Monkey Island is back with the original team!

I am absolutely fucking thrilled about this.

Monkey Island has been through a bit of a disappointing spell. Those Telltale episodes were pretty bad, and we shall not speak of the 3D installment that Lucasarts put out during their twilight years. But the first three games... mwah. Some of my all-time favorites.

Ron Gilbert! Dave Grossman! Michael Land doing the music! Dominic Armato as Guybrush! (Who, last I checked, was working as a realtor in California somewhere. [Dominic was, not Guybrush])

MURRAY THE TALKING SKULL.

Ron Gilbert basically saying "in my continuity the Monkey Island games after 2 don't exist" is very on brand. Honestly, I think The Curse of Monkey Island is better than any game made by Ron Gilbert. But in the end, I am still hopeful.

Yeah, I mean the third game is absolutely terrific. But hey, Murray's in there. That implies some sort of tacit acknowledgement of 3 at least.

Agree with ZombiePie that Curse is also my favourite Monkey Island game. But El_Blarfo is correct that as Murray is in the trailer, it does suggest that the game might in some ways acknowledge Curse etc. Maybe parallel universe gags or something.

All in all I confess I am extremely hyped; Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island 3 is genuinely something I thought would never happen, and getting people like Michael Land back to do the music and Dominic Armato to voice Guybrush all sounds amazing.

I don't get hyped up or excited by a lot, usually because I always come to whatever game came out 2 years later, but I am super excited about this game. This will be my elden ring. I will absorb every pre-release tidbit I can, I will buy it day one, and I will take the day off to play it on said day as well.

Even if this game is only mediocre, the MI franchise is my favorite and I'm just happy to see something be done with it.

@imunbeatable80:

Exactly this. Also, I see from your avatar that you are a person of exquisite taste.

1 and 2 are my absolute favourites (not a huge fan of 3, 4, or Tales). I don't like the art in the teaser trailer, but the people involved is enough to get me hyped.

Can't say I'm a huge fan of the art style on display either. Also, isn't this like the third or fourth studio Gilbert has joined/made now to make an adventure game before moving on ?

Sorta getting a heavy Richard Garfield vibe in regards to Ron Gilbert (made something hugely successful in the past, but stuck in an outdated mindset now). Monkey Island is Monkey Island though, so I guess I'm cautiously optimistic.

Meanwhile Ron Gilbert confirms in response to a Q from Jason Schreier that Monkey 3 is indeed canon.

I have never been more cautiously optimistic...

@ares42: It's the same team that made Thimbleweed Park. Which was pretty decent.

Cautiously optimistic about this. But also wondering why theres been such a reaction. Are people not aware the last two were terrible? (The answer is "probably not")

I'm very excited about this.

I'm also the person that thought Escape from Monkey Island & The Telltale series were enjoyable. I'm easy to please. I just love the comedic piratey vibe of Monkey Island too much.

I can only speak for myself, but I totally am. "Escape From" and "Tales Of" were dreadful. But the games in the series that were good were (mostly) made by the people involved in this one.

I would be more excited if any of Gilbert's latest games were actually funny. Monkey Island 1 and 2 are top-tier classics for me but I wasn't a big fan of any MI game since. Curse is decent, Escape is woeful, Tales is pretty funny but apparently made an a $5 budget and it's actually distracting.

But I managed to beat all of them, while I couldn't get more than an hour into Thimbleweed Park. TP replaced humor with pop-culture references and (extremely unfunny, not clever) 4th wall breaks and is a chore to get through.

Hoping this is good. The Tales series was pretty bad. (In the first episode you pick up a tube that's bent into a U. It's called a U-tube. ...Hah.) I never played Thimbleweed Park, but I played Gilbert's previous game The Cave and I thought that was pretty good but not especially funny. I don't have much nostalgia for Ron Gilbert's games myself. I agree with others that by far the best game in the series was *Curse*, which Gilbert had nothing to do with apparently, and I'd kill for a sequel to *that*. Get that amazing writing team team back and give me a game with the same beautiful hand-drawn art style in HD and... oh, it would be glorious.

This also leads to the question of... how should we make point-and-click adventure games in 2022? Those 90's games were a lot of fun, but I don't think I would have the patience for them now. Too many finicky inventory puzzles with illogical solutions. I'd really like to see adventure games with *multiple* solutions to most puzzles and also more dynamic storylines ala The Walking Dead etc. No need to change the basic idea of walking around clicking on stuff, but put in the effort to make the world more reactive.

