1UP launches week-long Brutal Legend article series

1UP has just launched a Brutal Legend article series that will feature wordy delights about Brutal Legend and its creator Tim Schafer every day this week, starting with the first that appeared last night.

The aforementioned first article takes a detailed look at Tim Schafer’s life, spanning a whopping eight pages and delving into things ranging from early bands he was in to how he ended up making the games we all know and love. Here’s one little gem from Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert:

“We had a job opening for a programmer on Monkey Island and received a stack of resumes. Tim didn’t submit a normal resume. He did it as a comic showing him getting interviewed, accepting the job, and showing up to work on his first day. We all laughed a lot and then there must have been some clerical error somewhere up the chain and we hired him.”

Also look forward to discussion about Tim’s past games, what other people in the games industry of him and his legendary games, and of course some Brutal Legend tidbits. Judging by the quality of this first instalment, this is going to be a terrific week of articles.

Here’s the full list of features on the agenda:

1. Tim Schafer Profile (March 30th, 2009)
2. Metal Movies That Should Be Games (March 31st, 2009)
3. 10 Things You Don’t Know (April 1st, 2009)
4. Retrospective Blogs (April 2nd, 2009)
5. Brütal Legend Preview (April 3rd, 2009)

Thanks to Justin Cogley for being on the ball and letting me know about this!

The Brutal Art of Brutal Legend

The ‘Brutal Art of Brutal Legend’ panel is now over at this year’s Game Developers Conference, and going off Kotaku’s write-up it sounds like it was a pretty superb showing:

“Here are the ingredients to a successful GDC panel: visually entertaining slides, more than one trailer, halfway-decent public speaker, a game that’s actually coming out in the near future. And Tim Schafer.”

Aside from a lot of technical talk — this is a game developers conference, after all — Double Fine art director Lee Petty talks about the challenges of making a huge open-world game that’s so artistically rich, and has all sorts of different themes to portray (goth, emo, etc).

He also stresses how important good sky art is, seeing as it fills at least half the screen in many games and yet is often neglected by developers. Sounds like they’re doing a great job of doing the sky justice:

“A tranquil orange evening sky turned into a swirling cyclone of purple with long streaks of lighting, then it became a clear blue daytime dotted with fluffy white clouds before melting into a pitch-black night lit up by a meteor shower.”

There’s no word on whether or not we’re actually going to see the videos used to demonstrate the game during this presentation, although there’s supposedly another embargo that ends in a week so they may appear around then. Unless some naughty site with little integrity goes ahead and posts them anyway!

Update

[March 28th at 12:42am GMT+1] Game developer favourite Gamasutra has now unleashed its write-up of the talk, which goes into quite a bit more detail than Kotaku’s.

Kotaku snaps Brutal Legend concept art

With the Game Developers Conference that I wrote about a couple of months ago now underway, new Brutal Legend media is starting to spill onto the internet. Although the Brutal Legend-related talks at GDC haven’t yet taken place, Double Fine has allowed the press to take a look around their studio and see what’s going on.

There’s currently an embargo on posting specific details about the game; however, gaming blog Kotaku has been granted permission to post their photos of the visit, which showcase a whole load of Brutal Legend concept art and other Double Fine paraphernalia.

There’re at least a few dozen pieces of concept art visible in Kotaku’s high-resolution photos, complete with various captions and whatnot which hint at the kind of things we’re going to see in the game. We can see new enemies named, maps of areas in the game, and various other interesting tidbits.

Once GDC has settled down I’ll take the time to dissect these a bit and work out what exactly they reveal, but if you spot anything interesting in the photos don’t hesitate to post a comment!

Thanks to Jeff Moeller for giving me a remarkably fast heads-up on these.

Brutal Legend potentially getting a Wii release

Extremely popular Nintendo blog GoNintendo has a pretty tasty scoop today concerning a number of EA’s and Activision Blizzard’s 2009 release schedules, courtesy of an anonymous source.

How exactly this person happens to have access to these particular two publishers’ information is unknown, but GoNintendo does place some trust in the source due to it being correct in the past.

The release schedule covers all sorts of games and platforms, but the most intriguing is of course the revelation that Brutal Legend is going to get a Wii version, and that all three will come out in Autumn 2009.

I’ll be getting the higher-definition version for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 I reckon, but if true it’s excellent that Brutal Legend’s audience is being expanded quite significantly.

Game Informer preview now available

I’ve been provided with scans of the Game Informer preview mentioned the other day, which spans a couple of pages — albeit only one with text — and comes with some nice shots that I don’t believe have been seen elsewhere.

It doesn’t talk so much about the game itself, but instead about the publishing issues that’ve plagued Double Fine for a second time:

“We were suffering from the same lack of information that everyone was for a long time,” Shafer explains. “We’d heard there was going to be a merger, and we thought, ‘Oh, there’ll be shenanigans around the bend.’ Sure enough, shenanigans came.”

Tim Schafer also reveals that Brutal Legend’s development did come perilously close to being shut down due to lack of funding, a problem that’s always going to be snapping at your heels when you’re left without a publisher:

“Regardless of the setbacks the game encountered throughout 2008, Double Fine avoided shutting down production, though Schafer admits the potential was looming in the final weeks before the deal was struck.”

Fortunately their worries during the aforementioned final weeks were unnecessary, as we all know the happy ending: Electronic Arts moved in and saved the day. Be sure to check out the scans!