Epic Mickey Boner

[Valigarmander]

^ Yeah, pretty much.

I posted this thread before it was confirmed to be a Wii exclusive, so if it had been made now it might have made more sense to be in the Nintendo forum.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

[QUOTE=Valigarmander]^ It's not, these all belong to JPS and its game. Square has nothing to do with this, other than the Disney connection. Anywho...[/QUOTE]

Well, it is obviously Disney which makes up half of the Kingdom Hearts universe, not just Square. Seeing as just about all of Disney is fair game for a KH game, aside from Pixar movies so far, I didn't rule this out.

[Bad Dragonite]

^Why did you quote Val and put my name on it?

Anyway, I don't think there would be much to hinder square from putting them into KH (If they decided to).
Disney pretty much gives Square access to any characters they want.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

^ Damn it. I often type out the quote tags so I mess up sometimes.

And that is exactly what I am counting on, that they may include these designs and ideas into KH somehow, since they are virtually unhindered and have much freedom to play with the Disney rights.

[Metal Mario]

Does Disney own these "new" characters, though, or would they be the intellectual property of another game developer? In the case of the latter, it would be like how all characters originally created for Super Mario RPG are the property of Square, not Nintendo.

[Bad Dragonite]

Most of the characters that seem to be making appearances are owned by Disney it seems, they've just been forgotten.

Either that, or in the case of the goofy bot, its just Goofy redesigned. So its probably still owned by Disney...

[Valigarmander]

Disney Releases First Epic Mickey Screens

To coincide with the premiere event in London, Disney has released the first official screenshots of the upcoming Wii-exclusive Epic Mickey. They depict a "cartoon wasteland," where Mickey is being held prisoner. At the moment, the Wasteland is in bad shape (hence the name), but apparently it's Mickey's job to make it all better.

In some ways, the style gives off a bit of a Kingdom Hearts vibe, though that may just be a Disney thing. It all looks to be delightfully abstract.

You can have a look at the rest of the images in our gallery.



We've still got a while to wait on this one. Look for it in October 2010.

Epic Mickey Premiere Event Liveblog

[Apiary Tazy]

Holy s**t, what is up with Mickey's Upper-Right face in the first picture?

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

HMMMMM...man, those graphics aren't too pretty. Maybe I am spoiled by what I've seen of FF:CC for the Wii, but I expect more...

[Valigarmander]

Epic Mickey Preview for the Wii from 1UP.com

Even though Warren Spector only shows off a brief gameplay clip, you can tell from the way he talks about Epic Mickey that he's extremely passionate -- not just about the game, but about Mickey Mouse as a character. He shows off a not-seen-by-the-public-until-now memo between Walt Disney and an executive. He introduces sequences where Epic Mickey is inserted into classic Mickey Mouse cartoons. And he notes, "I wrote my master's thesis on cartoons. This is a hidden part of my life until now."

Spector starts his session with a quick video that seems taken right from the beginning of the game. Mickey peacefully sleeps in his own bed when he's suddenly whisked away to the Forgotten Wasteland. I can't verify for certain, but the way the mysterious villain appears out of nowhere, and said villain's utter lack of a distinct shape or structure, suggests that Phantom Blot is the fellow who grabs Mickey. The Blot drops Mickey onto an operating table of sorts, and starts performing a twisted, animated autopsy; Mickey frees himself in the nick of time from being carved apart by a cartoon buzzsaw, and that's where the game proper seems to begin.

If anything, the basic structure of Epic Mickey seems reminiscent of Okami in that Mickey uses paint to restore a decrepit world. Spector describes The Cartoon Wasteland as the place where discarded characters, locations, and ideas reside; a limbo for the imperfect version of "It's a Small World" before the Imagineers settled on the final design that you can ride today. The Cartoon Wasteland has been rendered mostly inert, a dark, gloomy, and twisted version of itself. Restoring the Wasteland means converting it from "inert" to "painted" -- a transformation from doom and gloom into a "bright, marshmallow-y world," in Spector's words. He outlines the basic story arc as, "Act one: 'Where am I?' act two: 'Save the lands, save yourself,' and act three: The Phantom Blot unleashed."

When I first heard about Epic Mickey, I had assumed that the forgotten character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, would be the primary villain. He's one of the first cartoons that Walt Disney worked on, and when Disney himself left Universal, Oswald was then doomed to obscurity under the Universal (not Disney) banner. There's a lot of resentment on Oswald's part; Spector shows off an old memo from Walt Disney to Universal Studios bigwig Carl Laemmle, where Mickey looks fine and dandy while Oswald scowls in bitterness. It's easy to think that Oswald, the "older brother" to Mickey, would be the primary catalyst. But Warren actually describes Oswald as more of "the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland." Oswald is someone that Mickey can help redeem; the real bad dude is Phantom Blot and the motley crew he's assembled (so far, the only other villain shown is The Mad Doctor). Perhaps Oswald, with his "lackey for evil with a glint of redemption" motif, is the Darth Vader to Phantom Blot's Emperor.

But enough about the characters and the basic premise/plotline -- what about the game itself? Despite being, as Spector describes, a "platform meets RPG/adventure" (which differs from his previous titles, such as Deus Ex, System Shock, and Ultimate Underworld, which were all first-person, action-RPGs), Epic Mickey still maintains some core principles that Spector brings to his games. The game will still feature elements of player choice, and furthermore, be about what the player makes of Mickey within the story framework described earlier. "This is about making Mickey cool to you."

Spector focuses more on the reinvention of Mickey, the idea of making him a cool character as opposed to a stiff icon, than he does on gameplay mechanics. He notes that "painting" is about creation while "thinner" is about destruction, and how you use the two will affect Mickey and others around him. Being helpful, creating a lot, and embarking on sidequests to help others, will make you a Hero Mickey. You'll shine bright and have many friends; Spector shows a segment where, because the player has Mickey help a Gremlin find some lost friends, those lost friends create a path to another part of the area that would not be accessible otherwise. Heck, a Hero Mickey might even decide to help a boss character, thus completing a boss encounter without violence.

On the flipside, if you're more of a "gamer" as Spector jokes, a determined player who uses the gameplay mechanics as tools to improve yourself and progress through the game without having to deal with others (example: is there a bookshelf in the way? Just use Thinner to erase and be done with it), then you're likely to play a Scrapper. A more rough-and-tumble Mickey that doesn't have nearly as many friends in his corner, but is more powerful than his Hero version. There's also a Neutral option, but the core of it is that Spector, as in other projects he's worked on, wants to make sure you can progress through the game in the play-style that fits you.

It's extremely early, but from what Spector shows, I can see that Mickey moves and animates well. And yes, I do wish the visuals were a bit more HD-generation than what the Wii offers. Spector teases about other elements; he comments that "the game is a linear story" but doesn't offer more when asked about overall structure. When the Phantom Blot listens to Mickey's heart during the autopsy/examination, Spector slyly notes, "hearts are important, but I won't say why." The video demonstrates a sidequest where Mickey is asked to find more parts for Ro-Donald (my informal name for the Donald Duck doppelganger that Oswald has constructed to serve as his friend in the Cartoon Wasteland), but it doesn't show much beyond mission acceptance. Spector points out that Sketches are a secondary mechanic, such as using a TV sketch to distract enemies while a stopwatch slows time, but won't say more. He also notes that you collect tickets for economy, but won't say more about that either. He won't even explain what it means when something is "inert" as opposed to "painted."

The game is still a fair ways off, and it'll be a while before I actually see how paint, thinner, mission, enemies, and all that work together. But hearing how Spector talks about the game, and the sheer passion he has for both this title and Mickey himself, is enough for me to give it a closer look when Spector's ready to show more.

Check out the link for some more screenshots. Some of them are actually pretty cool.

[Valigarmander]

Warren Spector Addresses Disparity Between Epic Mickey Concept Art And Screenshots

Remember when some crazy looking concept art for Epic Mickey leaked? The kind of art that showed off tanks modeled after the Seven Dwarves in Snow White or a giant whale with Spaceship Earth on its back? Some of you might feel a bit disappointed that the official screenshots released to date don't quite reflect on that crazy steampunk aesthetic, and during an interview, I asked Warren Spector to discuss the disparity between the leaked art and the official art today.

He answers, "There are a couple aspects to that. I think I've mentioned before, that I'm a big believer in finding out where the line is by pushing past it. There are lines that are on every project; every project exists in a creative box. For most of my games, I create that box and the team has to sort of work within it. In this case, there's a creative box that I create, and there's the creative box that Disney overlays on that. I know where my lines are, but I don't know where Disney's are. I had a lot of stuff generated that was very specifically designed to be provocative and to cross that line. I know it's too far -- or is it? You tell me. So it forces a confrontation or a decision. Some of what you saw was beyond the line, and so I learned something from it. Some of it was early design ideas that are no longer relevant. Some of it is stuff that's still in the game, and I'm not saying what."

