Monkey Island 2 Revealed The Secret Then Walked It Back - How Ron Lied For 30 Years

[Hazy_Maze_Cave]

I just realized this. This is maybe why the whole meta twist is so annoying to me.

According to Ron Gilbert, he already revealed The Secret in 1991. But how can this be, if the big twist to this game is The Secret?

Everyone already saw the ending of Monkey Island 2. You are an adult fighting LeChuck to the death and then in a parody of Empire Strikes Back he tells you he is your brother. Then your parents call to you and you go outside and are a child in an amusement park. Everyone thought "oh wow, we are kids? and this is an amusement park? what a crazy twist" in 1991 at the end of the game. I remember how I felt seeing this, as a 10 year old, and thinking it was a great way to close out the series.

Then there is A SECOND TWIST! Chucky's eyes glow evil and there is an ominous sound, indicating that no, it's not a theme park. There is something sinister at foot.

RTMI re-creates the ending but removes this part. It doesn't have Chucky's eyes glow as he stares at the player. It only has the first twist.

My problem is, the second twist is the only reason I thought that the game world may not take place in an amusement park. If you just had the kids walk off, with no spooky second twist, then for 30 years I would have thought that The Secret is that it's actually an amusement park.

But I didn't. Because that's not how Monkey Island 2 ends. It ends with Chucky having an evil stare.

So essentially, Ron told us "The Secret" in 1991, but he immediately walked it back, then lied for 30 years I guess about The Secret being something else.

Then with this game he reveals that he lied to us 30 years ago. Lol.

Think about it, the only way this new framing makes sense is if you ignore that second twist ending of Monkey Island 2. You have to ignore one of the greatest endings in videogame history.

So yeah, I don't buy it. I believe that maybe he had this idea at one point, but the idea that it was always this way, and it's baked into the games, no. We have direct proof in the ending of Monkey Island 2.

[dprog1995]

He did it to make the ending of MI 2 more consistant with MI 3.

Since now we can say that the ending of MI 2 didn't actually happen that way and Guybrush's child(Boybrush) with his friend Chuckie decided to make it more crazy.(In the end of MI 2, we see Boybrush's version of it)

This was actually a good twist and in some way it shows that Ron Gilbert respects other MI games that he had no/very little involvement.

[BaronHaynes]

I replied to this in more detail where you posted it in another thread, but I disagree that the reveal from MI2 is the same one we get in Return - in 1991 it was implied that the pirate world was actually an amusement park, and in 2022 we learn that both are stories Guybrush is telling his kid about his pirate adventures (the reality of which we don't precisely know).

Originally posted by dprog1995:

He did it to make the ending of MI 2 more consistant with MI 3.

Since now we can say that the ending of MI 2 didn't actually happen that way and Guybrush's child(Boybrush) with his friend Chuckie decided to make it more crazy.(In the end of MI 2, we see Boybrush's version of it)

It's funny in retrospect that he wanted to tell his own followup to Monkey Island 2 for decades, and when he finally got to do it, the only thing he actually retconned was Monkey Island 2's ending (by recontextualizing it into something else, but still, lol).

[Hazy_Maze_Cave]

Originally posted by BaronHaynes:

I replied to this in more detail where you posted it in another thread, but I disagree that the reveal from MI2 is the same one we get in Return - in 1991 it was implied that the pirate world was actually an amusement park

Close but not right. It was first implied that it was an amusement park. The evil eyes Chucky stares at the player, indicating that no, there is some magic involved. You are ignoring the real ending of the game that indicates LeChuck has powers and is in control of the theme park illusion.

Look it is fine that Ron was to gaslight us about what he did in the ending of Monkey Island 2. He's the creator, he can do that. But I get to call him out on it. How am I wrong here?

Admit it, he used this game to lie about what happened at the end of Monkey Island 2.

For me, it makes it impossible to see this game in the same timeline. Maybe if this game was more well written, more fleshed out, had a more real game world, it would go some way towards supplanting MI2. But it doesn't. In fact it feels very shallow next to those old games. It's more of a soft reboot. Which is very fitting, considering most of the game is just a rehash of the first game.

