Daily Briefing: Monday 4th April

Return To Monkey Island Announced By Original Creators

Ron Gilbert, the original Monkey Island writer and director, is working with Devolver Digital and Lucasfilm on Return to Monkey Island, alongside the original co-writer and programmer, composers, and even voice actor of Guybrush. Gilbert announced this on April Fools’ day, but noone believed him, so they had to reannounce it properly - he joked, saying he felt bad about the April Fools’ joke so he put the game together over the weekend.

• It’s cool to see beloved gaming IPs return via the likes of Devolver working with the original staff, and it sure seems like Monkey Island fans are genuinely super excited. The game’s due to release this year, so here’s hoping it doesn’t disappoint.

The Next WoW Expansion’s Name Has Leaked: Dragonflight

Some World of Warcraft website code and SSL certificate signings point towards Dragonflight being the name of the next WoW expansion. Allegedly leaked key art shows Alexstrasza as the poster character, while details from another alleged leak, that also used the name Dragonflight, suggest it’s actually a pretty wild departure - a return to Azeroth with a few zone revamps, but with no new levelling experience - just endgame progression, alongside 4 new micro-classes and a very long-awaited feature for the game: class skins.

• Dragonflight is a generic name and easy to guess, so while that’s almost definitely the name, don’t put much weight into the additional details leaked. That said, it would be cool to see some real evolution with WoW’s gameplay. This could be Blizzard’s last chance with World of Warcraft before lapsed users don’t trust the company enough to come back, a problem very much exacerbated by 2021’s lawsuits.

Abandoned Developer Spoke To Konami About Silent Hill

Blue Box Studios, behind the controversially-handled game Abandoned, have claimed they reached out to Konami to clear the air when people started to think Abandoned was actually a new Silent Hill entry, but being marketed in a strange way. The creator also had to assure people that he isn’t an actor, or Hideo Kojima operating under a pseudonym. However, the suspicion is coming around the game being delayed repeatedly and having no real footage shown yet, despite a playable teaser due to release.

• People kind of lose their minds over anything Kojima or Silent Hill, but it’s hard to blame them - MGS5’s marketing was very mysterious involving pseudonyms and fake developers, and a lot of fans haven’t gotten over the cancellation of P.T. Abandoned is a very peculiar story, so perhaps we’ll cover that on the channel soon.

Sony “Could Be Working” To Emulate PS3 On PS5

Sources have indicated to VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb that Sony could be working quietly to emulate PS3 games on PS5. Grubb claims that after asking around, it sounds like they might be working on it and it would take time. However, ModernVintageGamer, dev at Night Dive who’s well-versed in retro gaming and emulation, tweeted that it’s technically possible but “Sony has never been interested in investing the millions to make it happen”.

• Straight up, this should happen for the sake of the Playstation’s library and access to tons of great games, especially in a better state than the way the games run on the native hardware - miserably. As to whether Sony will bother... yeah, a huge cost without a massive reward.