Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert is finally returning to the series after more than 30 years away with a new game, Return to Monkey Island. However, the Monkey Island Gilbert is coming back to is not the Monkey Island he left behind. The state of gaming has been widely altered over the last three decades, in part thanks to Gilbert's own work.
When The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, initially released, they were groundbreaking. Gilbert's sense of humor had been present in his previous game, Maniac Mansion, but the Monkey Island series raised the bar for what games could accomplish in terms of comedy. Just about every second of the games contained at least one quip or bizarre pop culture reference. The Monkey Island series redefined what a "funny game" looked like.
30 years later, there have been plenty of "funny games." Those first two Monkey Island games may still be high points for the medium, but they no longer feel quite so edgy and new. Games like The Stanley Parable have taken Gilbert's metatextual sensibilities to the next level, while games like Portal and Borderlands have veered in different directions to similar effect. No matter how funny the writing in Return to Monkey Island is, the game has a new challenge to face: It's not the only kid on the block anymore. Video games have changed significantly from where they were when the first two Monkey Island games released, and not just because it's easier than ever to pay more than 20 bucks for a game.
A handful of Monkey Island games have released since Gilbert's departure from the series. They all have their fans, but they're on a decidedly lower cultural level than the two titles Gilbert wrote. There's a reason Return to Monkey Island will act as a direct sequel to LeChuck's Revenge, with only cursory references to the other sequels. As games, they're not actually all that much worse, but the sequels repeat a lot of the beats of their predecessors. The comedy is no longer fresh and adventurous, but stale and somewhat repetitive.
While the Monkey Island series has grown without him, Gilbert has worked on a handful of new games outside of the world of Monkey Island. He wrote and directed Thimbleweed Park, a point-and-click adventure that harkens back to his LucasArts origins, and, prior to that, collaborated with Monkey Island co-developer Tim Schafer to make The Cave, a puzzle platformer with an involved story. Both games made waves in their respective communities, but neither has had the staying power of Monkey Island. Like the Gilbert-less Monkey Island sequels, they're good games, but they're both building on existing foundations rather than building new ones the way The Secret of Monkey Island did.
Gilbert is returning to a franchise that's failed time and again by stagnating. The task ahead of him is significant, as it's not enough to simply make another Monkey Island game. The series' first two titles succeeded by feeling truly new and fresh, and both the series and Gilbert's subsequent games have struggled to recapture that magic. Return to Monkey Island is a bold title. It signifies a return to a series that players haven't seen in a very long time, and a return for a series creator whose presence has been sorely missed by fans. Still, it isn't enough to simply "return" to Monkey Island. Gilbert and his independent studio, Terrible Toybox, need to know what to do with the series, and it needs to be something new.