DeathSpank Preview – Ron Gilbert interviewed

One of the true geniuses of the videogame industry, Ron Gilbert has done surprisingly little of note in the past 18 years. After defining the point and click adventure with Maniac Mansion, and perfecting it with the first two Monkey Island games, he seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth never to evolve his work as so many others of his generation went on to do. In reality, Gilbert never really went away at all. He just wasn’t on the radar of most gamers – unless you happened to be born around 1992, that is. For the best part of seven years, Gilbert worked exclusively in children’s games, creating titles like Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish – names that meant nothing to ‘Generation Guybrush’ but were undeniably popular and critically acclaimed within their own field.

Aside from PC strategy game Total Annihilation, created at the ill-fated indie studio Cavedog Entertainment, Gilbert has stayed out of the mainstream eye, only returning when he joined Hothead Games to advise on the development of Penny Arcade Adventures in 2008. And it’s only now, after such an extended period of relative inactivity, that the esteemed creator has announced a game exciting enough to make us sit up and take notice.

That game is DeathSpank, a new PC title that originated from a character in Gilbert’s Flash animation series Grumpy Gamer, but has since evolved into a much grander idea. “DeathSpank started to take on a life of his own; he’s like that,” he jokes. Billed as a cross between Monkey Island and Diablo, it takes the elements that Gilbert is best known for – story and puzzles – and applies them to a genre that has gradually become a personal favourite of the designer.

“There is something very therapeutic about the action-RPG gameplay of Diablo,” the creator explains. “I hate to call it mindless, but there is something fun about going around and whacking on tons of guys. The other fun part of Diablo, and most RPGs, is the paper-doll aspect of the game, and that plays a big part in DeathSpank. You’ll collect hundreds of pieces of armour and equipment, every one of which not only changes the stats of DeathSpank but also makes him look different.”

Current screenshots of DeathSpank certainly indicate that the game might lean more towards its Diablo inspiration than Monkey Island, but Gilbert is keen to remind us that it will still feature all of the adventure-style gameplay you would also expect. “Making DeathSpank a good, solid adventure game was one of the main design goals. It has all the classic adventure game puzzles that you’d find in Monkey Island.” And all of the humour too, it seems. “DeathSpank is the kind of hero that never really understands the big picture. He’s pretty literal with his interpretation of his world and that’s where a lot of the humour comes from. The player will be able to see what is really going on, but DeathSpank can’t. He’s there as a defender of justice, vanquisher of evil and to be a hero to the downtrodden. It doesn’t extend much past that for him. It also means that people take advantage of him a lot.” And with the character originating from an animation series that parodied clichéd videogame conventions, we wouldn’t be surprised to see DeathSpank’s videogame debut do the same. “We do poke fun at that stuff, but not in a blunt way,” Gilbert confirms. “It’s more subtle in how the world is described. For example, reading item descriptions is a real treat and you’ll see us poking a lot of fun at serious RPGs.”

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