![]() ![]() Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll, there’s probably some influence there, but then the rest of the team had their own backgrounds and I think we all influenced each other to a large degree. In terms of style, I’d always been a fan of P.G. You can also spot us leaning on TV shows and movies, used car commercials, and so on. Being at Lucasfilm, there are nods to Star Wars and Indiana Jones all over the place, as well as to people and things around the office. Grossman: We referenced things a lot, not meaning like aping a particular style but more like romping through a meadow and gleefully pointing at all of the other media that we ourselves had grown up with. GamesBeat: What were your influences on Secret of Monkey Island’s writing? It was self-referential and satirical at a time when that felt rare for a video game. On the other hand, the team is generally older and more experienced now, and we waste less time playing Tempest and Millipede. We even schedule time to “hang out by the watercooler” with coworkers, because it’s – surprise surprise – important to be able to relate to each other as people if you’re going to make stuff together. In 1989 it was like we were a bunch of kids at a summer camp spending all of our time together in 2022 communication is something we have to focus on and put work into. Ron and I had one face-to-face meeting in January 2020, and it’s all been remote since then, with the team spread all over various hunks of geography and time zones. Grossman: We’ve developed this whole game during a global pandemic, that’s certainly been significant. We were careful to honor that but also not be afraid to move it forward. Monkey Island has had 35 years to build it into something that it wasn’t back then. Gilbert: For me one of the big things is looking out for a modern and more casual audience while making fans happy. GamesBeat: What are some of the starkest differences between working on a new Monkey Island today compared to the development of the original? If I try to list my favorite characters from Return to Monkey Island, in terms of both the end result and the joy I had working with them, it’s a mix of new ones and returning ones. ![]() Someone written in support of a particular theme thirty years ago might not have much to say about whatever’s going on in your current game. Grossman: Yes, it’s a nice head start to have a character who’s already been developed a bit, which can help guide your decisions about what they should do and say. ![]() We rev isited locations and characters when it was important to our new story. The game is not a remake or remaster, it’s a whole new game. We revisited some locations and characters, but you have to be careful that it’s more than just a trip down nostalgia lane. Is it a fun challenge or a burden to have to work with those expectations? GamesBeat: There are a lot of recurring elements that fans expect to see in a new Monkey Island - characters like Stan, locations like Monkey Island. ![]() And then during production I continued to revisit them, often because I was about to write dialog for a returning character and wanted to remember their particular tone and cadence. By coincidence I was already playing through the early Monkey Island games with my son, who was 5 at the time and had finished all the Humongous titles, so we just kept on doing that with a little more focus from dad. Grossman: It’s easier to return to something of your own than it is to start work on something originally created by someone else, but I definitely still needed to do the research to get my brain in the right place. Beating your head against obscure puzzles was acceptable. Adventure game design was a lot more forgiving back then. Looking at the old game can be frustrating because there are so many little things that I wish I could change. Gilbert: I played Monkey Island 1 and Monkey Island 2 as we started to look at the new design. ![]()
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