Zoom in/Welcome back. We have been waiting for you. Nine years ago, Monkey Island’s Secret Creator and designer Ron Gilbert wrote a blog post on what he would do if he made another Monkey Island game.But now Gilbert is actually working on it Return to Monkey Island— his first work on the franchise in more than three decades — he told Ars that the 2013 blog post appeared to be written by a completely different person.
“That article was this weird stream of consciousness,” Gilbert told Ars in a recent interview. “I don’t remember the exact events, but I do remember feeling a little bit frustrated that I would never be able to make another monkey island, and that really gave birth to that article.”
“I figured if I could redo that article, I might have locked it up differently, because these are not things that would absolutely happen, and they’re not things that I would absolutely do,” Gilbert continued. “Anyone who’s been involved in any creative process knows that once you start, everything changes. Come up with ideas, change the story, change the characters, change the puzzles. Nothing is set in stone.”
haven’t seen you for a long time
Today, Gilbert describes the process of finally bringing him back to Monkey Island as a “stellar alignment thing”. While Gilbert said he considered returning to the series several times over the years, it wasn’t until a promotion from publisher Devolver Digital a few years ago that “the ball started moving forward.”
Before diving into Monkey Island, though, Gilbert said he wanted to make sure any new game lived up to the expectations it had achieved 30 years after the first two Monkey Island games were hailed as the pinnacle of classic adventure game design. “When Devolver first contacted me about this, it was my #1 concern – just weight [expectations]he said. “Is that something I really want to take on?”
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To overcome these fears, Gilbert consulted with Monkey Island programmer and author Dave Grossman to discuss whether there was any real value in revisiting the environment. The pair asked themselves a series of questions before committing: “Do we have a great idea? Can we move forward with this? Do we have … a story that fits the legacy?”
Enlarge / LeChuck’s boat is loaded and set sail.
Devolver figures
“for me, [the prospect of] Working with Ron was definitely a big draw,” Grossman told Ars.”[But] Just to check for ourselves we get together before we agree to make sure we have something to say [a new game], we’ll be able to take it in some interesting directions. So we met over a weekend and decided, yeah, that’s it, we should make a game. “
With that issue resolved, Devolver took the lead in dealing with Disney, which owned the intellectual property for the Monkey Island franchise through its 2012 acquisition of LucasArts, Gilbert said. Since then, Gilbert said he had some “lengthy conversations” with Disney and was ultimately “very pleased with the response” and the assurance he was given that his team would have complete creative freedom on the project. While Disney “definitely has feedback, good feedback, [and] We’ve collected some of their feedback,” said Gilbert, who was glad the company allowed him to “make the game I want to make.”
