Interviews// Warren Spector Talks Epic Mickey

Enemies come in the form of Spatters, which can be easily erased or befriended; and the menacing Beetleworx that take design cues from various annals of Disney animation. These latter foes cannot be completely destroyed, for they are built with largely an inert substance – in as much as you can manipulate cartoony, Disneyfied objects in the game world, so too are there things that are made of a creepy, inert design, which cannot be modified by Mickey's paintbrush at all. There are even NPCs that offer opportunities in the game, in the form of Gremlins – a creation of both Walt Disney and Roald Dahl in the 1940s for a feature film that never got made.

Speaking generally of the world that players will explore in Epic Mickey, Spector notes the creation of the game's central setting – The Cartoon Wasteland. Sounds like something out of Fallout 3, right? “Well, think of it as limbo for the animation world. We found all of these characters and things in the Disney archives and I got to wondering, 'Where do all the forgotten cartoons go?' From that, I designed the Cartoon Wasteland, which is like a purgatory for unused characters.

“Mickey gets sent to the Wasteland before his time, and you initial aim is to get out of there,” Spector continues, “but the more you play through the more Mickey realises that he has inadvertently been the cause of all the devastation that is taking place in the land, so that puts you in a moral choice as to whether you want to help all of these cartoons and make things right or if your plan is simply to think for yourself.”

How they want Mickey to act is ultimately up to the player. The character changes depending on how you play the game – from a Hero that stands tall and gains respect, to a Neutral happy-go-lucky mouse, all the way down to a Scrapper that arches his back and runs with a mischievous grin. Spector feels that the choices that can be made will allow the player to re-imagine Mickey as they want, rather than by how the director of a game does. “It's easy for me to say 'this is why Mickey is cool'. What we should be asking is 'What makes Mickey cool to you?'”

Your choices even extend to the opportunities and benefits you earn in game. During the showcase, I was treated to a walkthrough of a level where Mickey met a robotic Donald Duck – a creation of Oswald to make himself some friends. You have the chance to collect missing pieces of the robot duck and return them to him – or you can find a Gremlin who'll take those robot parts in exchange for more power. More power, or moral standing... can be a tough choice for some.

Boss battles can even be avoided in this game, provided you help them rather than agitate them. But it won't always be easy to think of how each boss character can be settled; “I had a meeting with John Lasseter (CCO of Disney's Animation Studios) and he gave me some advice on how to develop this game” Spector said.

“John recalled his time with Toy Story and told me he had to think to himself 'What does a toy want?', and urged me to think about what a cartoon wants, ultimately. So every character in the game has a want or desire for something here.”

At the end of the day, Warren Spector has a desire to simply remind Mickey Mouse that he is still a hero. Rounding off his chat with me, the designer spoke of how he wanted the character to return to being fun, funny, youthful (to a degree) and as mischievous as his very early cartoons suggest (“It's okay to be a little bit mischievous sometimes”). Only time will tell if he succeeds in his mission.

Epic Mickey is a Wii exclusive and is due for a 2010 release.