A lot of people were excited when it was announced last month that Ron Gilbert would be working on another Monkey Island game. While some expect this to be in the same old school vein as the remakes, Glbert himself has explained that he wanted to push the series forward rather than embrace the past entries.
Talking to Grump Gamer Blog (via GamingBolt), he explains, “Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren’t pixel art games… They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art… If I had stayed and done Monkey Island 3, it wouldn’t have looked like Monkey Island 2.”
When it came to adapting the same look of the previous games into Return to Monkey Island, Gilbert said, “It didn’t feel right… We didn’t want to make a retro game… I wanted to keep moving Monkey Island forward because it’s interesting, fun, and exciting. It’s what the Monkey Island games have always done. I wanted the art in Return to Monkey Island to be provocative, shocking, and not what everyone was expecting.”
Gilbert already admits that there would be some fans not pleased with the direction that he wanted to take the game, but he does iterate that the game is in ‘the art style I wanted.’ Hopefully the studio higher-ups stick to Gilbert’s decision, rather than try and alter the product to please the masses.
Fingers crossed we get a trailer soon.
Return to Monkey Island has no specific release date, but is set to come out sometime later this year.
