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Return to Monkey Island

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by LowLevel73 (talk | contribs) at 20:58, 22 August 2022 (→‎Settings and characters: Added source). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

  • Comment: Editors have already stated this is WP:TOOSOON. Continuing to submit after those rejections could be considered WP:TE. CNMall41 (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: I didn't realise images can't be used in drafts (kind of feel they should be to strengthen an article) however there are lots of screen shots shared for the game now. Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman recently did loads of interviews the past couple of days with lots of info out there now including screen shots, concepts and more. If whoever reviews the draft decides to decline still this is absolutely fine, however please note these are available now to add to the article once live. I didn't create the draft however I could see lots of people really wanted to see this, so I've tried my best to work on it and improve it for those people so we can have the article live. If the person who reviews this declines, please add the improvements you feel should be added to the article also as there's lots of substantial info out there now and not sure which you may feel is the best for the article. Hope this helps and has improved this more for you :-) UFC Beavis (talk) 13:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: As others have said, WP:TOOSOON. Remember that notability requires some sort of substantive description of the subject, which is currently lacking since only the name and broad concept has been announced. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 08:31, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: I haven't submitted the article for a re-approval however I honestly feel this article would be cool to go live, it's very much in development and the article is already fairly extensive now with additonal independent secondary sources as per WP:TOOSOON. The game is being released so nothing unpredictable about it there which is why I feel this would be ok to resubmit if someone would like to do this? :). UFC Beavis (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment: It is a notable game, but it is WP:TOOSOON for it to have an article now. I suggest keeping this page in draftspace until gameplay/development interviews are available. OceanHok (talk) 03:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)


Return to Monkey Island
Developer(s)Terrible Toybox
Publisher(s)Devolver Digital
Lucasfilm Games
Director(s)Ron Gilbert
Designer(s)
Artist(s)Rex Crowle
Writer(s)
  • Ron Gilbert
  • Dave Grossman
Composer(s)
SeriesMonkey Island
Platform(s)
Release2022
Genre(s)Graphic adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Return to Monkey Island is a upcoming point-and-click graphic adventure game developed by Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman, published by Devolver Digital in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. It is the sixth game of the Monkey Island series[1][2] and it is set to release in 2022 on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch.[3][4][5][6]

The game sees the return of Ron Gilbert at the helm of a Monkey Island project, after he created the franchise decades before. The game was announced on April 1, 2022 on Gilbert's blog and a teaser video was published three days later on Devolver Digital's YouTube channel.[7][2]

While the game starts immediately after Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, it isn't a sequel to it.[8] Dominic Armato is set to respise his role as protagonist Guybrush Threepwood[9]. The game will be the conclusion for the series.[10][11][12]

Gameplay

Return to Monkey Island is a 2D point and click adventure game. The player controls the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who sails the seas and visits islands, talking to other characters and solving puzzles to move the story forward.[1][2][7][13]

The user interface is based on the one designed by Gilbert for "Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure", which was further improved to streamline the gameplay and to provide a good experience to both players who prefer using controllers and those who prefer using mice.[7][1][14]

The game includes a hint system, to discourage players from looking for a walkthrough on the Web, integrated to the game and designed so that it makes sense "in the fantasy". The game also includes a simplified mode, called "casual mode", an option for people who haven't played adventure games before or in a while.[14]

Settings and characters

As with the previous games of the franchise, the game takes place on fictional islands in the Caribbean around the Golden Age of Piracy.[1] During the journey that will lead Guybrush to finally find the secret of Monkey Island,[15][11] the pirate revisits iconical places of the series, like Melee Island, now under new management, and Monkey Island.[1][16] His adventures also see him land on islands never explored in previous games, like the chilly "Brr Muda" and "Terror Island".[17][15]

