Thirty-one years after one of the most jaw-droppingly WTF endings in video game history, the upcoming “Return to Monkey Island” will finally solve the mystery left lingering in the final moments of 1991’s “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge”.
The new game has been in development for two years and is led by Ron Gilbert, the director and co-writer of the original game and the director of the sequel. He’s joined by Dave Grossman who co-wrote the two originals as well.
While the game marks the sixth overall in the franchise, it’s the third to be led by the pair and so is serving as a direct sequel to the second. Speaking with Adventure Gamers, the pair confirm that confusing modern amusement park ending of the second game will finally be explained. Gilbert says:
“One of the things that was very important to me about this was that I did want the game to start right at the end of Monkey Island 2, when you walk into that amusement park. I wanted the game to start there… I don’t want to go into all the details of it, but we do start there, and then it takes lots of weird twists and turns that you would expect from us.”
The third through fifth games effectively ignored the second game’s ending, which gives the pair creative freedom to resolve it however they wish. However those existing games do mean their original vision for a third “Monkey Island” game has had to be adjusted because the other games have used some of their previous ideas:
“If I made the actual [original] Monkey Island 3, people would say, ‘Oh, you’re just ripping off [Escape from Monkey Island], you’re just ripping off [The Curse of Monkey Island]. I don’t think you can make that game.”
The pair also tackled the question of how, as a sequel to the second, it will handle the third through fifth games and what exactly is canon. Gilbert says:
“We very purposefully don’t do anything to invalidate any of the canon that’s happened in those games. We’re not saying any of those things didn’t happen, we don’t talk down to them at all. We embrace a lot of the things we liked in those games. So we were very, very careful about that.”
Grossman then adds: “we decided that we would adhere to canon unless it was going to get in the way, and we would ignore some minor details if we needed to”. He says that the other games don’t even agree with each other so there’s bound to be a little bit of paradox anyhow.
Gilbert also confirmed that the new game will also see a return to the first game’s setting of Melee Island. The pair say they tried to get the original voice actors back where possible and have Danny Delk returning as Murray along with Alexandra Boyd as Elaine. They couldn’t get Earl Boen to return as LeChuck as he was very happily retired, but he did give them his blessing to recast.
“Return to Monkey Island” is due out later this year.
