This week, I had the opportunity to talk to both Gilbert and Grossman to learn a little more about the game and its evolution. The team that makes Return to Monkey Island has revealed very little beyond what is in the trailer and while Gilbert and Grossman did not want to go into too much detail, they shed some light on what to expect when the game is released. moment this year. . Read below for our full discussion on creating a modern point-and-click adventure, learning from previous projects and keeping the project a secret. The team also shared the first official snapshots of the game, which we included in this article. The subtitles were provided by the developers. This interview has been slightly modified for greatness and clarity. Mele Island. Picture: Awesome toy box Why are you both returning to Monkey Island right now? Ron Gilbert: Obviously if you follow my blog or follow me on Twitter, I am constantly bombarded by people who want a new monkey island and it is definitely something I was very interested in. [Note: I missed a sentence here because I accidentally pressed something on my keyboard that turned on a YouTube video. Thankfully, I was muted.] But I think when that opportunity arose, it was something I really wanted to jump into and put Dave on the big plan. I think, at the lower level, I just think the timing was right. Dave Grossman: And I think we have to do these things periodically. I feel like Ron and I have evolved enough to have some new things to say about the Monkey Island world. And the moment he called me, I said, “Oh, this is an opportunity to work with Ron again and revisit these characters, this world I love and have fun.” I was not a hard seller, honestly. In fact, I went in immediately. I think Ron was still playing while I said, ‘Yes, yes. “When can we start?” Ron: I think you were a little more enthusiastic. I was still very scared and more. We need to get together in 35 years from now and we can… Grossman: I’m in! I am now, call me in 35 years. With this new entry, what do you hope to achieve for people who may never have played a game on Monkey Island again? Grossman: We would like to correct this imbalance in their lives. Gilbert: When Dave and I started to really separate the plan and really think about it, I think there were two camps that were very important for us to fully embrace. These were Monkey Island fans, people who know the games inside and out and honestly probably know the games better than Dave and I know the games. And we wanted to make a very good, authentic island of monkeys, something that would really satisfy their thirst for a new one. But we also knew very well that there are probably many more people out there in the world who have never played Monkey Island but have heard of it. We also wanted to make something accessible to them so that they could enter the world of Monkey Island and not feel out of place when they started the game. These are really important aspects of history and design of what we face. Grossman: To be fair, this is not a new problem. But that’s the thing that happens every time you make a sequel to anything. Can you give some clues as to how you plan to do this? I can imagine it being a huge challenge. Gilbert: It’s a challenge. The game I played earlier, Thimbleweed Park, was more of a retro game. Even with this game, we had people comment that they felt there was a lot of humor and jokes and situations that just went beyond their minds because they were not entrenched in these old things with the point-and-click of LucasArts. With this game, Dave and I really tried to explain situations to people while they were playing it, so they understood the context in what they were jumping on, but not in a way that spoke to them down. He just naturally explained the context of what is happening. Or if there were things that were going to go through their head, just because it is some kind of inner joke or inner information, just to make sure they did not feel they had lost something. There are many times maybe [where things] you just go through your mind and you do not understand it. So that’s what we were trying to do, to serve these two commons well. Grossman: A lot of that falls into writing and this kind of standard practice, if you think about it. Almost no story starts without characters who already have a story together. And you just have to make sure that when these characters appear, this story will come out, especially if it’s important to understand anything. The courthouse of a chilly new island. Picture: Awesome Toybox Ron, I’m wondering what else you may have learned to build the Thimbleweed Park you are applying for Return to Monkey Island. Gilbert: Well, Thimbleweed Park, because of Kickstarter, was really geared as a LucasArts adventure “go back and play a classic.” So there were a lot of things that, due to the success of Kickstarter, I felt very compelled to do. Things like the interface being the same, things like pixel art etc. With [Return to Monkey Island], I think we felt a little freer than that. Despite the fact that it was the island of the monkeys, it was nice to be able to explore more open things like art style and things like the interface. I think that was probably the lesson I really learned from Thimbleweed Park was – along with the things I mentioned earlier – it ‘s just to make sure you’re not so established in the past with things, which is really fun for a certain group of people but can let a whole other group of people feel a little lost. I wanted to ask how you want to maintain the spirit of what many of these classic adventure games represent without perhaps — I do not know the best word — an artificial or mechanic that may not stand. How do you plan to keep that balance? Gilbert: A lot of that for us was to take a step back and really look at what’s going on. How much of this is just a crust? How much of this is just nostalgia? And be able to see everything from how puzzles are constructed, how dialogs occur and how the user interface works or how traffic works. All these things. And really, to be able to reconsider all these things. This is another adventure with point and click But at its core, it’s still a point-and-click adventure. It is not a first person shooter. It’s not a card game. It’s a point-and-click adventure. And so it’s kind of like understanding or really deconstructing the kind of point-and-click and saying, ‘Well, what does that really mean? What’s really fun about point-and-click games? ” And making sure to really emphasize this and not necessarily just a bunch of nostalgic things. Does that draw, Dave, with what we went through? Grossman: Sounds right. Basically, any element of the game should either support the gameplay or the story and hopefully both. Whatever it was not – that dragged one of these things back – we tried to locate it and rethink it and redesign it. Can you give examples, even at a high level? I understand you do not want to talk about the game specifically, but is there anything you can share about the way you try to capture it? Gilbert: If you look at the people playing games today, a lot of games are played on consoles. There are a lot of great players – PlayStation players and Switch players and all that. One of the things we really wanted to do was figure out how these people would play a point-and-click adventure with a controller. Because it is different. There is a different mentality to this. There is just one different way of binding your game brain. We spent a lot of time, a lot more than we did with Thimbleweed Park, really thinking about a controller and how the game can be a lot of fun playing with a controller as opposed to just a mouse. Be able to do this, but do not distract or reduce what the mouse is playing. Because we have seen many games that are games with the controller, and incorporate the game with the mouse. We really tried to balance these two game modes for humans very evenly. And you mentioned the art style, which, if I listen to it, is not going to be a pixel-based art style. It’s correct? [Note: I had not yet seen the screenshots when I interviewed Gilbert and Grossman.] Gilbert: Yes, that’s right. The art you see in the trailer is quite representative of what the art in the real game will be. So it’s not pixel art, and that was a conversation we had with Dave early on about “should it be a pixel art game?” Shouldn’t it be a pixel art game? ” Eventually, we thought we had a lot more freedom and flexibility not to make it a pixel art game. I think people will be very happy with art as soon as they see it and as soon as they see it move …