Personally, I'm hoping that some weird tank that looks like Sleepy Dwarf's head with mechanical arms and treads is still in the final game.

Epic Mickey Was Conceived As A Trilogy

Even though Epic Mickey is about a year away, Warren Spector already jokes about what will be in Epic Mickey 2. So during a follow-up interview, I asked Spector the simple, and obvious, question, "is Epic Mickey a stand-alone adventure, or will it be a franchise?"

He bluntly replied, "I don't do anything that isn't extensible. And I will certainly feel like that I have not done my job if we can't make other games in this world with these characters. In my head, I've got two more planned. In the business world of reality, those games have not approved, and who knows if we'll ever see them. I had three games planned for Deus Ex, and you see where that got me."

In addition to talking about possible future installments, I asked Spector about whether all the projects that Junction Point was involved in were dropped or no longer his concern as a result of the Disney Interactive Studios acquisition, and he noted, "Dropped yes, no longer my concern, no; as part of the acquisition, Disney now owns the rights to the fantasy game that I was pitching -- which I would love to do someday. If Disney wants a big, epic, dragons-flying-in-the-sky-and-guys-using-elemental-magic kind of thing; there are some interesting ideas in that and I know how to make it Disney-fied, so I hope we get to do that someday. They even own the game rights to Ninja Gold -- the project I was working on with John Woo. God knows why, but if Disney ever wanted to produce a game based on a movie for Fox Atomic, they could; I'd love to take the challenge of Disney-fying Ninja Gold. But right now, nothing is happening with [those older projects]; they just sit there in my hard drive waiting, like in the Wasteland!"

Interestingly, even though the previous projects are in the Wasteland, so to speak, Junction Point is quietly making another game. Sort of. When asked if everyone at the studio is focused just on Epic Mickey, Spector replied, "You know, we are working on some other stuff in the early concept phase, but almost everyone is full-time, full-on Mickey."

Finally, on the subject of a game that Spector desperately wants to make, Duck Tales, he mused, "A week doesn't go by where I don't pressure Graham [Ed note: He's referring to Graham Hopper, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Disney Interactive Studios] or someone else to let me do it. But so far, we'll see what happens."

Epic Mickey Was Originally Slated For Xbox 360, PS3 And PC

You've seen the first Epic Mickey screens, now try to imagine them in high-definition. According to an Official Nintendo Magazine interview, Epic Mickey was originally supposed to be for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, only to be shifted to the Wii in 2008.

"It's burned in my brain - Graham Hopper [Disney Interactive boss] pulled me into my office one day and said 'What does it take to deliver on the goals we have for this product?" said designer Warren Spector.

"And I said, well, you need enough time and enough money to be competitive. And it'd be awfully nice if we could focus on one platform."

"At that time we were talking about a Wii port and I was begging people - no, we can't just port to the Wii, it's not going to work. It needs to be its own game. A lot of the design ideas just won't work on the Wii, we need to give the Wii its dues. Graham looked at me and said 'What do you think about a Wii exclusive?' And I went 'Holy cow - yeah!"

The rest, as they say, is history. Spector lauded Disney Interactive for "walking away from three other platforms - no other publisher on the planet would have done that. It was a magic moment for me. No one has even mentioned other formats since that point."

We'll see how well that decision ultimately pans out. Look for Epic Mickey this time next year.

[Valigarmander]

Disney Still Open to Releasing Epic Mickey on Xbox 360 and PS3

Epic Mickey's lovely concept art won it some early buzz, but that excitement was tempered a bit by the appearance of the first screens. Will it move to another platform besides the Wii though?

"We have a very large audience base that has Wiis in their home," Disney's Graham Hopper said during a DICE 2010 group interview (via Gamasutra).

"That's not to say that we won't go to other platforms [in the future]."

Yes, Disney is definitely keeping its options open. But for now, it's just that. Epic Mickey is still a Wii exclusive.

It'll be out September 16.

[Deepfake]

Hmm those screens aren't jiving with the killer concept art. Let's hope they polish this up better.

[Valigarmander]

I wonder who the target audience is for this game?

[Metal Mario]

^Kids.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

^ Sarcasm?

[Metal Mario]

^Oh.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

^ Eh?

[Metal Mario]

^Hm.

[Greenmarioman]

^ Combo breaker!

Val, probably teens. I don't think it'll be very dark at all.