Potential of Monkey Island's Return

Return to Monkey Island Announcement. Taken from YouTube.

It was just another day in my scuffed routine. I finished all copywriting business I had at that point of time and decided to finally catch some gaming news and other nonsense like social media since I didn't look at them for two days straight. Much to my surprise, I've witnessed the great news regarding the return of Monkey Island series. Called Return to Monkey Island! Even though my experience with it so far is limited to great RetroAhoy video and listening to music for the first two games, I am pretty existed about it.

Probably the reason for it the return of Ron Gilbert, one of the original game directors of the series, and more people involved in previous installments like Dave Grossman. Such turn of events is usually a good sign in terms of how new game is going to turn out, resulting in aforementioned excitement and high hopes. As for me, I'll just throw around some guesses about this new Monkey Island game and potential details of its development.

Arts Were Never Truly Gone.

When I read the news about LucasArts going back to its original name of Lucasfilm Games, I didn't really get any expectations for it. I'm not exactly interested in new titles or remakes, so the announcement of new Indiana Jones and Star Wars projects flew basically past me, besides leaving the note about Strategy (not necessarily an RTS) and First-Person Shooter games that are yet to be announced. I mean, original Star Wars: Dark Forces is great with Star Wars: Empire at War being kind of curious.

Apparently, Lucasfilm Games would still operate as licensor of its properties. With Monkey Island being visible on the horizon yet again, there's hope for other LucasArts classic to return once again. Perhaps we could see a modern re-release or remaster of Outlaws? The Dig? I'm not sure about the status of titles that were remastered by Double Fine Studios, but the story with Duncan Jones and his script for Full Throttle movie adaptation with a desire to make it a reality suggest that the IPs are still in Disney's hands.

Grumpy Points.

As things would have it, there's more to Ron Gilbert's involvement in Return to Monkey Island. Previously he expressed his desire to come back to series on multiple occasions, but it didn't seem like Disney was really interested in either working on new titles after Tales of Monkey Island from Telltale Games and Special Editions for two original instalments and/or giving up that intellectual property. Why would Ron ask Disney, of all companies, for the rights to Monkey Island and was it as straightforward as that?

Well, not quite. Not when you start digging just a bit, that is. "If I Make Another Monkey Island" is a post in Grumpy Gamer blog published back on April 13, 2013. In it, Ron describes several points about a third installment of  the series in case he would actually develop it... I was about to make a similar note, but it appears that Gilbert beat me to it. Took a break from reading this "article" for a few hours and now there's this:

"NOTE: Now that Return To Monkey Island has been announced it's important to note that a lot of my views (but not all) in this post have changed. Don't take anything in here as more than a historical moment. Quoting anything in here as canon will just led to tears."

That was obvious as is, but I suppose he made a right call by stating this. Post was written almost 10 years ago, so it's obvious that some points would've changed one way or the another as time went on. You can't escape it, not in case like this. However, as Ron also noted, some point still remain valid. He didn't say which of them are as coming up with your own interpretation is a popular thing to do among people of Internet, so they'll just take the bait. And I'll follow that example despite not being a fan of such trend.

Obviously, it looks like Monkey Island series will stay within Lucasfilm Games. However, I believe that they simply managed to settle on an agreement with Terrible Toybox to have full creative control of this title. It's something that was kind of foreshadowed by its game director in an interview by onaretrotip:

onaretrotip: "Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but, as I understand it, you wouldn't want to license Monkey Island. You would want to own it if you, if you got to do a sort of 3a. Is that right?"

Ron Gilbert: "Yeah. I think, you know, any... and again, it's not... It's not this, you know, this thing that 'oh my god, I have to own it', right. 'I'm, I'm hoarding everything', right. It's not, it's not about that. It's about freedom, right. It's about the freedom to make the game I want and to kind of, you know, be... be able to participate in its success.

I mean, I... I made nothing off of Monkey Island, except my salaries. You know, I was, I was paid, I think, $60000 a year when I worked as Lucasfilm, and that was all the money that I made off Monkey Island. And, you know, it's kind of like 'Oh, you know if I do something, it's like I want to kind of participate in its success, right, and I want to have the creative freedom to really make what I want to make."

It wouldn't be the same "Monkey Island 3a" that Ron envisioned all those years back just as much as what Monkey Island 3 could've been due to passage of time. However, it would be the title that he wants to create in a way that celebrate this series. The funniest part about that interview, by the way, is that it's from October 2020 with last question being him talking about the fact that Disney doesn't sell IPs... And Gilbert said that Return to Monkey Island was in development for two years. He's a sneaky pirate, I'll tell you that!

Conclusion.

Let's see where this goes. I mean, that's what I would have done anyway: sit back and watch how Return to Monkey Island ends up being. Even though I would've liked to check out either Amiga, DOS versions or Special Editions of both classic Monkey Island games, there're several caveats that just wouldn't allow me to do so at this time. These dark times. At least I'm glad to see news like this since they manage to break through the gloom of otherwise depressing daily routine.

Even though it's a new entry in the series and not remaster, I wish there was a classic mode there. They don't really have to do that, but having something close to Ron's third point in his old post with "nice crisp retro art". Not that current style is bad (we haven't really seen much of it), it's just that I'm all in for unnecessary stuff like that. The Curse of Monkey Island is canon, but all latter games would be part of a spell or something... Not that I can make any kind of "prediction" due to current lack of knowledge.