Disney's the last place you'd look to for horror, but it seems like they're going there. There's a new Wii-exclusive game coming out under the working title of EPIC MICKEY. It features dystopian Disney settings and eerie, steampunk versions of their characters. I'm posting early concept art for it, and here's the game's premise:
Before Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, there was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. That's actual history, not just some made-up shit, but the game's using his obscurity as its springboard. The conceit is that once upon a time, Mickey inadvertantly spilled paint thinner onto the magical model of Oswald's world, unknowingly leaving it scarred and twisted. Mickey goes on to fame and fortune, but Oswald and his people languish in this hellish Disney World, culminating in the kidnapping of Mickey to take revenge on him in their world.
Here are some glimpses of that world...
(click to enlarge)
that is pretty messed up and creepy.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty fascinated by it. On one level twisted fairy tales are trite, but...this is officially sanctioned DISNEY, and that's noteworthy. And the designer, Austinite Warren Spector, worked on one of my favorite first person games, Thief: The Dark Project along with some of the games that paved the way for BioShock.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually very bold of Disney. Spector apparently declined the game offer initially, telling Disney's guys, "You've done an incredibly good job of making Mickey lame and irrelevant to anybody over the age of eight over the last thirty years. I don't do games for kids."
But then they said he could pretty much do what he wanted with the property. And apparently the game will have cool mechanics like the ability to draw stuff into the world with the Wii-remote, or, on a more destructive level, to erase things. It's supposed to involve moral choices, with the act of drawing being considered "good" and erasing to be destructive and "evil."
kewl.
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