The Brutal Legend Demothon was yesterday and it was a blast to watch. This livestream'd inside-look into the makings of Tim Schafer's latest pet project gave a lot of insight and a lot of laughs.
The premise of it was that an ancient god, Ormagoden, contacted Tim via instant message and told him that if there weren't 666 million downloads of the demo (which became available to XBL Gold members on the 24th of September, and all users on October 1st) then everyone in the world would get swineflu.
Here's the video that they just happened to have of the instance:
So in an attempt to avoid world-wide swineflu Tim enacted the official Brutal Legend Demothon, an event that would involve live streaming video from Doublefine Studios, Tim's company which also put out Psychonauts (one of my favourite games which deserves its own post), and time with some of the people behind the making of this metal-tastic game.
If you missed it, sucks for you. But if you were there right as 12pm hit then you and many, many others were anxiously waiting as we saw a Brutal Legend sticker and some random shadows in the background.
Apparently they were having some technical difficulties and didn't get the show started until about 12:30, but that's okay! We fans of metal, as well as video games, were patient as they got their shit together.
As I was busy filling out job applications while watching this I didn't take down all the names of those that appeared in front of my screen, but I did managed to pick up some interesting tidbits about the game-making process as well as just how silly some people are willing to act in front of the internet.
Some things we already knew, like the game is totally open and you can explore almost every corner of the map; no invisible walls that just suddenly appear and keep you from going further. Obviously you can't climb over the backdrop of mountains but it's impressive to think of how much time they spent on this to make the most of this fantasy-metal world. I can only imagine how many in-game hours will be spent just walking (or driving) around and discovering all the little nooks and crannies.
There are also many side quests which will break the ennui that would come with having nothing to do in a game but walk around. I'm imagining something along the lines of the Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls calibur where random battles break out between NPCs and little settlements are looking for their own personal hero to help them with their woes.
I think this game will have a certain edge than the Bethesda titles mentioned because in Brutal Legend you get a posse, and they are headbangers. What more could you ask for? You can instruct your little headbanger army to attack or defend anything that stands in your way, and moreso when you get into the multiplayer.
Yes, the multiplayer! This is actually how the Brutal Legend gameplay originated, as we learned from the livestream (and for you more news-savvy gamers, from certain gaming websites*). Tim Schafer is a huge fan of metal and already wanted to make a game like this many many years ago, like back in the mid-90s when he created Full Throttle. FT was a biker-adventure game for the computer released under LucasArts when Tim still worked there and you can see many elements and influences from it in what we've seen of Brutal Legend thus far.
Tim has a lot more than he did back then, his own developing studio for one, so he was finally able to create a game all about metal and rock to call his very own.
*Joystiq.com article 8 Jan 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment