Lair of the Leviathan
From Monkey Island wiki
| Lair of the Leviathan
Lair of the Leviathan title card
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|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Telltale Games |
| Designer(s) | Dave Grossman |
| Series | Tales of Monkey Island |
| Engine | Telltale Tool |
| Release date(s) | 29 September 2009 |
| Genre(s) | Graphic adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player video game |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Wii |
| Media | Download, DVD |
| System requirements | 2.0 GHz CPU 512 RAM 64 MB video card[1] |
| Input | Keyboard and mouse, Wii Remote, Wii Nunchuk |
| Preceded by | "The Siege of Spinner Cay" |
| Followed by | "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood" |
"Lair of the Leviathan" is the third episode of Tales of Monkey Island. It was released on PCs September 29, 2009 and on WiiWare on October 26 in North America and November 6 in Europe.
Contents |
Plot
Taking place after the events of "The Siege of Spinner Cay", Guybrush, Winslow, and the persistent Pirate Hunter Morgan LeFlay find themselves trapped inside a Manatee. Inside, Guybrush finds the long lost lover of the Voodoo Lady, Coronado De Cava. Things turn sour, however, when Guybrush lets slip the purpose of his goal: to find La Esponja Grande, the item that will cure the dreaded Pox of LeChuck. De Cava assumes that he is out for the Voodoo Lady's heart, and distrusts Guybrush. However, when Guybrush and Morgan play husband and wife, he allows them to join his crew to find the legendary sea sponge. De Cava is sure that his original crew died long ago. He also explains that the Manatee is lost, having lost his cochlea, the inner ear which provides a sense of direction. Without it, the creature will never find its way to the Manatee Mating Grounds, where La Esponja Grande resides. De Cava has decided that the only way to fix this is to create a new one, using 100,000 grubs. Unwilling to wait so long, Guybrush explores the Manatee in search of the missing Cochlea, only to fall down into the creature's stomach.
After a tumble, Guybrush lands in the stomach of the Manatee, followed by Morgan, where he finds that De Cava's crew have actually been living there, deciding to ditch their former captain for their 'Paradise'. The four members have formed a group which require a unanimous vote to get into. Noogie does not believe Guybrush can do anything for them, Bugeye just doesn't like Guybrush, and Moose only listens to his friend Santino, who is a skeleton. After a few rigourous events (and a meeting with Murray the talking skull), Guybrush wins the favour of all four members of the Democratically United Brotherhood of the Manatee Interior and is admitted to the group himself. With his new position, Guybrush becomes the keeper of the stolen cochlea, taken by the crew members so that they would stay in their paradise forever. With the Manatee back on track, De Cava starts to prepare for departure. Guybrush, however, is chased by the bitter brotherhood that he betrayed, and only defeats them with the help of Morgan's ruthless fighting skills.
Outside, De Cava sends Guybrush down into the depths in search of the sponge. However, the retrieval is not as easy as it sounds. The sponge is guarded by the most ferocious and deadly creature in the sea, the female Manatee, dubbed as the Leviathan. Retreating back to the surface, Guybrush learns that the only way to get past the danger is to help it to overcome its loneliness by finding it a mate. Our friend the Manatee would be a powerful candidate, but doesn't seem to be making a move on his own, so Guybrush will have to help. But first he needs to do two things: understand the Manatee language, and find an object called the Tongue of the Manatee.
After interrogating the captured renegade crew, Guybrush learns that the Tongue was the object Moose used to drink the bile from the Manatee. Upon re-entry, Guybrush manages to obtain the tongue, and is able to talk to Manatees. However, he still does not understand the language. According to De Cava, Santino was the only one who knew the language and he learned it from a scientist on Flotsam Island. Guybrush alters the Voodoo Lady's locket so that he can possess her body. Using her spells, he summons the Marquis De Singe and obtains his book of how to learn the manatee language. With this knowledge, Guybrush aids the Manatee in its quest to asking out the female Manatee. When the two head out, Guybrush snags the tiny Esponja Grande, which absorbs the Pox from his body.
