Interview: Warren Spector talks Epic Mickey: Power of Two. Consequences, Challenges and Wii U

If there was anyone who was going to create a game such as Epic Mickey it had to be Warren Spector. He’s not only a great game developer but also one of the biggest Mickey Mouse and Disney fans out there. Now Warren and his team at Junction Point studios are back to tackle the Epic Mickey world once again.

The original Epic Mickey was a Wii exclusive, now with the game on more platforms than you can shake a Wii Remote at, we chat to Mr Spector on the challenges of developing for multiple systems, find out some more about the Wii U version of the game, Warren’s love of Disney and the improved choice and consequences game play.

Vooks: So, Epic Mickey 2 is all complete now, and it’s only couple of weeks away. What do you think was the biggest challenge you had with this game, compared to the last one?

Warren: Oh, that’s easy man. The biggest challenge was going from one platform to, I should probably count them out, but I think eight. Designing an experience, that works deeply well on all platforms, dealing with the differences in rendering capabilities, and rendering style, so it looks good and played well on all platforms, coordinating the biggest team I ever want to work with in my life.

Thank god for Paul Weaver, my studio director, who did most of the heavy lifting on that front, but just coordinating 800 people, 10 locations now around the world was intense, let me tell you, by far the toughest problem.

Vooks: So you’ve had the Wii U under lock and key for little while, when did that version get started and how did you keep it a secret for so long?

Warren: There are couple of things to be clear, you know, they [Nintendo] never made the dev kit available, at least to us, until fairly late in the process. So, you know, I can’t say we were working on this thing for years now, that’s for sure. You didn’t to keep a secret as long as you might think. We put together a proposal that got kicked around at Disney, and Nintendo for long time. At the end of the day we probably seriously started working on it about 6 months ago. I just have to be clear about the one thing. All of the creative and asset generation was driven out of Junction Point, my studio. We controlled all of the versions of the game, but the Wii U version was actually implemented by a team that was partly at Avalanche, one of our sister’s studios in Salt Lake City and at Heavy Iron our external developers. We didn’t have to take that one on here. They were part of our enormous extended team, like Blitz, on the PS3 and 360 versions.

Vooks: The first game was a Wii exclusive, with the game being on so many platforms now, how have the controls been adapted to the the new platforms?

Warren: Well, we certainly spent a lot of time working on that. And they are very, very different. I think it’s going to boil down to personal preference. The motion control, the gestural control that the Wii Remote offers is really powerful for precise aiming, and precision thinking, which kind of interestingly makes it very well suited to adult play. Adults tend to not want to look foolish, they tend to play less and think more, you see what I mean?  But since that precision aiming isn’t really possible in the same way with the standard controller, or game pad. What you do is, you see people pick up those controllers, and sort of spray, hitting the thing they want to target in passing, which is very much the way children play with a Wii Remote in their hands. So, it encourages a different kind of play, which I found kind of intriguing, I’m really curious to see how that’s plays out when real people get their hands on the game.

I think you’re going to see that people will pick their platforms, in part based on the controllers that they find more appealing. And then, adopt play style that’s best suited to the controls. It was a big challenge, make no mistake about it, but you’ll tell us how we did it, I’m sure.

Vooks: Just quickly, again with the Wii U version. With Epic Mickey 2 you have have Oswald as a computer controlled assistant the entire time. When someone drops in the second player takes control of him and the screen splits. With the Wii U version, does the game still have split screen or can one player be on the GamePad and one on the TV?

Warren: It’s still split screen. Mickey uses the GamePad and Oswald uses the Wii Remote that you attach to the Wii U.

Vooks: You guys worked on the camera lot,  we’ve been watching a lot of interviews with you, we won’t ask you about it again. That was pretty much the only big complaint people had about the first one. What was the biggest thing you wanted to fix in the second game, but maybe no one else talked about the first time around?

Certainly the thing that no one really talked about was, is what I call the choice and consequences, the decision that I make, I don’t know if I talk about that before. I kind of got cold feet, on a choice, on the consequence side of choices. When we started testing the first game with kids and non-gamers, who are obviously going to be attracted to game with Mickey Mouse as its star. They didn’t have the background that gamers have now in games like Deus Ex, BioShock, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic and Fable and all that stuff. They didn’t have that background and experience, so I saw them kind of not know what to do with the consequences.

[pullquote_right][in the first game] the consequences of those choices kind of reset themselves constantly, so there was nothing that really mattered a lot. I really wanted to deal with that. So, this time your choices are really important.[/pullquote_right]So we backed it off, we had to sort of locally, step by step you had the lot of choices, but the consequences of those choices kind of reset themselves constantly, so there was nothing that really mattered a lot. I really wanted to deal with that. So, this time your choices are really important. They really matter. You really do have to think about them. We’ll see how that will plays with the audience now that they have been exposed to idea of choices and consequence in the first game. That’s probably the big one.