All the main characters of the series return in the game: the pirate Guybrush Threepwood (voiced by Dominic Armato), his love Elaine Marley (voiced by Alexandra Boyd) and his archenemy zombie pirate LeChuck (voiced by Jess Harnell). Murray the Demonic Talking Skull (voiced by Denny Delk) also returns.[1][2][18]

Development

Production

Before its announcement in April 2022, Return to Monkey Island was developed for two years in complete secrecy.[2]

The game sees the return of Ron Gilbert at the helm of a Monkey Island project, after he created the franchise decades before and left it after the development of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. During the years that followed, Gilbert dreamed about making a new Monkey Island game but he didn't own the IP rights of the franchise.[8]

At PAX 2019, Gilbert was talking with Nigel Lowrie, founder of Devolver Digital, who mentioned to him that he knew John Drake, who was in charge of licensing at Disney, which owns the IP rights of Monkey Island through its 2012 LucasArts acquisition. Drake wanted to approach Disney about doing a new Monkey Island game an it was with this discussion that "the ball started moving forward on stuff."[14][8]

In December 2019 Gilbert called Dave Grossman, who worked with him for the first two games of the series, to see if he was interested in joining the project and Grossman was delighted to accept. It was in this first contact that Gilbert said to Grossman that he wanted to reveal the game on April Fools' Day. In recalling how secrecy was paramount, Gilbert said: "I did not tell anybody. If you were not actually working on this project, you didn’t know about it. I didn’t tell my best friend. I didn’t tell my mother, I didn’t tell my sister."[1][2]

Gilbert and Grossman met in Seattle in January 2020[19] to see if they could come out with ideas for the game and it was after that discussion that they felt confident that they could make a good game.[1]

In January 2020, Lowrie approached Drake to pitch the game and Disney was willing to talk about it.[1] Since then, Gilbert had "lengthy conversations" with Disney to make sure that he and his team would have full creative freedom on the project, an assurance that Gilbert got and that was respected by the corporation during the development, allowing him to "build the game I wanted to build."[14]

The production went on, working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. At its peak, the development team consisted of 25 people.[7] Compared to his previous commercial game, Thimbleweed Park, the team working on Return to Monkey Island was bigger mainly because there were more artists: "It’s definitely more art; there’s a few more programmers… there might be like one more programmer. But most of it’s art. Just a lot more artists, a lot more animators than we had on Thimbleweed Park."[1]

Writing

For Gilbert it was very important that Return to Monkey Island started where Monkey Island 2 ended, with a cliffhanger that shows Guybrush as a kid at an amusement park. "I left Lucasfilm right after that and never resolved it. Future games did their best but we wanted to tackle it head on."[2] Still, the game isn't a sequel to Monkey Island 2 and Gilbert defines its temporal position in the series "amorphous".[1]

Gilbert and Grossman discussed if and how the game should embrace the events of the other games of the series and they found a way to keep all of them canon[2] without letting canon getting in the way of telling the new story. In an interview with The Verge, Grossman said: "Our general philosophy was that we would adhere to existing canon as much as we could with sort of two caveats — one being that it’s really hard to keep track of all that stuff. And some of these games don’t agree with each other, so sometimes there’s a paradox, and you just live with it. The other is that canon can sometimes get in the way of telling a good story, and that’s never a battle you want to lose. So whenever there was something that didn’t quite fit, we just ignored it conveniently."[7][8][2][1]

Another cornerstone for the writing was that Gilbert wanted to create a real pirate adventure, focusing on Guybrush visiting islands and avoiding contents too goofy or silly. "For me I wanted this game to be a good solid pirate adventure. I felt like some of the past Monkey Islands had veered a little bit into the silly territory. And I wanted this to just be, ‘It’s a pirate adventure.’ Guybrush is sailing the seas and visiting islands, and so that was a cornerstone that I wanted to do."[2][1]

Art style

The art style of the game is different from all the previous installments of the franchise. The pixel art option was discussed and ultimately rejected, because the developers didn't want to make a game that was a throwback to those developed in the 90s.[20] "Ultimately, we thought that we just had a lot more freedom and flexibility to not make it a pixel art game", said Gilbert.[7]

