I dont know if anyone has asked this question here before, but @RonGilbert , will “RtMI” be released on mobile as well? Because I love playing adventure games on mobile in different places, plus more people will be able to experience this game!
My hypothesis is that Steve Purcell had the impression that his first sketches had too few elements that suggested a game about pirates. So he made a sketch filled with stereotypical images, starting with a bunch of random pirates who never appear in the game or in the code wheel.
This sketch had a lot less pirate-related elements, although it suggested an exotic environment:
(Source)
This other sketch probably makes a better job at suggesting a pirate adventure:
(Source)
… but in the end they chose the version with the galleon, the stereotypical pirates and a giant skull and crossbones all over the image.
They’re looking at something out of shot, on our left… could it be the secret of MI?
These guys definitely look like they’ve just seen the secret -
I only see a single three headed monkey
A couple of people within the comments section of Ron’s blog were doubting my (correct) claim that Ron once went on record as stating that he viewed Guybrush and Elaine’s relationship more as that of brother and sister (as I pointed out; that did not necessarily mean that they are literally siblings - it could just as easily have been a metaphorical view of their interpersonal relationship) and that Ron said that they would never have gotten married, had he made a third Monkey Island game back in the 90s.
Thankfully, Ron jumped in to confirm his previous words and expand upon them…
“The way I always thought of the Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck triangle was that they were kids from the neighborhood playing together. Guybrush was 8 and Elaine and LeChuck were 11. Guybrush was the younger kid following the older kids around trying to be like them. They were not related. None of this is real or ties into the ending of MI2, it’s just the way I thought about the characters. It’s why Guybrush and Elaine would never get married.”
It’s a fascinating insight into the thought process behind how Ron wrote for those characters in the first two Monkey Island games. I can definitely see that metaphorical relationship in those games.
There’s something fishy here
He said he’s always thought of Guybrush and Elaine (and Lechuck) as kids.
Why would he think of them as kids, if the MI2 ending (where Guybrush turns out to be a kid) was conceived very late?
This is the first time that Ron has been explicit on the reason why he didn’t like seeing Guybrush and Elaine married. I didn’t expect to get more details on this topic, and I think that this is quite a rare event.
Old and well-known lines, like a random insult-fighting pirate saying “Pirate lingo! It’s how everybody talked back then. Come on Guybrush, play along” now can be explained in more than one way.
Now, I’m curious to know why he approached the creation of the main characters of a pirate game as if they were kids and not adults.
I imagine he was writing to his audience
You’re taking Ron’s quote too literally. He was talking in terms of metaphor.
That’s my normal expression when I come across anything that might been related to the secret, even in an extremely tangential way.
Yesterday I spent five minutes searching for The Secret™ in my mashed potatoes.
You are Richard Dreyfuss and I claim my five pounds.
It seems so. Ron just clarified:
As I said above the G/E/L triangle was just a framework for thinking about the relationships. It’s not part of the story or had anything to do with the ending of MI2
Basically he always thought of them as having a relationship similar to those of kids, but only later he decided to actually make them kids.
Right. Which makes me wonder: for whom should he write RtMI for? For which audience?
They have made clear that (understandably) they want to create a game appealing to a larger group of people, instead of just the usual “old guard”.
Who are these people? Are they (on average) older than those kids to whom Ron wrote the original story?
If so, should the storytelling approach change and account for the more sophisticated taste of an older audience?
Some questions are better left unanswered.
Cranky 40 year olds with impossibly high expectations.
That fits.
with impossibly high expectations and ready to jump all over you if the secret is not compatible with all the clues
I was browsing the forum and remembered an intense discussion full of Ron’s opinions about point-and-click games and Monkey Island in particular.
A large part of the thread is gold, from both an emotional and historical point of view. I’ll mention here just a phrase:
I just want to loudly state that I’m for real barely not 40 at all.