In his defence, Monkey Island is Ron’s creation and the ending is probably what he always intended. It felt like a fitting conclusion to me that neatly tied a bow on the whole saga.

He's also been creating absurdist controversial endings to adventure games for a long time before Return to Monkey Island (SoMI2, Thimbleweed Park)...

I thought the ending was lovely as well. We get sincerity, but seems some people can't go to sleep without an epic boss fight and some dramatic reveal of the "secret". This was the better way to do it and for me the best point and click ever made.

So instead you get a sophomoric meta-ending that has absolutely no originality and shits on decades of storytelling? The ending is trash and an insult to the fans' intelligence because the author can't accept he's "just" writing adventure fiction, as if that's beneath him and instead needs to make some philosophical point about the nature of aging, thereby completely stepping out of his skill set. Go read Proust, Ron Gilbert, and leave that silly ambition to rest.

But that's Ron. He's a Portland Gen X Socialist. Irony and cynicism are the only things he knows.

I believe that, as far as "The Secret" goes, this is what he always intended. The idea had been floating around forums for quite a while and I have no objections to that.

Having said that, RtMI feels like Ron Gilbert telling me to go away and do something else with my life. The world is falling apart, the game characters don't care, the ending itself gives up on you and, in case you didn't get it, there's a letter afterwards from Ron Gilbert himself telling you that, if you try to recapture the past, "you'll sort of get what [you] want but it won't be what [you] expected".

As far as I'm concerned, I would have preferred it if he hadn't made the game at all.

Truly infuriating.

There is an alternative ending if you know what to look for: https://www.trueachievements.com/a375369/i-dont-believe-achi...

My issue with it was not even the end, but everything else: it felt like a nostalgia tour and retreading of old ideas. Even the themes of the soundtrack were based off the originals. I quit a couple hours in; I wanted a new Monkey Island story, all I got was a game for people that simply wanted to relive their youth.

birds are immune to pepper heat