It was a real treat to get the email last week from Disney Interactive Entertainment for an Epic Mickey Developer call.  Normally, I would never be all that into a Disney event, but any chance that I can be on the same line as Warren Spector is a treat indeed.  The man that brought to life so many worlds for hardcore gamers like me is now breathing new life into Mickey Mouse on the Wii this fall.  It has been several years since Mickey has been in a video game, and if you had to have a developer kicking rust off of a franchise, you can’t go wrong with Warren Spector at the helm.  In the phone call, several questions are tackled, but at the end of the day, there was so much to cover and so little time to get to it all.  But sit back and take a break from your day with some talk about Epic Mickey from Junction Point Studios and Disney Interactive Studios.

In the Beginning

It was funny to find out that the Epic Mickey was not the game that Warren was looking to develop at Disney.  It seems that his initial pitch was for something completely different, something a little more sci-fi in nature, but Disney shot it down, instead pitching him on the idea of making a game starring the most popular mascot at Disney, Mickey Mouse.

It seems that Disney had been planning a reboot for Mickey Mouse for awhile, and with Warren Spector being a rather large fan of the House of Mouse, they pitched him on the idea of creating a game with Mickey in the lead.  Stranger still is the fact that the whole idea about the Wasteland and forgotten concepts was not something that Warren brought to the table, but was one of the core points that Disney had used as a starting point for their Mickey Project. 

Developing a Focus

With the concept under his belt, Warren was then granted carte blanche access to the Disney vault, a series of storage facilities under the main Disney Studios facility.  It was here that Warren came up with the idea of using items that had been long forgotten.  While it was a hardened rule, there were a handful of exceptions made for critical pieces that they felt needed to be in the game. But for the most part, Junction Point Studios limited themselves to work that involved Walt Disney himself, which started in 1928 and ended with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in 1967.

The game will also have a lot of real world places as well as animated spots.  Things like a version of the Small World ride will be in the game, as well as items like The Tiki Room and the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.  The key was to use places that might be lesser known, or forgotten in a certain incarnation.  Not sure if this means you will see a pre-ethnically cleansed Small World ride, but it would be funny if it happened.

When asked about why Warren Spector would be more interested in developing a Mickey Mouse game over another Deus Ex game or some other branching FPS title that he is known for, he brought up some of his background, noting that before he was in the game development business, he worked for Steve Jackson Games writing tabletop game manuals for such properties as the Toon and Bullwinkle and Rocky pen and paper RPG titles.

The Darker Side of Mickey

Now much has been said about Epic Mickey and that we see a far darker side of Mickey Mouse.  A lot of this came out of early leaked development shots that showed a Mickey Mouse that looked downright evil at times.  Warren commented on this, stating that the leaked drawings were in fact a genuine leak, and that they were done during a concept phase, where a lot of art was being created for the game.  None of it was final production art, but more ideas and concepts that were being pitched for Epic Mickey.

That said a lot of people found the ideas behind Epic Mickey to be a lot more dark and depressing than you would find in a typical Disney project.  No so says Warren Spector.  He found that when you look back at some of the early works from Walt Disney, there was some rather dark subject matter when you looked beyond the top layer of the animated story.  Epic Mickey also takes place in a world where things have been forgotten.  It is a depressing location, because these things have been forgotten by the real world, and only exist as a distant memory for most.  The player’s goal in Epic Mickey is to bring light to this dark world in the form of colorful paint, offsetting the drab colors of Wasteland.

On a lighter note, it should be noted that the main idea behind Epic Mickey is to hit the consoles with a great Mickey title that can put Mickey Mouse on the same level in the video game world as a Master Chief or Mario.  The character is one of the most recognizable figures in the world and it seems funny that he has never had a huge footprint in the video game world.  Disney hopes that Epic Mickey can change that perception with gamers.

