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Interview with Tim Schafer - pt. 2
Brutal Legend's Tim Schafer talks Grim Fandango and Tales of Monkey Island in the second part of our exclusive interview.
Written by David Scammell, 29 September 2009
In the second part of our exclusive three part interview with Brutal Legend developer Tim Schafer we discuss why there hasn't yet been a follow-up to Grim Fandango, the rise of co-op and Tales of Monkey Island...
GamerZines: Do you have a lot of different ideas for sequels, then, or is it simply more difficult to develop a follow-up game?
Tim Schafer: I don't know - I've never done it except for Day of the Tentacle. And Monkey Island.
GZ: Talking of that, have you played the new Tales of Monkey Island?
TS: No, not yet. I've been in crunch mode where I haven't been playing anything except for Brutal Legend. Like, at night I come home and write down a bunch a bugs and log them all the next morning. But actually I just started playing games again and that's definitely going to be one of the first games I play.
GZ: On the idea of creating sequels though, do you think it would be difficult to come up with new ideas and scenarios for the same set of characters?
TS: It wasn't for Monkey. It was hard to reset the relationship between Guybrush and Elena, that's the tricky thing. Because the first one was all about them getting together, and then in the second one they've got to have problems so they can get together again, but you can only pull that off twice - you can't have them constantly breaking up and getting back together again. Or you could, and that would be fun. I mean, I'm hopeful that people want you to make the old games again, but then that they play the new game and forget all about the old one?
GZ: Yeah, but we would love to see a new Grim Fandango?
TZ: Yeah?
GZ: No??
P3Zine Issue 32
For our latest Brutal Legend coverage, click here to download P3Zine Issue 32 for free.TS: That's what makes it special though, you know? It's like wishing that the British version of The Office kept going. It was good, but...
GZ: Brutal Legend's a fairly different focus for you, with a lot of emphasis on action. How deep does the game's combat system go?
TS: We try to give you a lot of choice so you have your axe and your guitar, and a lot of choices in the combos you can unlock. But we also have these things called double-team attacks which every friendly warrior that joins your battle can do. Press the Y button and they do a special move together, so the headbangers will form a mosh pit around you or the razor girls will jump on your shoulders and shoot with their special weapon. So whenever you're fighting you have the choice of using any of these double-team attacks, and some of them give you a vantage point high up over the battlefield, some let you step on your enemies with their giant feet. laughs
GZ: Were there any plans to implement co-op then, given these double-team attacks?
TS: No. In the multiplayer mode you can have co-operative teams of four versus four in the stage battle mode of gameplay. But the combat is a focus of ours; it is a game about batting in a heavy metal world.
GZ: A large part of the game is made up of vehicle sections, but driving is often seen as the low-point in action games. How have you countered that to make driving just as enjoyable as the rest of the game?
TS: Well, we started with the cars; it was one of the first things we implemented. It uses Havok which takes care of a lot of the driving for us, but I just like Hot Rods - we had Hot Rods in Grim Fandango with the Bone Wagon. The action is the core of Brutal Legend's gameplay, and this is how it started and what we worked on first, so it's not like we tacked it on at the end.
GZ: So is Brutal Legend what you'd call your game, the game you've always personally wanted to make?
TS: It's definitely a culmination of a lot of ideas and thinking back through the years, and a lot of thing I've liked and toyed with in games for a while, like having a roadie character like we did in Day of the Tentacle or having cars driven by demons like we did in Grim Fandango, all the stuff we did in Full Throttle with the bikes and the music, so it's great to finally just do it.
Check back tomorrow for the third and final part of our exclusive interview with Tim.
Brutal Legend launches on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 16th.
Brutal Legend coverage available in P3Zine Issue 32 - click here to download it for free!
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