A closer look at the Legendary preorder bonus

By Stephen Munn | August 14, 2008

My copy of the preorder bonus items for the upcoming September release of Legendary arrived today, and I thought I’d give you all a look at what the publisher’s doing to try to score a preorder out of you.

Firstly, there’s the DVD, shown in the picture at left, of course. It’s got parts one and two of the developer behind-the-scenes video. The first one can be watched right here, and the second one’s right here. In addition to those are a trailer and videos covering the weapons and the creatures in the game. Naturally, you can watch those videos here and at the linked locations, but they look so much better running in progressive scan off your DVD player, not to mention upsampled to HD, if you’ve got the resources for that.

The real draw here, though, is the art book that’s tucked inside the DVD case. It’s a tight little design with a lot of concept art showing the characters and monsters in the game. The literature included with my sample tells me the following:

Personally assembled and laid out by Steve Firchow, Art Director for Legendary, this art book shows how the creatures in the game got their unique look, from conception to completion. The enclosed DVD gives fans a behind the scenes look at the game in all its griffony glory.

The art book is a saddle-stitched booklet, not a hardcover book as pictured when the bonus was announced. The result is that, as I mentioned, the art book fits inside the folder that the DVD is in, which works very well for me. I can place that folder on the shelf right where the game belongs, between Phantom Hourglass and Mario and Luigi, while I wait for it to release, periodically pulling the art book out to look at the pretty pictures. Man, those griffons look sick.