The sheer amount of cut content in this game breaks my heart. (Spoilers Ahoy)

[Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot]

1. Terror Island is crawling with locations that have literally nothing in them, the island is extremely well designed, the art is intense and something we've never seen in a Monkey Island game before, months of work must have gone into conceptualising and designing an island that the player will probably spend 10 minutes on at the most. A whole island for a single tiny puzzle. Areas with nothing, curious pieces of paper with a story dripping with mystery written on them are entirely pointless and serve only for the little icons on them that guybrush puts in the right order for no reason whatsoever. The whole island is ultimately wasted and almost certainly had a bigger role to play but is cast to the sidelines for reasons we will probably never know.
   
2. Cogg Island... You may or may not know about this, but if you find a very specific trivia card, answer it correctly it points you to a spot on the map you can dive to that will take you Cogg Island. A full island map underwater with 6 locations on it. The whole island is clockwork, has grandfather clocks and telecopes on it and a giant compass in the middle. You can visit all the locations but only one thing is interactable. If you visit the compass in the center of the island and click on the sign it reads "Welcome to Cogg Island. This Island was cut due to time issues, please get a glimpse of what might have been". This island looks absolutely fascinating and here it lies at the bottom of the ocean, a whole half finished island cut from the game. What a shame, what a waste of creativity.
   
3. The Corruption of Guybrush throughout the whole of Chapter IV something has been set up, Guybrush's obsession with the secret is actually quite destructive, he's lied, cheated and stolen his way across the seas and true he is a pirate. But he's supposed to be a good guy! This is pointed to in all kinds of ways. The constant cuts to Elaine talking to people who have been collateral damage in your rampage towards the Secret but also the pamphlet of all the "evil" things you should aspire to as part of Lechucks crew you get in Chapter II actually gradually ticks itself off as you progress through the game implying you're just as much of a dumbass as LeChuck, this builds and builds and builds and then prompty disappears in a puff of smoke the moment you open the safe at the end of the chapter. With the exception of Flambe turning up to ask Guybrush questions to make you feel you might still get some revolution to this hours of build up. Bam Nothing a complete plot blue balling and totally rocked my ♥♥♥♥. in the bad way. I want to know what they were going to do with this... it almost feels cruel.
   
4. Widey Bones is one of the few new characters in Return who is directly connected to the The Secret of Monkey Island™and again is set up heavily in the beginning of the game leering weird ramblings at you throughout the first chapter. Locke Smith mentions that Widey used to live next to her and for some unknown reason moved to the exact same location as her when she moved to Melee island. There is obviously supposed to be a connection between the two characters but upon the beginning of Chapter IV she shows up, a completely different character than she has been in the game so far, says she has a key and 5 minutes later basically says she has lost the key and proceeds to have absolutely no purpose or presence in the game. That's it. She's done. They even forgot to take out the reference to it in the ending of the game which is supposedly shows pastiches of things that have happened in the game shows LeChuck holding Locke Smith up by a foot when the two never actually interact for the whole game, implied or otherwise.
   
5. The little things aren't as bad as the others but they're there. Constant examples of actions they didn't have recorded lines for, reused voice lines that make no sense, extremely poignant art assets in scenes that aren't interactable but were blatantly going to be at one point, in places it feels like you're 10 steps behind another Guybrush who has solved half the puzzle for you before moving on. Doors are already unlocked, tunnels already dug, torches already lit etc etc. Once you notice it, you can't un-notice it.

Will we ever see a directors cut? A fully realised vision? I dare to dream.

Footnote: Because everybody on this board is at each other's throats, I LIKED the game. I thoroughly enjoyed it, which is why I cared enough to notice all the stuff that was missing.

[[ZW] Ayanami]

This! Especiall with Guybrush's corruption and Widey, I'm preeeeetty sure there were plans once. Did you notice that Widey has "demonic" eyes, as opposed to all other characters?

In my opinion, the corruption plot would have been a great way to build up to a better ending - the Secret being that whoever seeks it becomes obsessed and corrupted with it. Like a self-fulfilling curse. Lots of wasted potential here...

[dprog1995]

All MI games have cut content though.

1.Wally was supposed to have a "drowning cutscene" in MI 2 and die in that game which was cut.

2.The final chapter of Monkey Island 3 was supposed to be longer but it was reduced to a "Guybrush vs Lechuck" fight.

[Deadweight]

The game does feel pared down compared to other MI games, there was so much in 3 to interact with randomly, loads of things had interesting voice lines if you tried strange combos or dozens of things to examine in every location. Here it feels much more streamlined.

I've only completed part 3, but Monkey Island is so barren and boring with nothing of substance to interact with

[Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot]

Originally posted by dprog1995:

All MI games have cut content though.

1.Wally was supposed to have a "drowning cutscene" in MI 2 and die in that game which was cut.

2.The final chapter of Monkey Island 3 was supposed to be longer but it was reduced to a "Guybrush vs Lechuck" fight.

There is a difference between a change to a scene in an isolated instance as opposed to what appears to be roughly 10%-15% of the game not making it.

[Zaxx]

It's 2022 so you know, DLC.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by dprog1995:

Wally was supposed to have a "drowning cutscene" in MI 2 and die in that game which was cut.

Yikes, that sounds horrible and completely out of place in that game. I'm happy they didn't actually go in that direction!

[dprog1995]

Originally posted by Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot:

Originally posted by dprog1995:

All MI games have cut content though.

1.Wally was supposed to have a "drowning cutscene" in MI 2 and die in that game which was cut.

2.The final chapter of Monkey Island 3 was supposed to be longer but it was reduced to a "Guybrush vs Lechuck" fight.

There is a difference between a change to a scene in an isolated instance as opposed to what appears to be roughly 10%-15% of the game not making it.

All video games have cut content.

Grim Fandango was supposed to have much more puzzles,areas and characters than what it had in the release game despite this fact the the game went overbudget and was delayed from it's original release date.(Just take a look at it's design document which is online.)

Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis was supposed to have 3 branching path in the first and last 1/3 of the game which was cut.(And this feature only appeared in the middle part of the game)

The Dig went into lots of changes during it's development and it also supposed to have "survival mechanics" such as searching for food and water which were removed.

No need to start another "this game is unfinished" myth.

[Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot]

Originally posted by dprog1995:

Originally posted by Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot:

There is a difference between a change to a scene in an isolated instance as opposed to what appears to be roughly 10%-15% of the game not making it.

All video games have cut content.

Grim Fandango was supposed to have much more puzzles,areas and characters than what it had in the release game despite this fact the the game went overbudget and was delayed from it's original release date.(Just take a look at it's design document which is online.)

Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis was supposed to have 3 branching path in the first and last 1/3 of the game which was cut.(And this feature only appeared in the middle part of the game)

The Dig went into lots of changes during it's development and it also supposed to have "survival mechanics" such as searching for food and water which were removed.

No need to start another "this game is unfinished" myth.

Hell it's not even so much the fact that the content was cut, it's the gaping holes it leaves behind. This either means the content was cut at the 11th hour or it was so core to the games initial development path that it was near impossible to remove without leaving scars.

The alternative is that the writing team just decided "lol lets just never resolve or expand on X" and I think they're better than that.

[Hazy_Maze_Cave]

It's a very sloppy game and the meta framing certainly seems like a way to get out of poor storytelling. I was hoping the new villains would be much more of the story but, like everything else in this game, they don't really matter. Nothing matters. That's the point of this game and all meta-focused storytelling.

Guybrush as a jerk was the one point where I almost shut the game off and demanded a refund. Thankfully they limited it to one scene where Elaine ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to you about it. I'm sorry, aren't we PIRATES here? Now I'm being lectured about destroying the culture of the natives. Wonderful. In some cases, this game being unfinished HELPED IT because you can see some terrible threads that were thankfully cut off.

I miss MI1 and 2, which were great stories about Pirate Adventures. This naval gazing was never MI and I don't care if Ron Gilbert personally made those old games.

[Master_Skywalker]

I mostly missed more silly interactions between the objects.

I think this is a game that could benefit from DLC. They could add more things and maybe make more alternative content, in order to give this game more replayability.

[Ash... Haushaltswaren!]

Thank you OP, you articulated something that was in the back of my mind.

You can really feel the cut content, that is true.