In 2007, artist Rex Crowle sent Gilbert a stylized version of Guybrush Threepwood that the developer found striking. While searching for an art director, Gilbert remembered that drawing and researched Crowle's works, discovering that he had been a designer of LittleBigPlanet and the art director of Double Fine's Knights and Bikes. So Gilbert contacted Crowle to see if he could help get an innovative style for Return to Monkey Island, something not already done for the franchise's previous games. The discussion led to hiring Crowle as the art director.[1][21]

Crowle, who played The Secret of Monkey Island as a kid, took inspiration from other Monkey Island games and from other LucasArts classics like Day of the Tentacle. For Return to Monkey Island he defined a style reminiscent of a picture book or a pop-up book because it matched well with the main topics of the game: "we’ve taken something from all of the games, while making something new and specifically tailored to the story that Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman wanted to tell. An art style has to connect with the core themes of the game you’re making, its not an interchangeable thing that you apply like a Photoshop filter, and for this adventure a picture-book style was the right fit."[13][22]

Music and voice acting

Composers Michael Land, Peter McConnell, and Clint Bajakian, who already worked on previous installments of the Monkey Island franchise, were hired to compose the game soundtrack.[23][1][3] In an interview with Adventuregamers, Dave Grossman pointed out how easy it was to work with musicians who already knew very well the franchise: "It’s nice, too, to have them around, because we know they already know what they’re doing, right? They’ve done music for several of these; we can just sort of trust them to do something good, and just kind of watch them work."[1]

Dominic Armato, the voice actor for Guybrush Threepwood in the previous games, was signed on to reprise the role and was happy to accept the offer. Gilbert met with Armato to have a chat about an unspecified "new game" and the voice actor was baffled when he discovered that the game in question was a Monkey Island game: "We got together, we had coffee, and I think he was very interested in the new game, almost kind of wondering whether maybe he could have a voice part in it. And then I told him that it was the new Monkey Island, and he was just floored."[7]

Alexandra Boyd and Denny Delk returned to voice Elaine and Murray the Talking Skull respectively. Earl Boen, the retired original voice of LeChuck, doesn't return as LeChuck instead. The developers approached him but the actor declined, saying "Recast the role, you have my full blessing to do that."[1][2] Jess Harnell was announced as the new voice of LeChuck.

Technical design

The developers spent a lot of time trying to understand how to make an adventure game enjoyable with a controller without making the experience worse for players who use a mouse. In an interview with The Verge, Gilbert explained: "We spent a lot of time, far more than we did with Thimbleweed Park, really thinking about a controller and how the game can be thoroughly enjoyable playing with a controller as opposed to just with a mouse. Being able to do that but not distracting or detracting from what the mouse play is."[7]

When the cursor stops over a screen hotspot, a brief message pop up, suggesting what action Guybrush would take if the player clicked the mouse button.[16]

Gilbert revamped the game engine that he used for Thimbleweed Park to be sure that it was up to the job for Return to Monkey Island. The development of his free game Delores, released in May 2020, worked as a testbed for the new engine.[1]

With the new engine and modern hardware, cinematic effects previously impossible in the 90s had become easy to achieve, as Gilbert told to Ars Technica: "We can do [camera] zooms and pans and pulls... now without even thinking about it. The hardware doesn't even sweat if we try to zoom, but zooming back then [in the early '90s] was a huge issue. People who do 3D games... know all about this because they've always had these things available... [but] if we want to draw the players' attention to something effectively, the camera can zoom [and] pull in. That is a very powerful thing to be able to do."[7]

Marketing

On April 1, 2022 Gilbert announced on his personal blog that he was working on a Monkey Island game. Three days later, Devolver Digital formalized the announcement publishing a teaser video on their YouTube channel. The game was developed for the previous two years in strict secrecy and the announcement of a new Monkey Island game took many people by surprise.[2][24][23][25][26]

