[Originally written in late 1997-ish, the wickedly funny "Curse Of Monkey Island" was released soon after and found a place in many an adventure gamer's heart. As recently as late 2000, Lucasarts came out with a 4th in the series, "Escape From Monkey Island", taking the series into 3D for the first time, but I believe both Johnathan and Larry left Lucasarts before this 4th title was completed, and at least one of them is heading up his own developer now (March 2001) - more info welcome.]

"The Secret of Monkey Island" is one of the best adventure games ever created. Its succesful implementation of humor and the "point and click interface" was absolutely brilliant.

Very soon, the 3rd installment of the series, entitled "The Curse of Monkey Island", will be released. It is being designed by Larry Ahern and Johnathan Ackley, who have worked on several other succesful titles at Lucas Arts. In this exclusive interview, Larry and John discuss the new game and the design of adventure games in general.

About Monkey Island 3

h0l: When Monkey Island 2 was complete, the ending concluded the monkey island series after Guybrush Threepwood woke up and realized that the entire thing was in his head. Surely this makes another sequel a little tricky?

JA: The trickiest part of making a sequel was actually just finding a way to deal with the ending to the last game without starting the new game at Big Whoop carnival.  I can hear the cries now:  "hey, I bought a pirate game!  What's with this little kid at the midway?!  I want swashbuckling!  I want privateering!  I want death and dismemberment (but only tastefully alluded to in a wholesome family environment)!

LA: So, Jonathan and I just decided to skip right past the whole explanation thing, get into some really intense pirate action, then slowly reveal the story over the course of the game in a very clever fashion (okay, maybe we were just buying time until we could come up with a reasonable explanation).  But come up with one we did.  Yes, Guybrush woke at the end of Monkey Island 2:  LeChuck's Revenge to find that the entire thing was in his head.......or DID he?!!!!  All will be explained in The Curse of Monkey Island, and it all fits together amazingly, like a Chinese puzzle box (and we have the elaborate flowcharts to prove it)!

h0l: It seems to have taken an age to get The Curse Of Monkey Island near completed. How come so long?

JA: A lot of the delay between the last Monkey Island game and Curse was based on the development cycles of other adventure games we were making here, like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle.  But, now that those are done and the statute of limitations has run out on some of the bad puns from Monkey 2,  we decided it was safe to revisit the fabled island of primates. 

LA: As for why it took as long as it did to make The Curse of Monkey Island once we started, well, that's because of the size (it's huge, and not just a bunch of cutscenes) and the quality of the game.  We wanted to make a game that was as rich and nonlinear as the classic LucasArts adventure games that preceded it, but with all the multimedia flash that modern gamers expect.  And I don't think the audience will be disappointed.  With feature quality animation and over 8,000 lines of dialogue, this is the biggest and best adventure game yet (Hey, who let the marketing people in here?!  Where are the jokes?).

h0l: Traditionally, the Monkey Island series was the work of Ron Gilbert.  Is the game noticeably different without Ron?

JA: We have no idea what Ron would have made if he had worked on this, so it's hard to compare.  But, being big fans of the first two games, we tried to be as true to the characters and style of the series as possible.  We'd like to think that we've taken the next step with the story and helped tie it all together into a satisfying trilogy.  I don't know why it is, but for some reason trilogies seem appropriate here at LucasArts.

h0l: We've seen The Curse Of Monkey Island publicised with the rather excellent fact that it has more monkeys in it than the first 2 games put together. Did you get any complaints from apes about their representation in the first two titles?

LA: More monkeys than the first 2 games put together?  Where'd you hear that?!

h0l: In what ways is Monkey Island 3 different from its predecessors (whilst still keeping the same style/flavour)?

LA: Well, as I've often said (and we don't mean to blow our own horn, but this is really a big selling point), there are more monkeys in The Curse of Monkey Island than in Monkey1 & 2 COMBINED!!  That's right, monkeys.  Several of them.  We felt that we really had to give the audience what they wanted this time around.  Also, we try and do some explaining about the actual secret of Monkey Island, clear up the whole strange Big Whoop carnival incident, and generally make the world safe for democracy once again.  And it's all contained neatly on 2 shiny little silver discs! 

