Quote:
Originally Posted by metroidreborn
I find it funny that Escape and Curse are bashed a lot because they have a un piracy setting when every game is pretty much the same. Secret had a circus, a church, shops, and an advertisement for a treasure and so forth. LeChuck's Revenge had even more and is the reason why the whole carnival aspect of the series started, though I do love that plot point. Curse may even be a step above them because they included actual island attacks and ship battles.
The point being is that the rating of Monkey Island games from fans seems to be based too much off a piracy setting, when the series never really had that much of one to begin with. They were known for ingenious puzzles, great stories, and witty and hilarious dialogue and interactions. That's probably why Mike made the islands so tourist esq. in Escape because he saw the other games had hotels, amusement parks, a circus, elevators, contests, shops, and much more. Tales I believe has the most atmosphere when dealing with this aspect of the series. I just don't understand why some people downgrade many of the games based off something that was never all that prevalent in the series to begin with.
|
I don't see how someone can see it this way, though. Secret's most famous puzzle, insult sword fighting, came from the fact that banter between fighters was common in Hollywood pirate films of the Errol Flynn archetype. The whole first act involved prooving you were a pirate through swordplay, theivery, and treasure-hunt-er-y. It's a romanticized, watered-down pirate world, but no less so than classic pirate films ever made it.
The games also had anachronisms, it also had things that had little to do with pirates. But these things
weren't run by pirates. You didn't have Arghargh the pirate clown going to pirate birthday parties while pirate stay-at-home moms marveled at their table centerpieces made by pirate glassblowers who may have enjoyed a day at the local pirate theater or pirate cabana club after getting their hair cut at a pirate barbershop. Stan didn't come up to you and say "Hi! I'm Stan, the pirate used boat salesman!", Elaine didn't have a big "PIRATE GOVERNOR" sign on her door. The things that didn't have a pirate atmosphere weren't being
run by people who were ostensibly pirates. Curse and Escape kind of introduced that theme, where every person of every profession is a pirate.