Return to Monkey Island will abandon the series’ now-iconic retro look

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Creator Ron Gilbert says the game might not look how fans are expecting but "it's the art style I wanted"

Return to Monkey Island
(Image credit: Terrible Toybox)

Return to Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert says that the latest game in the series will not have a retro look, unlike the earlier Monkey Island games. 

In a post on Gilbert’s website, Grumpy Gamer blog, (thanks, PCGamesN) the developer explained what visual direction the upcoming sequel will take. "When Dave [Grossman] and I first started brainstorming Return to Monkey Island we talked about pixel art," Gilbert writes, "but it didn't feel right. We didn't want to make a retro game."

"Monkey Island 1 and 2 weren't pixel art games. They were games using state-of-the-art tech and art." Gilbert continues, "If I had stayed and done Monkey Island 3 it wouldn't have looked like Monkey Island 2. We would have kept pushing forward." 

With this being said, Gilbert explains that he didn’t want Return to Monkey Island to be just a "throwback game" and, as mentioned above, he wanted to "keep moving Monkey Island forward because it’s interesting, fun, and exciting." 

Lower down in the blog post Gilbert reiterates how different the art style will be for Return to Monkey Island by adding: "Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or were expecting but it's the art style I wanted." He also explains that he wanted the art style to be "provocative, shocking, and not what everyone was expecting."

This isn’t the first time Gilbert has come out with information about the upcoming game as he also recently did an interview where he revealed that Return to Monkey Island will have a hint system to help out stuck players. 

Want to know what else you can look forward to this year? Take a look at our new games 2022 list. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.