Or, as he more popularly is known, Herman Toothrot.
Ronzo took to Twitter today to announce that everybody's favorite hermit (and less favorite grandpa) is back in Return to Monkey Island. Wally Wingert will once again voice him.
Not too much more to say other than that ReMI is shaping up to be somewhat interesting.
Update: A little more say. When asked if Herman would be Elaine's grandfather (as he was in Escape) Ron shot that down and said, "He's back to being just an old crank."
Jason
He's just testing you. Like that time a few weeks ago when he was trying to suggest he was working on a new Monkey Island game.
Ha! Good point.
Re: ReMI (I can't believe I just did that). My main hope is that it's a proper pirate story, that aims to entertain within those parameters, and just doesn't cop out with a meta ending.
I could easily forgive Guybrush and Murray having met before the beginning of Curse based on their first interaction. Neither is particularly interested in the other and so you can massage as "he killed your father... I mean he IS your father" kind of retcon quite easily.
As for Murray having a body, nobody knows that. It's kind of crazy to me that people are insisting on seeing things that are only implied. Murray could have been: 1. An annoying talking skull all along (being carried by the other undead). 2. A bodiless skull that gets a body at the end of ReMI just in time for Guybrush to blow him up and make him lose it again. 3. Guybrush simply forgets him, just like he did the Voodoo Lady in MI2 and again Curse. (So there's precedent of him being forgetful.)
There are so many possibilities!
OzzieMonkey
AlfredJ
Yeah I'm playing through Curse at the moment, and it's pretty clear in the opening scene that Murray loses his body when Guybrush is blowing up those rowboats full of skeletons. Before that he's a demonic skeleton, not just a demonic skull. And it's also their first time meeting each other.
There's other stuff too, like Stan getting locked into that coffin in Monkey 2 and only getting out in Monkey 3, the Voodoo Lady specifically mentioning that they met 2 times before, the last time being on Scabb (while Guybrush still had his beard!), Guybrush fighting LeChuck two times earlier (and no more), etc, etc.
If the game is really going to be placed between Monkey 2 and 3, it's going to be very tricky to adhere to a completely logical timeline/sense of canon for all the games. Especially because that timeline doesn't make much sense anyway (see the Toothrot stuff).
I honestly don't think any of it matters that much. As long as they get the tone and characters right, I'm good whatever. But I feel there are going to be a lot of heated online debates about all that stuff for years. Which maybe is only right, given how weird that Monkey 2 ending was back in the day.
At risk of repeating myself, I think that all of this eould be solved if we get a time jump after Giybrush escapes the carnival, suggesting Guybrush had unseen adventures that can be Curse, Escape and Tales for those who like those games or anything imaginable by Gilbert purists. You can have Herman show up at the start so we get one last monent of his character uncompromised by EMI's plot twist and then characters like Murray, Stan, etc can show up after the time skip. It makes sense given Ron's aprehension to talk about chronology. It'd be lretty easy to say "it takes place between 2 and 3"
but instead we get responses like "it's a difficult thing to discuss" and terms like "amorphous". Different time periods seems pretty likely and a first for the series that I welcome if true.
Yeah, you're right, I can see something like this happening. Their AG interview definitely seemed to hint there was more going on, timeline-wise.
(But I totally get why they won't come near any of this or why other people would hate it, and it might be too distracting for whatever they're going to do with Herman here, which is fine too. Just playing devil's advocate here).
AlfredJ
Yeah I'm playing through Curse at the moment, and it's pretty clear in the opening scene that Murray loses his body when Guybrush is blowing up those rowboats full of skeletons. Before that he's a demonic skeleton, not just a demonic skull. And it's also their first time meeting each other.
There's other stuff too, like Stan getting locked into that coffin in Monkey 2 and only getting out in Monkey 3, the Voodoo Lady specifically mentioning that they met 2 times before, the last time being on Scabb (while Guybrush still had his beard!), Guybrush fighting LeChuck two times earlier (and no more), etc, etc.
If the game is really going to be placed between Monkey 2 and 3, it's going to be very tricky to adhere to a completely logical timeline/sense of canon for all the games. Especially because that timeline doesn't make much sense anyway (see the Toothrot stuff).
