LA Times interviews Tim Schafer and Jack Black

A bit of a gem managed to slip beneath the radar during the publisher news excitement the other day: an interview with both Tim Schafer and Jack Black, conducted by the venerable LA Times. Here’s a choice quote from Jack:

“I was a big fan of Tim’s Psychonauts game. That’s the amazing thing about this. Tim is the only person I would have done a video game with. And he’s the only one who’s ever asked me. It was… destiny.”

Also covered is how the two met, how Brutal Legend was conceived, and various talk about what the game is all about. So like any Schafer interview, well worth reading.

Don’t forget to tune in to Spike tonight!

Just a reminder that the Spike Video Game Awards are on tonight at 9pm EST, during which the first Brutal Legend gameplay footage will be shown. It’s unclear how much (or little) will actually be demonstrated, but it’s certainly something you won’t want to miss if you can access the Spike channel.

According to Spike they’ll be putting the Brutal Legend premiere up for viewing online, however there’s been no indication of how good the quality will be. As such, it’d be really awesome if those of you with the appropriate equipment could record the show yourself in the highest quality possible — just in case.

Brutal Legend designer Tim Schafer has confirmed that he’ll be attending the event, along with many other guests including the likes of 50 Cent, former Xbox 360 boss Peter Moore, 24’s Kiefer Sutherland, and brutal boxer Mike Tyson.

A pre-show for the awards will be airing at 8pm EST, and can also be watched online.

Update

[December 15th, 2008 at 2:16am GMT+0] The event has now been underway for just under 20 minutes, and it turns out that a live web stream is available. Enjoy!

Tim Schafer chats with GameSpot

Man, it’s been a pretty exciting 24 hours for Brutal Legend fans. After the big publisher reveal and a small interview with Eurogamer, the night ends with Tim Schafer talking to GameSpot about the EA publishing deal and continuing development of the game:

“Jack [Black] is still in the [recording] studio. He has a lot of lines, but he is a big gamer and so he was actually prepared for what he calls ‘the phone book’, the script of the game. There’s a section of the game where he really just has to curse out this evil demon who’s coming up to him, so it was just better to let him go with it than to try and write it.”

Be sure to read the interview at once.

Eurogamer interviews Tim Schafer

If you’re not already suffering from heart palpitations after this morning’s publishing announcement, perhaps we can do something about that.

Hot on the heels of the news that Electronic Arts is publishing Brutal Legend, Eurogamer has interviewed Tim Schafer about his totally-not-cancelled game. A small snippet from Tim Schafer:

“In Brutal Legend you’ll go into a world you haven’t gone into before, which is combinations of every single thing I’ve ever thought was cool in the world, all together in one place [...]  Brutal Legend is the natural evolution of awesome. I think you must take the next step, even if it is a giant step… The next logical, enormous step towards awesomeness that we’ve made.”

For that and more interesting discussion about the new publishing deal, Jack Black’s involvement, the game’s music, etc, be sure to read the whole interview! Muchas gracias to Ozzie for bringing this to my attention.

Electronic Arts announced as Brutal Legend publisher

Despite a lot of people dismissing Electronic Arts as a potential publisher of Brutal Legend after an earlier story about comments from the company’s CEO, it looks like the industry mega-giant is taking the game on after all.

The game’s official website at brutallegend.com is now redirecting to a non-existent page on EA’s servers, brutallegend.ea.com (you can see a screenshot of this error on the right). You will also find a button linking to this page on the sidebar of Double Fine’s Brutal Legend mini-site.

This domain change only seems to have been made today — it previously redirected to Sierra Entertainment’s old site — and a new post on the official Double Fine blog further bolsters the evidence of an imminent full-blown announcement.

At this point it seems fair to conclude that Electronic Arts is publishing Brutal Legend, and that a new site hosted by EA will be going up later today. Thanks to Nappi for pointing this one out.

Update

[December 12th, 2008 at 1:05pm GMT] And just over an hour later, it’s official: Electronic Arts is publishing Brutal Legend! Check out the new official site, which is little more than a splash page for now but undoubtedly be filled out following the gameplay demonstration on Sunday.

Update #2

[December 12th, 2008 at 1:16pm GMT] I’ve just received a press release from EA detailing the deal further. According to EA’s David DeMartini:

“Brutal Legend is shaping up to be a creative tour de force. At EAP, we are deeply committed to giving the industry’s elite independent developers a platform to launch their creations to a worldwide audience. Tim Schafer is known for some of the richest stories and characters in our industry, and with Jack Black offering his vocal styling’s for Eddie Riggs, we are extremely excited to help Tim and his talented team at Double Fine see their vision come to fruition.”

Brutal Legend has been given a new release schedule of Autumn/Fall 2009, which is one year beyond the original date — plenty of time for Double Fine to fine-tune their baby to sweet pefection, I guess. It’s still slated for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 only at this time.