Unlike many Sea of Thieves fans, I didn't actually bring much affection for the pirate genre into my first experiences with Rare's huge sandbox. The game seems to have been a long-held dream come true for many would-be swashbucklers born in the wrong century, but even to this day, I don't have much experience with pirate media before or since playing Sea of Thieves. I've still never seen more than the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, for example, though the Sea of Thieves crossover with that franchise has me wanting to see the rest.
Similarly, my first (Guy)brush with Monkey Island was 2022's Return to Monkey Island, a game I probably only played because Sea of Thieves activated some inner pirate fantasy of my own years earlier. Therefore, I came into Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island with a different view of things than other, more nostalgic players will, but I still left it enamored as ever with Rare's latest showcase.
The Legend of Monkey Island is the collective name given to a trio of story missions to be released over time as free updates in Sea of Thieves. The first of those three, The Journey to Melee Island, is out today, and is what I was able to play last week ahead of its official launch. Billed as a Tall Tale--Sea of Thieves' word for a permanently available story mission--The Journey to Melee Island will take players roughly 2-3 hours to complete, similar to most others already in the game.
Beyond that familiar setup, however, is a major difference in this newest story mission: It plays like a first-person Monkey Island game as much as it does a Sea of Thieves story mission. Tall Tales have long been genre-bending, with stories of romance, action, mystery, and more being represented in the game's roughly 30-40 hour "campaign" in the game today. But these have tended to be narrative genres being toyed with, while the game has largely always played like Sea of Thieves.
With The Legend of Monkey Island, Rare reshapes Sea of Thieves into an adventure game much like a longtime Monkey Island fan would know. All of Melee Island is fully available right after you dock, and you can go any which way you'd like to chat with locals, interact with the environment, and start to figure out exactly what you're meant to do. Much like Monkey Island, enough of this fidgeting will start to reveal hints.
The goal is to get into the Governor's mansion to meet Guybrush Threepwood himself, but you can't do that until you clear the guards from the area who refuse to let you pass. Far be it for a Monkey Island game to simply allow you to circumvent them in one easy maneuver. Instead, you'll perform a series of tasks for the colorful denizens of the island, like disguising yourself as a chef's assistant to access some crucial kitchen supplies, serving extra-potent grog to Scumm Bar patrons until they pass out so you can swipe their Pieces o' Eight, and emboldening a pack of piranha poodles to attack a local tormenter of theirs. Each of these steps and more must be worked out through clues found in dialogue or the environment. It's never straightforward, and no Monkey Island fan would likely expect it to be, but it's certainly a novel cadence for those who only know Sea of Thieves in this equation.
While I could sense some jokes went over my head as they were clearly written for Monkey Island longtimers, I nevertheless found it easy to appreciate, as tonally it's not all that different from Sea of Thieves anyway. They both have a lightheartedness and a sense of magic to them that remains even when their respective stories sometimes get a bit darker. From first stepping into the Scumm Bar to eventually unlocking the doors of the mansion, I can imagine for lifelong Monkey Island fans the ability to finally explore these familiar locations in first-person must be even more exciting. I saw it as an intriguing new island--something I always cherish when they appear in Sea of Thieves. But for many players, it'll be like coming home and seeing it all with nostalgic eyes.
Because this is a faithfully made Monkey Island experience, it's pretty light on action--save for a fun scene involving root beer--so it may be that these missions are most enjoyed by players who already know Monkey Island, as the pacing of working out its environmental puzzles slowly over a few hours is not like the more explosive and death-defying stuff players have seen in the Disney's Pirates missions, for example. But knowing in advance such pacing comes with the territory, I really enjoyed the way progression unfolds in the manner of a classic adventure game. Sure, it's a bit obtuse to know to replace the skull you need to snatch with a coconut, but there are enough context clues spread throughout the game that whenever I did figure out my way past the next stop-gap, it felt like a genuine aha! moment.
For newcomers who do wish to familiarize themselves with this particular haven for buccaneers, there's a really cool history book that can be obtained during the mission which essentially recaps the entire Monkey Island series to date, complete with portraits of its heroes and villains as well as a full timeline of everything one could want to know. You can't get it until close to the end of the mission, but it serves as a handy backdrop for the rest of the expansion yet to come.
Speaking with Rare's Mike Chapman earlier this year--before this expansion was revealed--he told me one goal of IP crossovers is to depict those crossover characters appreciating the wonder of the Sea of Thieves for themselves. "You never want to leave the story and feel like Sea of Thieves has been diminished, like you'd rather be playing that other world," Chapman told me back in March. "We believe in our world, and it's about putting the Sea of Thieves world and what it stands for on a pedestal."
That's certainly how the Disney's Pirates crossover lands by the end of its five-episode arc, and I have every reason to believe this trio of Monkey Island missions will, too. But this first episode definitely feels like Rare taking a beat to put Monkey Island on its own deserved pedestal as an inspiration and trailblazer. There aren't many pirate games out there, so to have what seems to be two of the most beloved ever made colliding in this way makes for a fun milestone in gaming history, whether you come to it as a fan of one, the other, or especially both.
