Non-RPG General News - Return to Monkey Island Interview @Adventure Gamers

Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman have been interviewed by Adventure Gamers about the making of Return to Monkey Island.

Back to the game development, I’m curious about the two of you working together after all these years. What is that process like? You’re both designing and both writing?

Dave: We’re kind of doing the design and story stuff all together. We’re talking every week about this stuff, and things come up and we knock them out. We’re both doing writing; I’m doing a little more of the actual words, Ron’s doing a little more of the direction and managing the engine people and stuff like that.

Is it similar to how you worked together on the other Monkey Island games you made together?

Ron: Yeah, it is very similar. I spent a lot of time during Monkey 1 and Monkey 2 doing design work, but I also spent a lot of time working on the SCUMM engine, and working with Aric [Wilmunder] on all of that stuff, and that’s the same here. I spend a lot of my time, probably at least half my time, working on the engine, doing the programming, and all that kind of stuff. Dave is taking on the bulk of the writing. There are sections that I’m doing, characters that are my characters, that I’m taking control of.

Dave: I’m going to be interested, when the game comes out, to see whether people pick out, like, “Ah, that’s a Ron part! And I hate it!” Or “And I love it!”

Ron: The grumpy [characters].

What’s been the most fun thing about working on this game?

Ron: I think working on anything is a lot of fun. There’s Thimbleweed Park, any of this stuff—it’s fun to create things. I like making things up. Dave and I have these standing meetings when we get together for one or two hours every single week on a Slack call, and we just kind of go over everything that’s come up in the game, feedback from testers and feedback from playtesters and stuff, and I really enjoy those. I really enjoy that time of hashing through all of the details with Dave.

Dave: We get to play “What if?” with that a lot. “Oh, this isn’t quite working. Oh, I know! What if…” That’s very creatively satisfying. And I also like the part where I get to go off by myself and invent things for people to say. I personally really enjoy that part.

[...]