“I’ve only done one pixel art game in my entire career and that’s Thimbleweed Park. Monkey Island 1 and 2 were not pixel art games. They used advanced artistic technologies“, first clarifies Ron Gilbert, in particular referring to the process of digitizing the illustrations of Peter Chan and Steve Purcell in Monkey Island 2. “If I had stayed to do Monkey Island 3 it wouldn’t have been like Monkey Island 2. We would have kept going and Day of the Tentacle is a good example of that“, adds the author.
“When Dave and I started thinking about Return to Monkey Island, we talked about pixel art, but it just didn’t fit. We didn’t want to make a retro game. You can’t read an article about Thimbleweed Park without it being called a retro game. I didn’t want Return to Monkey Island to be just a retro game, I wanted to keep Monkey Island moving forward because it’s interesting, fun and exciting. That’s what Monkey Island games have always done“, he explains in stride.
As a reminder, Rex Crowle was chosen to be the artistic director of Return to Monkey Island. Media Molecule veteran Rex Crowle worked on the franchise LittleBigPlanet before leading the development of the memorable Tearaway and co-directing Knights and Bikes with his independent studio. The arrival of Rex Crowle on this project took place in particularly original circumstances recounted in this previous article.
“Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or expected, but it is the art style I wanted. When I started this game, my biggest fear was that Disney wouldn’t let me make the game I wanted, but it was wonderful to work with them.“
“It’s ironic that people who don’t want me to play the game my way are some of the biggest fans of Monkey Island. And that’s what makes me sad about all these comments. Return to Monkey Island is an incredible roller coaster. You can ride and have fun or get out of the amusement park because it’s not exactly the roller coaster you wanted.“
The output of Return to Monkey Island is expected this year on PC.
- Also Read | Return to Monkey Island will start right after the end of Monkey Island 2