On June 28, 2022, a gameplay trailer was released[27] with the official website also being updated to a small interactive gameplay style page.[28]

Starting from July 11, 2022, Gilbert and Grossman shared on Twitter a video clip of the game every Monday, calling the initiative "Monkey Island Monday". The clips revealed new locations, new characters and how the dialogue system and part of the user interface looked like.[29][30][31][32][16]

On August 12, 2022 it was announced that a world premiere of the game would feature at Gamescom, which will be held August 24–28, 2022 in Germany. Geoff Keighley, the host of Gamescom's Opening Night Live said "a brand new look at the upcoming reboot will be shown at ONL."[5]

The October 2022 issue of the magazine PC Gamer UK, issued on August 18, 2022, featured a cover story dedicated to the game.[22]

Reception

Before release

In May 2022, after the first teaser video and a few screenshots of the upcoming game were released, a visible portion of Internet users disliked the art style and expressed strong critics on social media. This led Ron Gilbert to write a post on his personal blog, to clarify why that style was chosen and to express his sadness for the backlash.[33][34][35][36][37]

On June 28, 2022, as part of a Nintendo Direct, a gameplay trailer showcasing the game's art style was released and reignited the backlash, leading a few people to insulting and harassing Gilbert on social media and his blog. As a result, Gilbert closed down the comments in the blog and said that he will not talk further about Return to Monkey Island.[38][39][40][41] Several game developers called out the abusive behavior from users and supported Gilbert and his team, including Cory Barlog of Santa Monica Studio and Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog.[42]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Morganti, Emily (14 April 2022). "Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman – Return to Monkey Island". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l McCaffrey, Ryan (3 May 2022). "'This Was Like the Manhattan Project of Games': How Return to Monkey Island Became a Reality". IGN.
  3. ^ a b Peters, Jay (4 April 2022). "Ron Gilbert is making a new Monkey Island game, and it will be out this year". The Verge. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  4. ^ Bowen, Thomas (15 August 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Price May Have Been Leaked by Nintendo eShop Listing". Game Rant. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Return to Monkey Island New Footage Teased for Gamescom". No. 12 August 2022. cbr.com. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  6. ^ Kim, Matt (28 June 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Is Coming to the Nintendo Switch First on Consoles". IGN. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Peters, Jay (14 April 2022). "Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island announcement was a joke '18 years in the making'". The Verge.
  8. ^ a b c d Serrels, Mark. "Why Ron Gilbert Is Going Back to Monkey Island". CNET.
  9. ^ Kennedy, Victoria. "Return To Monkey Island announced, coming 2022". Eurogamer. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  10. ^ Dinsdale, Ryan (29 June 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Will Be the 'Conclusion' for the Series as a Whole". IGN. Retrieved 2 July 2022.
  11. ^ a b Behan, Daire (30 June 2022). "Why Return to Monkey Island Being The Final Entry In The Series Makes Sense". Game Rant. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  12. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (29 June 2022). "It looks like Return to Monkey Island will be the last in the series". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  13. ^ a b Minotti, Mike (26 May 2022). "Return to Monkey Island's art director talks inspirations and expectations". VentureBeat. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  14. ^ a b c d Orland, Kyle (22 April 2022). "In rare interview, Monkey Island designers tell Ars about long-awaited Return The new title will eschew pixel art, embrace hint systems". arstechnica. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
  15. ^ a b Alexander, Harry (3 July 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Trailer, Plot & News to Know". CBR. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  16. ^ a b c Kennedy, Victoria (22 August 2022). "Latest Return to Monkey Island clip shines light on streamlined UI". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  17. ^ Mallender, Robin (4 July 2022). "All Return To Monkey Island Characters Confirmed For Comebacks". ScreenRant. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  18. ^ Ron Gilbert [@grumpygamer] (8 August 2022). "For those of you wondering, LeChuck is voiced by the amazing @JessHarnell" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  19. ^ Minotti, Mike (19 May 2022). "Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman are ready to Return to Monkey Island". VentureBeat. Retrieved 21 August 2022.
  20. ^ Biggs, Tim (8 May 2022). "Monkey Island is back, but don't call it a 90s throwback game". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  21. ^ O'Connor, Alice (4 April 2022). "A new Monkey Island 2 sequel is coming from Ron Gilbert". rockpapershotgun.com. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  22. ^ a b Freeman, Will (October 2022). "A Treasured Island". PC Gamer. No. 374. UK: Future Publishing Ltd. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  23. ^ a b Egan, Toussaint (4 April 2022). "New Monkey Island game Return to Monkey Island arriving in 2022 from original creator Ron Gilbert". Polygon. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  24. ^ Chalk, Andy (4 April 2022). "Monkey Island returns in Return to Monkey Island". PC Gamer. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  25. ^ Machkovech, Sam (4 April 2022). "Return to Monkey Island confirmed by Ron Gilbert as real, slated for 2022 launch". Ars Technica. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  26. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (4 April 2022). "Return To Monkey Island announced, coming 2022". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  27. ^ J Capel, Chris (28 June 2022). "The first proper Return to Monkey Island trailer acts as a full gameplay reveal, teasing the bold and probably divisive art style, and a Secret revealed". PC Games.
  28. ^ Goslin, Austen (28 June 2022). "Return to Monkey Island trailer shows off long-awaited sequel's first gameplay". Polygon.
  29. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (19 July 2022). "Return to Monkey Island gets another gameplay snippet ahead of release". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  30. ^ Smith, Graham (26 July 2022). "New Return To Monkey Island clip looks gorgeous, says I". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  31. ^ published, Rick Lane (26 July 2022). "More Return to Monkey Island footage shows off dialogue system and new character". PC Gamer. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  32. ^ Reynolds, Ollie (9 August 2022). "Ron Gilbert Shares Humorous New Look At Return To Monkey Island". Nintendo Life. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  33. ^ Odom, Rayburn (6 May 2022). "Monkey Island 3 Isn't What Fans Asked For, Says Creator Ron Gilbert". CBR. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  34. ^ Davie, Cade (10 May 2022). "Return To Monkey Island Creator Breaks His Silence On Backlash". SVG.com. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  35. ^ Reynolds, Ollie (9 May 2022). "Negative Fan Reaction To 'Return To Monkey Island' Made Its Creator 'Sad'". Nintendo Life. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  36. ^ Dinsdale, Ryan (9 May 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Director Explains Why Pixel Art 'Didn't Feel Right'". IGN. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  37. ^ Midler, Jordan (8 May 2022). "Ron Gilbert 'sad' about negative reaction to Return to Monkey Island's art style". VGC. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  38. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (June 30, 2022). "Return to Monkey Island creator will no longer talk about the game following abuse". Eurogamer. Retrieved July 1, 2022.
  39. ^ Wheeler, C. J. (30 June 2022). "Ron Gilbert doesn't want to talk about Return To Monkey Island anymore". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  40. ^ Gilliam, Ryan (30 June 2022). "Ron Gilbert won't share any more about Return to Monkey Island after art style complaints". Polygon. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  41. ^ Behan, Daire (30 June 2022). "Return to Monkey Island Creator Shuts Down Blog After Personal Attacks". Game Rant. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  42. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (July 1, 2022). "The gaming industry calls out toxic fans". Eurogamer. Retrieved July 1, 2022.

Category:Video games Category:Monkey Island Category:Video games about pirates Category:Video games scored by Michael Land Category:Video games scored by Peter McConnell Category:Video games scored by Clint Bajakian Category:Video games set on fictional islands Category:Video games set in the Caribbean Category:2022 video games Category:Upcoming video games Category:Upcoming video games scheduled for 2022

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