I honestly don't think any of it matters that much. As long as they get the tone and characters right, I'm good whatever. But I feel there are going to be a lot of heated online debates about all that stuff for years. Which maybe is only right, given how weird that Monkey 2 ending was back in the day.
At risk of repeating myself, I think that all of this eould be solved if we get a time jump after Giybrush escapes the carnival, suggesting Guybrush had unseen adventures that can be Curse, Escape and Tales for those who like those games or anything imaginable by Gilbert purists. You can have Herman show up at the start so we get one last monent of his character uncompromised by EMI's plot twist and then characters like Murray, Stan, etc can show up after the time skip. It makes sense given Ron's aprehension to talk about chronology. It'd be lretty easy to say "it takes place between 2 and 3"
but instead we get responses like "it's a difficult thing to discuss" and terms like "amorphous". Different time periods seems pretty likely and a first for the series that I welcome if true.
There's other stuff too, like Stan getting locked into that coffin in Monkey 2 and only getting out in Monkey 3, the Voodoo Lady specifically mentioning that they met 2 times before, the last time being on Scabb (while Guybrush still had his beard!), Guybrush fighting LeChuck two times earlier (and no more), etc, etc.
If the game is really going to be placed between Monkey 2 and 3, it's going to be very tricky to adhere to a completely logical timeline/sense of canon for all the games. Especially because that timeline doesn't make much sense anyway (see the Toothrot stuff).
I honestly don't think any of it matters that much. As long as they get the tone and characters right, I'm good whatever. But I feel there are going to be a lot of heated online debates about all that stuff for years. Which maybe is only right, given how weird that Monkey 2 ending was back in the day.
1) They're just going to play fast and loose with the idea of canon in the series from now on and just not really worry about it, because ultimately what makes 'true monkey island lore' doesn't really matter.
2) They're going to play fast and loose with the canon in the series from now on BUT that's as part of DEEPER lore related to the whole fairground/child guybrush/lechuck thing. Like, for example, maybe if part of what Monkey Island is is imaginings of a child in a theme park, order of events probably doesn't actually really matter. Childbrush can go off on a reverie about a cursed ring and marrying Elaine, and Monkey Kombat, and then later decide he really liked Murray and but he wants to go back and try a different ending to 2.
I'd be into either, but I'm intrigued by the idea of 2.
*runs away
Jason
I'm not proud to say that the troll in me would love for Ron to fully embrace the whole H.T. Marley thing, if only because the sheer power of the resultant butthurt would keep us off fossil fuel for centuries.
Was the main problem that it doesn't make sense that H.T ends up on Monkey Island through a whirlpool during an America Cup race if it was already established he got there from following the recipe in MI 1? Also it sounds like H.T was always a crank going by the captains logbook in MI 1.
ThunderPeel2001
Ron just confirmed to me over Twitter that he's not Elaine's grandfather but, "back to being just an old crank."
He's just testing you. Like that time a few weeks ago when he was trying to suggest he was working on a new Monkey Island game.
ThunderPeel2001
Oh god. That would suck hard. Please don't let that stupid Marley grandfather retcon be factored in. Why don't you wish for Monkey Kombat to return while you're at it... THAT would really burn people up :)
To be clear, I completely support that he isn't grandpa as well I just thought it would be funny in a "surprise, that was my plan all along too bad" sort of way. Lore wise Herman being grandpa doesn't really take away anything and elevates an already beloved but inconsequential character (which is probably why they chose to do it so much later on)
All that said I can leave it as happily as I would take it and am happy to hear another "course correction" by Ron has likely been made.
Oh and we definitely agree on Monkey Kombat, that can just die and dissappear forever lol
Jason
I'm not proud to say that the troll in me would love for Ron to fully embrace the whole H.T. Marley thing, if only because the sheer power of the resultant butthurt would keep us off fossil fuel for centuries.
For the record, if this happens I am going to totally confuse my family with sudden standing applause. Especially if it's done as a throw away line like "I gotta get out of here before Elaine sees me.." or something like that. That way it doesn't -really- confirm it but it totally does and will lead to further debate for years to come lol