JA: Also, we tried to get Guybrush out on the high seas to do some real swashbuckling as captain of his own ship.  I think the technology really limited what could be done with the characters in the previous games, so it was satisfying to be able to push Guybrush into new territory.  I think he's really evolved as a character, and I know that the whole pantomime clog dancing sequence will be a pleasant surprise for fans. 

h0l: The industry increasingly sees spin-off merchandising, cartoon series, and so on from the most popular and character-led games. So where's the Guybrush fluffy toy and animation series? Or did the Maniac Mansion TV series put LucasArts off that angle?

JA: I think we haven't gone that route because it has nothing to do with selling computer games, which is the real business that we're in.  We like to focus on what we do best, without having to worry about what someone else might be doing with characters that we license out to them.  There's so much room for error with things like that.  Crucial issues are at stake, like how fluffy should a Guybrush fluffy toy be? Should we have real flaming beard action on the LeChuck dolls, or will kids just use them to set each other on fire?  Things like that.

About Designing

h0l: How do you come up with puzzles?  Do you sit down and say "Ok, Guybrush has to get from A to B.  Let's see what we can do to delay that."?

JA: Puzzle design usually starts with an overall goal of what the character wants to accomplish, then we try and think of really cool situations to put Guybrush in or fun things to interact with. Sometimes we design in terms of trying to think of an ingenious way for him to accomplish something that seems impossible, so the result is like one of those classic James Bond escape scenes. 

LA: If you go "ooh" when you figure out the answer, then that's the effect we're shooting for.  You know, kind of like when MacGyver makes a neutron bomb out of chewing gum and a paper clip.  It's the "why didn't I think of that?" factor. Basically, I would say that all adventure game heroes are either MacGyver or James Bond, but some are more cool than others.

h0l: Do you feel that the adventure game genre is becoming stale?  Roberta Williams seems to think so and has drastically re-structured the new King's Quest game.  Do you think Monkey Island series will take a similar turn in the future?

LA: There's always something interesting about exploring new directions in game design or new avenues with familiar characters.  But, the adventure game genre is as vital as ever.  There's just a lot more going on in games these days and I think some people are exploring. This is a good sign, because it will keep the medium fresh.  One of the qualities that keeps a series like Monkey Island from getting stale, though, and what's really at the heart of the fun is the comedic interactive dialogues. 

JA: When you address a character there are several choices of bizarre opening lines, each of them begging an interesting response.  And, when Guybrush replies to someone, there are 5 different punchlines to choose from.  Each gets a great reaction from the character, and even if you don't choose the other 4, you get the added comedic value of seeing what Guybrush was considering saying.  And all for one low, low price!  What a deal!!  I think the genre can get stale only when the player's choices are stale.

h0l: Why is there so much humour in LucasArts adventure games?  Even the most serious of the LucasArts adventures (The Dig) had it's own fair share of jokes

JA: It's for the very reason I mentioned above.  It's that added value of a LucasArts product that let's you know that we care.

h0l: What do you think of the recent move backwards from point and click interfaces to text parsers? 

LA: I can't spell; I think it's very danjerous.

JA: Seriously, I think it's a little silly.  When you make a modern game, you're not competing with old text games from the 1980's. You're competing with the memory of old text games from the 1980's. People remember all the fun they had banging their head on their computer desk trying to figure out the proper input for the game's two-word parser.  But if you play those games now, you enjoy the nostalgia factor for the first ten minutes and then you realize why interfaces have evolved in the way they have.

h0l: Which adventure games have you been particularly impressed with recently?

LA: I hate to admit it, but I haven't had an opportunity to play any games in the last year or so while we've been in production.  I'm really looking forward to shipping the product so I can have a look at some of our competition.

h0l: Where do you see adventure games 5 years from now?

JA: It can be a difficult and expensive style of game to produce, so we've seen fewer on the market recently. However, LucasArts has a long and successful tradition with the genre, and we're very fond of it here. each time out we make some alterations to the style and gameplay, so I'm expecting it to continue evolving, but at the heart of it all is always a strong sense of character and story.  The balance is between providing enough story to draw the player into the world, and then opening up the world enough for the player to interactively become a part of it.