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Return To Monkey Island announced, coming 2022

Nico_D

Nico_D

Member
Oh... who would've thought. I knew Gilbert was saying he is trying to get the rights back some years ago but then nothing was heard. Amazing news!

That said, I think Curse is really, really good, might be even the best of the first three games. It's awesome situations and some great puzzles. The whole death thing is hilarious.

edit: just watched the trailer. Isn't that Murray?
 
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Y

YCoCg

Member
Wasn't there a blog update some years ago saying that if pushed he could work Curse into his sequel, but he'd just divorce Guybrush and Elaine? Fits in here with Murray and Dominic being back.
 
Faithless83

Faithless83

Banned
Every revival project backed by their original creator is a win in my book.
Let's just hope it doesn't turn into a Bloodlines 2 scenario. That one still hurts...
 
Jennings

Jennings

Member
Day one if it's on Xbox. I will play it side-by-sidewith someone I know has been a fan of the series forever.
 
E

Elios83

Member
Excellent news! I've played all the games in the series including the less successful Escape from Monkey Island and the Tell Tales episodic game.

Hopefully they have a decent budget :messenger_grinning_sweat: in a perfect world it should look like MI3 HD...
Is the initial release only on PC?
 
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SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
TintoConCasera said:
Cool, but not very optimistic.

Animation looks cheap and game could just be a way to cash in from nostalgia.

Honestly for as much as I liked those games as a kid, I would prefer if they'd try new things instead of this.
Click to expand...
Bad take, ignores a lot of the context.

To get it out of the way, yes, I do think this game is low budget/indie. And that's a good thing when you consider the history.

This is the first time the series creator has gotten to work on this series since 1992. The last three games were done without him, and for many years he expressed how much he wanted to do another one, but how he would soft reboot back to where he left off at the end of Monkey Island 2, and do it the way he wanted to originally, which is to say pretty staunchly rooted in classic point and click adventure, and ignoring the story of the last three games.

He also said he would only do it if he had full creative control, and it was handled by his own small team. In fact, for a long time he said he would only do it if LucasArts would sell him the IP outright (something they don't do as a matter of policy). It seems he has caved on that last demand, but the fact that this is happening and being made by Ron's team, and they're actually giving him full creative control is a big deal.

And the fact is, if they did this with a bigger team and budget, Ron wouldn't get that control to make the game he wanted. More money means more people who need to sign off and more designing for the mass market. This is only finally happening like this after 30 years BECAUSE it's an indie game. There's nothing cynical or cash-grabby about it. If anything they are leaving money on the table on the name of creative control.
 
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Holammer

Holammer

Member
Interested to see if this game flips the table and throws everything after #2 in the trash, or if it's just a inbetween-quel that fits in the lore.
Not a big fan of the art style, but if they had the technology of tomorrow at their disposal, the originals would have looked that way and not as the pixelated glory viewed on a radioactive CRT box we got back then. With the bleepy bloopy sound.

Small worry it'll get preachy and current year, spurting diversity from every orifice.
 
Y

YCoCg

Member
High res logo:
image
 
Fuz

Fuz

Banned
Covid, war and now this.
Just when I thought it couldn't get worse.

Holammer said:
Interested to see if this game flips the table and throws everything after #2 in the trash, or if it's just a inbetween-quel that fits in the lore.
Click to expand...
Ron wrote he's not retconning that trash CoMI.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Draugoth said:
Confirmed for PC only so far.
Click to expand...
If Thimbleweed Park is anything to go on (same dev) they will trickle out ports to every platform you can think of, they just don't have bandwidth to handle a multiplatform launch.
 
bender

bender

What time is it?
Wasn't really a fan of Deathspank, The Cave or Thimbleweed Park so it's hard to be excited about this.
 
Fuz

Fuz

Banned
I'm getting messages over messages on whatsapp from friends announcing me this :messenger_tears_of_joy: even from a non gamer, but she knows how religious I am. And now I'll have to explain how I'm falling into depression.
 
RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
Will be interested to see what art-style the overall game goes for....I've never played the 2009 release have been meaning to check it out..but this not being a release on consoles is frustrating....as I wouldn't be surprised if it is 2023 till they make it available on the Series X etc..
 
Vampire On Titus

Vampire On Titus

Member
A blog post from Ron Gilbert called "I I Made Another Monkey Island" from 2013. A lot of what you read in this blog are design choices you can see manifest in the game Ron & Terrible Toybox would make in 2017, Thimbleweed Park. Some things he's evidently changed on from the trailer. But I think this part in particular sheds light on his approach to the game's continuity:

Twelve - It would be called Monkey Island 3a. All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.

Thirteen - It won't be the Monkey Island 3 I was going to make in 1992. I'm not the same person I was back then. I could never make that game now. It is lost to time. Hopefully this one would be better.
Click to expand...

Ron wants to make a Monkey Island that continues from the story he was telling in the first two games. And personally that's the way I want him to do it. As much as I love the other MI games, and I do, if Ron Gilbert is stepping back to helm the series I don't just want another fun pirate adventure continuing from where Tales left off. I want Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island 3, to see how he would wrap up the story he started, and to find out the secret of monkey island.
 
Fuz

Fuz

Banned
Twelve - It would be called Monkey Island 3a. All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.
Click to expand...



This also means that, as I always said, there is no secret of Monkey Island other than its position and maybe the hellish labyrinth and Ron was always pulling our legs, since he said that he already had the story for the 3rd chapter laid out in his mind in its details. If so, no curse-retcon would have been possible.
 
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B

Bogeyman

Banned
What!! Hot damn. This game isn't just reminiscent of childhood - this game IS childhood!

From the extremely brief teaser, I'm not 100 percent into the art style, but then again.. Who gives a damn. This is a definitive pre order the very second it hits the stores.
 
F

Filben

Member
I sincerely believed I'd never see a Monkey Island again. I have such fond memories from my childhood of this game, played the titles back and forth and never got tired of the humour, Guybrush and the other characters and the world and its vibes.

I really can't believe I'll see another game like this. This is one of the rare moments I'm truly moved or maybe even hyped by a game's release.
 
Vampire On Titus

Vampire On Titus

Member
Fuz said:


This also means that, as I always said, there is no secret of Monkey Island other than its position and maybe the hellish labyrinth and Ron was always pulling our legs, since he said that he already had the story for the 3rd chapter laid out in his mind in its details. If so, no curse-retcon would have been possible.
Click to expand...

I always figured the secret of monkey island was the meta narrative that is hinted at in the first game and revealed (possibly) at the end of 2. That Guybrush is a kid in an amusement park being bullied by his older brother Chuckie.

Edit: It might be the case that Murray or certain elements from the other games remain in MI3a through some meta narrative shenanigan's. It wouldn't be outside of Gilbert's wheelhouse. I'm curious to see what he ends up doing.
 
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A

AnotherDayAnotherDollar

Banned
Amazing news. Wish they would do a full remake of the first 2 as well. The remasters were great, but a full on remake with all the new modernized things we are bound to see in the 3rd iteration would be great.

KWAB said:
grumpygamer.com

If I Made Another Monkey Island

Ron Gilbert's often incoherent and bitter ramblings about the Game Industry
grumpygamer.com grumpygamer.com
read this he talked about it

Twelve - It would be called Monkey Island 3a. All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.
Click to expand...

Nine - I would rebuild SCUMM. Not SCUMM as in the exact same language, but what SCUMM brought to those games. It was a language built around making adventure games and rapid iteration. It did things Lua could never dream of. When Lua was in High School, SCUMM beat it up for lunch money. True story. SCUMM lived and breathed adventure games. I'd build an engine and a language where funny ideas can be laughed about at lunch and be in the game that afternoon. SCUMM did that. It's something that is getting lost today.
Click to expand...
Eleven - The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned the IP. I've spent too much of my life creating and making things other people own. Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I would encourage it. Label them as such, respect the world and the characters and don't claim they are canon. Of course, once the lawyers get ahold of that last sentence it will be seven pages long.
Click to expand...

Doubt these are happening (even the trailer has a joke about the IP thing), but it's something that Lucas (and Disney) should want and encourage. They have a plethora of great Adventure IPs that could be remade or continued today with a new engine. Maniac Mansion, Indy, Full Throttle, The Dig, Grim Fandango, Loom, plus all the other IPs they could play with from their parent company or create original adventures. They could even team up with Purcell for a new (good) Sam and Max game again. Having a small dev team and releasing it across multiple platforms would allow each new game to be profitable as well.

Allowing people to develop their own stories based on the IPs would allow it to grow and get cult followings again.
 
Dee Dah Dave

Dee Dah Dave

Member
Still got my Amiga 12 disk version somewhere of Monkey Island 2. Loved these as a kid and the 3rd game was great too.

Not feeling the art style though if that video is representative of the new game.
 
Pegasus Actual

Pegasus Actual

Member
How is it that Ron Gilbert did Thimbleweed Park which looks very much like a classic LucasArts adventure, and the comes back to do a Monkey Island in whatever this art style is... I don't get it, if you're gonna feed me some member berries then make me some fucking member berries.
 
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Wildebeest

Wildebeest

Member
Pegasus Actual said:
How is it that Ron Gilbert did Thimbleweed Park which looks very much like a classic LucasArts adventure, and the comes back to do a Monkey Island in whatever this art style is... I don't get it, if you're gonna feed me some member berries then make me some fucking member berries.
Click to expand...
Maybe it is because he does the story, design and scripting but not the art.
 
Salz01

Salz01

Member
For me, this is the best news so far this year. I love MI2, and play it on Xbox every now and then still. Hope the art style is at least decent, but the music, voice actors, Gilbert seal the deal for me.
 
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