The monkey Island series is one of, if not the, favorite series I've ever played. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm not actually a fan of Ron Gilbert's (in my opinion, overly obtuse) puzzle solutions from the monkey Island era and was not a huge proponent of the Big Whoop ending from monkey Island 2.

Looks wise: The style of Curse, or something similarly more whimsical and stylized, would have been definitely preferred over the pretty middling style on display in the trailer. Hopefully it comes together visually.

I was not a fan of Escape when it first came out but upon subsequent replays I discovered I actually find it quite decent with many memorable sequences despite some silly puzzles in the first couple of hours. The Telltale series was ok but I need to replay it this month to refresh my take on it.

I'll buy it because, why the heck not, and hope I enjoy it. If it does indeed release in 2022 it would be a nice treat in a really shit year.

The artstyle of Escape was great and still holds up, I hope they wont go with what they showed on trailer/teaser as its simply ugly in my opinion.

I am so excited for this. While Curse is my favorite game in the series by a pretty wide margin, I love them all. I even like Escape and the Tales games quite a bit. What's funny is that Escape From Monkey Island on PS2 was the first one I played before going back and starting at the beginning.

@wollywoo: Good thing the majority of the best adventure games have been made in the last 10 years or so, and are readily available to be learned from. Rather than repeating the mistakes of 25-30 year old games. :)

@bobafettjm: hah, same here. Started with Escape, loved the vibe and then went back to the older ones. The PC controls for Escape were strange though, apart from the obvious tank controls. i remember using page up & down to switch between interactible objects in the lower third.

@wollywoo: while I certainly understand your comment.. I can tell you right now, Ron Gilbert is going to make this game more 90s adventure game then anything else. He did it for Thimbleweed and he will do it again for monkey island. For me, my excitement is not only knowing that this is another entry in this series, but also that it will be old school to a fault.

Granted I would love a monkey island with a newer adventure game flair as well, but I just can't see Ron going in that direction

This is all neat so far, and I do like the look of the teaser, but I question whether the "original team" exists anymore. To me, the guy who made Monkey Island 2 is not interchangeable with the guy who made Deathspank.

I'm not even saying Deathspank was terrible or had nothing funny in it. I just feel like it says a lot about Ron Gilbert post-LucasArts that Deathspank was his passion project. It also says a lot that he (and Grossman for that matter) had no firsthand involvement with Curse, an utterly perfect update of the original games' humor and tone.

I'm curious to see how it plays out but I can't help but wonder at... what does the same team even mean like 30 years later.

Like sure it's the same people but I dunno.

Very excited. It's been too long since I've had Monkey Island in my life.

Also, didn't enjoy Escape that much, but I'm surprised to see the Tales hate in here because I thought it was fantastic. It did some pretty interesting things with the characters, had some genuinely emotional moments, and I think is the only game in the franchise that didn't kind of fall apart at the end.

Guess I have a reason to FINALLY play through Monkey Island 2 after all these years...

Like, what even IS a person, man? *exhales smoke*

In all seriousness, I don't expect it to be a carbon copy of those first two games. I don't think anyone should. It's been 30 years. But I'm excited for it all the same.

I'm pumped that Murray is gonna be back and has survived Ron Gilbert's head canon destruction of everything past MI2... but some not-insignificant part of me also wants to hear the words "El Pollo Diablo" and "Ah, papapishu!" again.

I feel like Tales was generally well regarded? This thread is like the most negative I think I've really seen about it.

@efesell: They're fine. They lack the charm and wit of the originals, and the episodes vary in quality, but they're fine. The context is that when they came out point-and-click fans were so starved for new games that they were ready to love anything, but like most Telltale Games, in retrospect they're just fine.

Tales is much better than Escape, but it's hurt by the shoe-string budget. Honestly I've never felt all that starved for point-and-click games, since there have been quite a few decent-to-great indie games coming out pretty regularly. The Wadget-Eye games in particular have been really enjoyable. But I do admit none of them have reached the heights of the old Lucasart classics. I just don't think Gilbert will manage that either considering how dire his latest games have been (imho).

@theonewhoplays: Personally, I thought Thimbleweed Park was pretty alright. But I do agree about Deathspank and to a lesser degree the Cave. The latter I thought was a good idea with poor execution, while the former(s) were such a weird attempt to be a modern version of a specific time in humor that going back now I think they would be significantly more cringeworthy.

There's a big interview up at The Verge with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman. It covers a bunch of questions folks have had so far in this thread.

Most interesting to me is that it sounds like Gilbert got a lot of his retro, hardcore ya-yas out with Thimbleweed Park. He has some takeaways from that about what design choices did or didn't work.

Fun!