Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge’s quite ambiguous ending will be explained by the developers.

Monkey Island was a popular franchise in the 1990s; LucasArts’ graphic adventure game running on the SCUMM engine was a deserved success, but the second game’s ending has left unanswered questions. It’s been 30 years since then (the original version of the game was released in December ’91). Two crucial individuals from the original developers return to put the past behind them. Ron Gilbert was the director and co-writer of The Secret of Monkey Island (the first instalment) and later directed Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge; Dave Grossman worked on both games as co-writer.

Return to Monkey Island will be the sixth game in the franchise, but the third for the Gilbert-Grossman duo, so they will ignore the three games after it as they work on the sequel to 2. It’s confirmed to Adventure Gamers that they explain what happened at the end of the second episode (the protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood takes off LeChuck’s mask after he asks him to; it turns out that Chuckie, Guybrush’s brother, was fighting him, then a worker comes in saying they shouldn’t be there… then we see them as kids at an amusement park, the parents welcome them, then Chuckie’s eyes turn red…).

Gilbert said, “If I made the actual Monkey Island 3, people would say, ‘Oh, you’re just ripping off [Escape from Monkey Island], you’re just ripping off [The Curse of Monkey Island]. I don’t think you can make that game. One of the things that were very important to me was that I wanted the game to start right at the end of Monkey Island 2 when you walk into that amusement park. I wanted the game to start there. That was kind of my one criteria. We need to start the game there. I don’t want to go into all the details, but we do start there, and then it takes lots of weird twists and turns that you would expect from us.”

The duo have confirmed that Guybrush will return to Mêlée Island, where the first half of the first game occurs. In the case of Monkey Island, Gilbert was just joking: they might wedge it in, but there was no action there in the second part. Grossman added that Monkey Island 2 wasn’t called Return to Monkey Island, to which Gilbert nodded with a laugh, so the chances are that maybe the name isn’t a coincidence… though knowing them, who knows?

In development at Terrible Toybox, Return to Monkey Island will be released by Devolver Digital for unknown platforms later in 2022 (we wouldn’t rule out PC, though…).

Source: VGC