I hope not. I’m already breaking one of my golden rules by planning to purchase Return to Monkey Island; that rule being that I do NOT financially support Disney (who have a stranglehold upon the film industry, verging on a monopoly). I am just about willing to make a sole exception in order to support Ron Gilbert’s Return to Monkey Island, but if they also expect me to support a DRM release, then that’s a step too far, as I am staunchly opposed to DRM because it’s an anti-consumer practice (I buy all of my games on GOG or other DRM free sites).
If Disney imposes a Steam only release or demands that players sign up for a Disney account or any other such DRM nonsense, then I’ll be pirating the game (seems oddly apt). I don’t want to pirate the game, but I am an ethical consumer and I like to vote with my wallet. I do my darnedest to avoid financially supporting insidious corporations (The Mouse) or anti-consumer practices (DRM, exclusive pre-order DLC etc). Me buying a Disney game is already something I’m immensely uncomfortable with, so if try they push DRM on top of that, I’ll be sailing the high seas of the net in order to sail the high seas in Return to Monkey Island. GOG or GTFO.
Get NOW Return to Monkey Island, exclusively on Epic Store! Collect or buy virtual pieces-of-eights to expand your collection of monkey-NFTs and to unlock the DRM-free* version!
It’s 3:23 a.m. here and I can’t sleep. Here are my not-so-lucid thoughts: Return to Monkey island characters, story and all are property of Disney, which let Ron Gilbert to direct the game as he wants to.
Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie) is also Disney’s.
I wonder if the next PotC movie will be directed by Ron Gilbert, making finally a Monkey island movie!
It’s more than that! The entire game is designed to work as a storybook: pages can be turned in any direction to revive past events or to quick-jump to future ones, but keeping the knowledge (and inventory) of what has happened in all the pages viewed. This creates completely new gameplay dynamics, for example the ability of accessing objects that existed only in previous games of the franchise, if you need them. The player defines his/her own narrative flow.
And wouldn’t that be coherent with the collective tiresome wait for more pre-release information? This game might well be a sadistic social experiment to study people reactions to anguishing frustration.
Quite frankly, I’m banking on it. I want to be stumped with the puzzles (insert stump disk 22 joke here) . I’m not going to consult a walkthrough, nor am I going to make use of the in-game hint system. I’m going old school for this mo-fo. If I spend four months, clueless and without an idea of what to do, then so be it. I’ve spent my entire life awaiting this game and I’m going to savor every darn last frustrating bit of it!
It’s true that, if Ron wants to innovate (as I believe he does) , he is probably going to do something like what you are suggesting …
Otherwise, what kind of innovation could he bring? I don’t see him innovating at the interface level, like obra dinn for example, as it would limit the range and diversity of the puzzles.
Maybe it’s just some way to explain the backstory to new players… if it starts with kid Guybrush, new players will be wondering how it’s a pirate game.
To put events in perspective, it’s important to say that when the development of MI2 was almost finished, Ron still didn’t have an ending, any ending. So he panicked.
(Source)
In my opinion, with “It was not meant to be a cliff hanger” he just meant that the ending of MI2 was a result of a last-minute panic-induced decision, not something planned.
In an uncharacteristic 180-turn from the rigid zero-divulging policy adopted by the developers, a critical and unimaginable piece of information has leaked and it’s making the news around the planet.
How long did it take for Ron to henpeck out that accent mark? He is a man of many more talents than myself tho, I suspect he may have it on speed dial, actually.
