![]() "I think it works pretty well in the long run, though, because he's so over the top," he laughs. Flies buzz around rivers and lakes, and characters look grubby and weird - it's a grim kind of fairytale.Īs the lineage suggests, DeathSpank's not a particularly seriously-minded game, and Gilbert's willing to admit that there was always a danger that, caught in some infernal feedback loop, the project might simply lapse into the clichés it's trying to send up. ![]() ![]() That wasn't the only thing that clicked, by the looks of it: Gilbert's now Hothead's creative director. "They say they want stuff that's new and original, but they just want stuff that's like everything else." Eventually Gilbert ran into the team at Hothead (makers of Penny Arcade Adventures) and the project clicked. "Publishers say they want funny games, but then you pitch them one and they get scared," sighs Gilbert. Several years of pitching DeathSpank to publishers ensued it doesn't sound like it was a great deal of fun. Eventually, I did a little game design around him, and I kind of liked it." He appeared in a bunch of the strips, but the more I started to think about him, the more he became an interesting character to me, and his world just started to grow. We wanted him to be as stupid as possible, so we just called him DeathSpank. "For one episode, we needed this videogame character. "Clayton Kauzlaric, who I worked with on Total Annihilation, and I wanted an avenue for making fun of the games business, and the strip was perfect," he recalls. It started with a Flash comic strip on Gilbert's website, Grumpy Gamer. DeathSpank is a game about games it's a title born, it seems, from Gilbert's frustrations with the industry and its endless desire to circumnavigate the same old territory. But for once, the designers have earned the rights to their tatty old clichés. As for treasure? There are treasure chests lying around all over the place. In fact, it's practically drowning in everything you've come to expect in a videogame: explosive barrels, angry monsters and rattling skeletons. But I'm willing to let that one go: I've never fought a nun in a videogame, and when it comes to Gilbert's latest, I sense that taking on Whoopi Goldberg's crew is one of the milder distractions on offer.ĭeathSpank's rolling cardboard world is filled with things to do and people to hit. ![]() Well, if we're sharing, Ron, you have no idea how many nuns I've fought over the years. "If you've ever wanted to fight a nun, this is the game to do it in." "I'm betting," says Ron Gilbert, settling into a killer pause with the practiced air of a world-class vacuum cleaner salesman, "that you've never fought a nun before." He laughs, slightly frazzled after a day full of promotional interviews backstage at PAX. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |