There is no doubt that one of the great news that this 2022 has left us is that Monkey Island returns (pun intended). And that he will do it before the end of the year and that behind the laughter that we are going to spend there are some of the names responsible for the first two titles. Now, do you know the reason why Ron Gilbert has not returned to this pixelated style that he likes so much and is used in some indie developments (especially)?
Pixel-art vs modern style
As you well know, pixel-art is something like emulating in a video game, bet, the visual style of the developments that took place during the 80 ‘s and much of the first half of the 90’s. they had too large a screen resolution and that of HD or FullHD was pure utopia. As a result of this limitation, a visual style was developed that today smells of retro and that with the arrival of Return of Monkey Island has once again been put on everyone’s lips.
And the reason must be found in that, despite the good news of the return of the third part of the original saga (the one of the first games of the late 80s and early 90s), some fans complain with their mouths small that Ron Gilbert has not returned to those origins. Fortunately, it seems that the North American has things clear and believes that this plot continuation of LeChuck’s Revenge should be completely free and not suffer from the ties of his predecessors.
In an interview in Adventure Gamers, he comes to remember that Return of Monkey Island «is more than an evolution. We didn’t end up going with that [pixel-art] style, but I found a striking image, and one of the things I was looking for in art was to do something that hadn’t really been done before. Pixel -art had been done before, we are now thirty-five years after the last version of the pixel-art game .” What’s more, he recalls that “[ The Curse of Monkey Island ] had its own art style, [ Escape from Monkey Island ] had its own art style, [ Tales of Monkey Island ] had its own art style” so “There have been more games that aren’t pixel-art than there have been.” So the decision was easy: goodbye pixelated graphics, hello “modern” style.
Thimbleweed Park led the way
Anyway, when Ron Gilbert blogged back in 2013 what his next Monkey Island might look like , he was actually describing a full-fledged pixel-art title, so what do you think happened to keep him from going that route? Well, very simple: he embarked on Thimbleweed Park , the game that he launched in 2017, and that already took care of all his desire to make a graphic adventure with that unmistakable style of showing scenes and characters.
Once the project was finished, Ron felt free from pixel-art ties for his next undertaking, which would be none other than developing Return of Monkey Island , the plot continuation of that Monkey Island LeChuck’s Revenge that completely revolutionized the scene of the graphic adventures now 30 years ago (in Spain).