Epic Mickey Preview [Wii]

30 Oct 2009 at 17:25:55 by John Robertson

How do you make Mickey Mouse relevant again? That’s the question that Warren Spector, Disney and the team at Junction Point Studios hope they’ve finally found an answer to.  Enter Epic Mickey, the game that Spector believes will turn the world’s most famous mouse from an image on a t-shirt back into one of the most beloved characters in animation - and presumably videogames.  Of course, making Mickey relevant to a modern audience is no easy task, requiring careful tweaking of his persona in a way that doesn’t tarnish, or diminish, the heritage of the character, or the Disney brand as a whole.  It’s something that Spector seems acutely aware of as he told us that “[Epic Mickey] can’t just be great, it needs to be Disney great”.

‘Disney great’, given the company’s long history, invariably means different things to different people, presumably making it exceptionally difficult to craft a game that will appeal to a broad audience while delivering on the elements quintessential to a good Disney movie – whatever those may be to you, personally.  For any kind of narrative product to work you need to make sure your characters and your plot are strong enough to tell the story you want to tell, failures in either category usually leads to disaster. 

While the majority of the plot is still being held under wraps we were treated to a brief glance into the adventure that awaits Mickey, and the characters he’ll meet along the way.  The game begins with a cut-scene in which Mickey is abducted, straight out of his bed, by a flying mass of black paint.  He’s taken to an alternative reality/universe known as the Cartoon Wasteland, a world inhabited by characters that have slowly faded from the public eye over the years.

It turns out that the person responsible for kidnapping Mickey is the Phantom Blot, a creepy, ghostlike character who hasn’t been seen for a number of decades but was first introduced back in 1939 with world domination his primary goal in life.  During the opening sequence, Mickey’s long lost, resentful older brother, Oswald (who is a rabbit rather than a mouse), is standing at the Phantom Blot’s side – presumably having assisted in Mickey’s capture.  Details on Oswald’s full role were difficult to extract, but he represents perfectly the kind of forgotten, jealous personality that has existed in the Wasteland, while Mickey has been living a life of comparative luxury and happiness away from it.  At this point Mickey doesn’t know that he even has a brother, and part of the opening act centres on that very realisation as well as the bombshell that Mickey’s own success may have just caused the creation of Cartoon Wasteland in the first place, as the characters Mickey has encountered and displaced over the years needed somewhere to live.

Acts two and three then move on to the ever-entertaining job of saving the world, saving yourself and putting an end to the Phantom Blot.  On paper the story sounds undoubtedly interesting, and the stylish visuals of the intro movie help draw you in, but the true quality – and whether it’s ‘Disney great’ – will not show itself until we get the opportunity to sit down with the game for a much lengthier play through.  Aside from Oswald, the Phantom Blot and Mickey Mouse himself, Spector confirmed that Donald Duck, Goofy and Black Pete will all make appearances in some form (with the latter used as a running gag/comedy act), although nothing was mentioned about their relevance to the story, or whether we’ll see any of the more recent Disney creations on our journey – Pixar characters, Lilo and Stitch, Lion King etc.

However, there was confirmation on three new sets of characters – Splatters, Bunnies and Beetleworx.  The Splatters and Beetleworx are both on the Phantom Blot’s payroll and act as his minions who’ll obey his every command without question.  Visually the Splatters are a globular mass of paint with a pair of skinny arms and legs stuck on to provide a humanoid appearance.  They look rather cute and cuddly in comparison to the Beetleworx, who are altogether more menacing, sporting a metallic outer shell and spider-like legs that left its torso high off the ground, making them roughly twice as tall as our hero with the famous set of ears. 

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