Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games under license from LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was released in five episodic segments, between July and December 2009. In contrast to Telltale's previous episodic adventure games, whose chapters told discrete stories, each chapter of Tales of Monkey Island is part of an ongoing narrative. The game was digitally distributed through WiiWare and Telltale's own website, and later through Steam and Amazon.com. Ports for OS X, the PlayStation Network, and iOS were released several months after the series ended.
Players assume the role of pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who—while attempting to destroy his nemesis, the undead pirate LeChuck—accidentally releases a voodoo pox across the Gulf of Melange. With the assistance of his wife, Elaine, Guybrush seeks out a cure. The game was conceived in late 2008, due to renewed interest in adventure game development within LucasArts. It was developed concurrently with LucasArts' special edition of the 1990 game The Secret of Monkey Island; LucasArts oversaw production of Tales of Monkey Island, and ensured that it matched the remake in certain areas, such as art direction. Production began in early 2009; franchise creator Ron Gilbert was involved in project planning, while development was led by Dave Grossman, who co-designed the first two Monkey Island games. The game's music was composed by Michael Land, and the core cast of The Curse of Monkey Island reprised their voice roles.
Tales of Monkey Island received generally positive reviews. Critics praised the game's story, writing, humor, voice acting and characterization; 1UP.com described Guybrush as Telltale's strongest and most expressive character yet. The game's music and graphics were also lauded. Complaints focused primarily on the perceived erratic quality of the game's puzzle design, a weak supporting cast in the early chapters, and the game's control system. Tales of Monkey Island garnered several industry awards, and was Telltale's most commercially successful project until Back to the Future: The Game.
A sixth entry in the franchise, Return to Monkey Island by publisher Devolver Digital, Lucasfilm Games and Terrible Toybox, was released on September 19, 2022.
Gameplay
Like its predecessors, Tales of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game; the player assumes the role of the protagonist in an interactive story, which is driven by the exploration of the game's three-dimensional environments and by solving puzzles. These puzzles are traditional adventure game conundrums that require the player to use the environment, or items that have been found and stored inside the game's inventory, to accomplish goals. In keeping with previous Monkey Island games, Tales of Monkey Island allows players to combine certain items to create new items; for instance, the player can combine a number of voodoo ingredients with a cutlass to produce a magical cutlass.The game world is explored with a PC keyboard and mouse, or the Wii Nunchuk's analog stick. Contrary to previous Telltale adventure games, the player holds and drags the mouse to move Guybrush, rather than point and clicking. The WASD keys or the arrow keys may instead be used to move Guybrush. Like other Monkey Island games, Tales of Monkey Island is designed to prevent the player from meeting a dead-end, such as the death of the player character. Each of the game's chapters is an estimated two to four hours in length, depending on the player's ability to solve the puzzles. A hint system can assist struggling players.
The first chapter of the game includes a "treasure hunt" mode, where the player directs Guybrush through a maze-like jungle in pursuit of hidden treasure. Found treasures translate into prizes and discounts on Telltale's website. To access this mode, the player must locate maps on the Internet, hidden on the official Telltale website and three participating Monkey Island fansites.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Tales of Monkey Island is set several years after the events of Escape from Monkey Island. The designers discarded the Tri-Island Area—the setting of the game's predecessors—in favor of a new locale: the Gulf of Melange. The game follows Guybrush Threepwood, a pirate who is naïve and hapless, yet successful. Before the game's beginning, Guybrush spends years locating the elements needed to create the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu, a voodoo weapon capable of destroying his nemesis, the demon pirate LeChuck. As with other Monkey Island games, LeChuck vies for the love of Elaine Marley-Threepwood, the wife of Guybrush Threepwood and former governor of the Tri-Island Area. In the events immediately before the game, LeChuck kidnaps Elaine, and Guybrush pursues him with the voodoo cutlass.Several ancillary characters from earlier games in the series return in Tales of Monkey Island, including the Voodoo Lady, an enigmatic voodoo priestess who advises Guybrush in his quests; Stan, a stereotypical salesman and business opportunist; and Murray, a talking skull with delusions of grandeur. The game introduces new characters to the series, such as Morgan LeFlay, a competent and athletic female bounty hunter who idolizes Guybrush, and Reginald Van Winslow, the former captain of the Screaming Narwhal who becomes Guybrush's first mate. Other additions to the cast include Coronado DeCava, an explorer and former lover of the Voodoo Lady, and the Marquis de Singe, an antagonistic French nobleman and doctor.
