Adventure Gamers - Forums

Meta-endings was thing in late 80’s and early 90’s adventure games. Besides LeChuck Revenge there was LSL3 (Larry went to work for Sierra.), SQ3 (Roger saved sci-fi version of designers of SQ games and they went work for Sierra), SQ4 (time travel takes Roger to sequels and prequels) and LSL 5(turns out that Larry’s amnesia was caused by deletion of fourth LSL game). Negative reactions to endings of LeChuck Revenge and RTMI made me wonder, maybe it is sign that fandom of Sierra games and MI games doesn’t overlap as much as someone who played both would think.

garbo - 06 October 2022 06:03 AM

Meta-endings was thing in late 80’s and early 90’s adventure games. Besides LeChuck Revenge there was LSL3 (Larry went to work for Sierra.), SQ3 (Roger saved sci-fi version of designers of SQ games and they went work for Sierra), SQ4 (time travel takes Roger to sequels and prequels) and LSL 5(turns out that Larry’s amnesia was caused by deletion of fourth LSL game). Negative reactions to endings of LeChuck Revenge and RTMI made me wonder, maybe it is sign that fandom of Sierra games and MI games doesn’t overlap as much as someone who played both would think.

I would say those are less egregious than what Ron is trying to do with Monkey Island 2 and the new one. Those games you mentioned had sight gag endings sure, but they were still a real ending, as in those things happened. doing the whole it might just be in the imagination of kids and the whole adventure was fake is a cop out and somewhat lazy as a writing technique to me. It’s the equivalent to dream sequences in shows and movies. It is a get out of jail free card because nothing really happened during those sequences bc it was not real. For example Roseanne tried to do that with the last season of her show because everybody hated it so bad, they made the whole season a dream sequence and that decision made the season even worse than it was. It made me roll my eyes.

Jdawg445 - 06 October 2022 09:35 AM

I doing the whole it might just be in the imagination of kids and the whole adventure was fake is a cop out and somewhat lazy as a writing technique to me.

I actually think that LSL5 blurres line between reality and game more -reality is a part of game, otherwise character from game couldn’t erase game disks and game is part of reality otherwise it wouldn’t exist on disks.Then again, someone who finds imagination endings boring could argue that LSL5 ending is Escher painting like and therefore more interesting.

In my case, my main problem with meta endings is that it’s been done too much.

As a teenager, I found them very clever, I loved 4th wall breaking jokes and endings… But with Ron Gilbert, he’s overused this type of endings from MI2, Thimbleweed Park and RTMI. The first time, it’s interesting, it feels novel. After a while, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and is annoying because it reduces the impact of anything that happened in the game.

giom - 06 October 2022 12:01 PM

In my case, my main problem with meta endings is that it’s been done too much.

As a teenager, I found them very clever, I loved 4th wall breaking jokes and endings… But with Ron Gilbert, he’s overused this type of endings from MI2, Thimbleweed Park and RTMI. The first time, it’s interesting, it feels novel. After a while, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and is annoying because it reduces the impact of anything that happened in the game.

That is also true and it goes with any medium of art. look at Tim Burton. in the beginning people loved his style and eye for Flair, now they find all his movies derivative because it’s literally the only thing he can do aka be strange, it’s like he couldn’t make a normal movie if his life depended on it. And the audience grew tired of his same visual style, which is why his latest movies bomb so bad or didn’t get the critical response that he wanted them to either.