[sladerlmc77]

Jake:

As the Monkey Island series belongs to LucasArts and we are licensing it, we could not easily leave the end of the game in an irreversible place.

This is sort of what I expected...but at the same time, I can't help but re-read the sentence and put the emphasis on the word "easily." That means that it wouldn't have been impossible, no?

After all, as I understand it, the scripts did have to be approved by Lucasarts beforehand...

That said, I'm sure they wouldn't have made any decisions about a second season of Tales until the first season had concluded.

I hope they'll have gained the confidence to give you a bit more leeway in future Seasons.

I don't know if we ever seriously considered leaving Guybrush trapped in the crossroads, but I also don't know if any of us would be opposed to it. This came up on the DVD commentary track but I can't remember exactly what was discussed. (Get the DVD to find out! ... or I will try to remember.)

I can't wait to hear this on the commentary track...I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during those story discussions.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have never seen her as a villain and still don't after Tales. I do think that from some points of view (eg Elaine's) she appears to go too far and tread into antagonistic territory, but from her perspective (and surely from certain outside perspectives) she is a disconnected party who is trying to keep things level and safe, if at a cost.

That's the part I'm interested in finding out in Season 2. If she is indeed a force that attempts to keep things in balance, surely there is some opposing force she is working against. That means that the greater danger would be not maintaining that balance. I'd like to see exactly what it is that scares the Voodoo Lady enough to keep LeChuck and Guybrush in this endless cycle.

I've been suspicious of her as a character ever since it was noticed that she's shipping supplies to LeChuck in MI2, though.

I always viewed that as just good business sense. May as well profit from both sides of the fence.

Kroms

Yeesh, you Monkey fans with all your clamoring for darkness and despair. It's a pirate game, not the Holocaust.

Who's clamoring for darkness and despair?

Look at it another way...in my discussion above, I mentioned that these characters will have dealt with some scars and need some time to heal, but I'm not meaning that in a literal way - nor am I suggesting they should be angsty about it.

What I AM suggesting is that the characters should grow and have doubts.

Way back when Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on the air, I remember having a long discussion with a fellow fan about the novels. I enjoyed reading them at the time, but he countered that it was pointless because they didn't affect continuity within the universe. For that matter, episode-to-episode continuity on the show could get dicey.

But the novels were worse...it was fore-ordained that no story could have a lasting impact on the characters. By the end of the novel, everybody had to be returned to their starting position - this made every novel a zero-sum effort.

After that, I never could quite enjoy reading the Star Trek novels.

Contrast that with the Star Wars novels. While their quality has varied over the years, later in the Bantam line, the publishers realized they were falling into the same trap that the Star Trek novels did - and they decided to do something about it.

They started killing a few minor characters. "Dark", you might say...but it had the intended effect. It showed that the characters were now considered mortal...and that not even major characters were exempt from being impacted by death or loss.

Now suddenly, the outcome of every novel was not assured before you read it...and it made the investment in the characters greater.

We already know that characters in the Monkey Island universe can grow and change...Guybrush has undergone major changes throughout the series - I just think it's important to continue that trend. (And letting him keep his hook might've been a great way to do it - he was even disappointed to lose it!)