The Paint Brush is a Mighty Weapon

One of the questions that garnered a fantastic response from Warren Spector was the idea of using a paint brush as a weapon.  It seemed so harmless, and yet in the world of Wasteland, the paint brush is the most powerful weapon you could have as it can be used to bring life to the drab world.  But the paint brush was not always in the mix.  It seems that the paint brush came into play when Alan Barney (sp?), a writer and Alex Durand, a programmer got involved with Epic Mickey.  While still in the early development phase, Warren had given some ideas to the developers on what he was looking to do.  He never really thought about a paint brush, but the pair of developers went about designing a sequence with the paint brush and it has been there ever since.

Warren loved the idea of the paint brush, not only because it never looked like an imposing weapon, but because it could pay homage to all the storyboard artists that put in so much work on animated features, but none of their work gets to see the light of day.

The Point At Which You Decide to Buy In on the Story

While I have stated up front my indifference to most things Disney, I have followed development of Epic Mickey from its early phases, if only because of Warren Spector.  One of the big questions asked was about crafting a solid story in a game where the character is mass marketed to children.  Warren came flat out and stated that most game stories are completely terrible, including some of the games that he has worked on.  However, he stated that you can have a story that works on two levels for both parents and children and does not sacrifice amusement or depth for either player.  He then started to talk about how Mickey found this world, Wasteland and that when he went into it, he saw that he had unleashed a massive amount of damage to the world.  He had inflicted pain and chaos upon the land.  Mickey starts to feel a sense of sadness as he realizes not only the wrong that he has done to the world, but what has come of the residents of Wasteland.

See, as Mickey travels through Wasteland, he starts to meet people and characters that he remembers, but had long forgotten.  It forms a genuine sadness, not only with the character in the game, but the player that is navigating the world.  And that pain only gets worse when Mickey finds out that he not only has a brother, but that his brother hates him for everything that he has become.  See, Oswald is a long lost Walt Disney creation that did not pan out, and was left to be forgotten, and in his place, came Mickey Mouse, a character that ended up becoming hugely famous and world renown.  Oswald holds Mickey in contempt for taking his fame, and Mickey does not really known how to handle this, and it again causes an emotional response not only for the character, but for the player.

In these few short minutes of the conversation, I had immediately become a fan of Epic Mickey.  Story is a main focus in a game, and to take a character that embodies fun and excitement and put him into a situation that is not only uncomfortable, but makes him realize that everything is not roses and candy is extraordinary.  Sure, the game is not out yet, and it may not play out like this in the real world, but just attempting to create something that heady, sound like a lot of fun.

Closing Thoughts

Some of the areas that the team at Junction Point Studios is looking to put in the game were created by using thousands of photos from the Disneyland theme park early, before the park was opened to customers.  This allowed for things like textures from surfaces and paint from areas to be recreated as it looks in the real world, without having to resort to photo realistic environments in the game.  The team wanted places to be recognizable, but not directly drawn from photos.

For those that boil a game down to gameplay and length of game, we will close with these last little bits of info.  A lot of play testing went into creating Epic Mickey.  It seems that people of all ages and play skills were brought in to test out the game for difficulty and length.  While no promises were made, it seems that plays were ranging from 12-28 hours and the average play time was 16 hours.  However, you will find yourself going back to the game multiple times to find all the solutions to puzzles.  Also, each puzzle can be solved in multiple ways, with the straight forward approach taking the shortest time, while harder paths can be used, with more rewards along the way.  It should allow Epic Mickey to cater to a wide range of fickle tastes.

With our conversation coming to a close, it was amazing to hear all the ideas that Warren Spector, Junction Point Studios and Disney Interactive Studios have for Epic Mickey.  This does not sound like some shallow cash in on a license, nor does it seem like Disney has brought in a developer for his name to help sell copies.  And while some people were unhappy with the lack of answers on other platforms, Wii owners should end up with a high quality gaming experience on their console with Epic Mickey.  Epic Mickey hits on November 30^th, 2010.