Ron Gilbert has posted on his blog what he would do if he was to create a new Monkey Island. He does emphasise that he is NOT making one but if he did it would have the following:
It would be a retro game that harkened back to Monkey Island 1 and 2. I'd do it as "enhanced low-res". Nice crisp retro art, but augmented by the hardware we have today: parallaxing, depth of field, warm glows, etc. All the stuff we wanted to do back in 1990 but couldn't. Monkey Island deserves that. It's authentic. It doesn't need 3D. Yes, I've seen the video, it's very cool, but Monkey Island wants to be what it is. I would want the game to be how we all remember Monkey Island.
It would be a hardcore adventure game driven by what made that era so great. No tutorials or hint systems or pansy-assed puzzles or catering to the mass-market or modernizing. It would be an adventure game for the hardcore. You're going to get stuck. You're going to be frustrated. Some puzzles will be hard, but all the puzzles will be fair. It's one aspect of Monkey Island I am very proud of.
Full-on inventory. Nice big juicy icons full of pixels. The first version of Monkey Island 1 had text for inventory, a later release and Monkey Island 2 had huge inventory icons and it was nirvana. They will be so nice you'll want to lick them. That's a bullet-point for the box.
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.
Ron has many more suggestions. I hope he manages some day to get the licence for Monkey Island. His suggestions and ideas are making me water on the mouth just thinking how good the game would be.
Ron, if you ever do and start a kickstarter campaign we are definitely on board here at The Bearded Trio.
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Awesome. Don't know if it will ever happen, but it would be fantastic. I think he would also need to reboot the storyline. All the relationship stuff between Guybrush and Elaine has been stretched pretty thin. How about a game that takes place, say, 16 years later and features Guybrush Jr wanting to become... a mighty pirate?
ReplyDeleteThis feels weird now that he made Return to Monkey Island.
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