Topside, Guybrush accidentally reveals his true intentions, enraging De Cava, and he and Morgan are captured and caged to the mast. Guybrush escapes and is relieved to find that the sponge was forgotten (Santino was supposed to pick it up). De Cava, however, begins to fire at the Screaming Narwhal, intending to keep the sponge to return to the Voodoo Lady. Cannon fire does not work, but Guybrush calls upon the Manatee who swallows the deranged explorer's ship, leaving them stranded once again. Guybrush and Morgan watch as the manatees hold fins together as they swim. Unfortunately, Morgan returns to her main priority in capturing Guybrush, knocking him out and setting course for Flotsam Island.
Characters
- Guybrush Threepwood
- Elaine Marley (brief appearance)
- LeChuck (brief appearance)
- Voodoo Lady
- Marquis De Singe
- Morgan LeFlay
- Reginald Van Winslow
- Coronado De Cava
- Bugeye
- Moose
- Noogie
- Santino
- Murray
Trivia
- In the intro, the Voodoo Lady says that "we are never so vulnerable than when we trust, but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find our heart's desire," a reference to a trust quote from German folklorist Walter Anderson (1885-1962).
- At one time if you get an answer to one of De Cava's questions wrong, Morgan will roll her eyes and say, "Fail." This (along with De Cava's shout of "Failure!" if you guess his answer wrong) is a reference to the "FAIL" meme from the 1998 Neo Geo video game Blazing Star, which is rendered famous for the Engrish captions; most notably, if you didn't beat one boss in one stage within a few minutes, a "Game Over" message would appear that says, "You fail it! Your skill is not enough, see you next time, bye-bye!"
- Winslow tells Guybrush that he had found a seahorse head in Guybrush's bed of the Screaming Narwhal while the latter was away. This is a reference to when Jack Woltz wakes up to find the severed head of his prized racehorse Khartoum in his bed in the 1972 film The Godfather.
- Before Guybrush notices the sea horse's head he yells "Sea Biscuit!", upon discovering one near the ship. This is likely a reference to the movie Seabiscuit, based on the famous American race horse.
- When Bugeye says that "breaking the rule of the Brotherhood has only one consequence", one of the choices less obvious than "death" is "A double fine?" This is a reference to Double Fine Productions, an American video game developer founded in San Francisco in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after his departure from LucasArts; the name "Double Fine" is a play on the Golden Gate Bridge being a "double fine zone" as Schafer drove from place to place around the Bay Area to meet with possible publishers for Psychonauts.
- During the time that the Brotherhood chases Guybrush around, Murray shouts out, "Faster, minions! Kill! Kill!", which is a spoof on the title of the 1965 film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
- During the credits, Murray babbles on and on and makes fun of the names in the sections of the credits, especially his own name in the "Cast" section. This is a reference to Mike Nelson and his robot crew who snark at the end credits at the end of the 1996 film Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, which is based on Joel Hodgson's TV series that ran for 11 years, from 1988 to 1999.
Fast Forward
- In one cutscene, when De Singe extracts the formula (which would later be called the "Jus de Vie" in "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood") from Guybrush's Poxed hand, he becomes joyous and mutters to himself in French, "La mort est tuée..." (albeit without the "é") which, when translated, means "Death is killed." This is De Singe's prime motivation in "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood", and, arguably, an important theme from Guybrush's perpective in "Rise of the Pirate God".
- At the beginning, when De Cava presses the button on the Voodoo Lady's locket, she possesses him to tell Guybrush about the plans for La Esponja Grande. Guybrush can later use the locket to his advantage by replacing De Cava's picture with his own picture, and he can try letting the Voodoo Lady possess him just for fun (as she wonders if she has "leapt into the decrepit shell of a sailor suffering starvation or the torpid corpse of a malnourished deckhand") before finding a way to possess her. This becomes a plot point later on in "Rise of the Pirate God", when he uses his Spirit Photo to replace her photo before he can repossess his own body.
- A cutscene shows Elaine progressing through the stages of the Pox as she and LeChuck travel around the seas returning the monkeys to the wild, foreshadowing both Elaine's transformation in the next episode and LeChuck's ultimate purpose with the monkeys.
