Does the Horse Armor actually do nothing in Return to Monkey Island? Answered

Return to Monkey Island does exactly what the title promises: it takes protagonist Guybrush Threepwood back to where the legendary point-and-click games began. Along the way, he’ll pick up various objects and use them to solve a variety of puzzles. One of those pick-me-ups is the Horse Armor, but if you’re wondering what it actually does, the answer is an inside joke.

Related: Return to Monkey Island is a post-nostalgic tale of puzzle-solving pleasure – Review

How to get the Horse Armor in Return to Monkey Island

At this point, it’s too late to get Horse Armor if you don’t already have it — the item was promised as a preorder bonus when the game’s release date trailer premiered. That may change in the future, but for now, there is no way to find the Horse Armor in-game unless you previously preordered the game on PC or Nintendo Switch.

How to use the Horse Armor in Return to Monkey Island

If you do happen to have the Horse Armor, then you’re going to want to know how to use it. The answer is: you can’t. It actually does nothing, as some folks suspected from the beginning. That probably should’ve been obvious, considering the fast-talking used boat salesman Stan S. Stanman was the one pitching it in that same preorder trailer. “It’ll look great in your inventory,” he promised — and that’s all it will do. Considering Return to Monkey Island is a puzzle game, giving select players an advantage with a bonus item wouldn’t really be fair anyway.

Why is Horse Armor in Return to Monkey Island?

So if the Horse Armor is only in the game as a joke, where did it come from? The origins lie with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which offered a horse armor cosmetic all the way back in 2006 before microtransactions became a big part of gaming culture. Future games like Ghost of Tsushima would make horse armor a more integral part of the game, but the horse armor meme is symbolic of silly DLC. Return to Monkey Island is simply riffing on that.