![]() ![]() So it really had to be about the metal, and we were never going to compromise that. Heavy metal sings about fantasy themes, and it sings about epic Norse mythology and all this crazy stuff of legends that other music doesn’t have. It’s got to be heavy metal”, because of the lore. And I was like “No, it’s got to be… it can’t even really be just hard rock. One publisher even brought up country as an alternative. But the first time we pitched the game to publishers (around 2005, before the first Guitar Hero) there was some pressure to change the genre of music to hip hop. That was always the way we were going to do it. TS: It definitely made it easier for the pitch. Do you think that the rise of Guitar Hero and all those other games giving metal more of a mainstream outlet, especially in the video game world, taking authentic and underground metal bands, paved the way for you to really go all out with Brutal Legend and make an authentic experience, instead of doing something that might have been a tamer version? You can tell that Brutal Legend was made with a great deal of reverence and affection for metal, and it’s not just a caricature of what some people think metal is. And yes, someone asked what happened to Dio. Whether it’s the amazing cameos from Ozzy, Lemmy, Halford, Lita Ford and others, the best metal soundtrack in the history of gaming, or just the bad ass gameplay, you’ve heard about this game.īrutal Legend creator and President of Double Fine Productions Tim Schafer (who also created the much-beloved cult game Pyschonauts ) and Musical Director Emily Ridgway took a break from the usual video game press circuit for a special round-table call with Metal Insider and other lowly metal literati to dig deep on making a commercially-viable yet still authentic metal game, bringing in metal legends as talent, picking that insane soundtrack, and metal’s ability to be simultaneously ridiculous and mighty. The player would play a pyro solo on his guitar, which would free the statue from its straps, causing it to spread its wings in freedom and the bright red gag ball would fly off and roll around the world like a ball.You’ve all been salivating over Brutal Legend, the game that’s had every metalhead talking. Taking this into account, we made the statues bound with leather studded straps and placed a red ball gag put in the mouths of the serpents. The visual design for the Tainted Coil was an unusual combination of the paintings of 16th century artist Hieronymus Bosch and the Bondage/S&M scene. “I came up with the idea that there were ancient statues that the Tainted Coil demons had defaced. Tim wanted the player’s actions to the make the world better in some way (“to create beauty simply by rocking”). The problem was that everything we came up with involved the player doing something that was destructive, making the world look more desperate, or downtrodden. These were elements that we could put all over the world that the player could do a guitar solo on and get some rewards for exploring the open world. I do remember that we were having trouble coming up with the design for the “Bound Serpents”. In fact it’s so common place, I’m not sure I can come up with a great example. “When you work with Tim Schafer, there are a lot of jokes and lot of crazy ideas that end up the game. It’s an imperfect process, filled with both successes and failures, but it’s something we try and do well at Double Fine.” Gameplay is a very iterative process, so finding ways to account for that in the visual design is key. With environments, for example, it’s a close connection between the space design and the actual moment to moment gameplay that makes the world really rich. ![]() “Something that felt great earlier might need some lovin’ later in development because other parts of the game have changed. But it is how well the game harmonizes with itself that makes for good art design. One of the things that makes big games difficult is that it’s hard to see how all of the elements are fitting together until relatively late in development. We employ agile development when making our games–so every two to four weeks the entire company is always looking at the game and thinking about how well some of the pieces are working together. ![]() Although we have a process, with defined milestones, for making a “level” once we’re in production, games evolve pretty organically. ![]()
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