The other thing that, we didn’t hear a lot, but we did hear, enough, was people wished we have done a little bit better job on player direction. It’s not much fun in games, at least for me, to have to go, what am I suppose to do, where am I suppose to go. It’s suppose to say, how do I do that. And so did a lot of work on players directions. So, you know where to go, and what to do. And the trick is figuring it how you want to solve it, not how we wanted you to solve it, but how you want to solve the problem to get past the challenge. Apposed to figuring out where the challenge is, or what the challenge is.

Vooks: So the choice and consequences aspect you mentioned earlier, you’ve done that in nearly all of your games previously. You mentioned that this time around the consequences have more of an impact that ever before. Can you tell us more about that?

When you go from map to map, when you return to a map you’ve already visited, which you’ll do in this game, what you did is, is going to be what you did. I mean, those changes, I call it persistence. The changes you make persist, they’re forever, until you decide to change them back. And there are many, many, many cases where, you know, destroy a wall, or erase part of a tree, I mean it’s forever. No matter how much you want to undo it, you can’t.

Open one path to get you a gold, and other pass that you might have taken with their own challenges and their own rewards, are completely inaccessible forever. I don’t want you thinking like agonising over. When we first started Deus Ex and first started testing Deus Ex with gamers. I called it paralysed by choice. They will get to an obvious choice point, cause we want to show players, hey, you’re about to make decision, think about this. They would sort of get paralysed, and don’t know what to do, because they’re not used to actually make choices. And you never want to paralyse people, but you do have to think about what you’re doing. Pick a play style because it’s going to matter.

Vooks: So, the characters of fully voiced this time are compare to mumbling, compare to last time as well?

Warren: Yeah, I didn’t mention that because we heard a lot about that. [laughs]. We then realised that a lot of players wanted their characters to talk, that’s for sure.

Vooks: You’ve got a big collection of Disney things in your archive, you even brought some to E3 this year. How was it, personally for you to be able to work on a Disney project again, and been given access to the archives?

[pullquote_right] I’m not often without words, I don’t even know how to describe it. Imagine like getting to do something that you will never thought you will get to do,  that you waited your whole life to do, and then you got to do it, that’s how I felt.[/pullquote_right]Let me put it in this perspective for you. When I signed with Disney, my Mum’s first comment wasn’t congratulations or are you crazy, which was kind of two extreme responses possible, it was like, it’s about time. So, getting to work with, as a Disney fellow, as an animation geek all my life, getting to work with Mickey Mouse, and reintroduce Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to the world, well how do you think it felt? It still blows my mind.

It blows my mind and Disney chose to reintroduce Oswald to the world in a video game, that wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago. And it blows my mind to this day, that we got to give him his voice for the first time. I mean, if you ever hear Oswald from now on, it’s going to be the voice that we gave in this game, working with those folks at Disney. The voice that came about, because the script we wrote for the game, character proof file and background information that we provided to the company.

I mean, that’s amazing, it was, I mean, I don’t even have words, I’m not often without words, I don’t even know how to describe it. Imagine like getting to do something that you will never thought you will get to do,  that you waited your whole life to do, and then you got to do it, that’s how I felt.

Vooks: Oswald is now a big star. Do you think he deserves his own movie or a TV show now?

I will be so bitterly disappointed if Oswald doesn’t get cartoons and TV shows and movies, more plush toys and more T-shirts, and Vinylmation. That little guy is a great character and if we did nothing else, if we just sort of showed the world that this Walt Disney’s first creation was as cool and compelling as his later ones. That would be a failure on our part I think. I’ll be very sad for Disney, if we don’t see a lot more about Oswald.

If you go to California Adventure now, there is a place called Oswald’s filling station. You can buy, there is not a lot of them, but you can buy Oswald pins now, t-shirts and what they call big figures, you know statues, and Christmas tree ornaments. You’re starting to see the beginning of Oswald merchandising. The next step is I think, get him on cartoons and movies, get him on TV, I mean we’ve got to do that, we have to do it.

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is available on the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC from November 22nd. The Wii U version of the game is due out on Wii U launch day which is November 30th.

The 3DS companion game, Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is also due out on November 22nd. We interviewed Peter Ong, co-founder and creative director of DreamRift and director of Power of Illusion here. You should read that too.

Thanks to Warren Spector for taking the time to have a chat with us, we’re really honoured to have the chance to speak you. Thanks to Drew from Suprise Attack as well for setting up the interview.