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Originally Posted by Pale Man
PK, I agree with you completely, as usual.
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Thanks.
Going on beyond that to even more contreversial waters you may not agree with, from my perspective, a MI3 by Ron Gilbert instead of Curse could've been a very bad thing. A lot of times when you see these secret riddled endings they don't live up to any happy, fulfilling or even logical conclusion. A bad resolution of the MI3 could've killed the series not only in terms of sequels but in terms of public opinion as well - it's legacy.
The Matrix is a prime example of this. It's amazing Curse was able to tie up as many plot holes as it did and explain it in such a satisfying way.
Curse is a stellar adventure game - one of the best if not the best of all time. It's not my favorite ever but I'm certainly glad it exists. Escape - for all the hate it gets - is a very good adventure game in a series filled with great titles. It gets a lot of hate but an excessive amount. So I'm glad Escape exists too. I've always gotten the sense that Ron's MI3 would've finished off the series for good with whatever his secret is.
And then we have Tales. Tales has a lot of promise and is helping in the modern revival of adventure games considering all the interest in Monkey Island. Beyond that it's given excellent exposure to Telltale - I'm a customer who bought all their titles simply because I became aware of them due to Monkey Island. Hell, if Ron had made MI3? We may not have gotten a MI:SE years later, the same MI:SE which is selling so well now and is yet another important cog in the industry working to revitalize the genre.
I say this as a LeChuck's Revenge fan. In fact it's my favorite adventure game ever made. But I wouldn't change things as they are to see Ron's intended third game. People act as if Ron was screwed over or never got his shot. People forget that Ron voluntarily left LucasArts of his own accord without making the third Monkey Island. In fact they even forget his original vision for Monkey Island was originally slated to be a more serious game but Dave and Tim worked so many jokes in that became what was. Ron is not God in my eyes, even though I do like and respect his work. But I don't deify the man nor accept the idea no one can make good Monkey Island games except him. I trust Chuck, Mike, Mark and Dave to make Tales. I'd trust Tim to do it.
Everyone hates the idea of Monkey Island being all the dream of a little boy. That's the apparent and most logical ending to MI2 on the surface of things - but nobody seems to want to accept it as it seems so much of a let down. How do we know Ron's third Monkey Island game with his venerated secret isn't something like this - something as dissapointing or series killing?
Beyond that how do we even know there even IS a secret and Ron isn't just pulling wool over our eyes, trying to get a third game made years later? The end of MI2 looks like it was deliberately done to make the "He's just a kid" theory look like the truth but apply wiggle room for a sequel later. It's apparently worked very well as people still talk about it today. For all we know Ron has spent the last ten years coming up with a secret. It's not a nice thing to say and I don't mean anything malicious by it, but you would have to be a fool in this world to assume the best of everybody always and none of us know Ron personally.
Really we will probably never know the secret (if one exists) and even if we figured it out Ron would never tell us - he wouldn't tell us for nine years Monkey Island lay dead and seemingly gone forever. And Ron's game probably doesn't even fit within the established storyline - his complaint on the Elaine and Guybrush marriage could mean they're sister and brother which would turn Monkey Island into an incest fest. It'd have to take place in some weird alternate timeline or itself be revealed to be a dream sequence which would just be a convoluted and messy solution.
If Ron got to make his Monkey Island game - a direct sequel or one that eliminates Curse, Escape and Tales as canon - I would be excited to play it but I would be afraid for the ramifications for the series. In any case fixating on a ending that got a canon resolution back in the nineties that we'll never be able to figure out seems silly to me. It's an interesting discussion point but at the same time it's kind of a pointless conversation.