Epic Mickey Looking More Real, More Amazing

[FigmentJedi]

An Interview With Warren Spector - Disney Epic Mickey - Nintendo Wii - GameInformer.com

New interview with Warren. Wasteland is basically explained as both a Yesterland and world of unmade stuff.

[ZeekSlider]

Thanks for the link to the interview. I'll read it when I have more time, but I like the preview of Oswald on page four.

So I guess Wasteland is made out of the part of the filing cabinet during those Blue Sky meetings where the "good ideas" get put while the "great ideas" are given a budget and constructed?

[Garfieldo]

The new interview is absolutely amazing, and I suggest that everyone truly interested in this game read the whole thing. But for those of you who, for whatever reason, aren't will to read the 6-page interview, I've picked out some helpful bits and quoted them below. And if that seems like too much for you (really, it shouldn't), at least read the parts that I've bolded.

The Mickey game is set in the world called the Wasteland, which is a land of forgotten and rejected Disney creativity. The backstory fiction is Walt Disney couldn’t throw anything away – the archives are evidence of that – and if he couldn’t throw like a piece of paper away, how could he bear for the fruits of his imagination and his animators’ imaginations, and the Imagineers’ imaginations – how could he bear to see that just lost forever? So the power of that idea, “I must never lose these characters or these rides, or anything,” led to the creation of this alternate universe, which is this limbo world where forgotten and rejected characters, theme park rides, scenes from movies that never got made – scenes that didn’t fit into movies that did get made – background paintings, character costumes from the park that got moth-eaten – designs for garbage cans for crying out loud, you know? All of that stuff – where does it go when the world rejects it or when its time has passed? It goes to the Wasteland. And when the world is ready to re-embrace those things – when the world is ready for the flying saucers ride at Disneyland, gosh darn it, it’s coming out of the Wasteland and it will be there. And when the world is ready for Oswald? He comes out, like he is now. And when the world is ready for a reinvigorated Mickey Mouse? What better way than to have him come back out of the Wasteland? So that’s kind of the setting.

...

It was about going where the audience is and going somewhere where they’re going to accept a visual style that is more cartoony than people are used to seeing and where we don’t feel obliged to throw in every shader on the planet. “Look at the normal maps and shaders.” We don’t have to do that kind of stuff. It’s the right platform for this project, for sure.

...

I really think every game needs a couple mechanics. I used to throw the kitchen sink in. Everyone here calls me the kitchen sink designer. It’s kind of embarrassing. I think in addition to the core you need – if you just keep doing the same things over and over, no matter how dynamic or interactive you make your world, eventually it’s going to get kind of old. You need some modifiers. You need your +5 sword.
So we’ve created this secondary system, this sketch system where you can create objects from blueprints. They modify NPC behavior. They modify the simulation. They modify things as opposed to create and destroy or draw and erase as very binary, very black and white. These offer a different kind of interaction with the world and the environment and the characters. I think the combination of those things is going to result in unexpected events.

...

That’s another core value. I really believe in the value of emergent situations, things that are not planned. When you get simple systems that interact with a simulation that is just deep enough to support unexpected behaviors, when you start getting things happening that the developers didn’t know could happen, that’s when you start to win. That’s the big win, because then players discover solutions to problems that we didn’t even know existed.

...

Gottfredson created the Phantom Blot as a villain to face off against Mickey in a comic book. You know, I love Floyd Gottfredson, I really do, but wow, the Phantom Blot is a lame villain. He’s a guy in a black sheet who robs cameras. He steals peoples’ cameras. ... We’ve re-envisioned him pretty dramatically as a creature of paint and thinner and corruption. That’s the way I describe him to the team. He’s an interesting character. He’ll be troubling Mickey for a while, I suspect.

[ashfordT]

Originally Posted by Garfieldo

It's like some sort of steampunk-flavored Tim Burton upside-down cake, with American McGee icing and emo teenager sprinkles.

And I'm okay with that! This game looks awesome. I'm anticipating for it to come out.

[cositaluvsmickey]

The more info I get on this game ..the more Im getting excited for the release date? which by the way..does anyone know if they have announced the offical release date?

[Garfieldo]

Fall 2010 is all we know so far. So yeah, still about a year away... Oh well. Hopefully they'll be able to use some of that time to refine the graphics.

Oh, by the way, you can smash gramophones hidden throughout the iasw stage to make the music go away. Hooray!

