Ron Gilbert will no longer post about new Monkey Island after online abuse

This week, we finally saw the first gameplay trailer for Return to Monkey Island, the follow-up to the first and second Monkey Island games, led by Ron Gilbert. Much of the game's rollout has been delightful—an obvious April Fools' joke by Gilbert about a new Monkey Island game became a de facto announcement. But there has been some sour discourse since the new trailer, and on his personal blog, Gilbert said he would no longer be posting (via Eurogamer) about returning to Monkey Island.

"I'm turning off the comments," Gilbert said in a post from the new trailer. "People are just being mean and I have to remove the personal attack comments. It's an amazing game and everyone on the team is very proud of it. Play it or don't play it but don't ruin it for everyone else." . I will not post about the game anymore. The joy of sharing has eluded me."

From what I've seen, most of the negative comments have focused on Monkey Island's return to art direction. The original game used pixel art, but the new game opts for a more cartoony look. In an April interview with The Verge, Gilbert said it was a deliberate decision:

So it's not pixel art, and it was a discussion that Dave [Grossman] and I had quickly asked "Should this be a pixel art game? Shouldn't this be a pixel art game?" Ultimately, we thought we had just too much freedom and flexibility to not make it a pixel art game. I think people will be very happy once they see the art and once it's moving and animation. We have There's an incredible group of animators on the project, and it's really neat when you really start to see everything moving in the game.

And Gilbert tried to address criticisms of Return to Monkey Island's art style in a May post on his personal blog. He wrote, "Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or expected, but it is the art style I wanted." Unfortunately, though, some people continue to say shoddy stuff, and now it looks like we won't be hearing from Gilbert about what a terrible game looks like. (Seriously, if the short scene featured on the Return to Monkey Island website — complete with a classic point-and-click dialog tree! — is any indication, I think we're in for a treat.)

Vibration has been weird in video games this week. The release date for God of War: Ragnarok was rumored to be announced on Thursday, but on Wednesday, Santa Monica Studios creative director Cory Barlog said on Twitter that was not the case and after fielding several people, fans were asked to be patient. Had to say, many comments on his recent tweets.

"If it was up to me, I would have shared all the information after knowing about it," he said. "But it's not up to me. So please, be patient. I promise that things will be shared as quickly as they can be."