Return to Monkey Island – Coming 2022 | Hacker News Reader

Return to Monkey Island – Coming 2022

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145 pointspietroppeter38 comments

"Ron Gilbert told me I'll never make another Monkey Island" because of this:

https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland [2013]

> It doesn't need 3D

Seems he's evolved his position. I kind of like the trailer, I didn't expect to. I think the flow with the boxes being dropped worked out well. Maybe he'll do it well.

> Seems he's evolved his position

What makes you think so? There's no 3D in the trailer (and by extension I assume that the game is 2D too).

That's interesting, I guess you could interpret it that way now that I look again. But to me it looks like cell shading. Taking a peek at Tales of Monkey Island and MI4, this one looks like a great improvement. Probably why it impressed me.

If it is 3D, the camera angle doesn't change much but at least the ship seems to move just a little or something. And the boxes that the guy drops seem 3D. But maybe it's just artistry, who knows.

It's also interesting to look at the other products from Devolver Digital, for instance Weird West [1]. It has 2D look in 3D world.

Since Return to Monkey Island will be point and click, I too suspect that camera angle won't change much. I think interacting with the scenes is basically 2D.

With 3D scenes the user would be forced to turn the camera, and I think that is too much for point and click.

[1]: https://www.devolverdigital.com/games/weird-west

Yeah I didn't infer from this video that the game would be 3D in the sense of camera movement, just graphical engine.

And wow, Weird West's graphics look interesting.

Weird West's shading is great, but it's still clear that it's a 3D world even from still screenshots, while Return to Monkey Island looks clearly 2D even when animated. Everything in RtMI trailer is flat, ship's parallax is a simple transformation, Murray and seagul are obviously flat and keyframe animated the way 2D animation is done, you can see handpainting on Mêlée Island and the water around it. Plus, of course, this is the kind of game where they would gain pretty much nothing from trying to make it 2.5D (and making it convincingly pass as 2D-looking is a lot of work). I'm absolutely surprised that anyone thinks it's 3D, and in fact this is the only place I've seen anyone suggesting that at all (everywhere else people are discussing the art style instead, which seems to somewhat borrow from Special Editions while making it distinctly modern and a bit more cartooney).

BTW. If you're into cell shaded stuff, check out some of the Telltale's stuff like 2012 The Wolf Among Us (which has a sequel being worked on now).

I'd rather say that you probably haven't seen a lot of modern, quality 2D animation out there. I'm 100% sure it's 2D, and other hints (like the fact that Delores seems to be an engine demo for Return of Monkey Island as the timeline matches perfectly) also point to it not being 3D.

Look at the first box being lifted and dropped… the box rotates in what appears to be 3D space.

I’m not certain as the rest of the shot looks like really nice 2D parallax, so this could just be really good 2D animation.

Aren't boxes, like, the easiest of all things to rotate convincingly in 2D animation? :D

Apparently the quote is: "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," he said. "Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I would encourage it."

So does he own it? I'm leaning no. The trailer sounds like he's preemptively telling people who ask him about it to can it.

Wow - the game I've been waiting for for 31 years! I hope it lives up to the expectations...

Seriously, I was (and still am) a big fan of Monkey Island 1 and 2, but the third installment (which came after a hiatus of 6 years and had totally revamped cartoonish graphics) never really clicked for me...

So it just needs to be as good as a lightning-in-a-bottle classic multiplied by >3 decades of rose tinted nostalgia. (mostly) kidding ;)

Hopefully they'll retain my favourite aspect of the original, which is me having untold free time to explore it at my leisure.

It can happen, at least recently we had a good experience. Psychonauts waited 16 years for a sequel and it was everything I hoped and more, incredible sequel.

If this is true it would the be almost the OG team directing and writing. Tim schaefer is missig I guess due to his work on Psychonauts 2.

Maybe update link to the official URL https://returntomonkeyisland.com/

I hope this turns out better than the moribund Space Quest reboot [0] from the original authors, which has been languishing for the ten years since its Kickstarter.

[0] https://guysfromandromeda.com/

He delivered Thimbleweed park so I seems his team is quite capable to deliver :).

Amazing news.

So I guess the question here is how he got a hold of the rights.

A little disappointed it's going to be high-res and not pixel art, Thimbleweed Park style. I really need to get round to playing Thimbleweed Park...

This brightened my day. Also, Thimbleweed Park was great IMO.

Really looking forward to this. Back in the day I played it on my Amiga 500, but last year, after watching Retro Ahoys video [1] I got my old 486 out of the loft and bought a Roland MT-32 just to play it - highly recommended, as is the video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9ahZQ7oP0

I guess the inclusion of Murray (the talking skull) makes The Curse of Monkey Island canon then? :)

I was wondering the same. I love MI3 so much (first game in the series I played) but from a story perspective it just ignored the ending of the previous game. Would love to see Ron actually find a way to reconsile that instead of sweeping it under the rug.

Technically, it pays respect to the ending of MI2 by opening the game with Guybrush inexplicably lost at sea in a bumper car.

A while ago Ron Gilbert laid out what it'd look like if and when he was able to make another Monkey Island game: https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland. He said he'd fork off the Monkey Island canon after the 2nd game, but also "that doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that." So I guess Murray (and using Dominic Armato as the voice of Guybrush) are part of that.

From his "If I Made Another Monkey Island" post quoted in the ad:

> All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. ...That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.

So it can be both! Monkey Island 3 is no longer canon (which is a shame because it's fantastic), but also Murray can be upgraded into the canon universe anyway (TV Tropes would probably consider this an example of a "Canon Immigrant").

Just like the factoid quoted by the teaser trailer, this seems outdated by now ;)

> MI3 doesn't go out of canon. We were very careful about that. Murray is in this game.

- Ron Gilbert, https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/1511022135191384067

There was an awesome iOS remake but it has since disappeared from the app store

This is a new game!

It wasn't just for iOS and it's still available on Steam, and at gog.com

I'm shaking! I'm shaking!

checks the date of the tweet

Not an April fools joke, nice.

https://grumpygamer.com/april_fools_2022

I don't know what's true anymore...

Someone found a tweet of his saying that if he'd ever release a new Monkey Island game, he'd announce it on April Fool's Day. So he did, and of course nobody believed him. But 3 days later he posted this:

https://grumpygamer.com/return_to_monkey_island

My favourite adventure game!

You fight like a dairy farmer.

How appropriate. You write like a COW.

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