On April 5th it was announced that a new entry in the Monkey Island series of adventure games, "Return to Monkey Island", has been in development and is due for release in 2022. For the first time in over thirty years the game is being designed and written by series creator Ron Gilbert and one of his two collaborators on the first two games, Dave Grossman. M'colleague and I recorded some thoughts on the announcement which can be heard here:
I wanted to add something that only occurred to me after recording: that this is, in a manner of speaking, a "Return to Monkey Island" in multiple senses. The game may (or may not) involve player character Guybrush Threepwood's return to the fabled Monkey Island. But it's also a return to the franchise and is also Gilbert's (and Grossman's) metaphorical return to "Monkey Island" as in the series itself. And this leads me to imagine that there's a good chance that the game is going to be just as much about the idea of what a text or series of texts is in the hands of its original creators as opposed to continuations by others. But perhaps I'm overthinking it and it won't be about that at all.
Speculation is rife online about how this new game is going to fit in the game's admittedly messy storyline. Publisher Devolver Digital is marketing it as "the long-awaited follow-up to the legendary Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge" and also as "a new game by Ron Gilbert that picks up where Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge left off". However, Ron Gilbert has also tweeted that "MI3 doesn't go out of canon. We were very careful about that. Murray is in this game." The inclusion of this fan-favourite character from non-Gilbert-developed instalment The Curse of Monkey Island suggests that the game is set after that sequel. However, I have seen many people online assuming that it is set between LeChuck's Revenge and Curse.
Personally I doubt that the game has been designed to be a mere bridge between the second and third games, and that it's much more likely to be a continuation of the storyline that doesn't contradict anything from the non-Gilbert games without referring to them in any detail. It's noteworthy that Devolver are using terms like "follow-up" and "picks up where Monkey Island 2 [...] left off." They're not saying "a new game set between Monkey Island 2 and The Curse of Monkey Island." I have a suspicion that the new game is going to still be, technically, set after Tales of Monkey Island and will simply treat the intervening games as more of a digression, returning to the story as it was set up at the end of the second game. Are Guybrush and LeChuck really brothers? Are they really children in an amusement park (and perhaps games three to five were merely a continuation of the fantasy)? What is the secret of Monkey Island? And does any of it really matter? I have a strong suspicion that the answer will be "no", and that the game will poke fun at fans who have taken the storyline of this silly series of comedy pirate games so seriously for the last three decades.
The Secret of Monkey Island created a fantasy that captured the imaginations of adventurers all over the world. LeChuck's Revenge gleefully tore it down. Perhaps a third game in this story will propose a resolution to this conflict. Perhaps it will encourage us to return to Monkey Island in the sense of going back to the idea that we shouldn't worry so much about what's real and what's illusion, and just enjoy the ride.