Plot
Having acquired the components of the Cutlass of Kaflu, Guybrush races to the Rock of Gelato to save his wife from LeChuck; however, he fails to properly create the sword. When Guybrush stabs LeChuck, the flawed cutlass transforms LeChuck into a human, and infects Guybrush's hand with the "Pox of LeChuck", which gives the hand a mind of its own. An explosion on the ship hurls Guybrush into the ocean, and he later washes up on Flotsam Island. There, Guybrush encounters the Voodoo Lady, who explains that the pox will ravage the Caribbean, unless it is absorbed by a voodoo sea sponge called "La Esponja Grande". Guybrush is advised to seek Coronado DeCava, a conquistador who is on an expedition to find La Esponja Grande; to leave the island, Guybrush must neutralize a machine that is drawing the winds inward, and thereby preventing ships from leaving. It is revealed that the Marquis de Singe is using the machine to bring pirates to the island for his medical experiments. De Singe becomes obsessed with Guybrush's hand, as he believes it to be key to eternal life. Guybrush reverts the wind patterns to normal— unwittingly causing the pox to spread across the sea —and departs in his newly acquired ship, the Screaming Narwhal. De Singe hires a pirate hunter by the name of Morgan LeFlay to capture Guybrush; en route to the Jerkbait Islands, she boards the Screaming Narwhal and cuts off Guybrush's pox-infected hand in a duel. Afterwards, she returns it to de Singe.On the Jerkbait Islands, Guybrush finds Elaine safe, and learns that the now-human LeChuck is trying to make up for the evil deeds of his past. The three help to defend the resident merfolk city from pox-infected pirates; in return, the merfolk summon sea creatures to assist Guybrush in locating La Esponja Grande. Elaine stays behind to monitor LeChuck's actions. As Guybrush follows the creatures on the Screaming Narwhal, Morgan again boards the ship; de Singe had informed her that Guybrush's entire body was needed. Distracted by their duel, neither can react in time when the Screaming Narwhal is swallowed whole by a giant manatee.
Inside the manatee, Guybrush and LeFlay discover the crazed DeCava and his crew; Guybrush heals the manatee's injuries, and escapes with DeCava to the location of La Esponja Grande. After retrieving La Esponja Grande, Morgan knocks Guybrush unconscious and sets sail for Flotsam Island with her bounty.
As Morgan reluctantly delivers Guybrush to de Singe, Guybrush is seized by the townspeople and put on trial for multiple crimes—chief among them having released the pox across the Gulf of Melange. LeChuck exonerates Guybrush by implicating himself in the creation of the pox, and produces evidence that all previous confrontations between Guybrush and LeChuck had been orchestrated by the Voodoo Lady; the two are imprisoned, and Guybrush is released. As Guybrush prepares to cure the pox with La Esponja Grande, he finds Morgan murdered in de Singe's laboratory. At the wind machine, de Singe traps Guybrush and Elaine, and believes that his experiments with Guybrush's hand are on the verge of granting him immortality. However, de Singe falls into the wind machine and is disintegrated; Guybrush then uses La Esponja Grande to absorb the pox. LeChuck arrives to free the two, but as Guybrush thanks him, LeChuck impales him on the Cutlass of Kaflu, and uses La Esponja Grande to transfer the pox's potency to himself.
Now deceased, Guybrush finds his spiritual self at the Crossroads: the place where the living and dead realms meet. With the assistance of Morgan's spirit, he finds a spell that embodies courage, anchor, direction and sacrifice, and returns to the land of the living as a ghost. LeChuck however absorbs the massive amount of energy generated by a dimensional rift Guybrush opens; the pox was engineered by LeChuck to achieve this goal. Elaine, in an apparent act of betrayal, becomes LeChuck's demon bride. Guybrush repossesses his dead body and shrinks La Esponja Grande, reversing LeChuck's hold over Elaine. LeChuck attacks Guybrush, who lures the demon pirate into the rift. There, LeChuck is simultaneously stabbed by Elaine and Morgan, which destroys his physical and spiritual forms. Stranded alone at the crossroads, Guybrush realizes that he has one more item that meets the spell's criteria for his return: Elaine's wedding ring. He uses it to restore himself to life and return to Elaine, who reveals her reason for becoming LeChuck's bride was to ensure that Guybrush would rescue her and defeat LeChuck. The spirit of Morgan delivers a jar containing the essence of LeChuck to the Voodoo Lady, in exchange for her return to the land of the living.