In rare interview, Monkey Island designers tell Ars about long-awaited Return

Nine years ago, The Secret of Monkey Island creator and designer Ron Gilbert wrote a blog post laying out what he would do if he made another Monkey Island game. But now that Gilbert is actually working on Return to Monkey Island—his first work on the franchise in over three decades—he told Ars that the 2013 blog post seems like it was written by a completely different person.

Gilbert told Ars in a recent interview that the article was just this weird stream of consciousness.

Gilbert said that if he could redo the article, he would cage it a bit differently. You change the story, characters, and puzzles when you come up with ideas. Everything is not written in stone.

A long time coming

Gilbert describes the process that led him back to Monkey Island as a "star alignment thing." While Gilbert said he had considered a return to the series many times over the years, it wasn't until a pitch from publisher Devolver Digital a few

Before diving back into Monkey Island, Gilbert said he wanted to make sure any new game could live up to expectations that have risen sky-high after three decades of the first two Monkey Island games being hailed as the epitome of classic adventure game design.

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To get past those fears, Gilbert consulted with another Monkey Island programmer and writer. Before committing, the pair asked themselves a number of questions. Can we move forward? Is there a story that fits the legacy?

The prospect of working with Ron was a big draw for me. We met for a weekend and decided that we should make a game.

With that settled, Gilbert said Devolver took the lead in handling the business end of the deal with Disney, which owns the IP rights to the Monkey Island franchise through its 2012 LucasArts acquisition. Since then, Gilbert said he has had some "lengthy conversations" with Disney and ended up "very happy with the responses" and the assurances he got that his team would have full creative freedom on the project. While Disney "certainly have had feedback, good feedback, [and] we've taken some of their feedback," Gilbert said, he has been happy that the corporation has allowed him to "build the game I wanted to build."