a fantasy play with his brother who impersonates the bad guy, probably during a visit in a theme park in which the kid gets lost and fear the abandonment by his parents.
Telling people: “the secret of Monkey Island is just the fact that it’s all a kid’s fantasy” may appear commonplace and prosaic, and given the quality of the work, the authors realized the concept could be digged more giving it more significance.
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This would be great, IMO. That would perfectly make sense story-wise, and we could have awesome and very original puzzles that way.
very hard to design though… 
Maybe not for everyone but this sounds great to me.
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The fact that it’s all a kid’s fantasy kind of naturally follows from the MI2 ending. That’s why I didn’t like that ending when I was young, as it destroyed the mental image I had of Guybrush (and myself in impersonating him while playing the game). Sure, there were also all the anachronisms within MI2 and (less so) MI1, but I guess those could be chalked up to the humorous nature of the games, and the infantile state of the games industry at that time in general.
Anyway, what I wanted to write is that I would be really disappointed if that was the whole secret, because it hides in plain sight. I want to believe the secret is something that is actually hidden on Monkey Island, but I guess even the title “The Secret of Monkey Island” could mean that Monkey Island itself has an unknown property that is the secret. And that property might well be that it is an imaginary place in the mind of a kid visiting an amusement park. But so would be Mêlée Island and the rest, therefore my hope is that there’s more to it than something that simple.
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It is worth to mention that the “it’s all a kid’s fantasy” is one of the few options explicitly dismissed by Ron (emphasis is mine):
Flirbnic: There are a lot of theories about what the Secret of Monkey Island is…
One of them is that there are portals everywhere eg. when guybrush falls down the hole on Dinky Island, he goes through a portal to the hallway world and after Guybrush takes off LeChuck’s mask, they go through a portal to the carnival world, where the grog machine came from
Then there is my theory that the secret is the location of Monkey Island
And there is another theory that it’s all just a dream that a little boy (Guybrush) was having while in a ride similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean thing…
Which of these is closest to the Secret of Monkey Island?
Ron-G: Cold, cold and cold. One is closer than the others…but not much.
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Okay, so that’s not the secret. I’m relieved. Doesn’t say it’s not a kid’s fantasy anyway, though.
I am sure there is a secret but it has been hyped to such large proportions that the actual secret (original or adapted) may look small and not living up to those pumped expectations.
I also don’t really get the obsession with that secret. Does it make the two first games any worse not knowing the secret? No.
Would they be worse games if they were simply titled: Monkey Island and LeChuck’s Revenge? No.
I rather see it as a running joke. The word “secret” in the title sounded good. They kept it, and the game works perfectly if it was the only one ever to be made. Once the game was a success and it was clear a sequel could be published, some references were put in the second game, where you can ask LeChuck what is the secret - which fed the minds of people even more that there is a secret.
Perhaps this in itself is an even longer setup than the announcement on April fool’s day. Perhaps the secret is just that: it is a secret, so it ceases to exist once it is revealed.
Imagine if RMI would not be short for Return to MI but Reveal of (the secret of) Monkey Island instead.
Anyway, I expect a sarcastic comment from Guybrush or another character if or when the secret is revealed: “THAT is it? That is the secret? How lame! Glad I didn’t spend more than 20 bucks.”
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Admittedly, for writers , there are ideas that seem to work on paper but not when you try to actually write the dialogs. But you need to be an inexperienced writer for that to happen…
I very strongly disagree with that last sentence. Working in film, this happens constantly. And I don’t mean because we are unable to get the performance we need from the actors or that there was some inadequacy in how a scene was shot or cut. It is that simply, ideas that seem great on paper only reveal their problems when translated to their final format.
We always have things that read great, and seem to be working on set, and then you get into the edit room and put them on a screen only the find that they don’t work at all.
This often means that we have to come up with new solutions based on the material we have. I have been in projects where the entire focus of the story changes in the edit room to such a degree that a single sentence summary of what the movie is about would change ENTIRELY.
I’m not suggesting that this did happen with Ron (and frankly I have zero investment in what the secret is) but it is an easily plausible scenario that Ron and company could have had an idea going for 30 years, tried implementing it, it wasn’t working, they tried tweaking things to make it work, and then in the end found that a completely different solution wound up working better for what they made.
It is while making the thing that you discover what it is about. It is rarely what you originally set out to do.
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The Secret probably started as a MacGuffin. And I’m fine if it stays like that. All I want to know is whether Guybrush was a real kid, or is it really a spell as Elaine suggested. And are they really brothers? I get it was a parody of Star Wars there
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This is equally true for novel writing. Books that are written without or with minimal cutting, editing, rewriting, fitting… well, you can tell.
In general good storytellers have the talent to make it feel as if the story you are reading, watching or playing was all conceived seamlessly. Good writers can take a uncompleted story and finish it without showing the seams of where things were cut, an end/beginning was added or “filling” was done to go from A to B - without it feeling as filler.
Most MI games are sprinkled with quotes from Star Wars anyway.
I understand what you mean, but completely dropping the idea you have nurtured for 30 years, and you had dozens of interviews about, is so incompatible with human nature that it’s still implausible for me. They would just rewrite it again and again until it works. And even if they really replaced it with a different idea, human nature is such that they would try to sneak in the idea by the backdoor, in some other way, in this game or in a sequel.
Not to mention that Ron would be worried about future interviews: he either would have to lie about what the secret was, or admit changing it at the last moment, and therefore tell us what it was.
Well, it depends on which aspects of a game a player cares most.
In my case, I have always associated the secret with the narration of a story that has not been fully told.
I didn’t get the feeling that the story was fully told at the end of MI1. MI2 ends with what I always perceived as a giant cliffhanger.
Knowing how that story ends (the story about the secret of Monkey Island, that is) is more important to me than playing a game. I’m aware that I probably belong to a minority of people.
From that perspective, while the first two games are good, they also don’t fulfill the goal of completing the tale.
It’s like watching Star Wars episode IV and V, but living in a universe where episode VI was never made. The movies are good by themselves but the whole story lacks a piece.
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I hadn’t that feeling. To me, MI1 was (and has) a perfect story, fully told. And I had the same feeling at the end of MI2 - until Elaine wondered what happened to Guybrush. If that question wouldn’t be there, I won’t miss anything. That Guybrush is just a child, LeChuck his brother and Big Whoop a theme park was a perfect and genius ending to me.
“The Secret Of…” was just a title to me, similar to the “Secret of…” titles of many movies and books. Like there a / the secret isn’t actually named or revealed, it’s just a hint that there is a mysterious island in the game.
So I don’t care so much about the secret like others. Instead I’m more curious what happened at the end of MI2 actually. 
(IMHO MI3 was a disappointment in that regard.) But of course: After Ron had mentioned that there is a secret, I would like to know it too… 
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Fun fact: James ‘Purple’ Hampton suggested the ending of MI 2.
My favourite game is probably Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. I was super involved in the process and it would definitely have to be my favorite LucasArts game. You know, folks like Ron Gilbert leading up the SCUMM team made up with people like Tim Schaefer and Dave Grossman, were open to feedback from us testers, and even included us in the brainstorming for the climactic ending of the game, where my suggestion to make it like a St. Elsewhere-like ending, where it is revealed it was all a dream became the basis for the cliffhanger finale where it revealed LeChuck and Guybrush are actually two brothers in the real world just as we see LeChuck’s eerie eyes glow in the final shot.
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