[Huntbeach]

Originally posted by Hazy_Maze_Cave:

I just realized this. This is maybe why the whole meta twist is so annoying to me.

According to Ron Gilbert, he already revealed The Secret in 1991. But how can this be, if the big twist to this game is The Secret?

Everyone already saw the ending of Monkey Island 2. You are an adult fighting LeChuck to the death and then in a parody of Empire Strikes Back he tells you he is your brother. Then your parents call to you and you go outside and are a child in an amusement park. Everyone thought "oh wow, we are kids? and this is an amusement park? what a crazy twist" in 1991 at the end of the game. I remember how I felt seeing this, as a 10 year old, and thinking it was a great way to close out the series.

Then there is A SECOND TWIST! Chucky's eyes glow evil and there is an ominous sound, indicating that no, it's not a theme park. There is something sinister at foot.

RTMI re-creates the ending but removes this part. It doesn't have Chucky's eyes glow as he stares at the player. It only has the first twist.

My problem is, the second twist is the only reason I thought that the game world may not take place in an amusement park. If you just had the kids walk off, with no spooky second twist, then for 30 years I would have thought that The Secret is that it's actually an amusement park.

But I didn't. Because that's not how Monkey Island 2 ends. It ends with Chucky having an evil stare.

So essentially, Ron told us "The Secret" in 1991, but he immediately walked it back, then lied for 30 years I guess about The Secret being something else.

Then with this game he reveals that he lied to us 30 years ago. Lol.

Think about it, the only way this new framing makes sense is if you ignore that second twist ending of Monkey Island 2. You have to ignore one of the greatest endings in videogame history.

So yeah, I don't buy it. I believe that maybe he had this idea at one point, but the idea that it was always this way, and it's baked into the games, no. We have direct proof in the ending of Monkey Island 2.

Yeah, I agree that it’s kind of strange to reveal the whole theme park thing in the second game if that was the twist all along. My guess is that Chuckys evil eyes and the curse was a way to keep the mystery for a third game. I believe I have read that he intended to make a trilogy from the beginning.

[BaronHaynes]

Originally posted by Hazy_Maze_Cave:

Look it is fine that Ron was to gaslight us about what he did in the ending of Monkey Island 2. He's the creator, he can do that. But I get to call him out on it. How am I wrong here?

Admit it, he used this game to lie about what happened at the end of Monkey Island 2.

I think we're just not gonna see eye to eye on this. I don't think it's "lying" or "gaslighting" for a writer to recontextualize a deliberately ambiguous ending. Especially because the ending he had in mind in 1991 was retconned by Curse of Monkey Island. Ron didn't want to undo MI3-5, so he left Curse's explanation canon and made his MI2 ending, that Guybrush is a kid playing in an amusement park, a fake ending thought up by Guybrush's kid and Chuckie.

Since the other games changed his plan following the ending of MI2, he included them in his mythology by making them all stories Guybrush is telling to his kid. I don't see that as a betrayal or a lie, personally, so I don't need to "admit" anything -- he said back in April this wasn't going to be Monkey Island 3a and it wasn't going to be what he would've done in 1992.

[Frosty]

The game suffers many of the same problems like a show such as Lost suffered, which is that the mystery and the hook for the over arching story is used to motivate and intrigue the player. But it becomes such a big deal over the course of the game, and the series of games, that no ending could ever possibly satisfy anyone, it would always be some huge let down no matter what you did. So it either has to remain ambiguous or out of reach to avoid that disappointment. This is especially true if you want to revisit the franchise in future and make sequels.

If you ask yourself the question of what kind of ending you'd actually be happy and satisfied with, and you're honest with yourself, I don't even think you could answer that. Enjoy the journey for what it is, that's where all the fun and experiences are, the end goal is always just a mechanic to move the story forward.

[kevinmask78]

I also have a feeling Ron reinvented the ending of Monkey 2 just to connect Return, and it doesn't feel like REturn is the sequel he always had in his mind since Monkey 2 either, I think Ron simply plans to make new MI games, this is the first of a new series and he tried somehow to pick up where he left off from Monkey 2 by changing some details from the ending, so IMO Return is just a brand new game with recent ideas, not really the lost sequel of Revenge now restored in 2022, do you agree?