Return to Monkey Island I won’t go back there exactly everything Fans may remember.
In a recent (and rare!) interview with Ars Technica picked up by the people at EurogamerMonkey Island co-creators Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman gave the first hints of what the long-awaited sequel might look like.
While the two are silent, what Return to Monkey Island become, they are open to some things that they want to change.
“It is a New Monkey Island game rather than Another Monkey Island game, that’s a subtle difference, but an important one,” Grossman said.
Two of the new things in store: a hint system and a casual mode. In almost any other video game (except maybe a FromSoftware title) that wouldn’t be such a big deal, but for a Monkey Island title it is. As a sequel to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (Return to Monkey Island will ignore the three subsequent sequels without Ron Gilbert), Return to Monkey Island follows on from the pinnacle of classic adventure games known not only for their wit, charm and character, but also for insanely difficult puzzles that encouraged players to embrace the games’ sometimes absurd logic and find everything what the developers have hidden in each scene.
But it’s been 31 years monkey island 2 and expectations are different, says Gilbert. Per Ars Technica:
A big part of the reason he changed his mind, according to Gilbert, is simply the rise of the internet. In the early 90’s, before internet access was widespread, it was just “what [adventure game] players expected,” he said. But today “if [players] don’t have a built in hint system, they’ll just hop on the internet and…read a walkthrough. To prevent this, Return to Monkey Island
will feature a hint system designed to make sense “in the imagination,” Gilbert said. It will provide “more than just a walkthrough.”
The full interview is worth reading – Gilbert and Grossman are both old-school legends who don’t want to make much of their greatness in gaming history, but are always incredibly insightful, even when surly.
Return to Monkey Island should appear later this year.