An announcement of some really great new DLC for Sea of Thieves gets dovetailed with a genuinely surprising revelation.
We need to start with the game itself. In the Xbox Games Showcase for 2023, Rare revealed Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island, upcoming story DLC made in collaboration with LucasArts, AKA Disney.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the DLC explores the what if scenario of Monkey Island falling into the Sea of Thieves decades after the games. The trailer shows you meeting up with Guybrush Threepwood himself.
Other characters you will run into include Elaine, the Captain LeChuck, Murray the Demonic Talking Skull, and more.
The interesting aspect of this DLC is that Rare, working with LucasArts, decided to make the DLC something of an adventure game itself, within the Sea of Thieves framework.
They tease what is described as “point-and-click” gameplay, though we don’t know if it will actually involve your Xbox controller getting remapped to function like a mouse. In the vein of that gameplay style, though, you will need to experiment by picking up objects, and using them to solve puzzles.
One major adaptation that fans will note is that this DLC is single player, and in Sea of Thieves’ first person perspective.
But now we must discuss the real surprise about this news, as it turns out that Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert revealed that he had no idea that this DLC was being made or planned. In his words, “all done without my knowledge or input.”
The legal ownership status of the Monkey Island franchise is not entirely publicly known. Ron got to make Return of Monkey Island, released in 2022. But, that came about after LucasFilm was bought out by Disney, and Ron tried to unsuccessfully convince Disney to allow him to make a new game in some form.
While we don’t know the full score, it may simply be the case that Disney retains full ownership and is under no legal obligation to contact or work with Ron Gilbert.
But even if it that were not the case, that doesn’t mean that Disney using the IP on their own is the right thing to do, either by Ron, or in terms of the smartest thing to do.
In contrast, Ubisoft has done good by Jordan Mechner, getting his blessing for whatever choices they make in regards to Prince of Persia. Mechner is involved with both the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake and the newly announced Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
While this is a bad first step, it’s not too late for LucasArts, Disney, Rare, and/or Microsoft to do good by Ron. The first step, of course, would be to simply talk to the guy.
Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island will be published in three parts, with the first part releasing on July 20, 2023.