[ruolbu]

1. and 2. I totally agree with. Gonna have to find Cogg Island, I did not care about trivia cards, but this diving mechanic being used to find multiple interesting things was what I was hoping for.
4. and 5. I don't see. Please be specific about 5., I really don't know at which point you expected what to happen. I noticed that fewer things were interactible, but I never felt like things obviously had been cut. About 4. I feel like your fantasy got the better of you. This character explained that she follows this locksmith (apparently not a common profession) in case a golden key shows up. It was her best lead. I too thought that you COULD do a lot more with her, but not that anything was cut. It made sense to me.



3. Genuinely, I feel you, but I also think the game delivered here. I played MI1 and 2 as a kid, and then 3 and 4 as an adult, never played 5. From that perspective I hope it's understandable that MI3-MI5 mean less to me, I hardly consider them canon in my heart, not that my oppinion matters. I played them in an attempt to reconnect with this bit from my childhood, and their different art style and a couple weird gimmicks about them turned this into a failure. At that moment I was chasing something beyond gameplay, beyond art style, beyond puzzle design.

Return to Monkey Island was announced as a return to some kind of Identity that MI1 and 2 held. It was the marketing my mind wanted to hear. Especially since the ending of MI2 was so weird. I again got my hopes up to connect with that intangible thing from my childhood. And of course I couldn't. I loved the faithful recreation of Monkey Island 1's locales, I loved seeing the characters reconnecting with their past. And when the game made it obvious that Guybrush was chasing something from his past, it felt like intentional commentary on what I and no doubt countless other folks were experiencing. There is no way a Return to Monkey Island could live up to what the games of old gave me already, no matter how faithfully the game recreates the steps from back then. Getting off of Mêlée Island, traveling on boat, wandering Monkey Island, returning to Mêlée only to receive a Sea Map and freely travel between islands on a search for MacGuffins, even recreating that little diving sequence from MI2 and then doubling down on the amusement park ending.

Folks like me, who most strongly connected with MI1 and 2, who wanted a return to that, who were wondering about what the actual secret was and what the ending of MI2 was about, were directly told "What you do is kinda pointless and please don't ignore everything around you in the here and now to chase your past". And I think that's fair. It's true and I got a neat nostalgia trip out of it. The game is not like the other games in many ways, it does some things better and some things worse. I can't get the same things out of it that MI1 and 2 did in my childhood. But I could get things out of it, that I can only get now as an nostalgic adult. And to figure that out I really did not need that plotline to wrap up and Guybrush have a character arc. I don't consider that unfinished at all. The game left this kinda hanging to make people consider it more. I truly believe there was never any intent to develop this arc any further than to frame the end of the game as a mad dash towards something meaningless and intangible that both the protagonist and the player share.

[Automatic Hydromatic Sex Robot]

Forgive me if I don't give an itemised list of little things because while they annoyed me I never really got to the "making a list" point, it was a purely subjective vibe that maybe is just me. As is 4, if she is supposed to just show up, poop out a load of exposition about the keys and then just hang around doing nothing for the remainder, that is just bad writing, I really hope she's been cut down instead of intentionally wasted.

As for 3, you're preaching to the choir. I liked the ending. Doesn't mean there couldn't have been some sort of recognition/resolution of the whole "Guybrush is a butt" thing they have been throwing around for a third of the game. It's chekov's bazooka.
It has been common knowledge for a long time that Gilbert didn't like Elaine and Guybrush getting married in Curse and while audience tests showed that breaking them up was not an option because everybody hated it, I don't doubt he wanted to take them over some rocky ground and if you're not then you take out all those cut away scenes that show stuff that never gets resolved it just doesn't make sense.

[Joe_monsters]

I loved the game, but I have to agree with you. I would love a director’s cut. Still, I feel like there is something hidden about Guybrush’s corruption. You can fill LeChuck’s pamphlet. The only one I didn’t fill is « commit murder ». I don’t if there is another secret ending or if it just means that Guybrush would never go that far.

[Bishop Cruz]

And even the uncut content is sparse. BrrMuda has three major areas, one up that leads to two bland locations, one single screen location with ONE conversation, and the quarry, which is also extremely simple. Very little memorable about it. Just bland, bland stuff.

Melee Island is shadow of its former self, which COULD have worked if that was the point, but nothing really came of it. Monkey Island was the same, absolutely tiny.

The rest of the environments were even worse. Scurvy was repeating groves and a small camp, Terror was discussed above, and the others were all one screen with one puzzle too.

The ending would have worked if the journey hadn't felt so bland.