[Bobd20011]

I cannot wait for this game! I hope that some of the GameInformer cover images make it into the game. Its A Small World and Haunted Mansion look incredible!

[Huh]

I was a little upset when I heard that the concept art was just that: concept art. But I believe that this game can still be subtely creepy just because it's concept is pretty messed up and friggin DEEP! Anything that involves Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as some sort of antagonist or misunderstood character is going to deliver something different. Will there be blasting of psycho zombie small world dolls and killer scorpion CBJ AAs? Maybe not, but one can still hope. But, Disney is still approving a story that still strays away from the current product even if the visuals have to be kept light. And it really seems that the Mickey/Oswald relationship is a metaphor for the Walt/Roy relationship as Roy was an equal partner but many forget his contributions because they were all business and not the creative side. I AM buying a Wii for this game.

And on the concept art alone... they are awesome! I will probably use one of them for a tattoo one day. Anyone who has been on Splash with the AAs shut down or tripped on acid during Fantasmic know how scary those villains look to be.

[disneytim]

CNET posted these Epic Mickey character images and screen shots today:


"Scrapper" Mickey


Animatronic Donald


The Mad Doctor


Oswald. He looks harmless enough.

[Cactushugr]

New York Times talks about the game and also about Mickey retooling in general here. Mickey has never really resonated with me as a character (not enough irony?) so I am excited for this and happy that I did buy the Wii. In the meantime we're having fun practicing our Toy Story Mania skillz.

[dmtnt55]

This game looks amazing. 'Nuff said.

[sir clinksalot]

This is what scares me ... when you go from concept art that looks like this ...

Originally Posted by MickeyMania

To Gameplay graphics that look like this ...

Originally Posted by disneytim

The question of "why is it a Wii Exclusive" if it can't support the graphics has to be asked again.

I love the Wii, don't get me wrong. It's absolutely my favorite "Gaming" system and what it does, it does VERY well. What it doesn't do well are the graphic-intense games like Epic Mickey (with a few exceptions).

[gurgi]

Well, Sir Clinksalot, I kind of agree with you, but I also think that the choice of screenshots as the first "in-game" shots was maybe not the best. The area we're seeing in those shots is the "It's a Small World" section, which is meant to look like the flat Mary Blair style. So, it does look a little simplistic, and might be turning people off to the look of the game compared to that concept art. Some of the other areas they've shown, like the Mad Doctor's workshop look a bit more detailed and creepy. In general though, I do think the Wii could not possibly recreate the concept art as shown...but then I'm not even sure they would have bothered if it were for Xbox 360 or PS3...although it would be HD...

[Zorro825]

Originally Posted by sir clinksalot

This is what scares me ... when you go from concept art that looks like this ...



To Gameplay graphics that look like this ...



The question of "why is it a Wii Exclusive" if it can't support the graphics has to be asked again.

I love the Wii, don't get me wrong. It's absolutely my favorite "Gaming" system and what it does, it does VERY well. What it doesn't do well are the graphic-intense games like Epic Mickey (with a few exceptions).

Keep in mind too the game is still a year away from being released. I'm sure they're going to polish the game a bit more before it comes out. The Wii is capable of some good graphics (Obviously not on par with the PS3 and Xbox) but publishers need to be willing to push it. Super Mario Galaxy and The Conduit are examples of games that push the Wii's processing power in the visual's department

[Garfieldo]

Originally Posted by sir clinksalot

This is what scares me ... when you go from concept art that looks like this ...



To Gameplay graphics that look like this ...



The question of "why is it a Wii Exclusive" if it can't support the graphics has to be asked again.

I love the Wii, don't get me wrong. It's absolutely my favorite "Gaming" system and what it does, it does VERY well. What it doesn't do well are the graphic-intense games like Epic Mickey (with a few exceptions).

In what game have you ever seen graphics that were as good as the concept art/the opening movie? If such games exist, I doubt there are many.

It also doesn't help that you're comparing concept art of one location of the game with screenshots from another. This GameInformer scan has some of the iasw area concept art at the top. As you can see, this piece of concept art looks remarkably similar to the Gremlin Village screenshots.

And to anyone who may complain that the game looks a lot brighter and less gothic looking than the concept art, remember that the object of the game is to bring color back to the world. Take a look at this:



Notice how the wall is bright on one side, yet dark on the other? Hmm, now why would that be?