Audiences might credit Warren Spector with coming up entirely with Epic Mickey but it was actually a group of interns that sparked the idea of Mickey trapped in a twisted wasteland.
The concept pieces by Gary Glover and Fred Gambino set a tone for a dystopian world, which looked like a steampunk or post-apocalyptic wasteland with only a few, but prominent Disney set pieces scattered across the landscape.
The machinations featured in the concept pieces were combinations of the cartoon characters and theme park attractions. An amphibious Pete tank with tea cup turrets and cartoon arms reaching storming a beach and taking black and white cartoon characters. A gigantic paddlewheel ship / mechanical narwhal with enormous mechanical crab legs pulling the Spaceship Earth, the geodesic dome from Walt Disney World and water tower from Disney studios across an ocean.
Somewhere in the concept pieces the seeds of Epic Mickey were planted. Some elements translated well into game form, but far and wide the finished version of Epic Mickey had little to do with the concept art. Warren Spector was challenged to design a game that placed Mickey in an adventure, the likes of which had never been tried with the character. The Mouse would be trapped in a world, a twisted version of the one that inspired him, all for the sake of trying to get the character to resonate with modern gamers. But for many it seemed that the world in the final game was not as dark, mechanical or macabre as they would have wanted. What exactly did gamers and critics want? That would be tough to determine.
Metacritic gave Epic Mickey at a 73 out of 100 approval rating, whereas Disney's Guilty Party was rated at 78. This is not to say that Guilty Party was a bad game, but how was it possible so say that Epic Mickey was a worse game? Did it somehow lack the elements of play, control, animation, story or anything else that a Wii party game possessed? It could be endemic of a larger problem regarding ratings and genres, but I digress. I would like to challenge the critics of Epic Mickey, especially those that thought that Disney had made a better title this year. Show me where Epic Mickey was a worse game than anything else Disney released in 2010. Explain to audiences how this game was a letdown. The best I can do is take a guess at the design "flaws" that critics saw with the title.
Did the game suffer because Junction Point did not create a sandbox environment out of the Wasteland? A wide-open area for Mickey to travel in, jump on and explore? If this were a complaint did the critics not wonder how much time and effort that would have taken? The levels in Epic Mickey were crammed with hundreds of layers of detail. Every corner of the lands had their own specific layout, textures, palettes, and atmosphere. Just as each “theme” part of the real Disneyland had its own personality, with unique signage, decorative elements and even trash cans. There were no repeated elements from theme area to theme area, so that Tomorrowland would feel like a glimpse into the future and Frontierland always had a classic western feel. So too did the individual levels in Epic Mickey bear many layers of uniqueness. Colors, textures, layouts featured in the title were based on the work of the legendary Imagineers, like Mary Blair, Rolly Crump which I mentioned in previous blogs. Even the legendary Marc Davis, whose concept work on the Haunted Mansion was set to tell a story of a vengeful sea captain returning from the dead. This painting was never actually featured in the original attraction but helped add atmosphere to the game.
It was highly unlikely that Wii media had the memory capacity to hold an entire open world like those found in Grand Theft Auto and still had maintained the absurd level of detail that the individual theme portions maintained, inside and out. Even if the discs could hold that much data for textures and modeling, it would have taken years for Junction Point and Disney Interactive to have modeled a fully scaled-out Wasteland. Additionally, the concept art that gamers flocked to clearly showed miles of empty areas and oceans separating the park elements. What would gamers have done with miles of nothing to see or do? Where there gameplay elements in designs like that? Were the lack of interactive elements and miles of space what turned some gamers off of Shadow of the Colossus? The Wasteland featured in Epic Mickey was actually designed with the elements featured in the concept art and then given a purpose. Whether critics acknowledged this or not was something else.
Oceans and rivers of paint thinner separated the various theme levels. In order to bypass the thinner and get from park to park Junction Point added the movie projectors. It created a mechanic to allow players to transverse the levels and layered a game-within-a-game play element. Once outside of the projects gamers were sometimes met with the same twisted scenery, oceans of thinner and bold colors that were featured in the concept art.
Many of these twisted landmarks did not solely exist for the sake of shock value, they were given a purpose. For example, rather than place the Matterhorn Mountain in the Wasteland, Junction Point created a “Mickey Junk Mountain.” It was a mountain that was built on decades of Mickey merchandising. Just about every record, book, puzzle, toy, toiletry, figure and game that featured the mouse was crammed into the walls, floors and background of the mountain peaks. Off in the distance there were ravines hidden behind swirling toxic clouds with the occasional set of mouse ears. If one bothered to look then they would have been reminded very clearly of the concept art.
This mountain was used by Oswald to hide away the Mickey merchandising and keep the other citizens of the Wasteland slightly clueless about the mouse. Oswald did not want them to see how famous Mickey had become so he hid away as many products bearing the icon as he could. Not that it mattered because most everybody in the game knew who Mickey was and was delighted to meet him.
This bit of pettiness on the part of Oswald was tempered by the knowledge that he had been completely forgotten by the outside world. At the core of the mountain was Oswald’s lair. Inside he kept a solitary prized possession within a cabinet. Oswald took it out in a cut scene and polished the figure before putting it back. That small toy bearing his name was the only clue of the popularity that he had before Mickey came along. It was a tiny reminder of the Disney legacy that had been forgotten. Oswald’s purpose was in trying to keep the Wasteland going for the other forgotten characters and for himself to hold onto any memories he had left of the "good old days." Again, whether critics made the connection between Mickey Junk Mountain and the core made up of a single Oswald figure was something to be considered.
Other pieces of concept art made it into the game very much intact. Gamers might have paid more attention if the critics had bothered to find the connections between concept art and finished game design. Lonesome Manor in concept and the game were as complimentary as could be expected when converting 2d paintings into 3D models. The colors and overall shape of the model were very closely mirrored.
Another thing to consider was the preconceptions that gamers had about the Disney characters. This was the challenge of nostalgia versus expectations. Did critics ignore the gameplay just so they could complain about the lack of fanservice in the title? Where would these critics even assume that the only way a Disney game could work was through fanservice?
Kingdom Hearts may done wonders for the Disney name in gaming circles, however that popularity came at a price. Characters were dressed up in the costumes of the films the game was crossing into. It was original when the cast dressed up in (non-canon) Tron costumes, or in the black-and-white hues of the Steamboat Willie. Yet these visuals were done mainly for the sake of fanservice, appeasing fans by using cameos and crossover reference material as visual distractions. They supplemented the lack of actual gameplay by providing hefty doses of nostalgia. These nods to fan-favorite Disney films did nothing for the play mechanic. They were used solely for the sake of pushing along a plot.
I challenge the harshest critics to review Epic Mickey on the gameplay elements rather than fanservice preconceptions. Rating down the game because Mickey was not in a particular costume did nothing to point out the actual failings of the game. Complaints about a certain detail from a concept piece did not make the character relevant. It did not answer the challenge laid out to Warren Spector and Junction Point. Mickey had to be presented as a personable character with a sincere story yet wrapped into an original gameplay experience. The best games after all should be played and not watched. Epic Mickey was a title that required intense audience participation. Unless a costume change was relevant to gameplay then it wouldn’t be in the game. The mouse did not change costumes or identities in Epic Mickey. He did not don a Tron, Pirate or Ghost costume in any portion of the title, yet that was not to say that those elements crucial to the Disney name were not featured. Epic Mickey presented fantastic battles in familiar, yet distorted locations, with nods to the park and film legacies.
Whether it was fighting a gigantic Petetronic, part Pete and part Sark from Tron, above Space Mountain, or a possessed mechanical clock from it's a small world Epic Mickey maintained tons of originality and diversity to surprise even the most jaded gamers and visitors of the parks. Somehow these encounters and designs were glossed over by critics. Possibly because they not only supported but surpassed the concept designs.
Other concept pieces showed macabre, mechanical versions of Mickey's friends. These disjointed and unfinished "animatronics" did make their way into the game. Goofy, for example, did only have one arm and was missing his large cartoon eyes, only a small green camera served as his vision. Did critics bring attention to these odd creatures? Did they acknowledge that the concept art and finished pieces were not far from each other? Or that Junction Point managed to capture the essence of the actual character even with unfinished robotics? How mickey interacted with the characters and helped solve their problems shaped the direction of the story.
Mickey was given the ability to navigate the world in 2-dimension stages that gave a nod to the classic films and games that inspired the legacy. Those that did not grow up with the 8 and 16-bit titles got a sense as to how they used to play in the projector levels. The game served as an introduction to the original Disney animated shorts for an entirely new generation of gamers. Characters that had long been forgotten, like Oswald, got a chance to be reintroduced to audiences. Other forgotten characters, like Gus the Gremlin, were brought back in honor of the legacies that never got fully realized. When Mary Blair and co-designer Bill Justice were working on adapting the Gremlins from creator Roald Dahl’s (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) stories, they never got to see an animated project take flight. Decades later Mr. Justice, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, could not remember bringing the Gremlins to life or enjoy their part in Epic Mickey. Warren Spector was honoring his legacy as well as the other Imagineers that had left their mark on the company, some still with us and some that had passed on.
Players would be challenged working with the paint and thinner mechanic in 3D. This was the gameplay element that was actually bringing Mickey out of the 2D legacy and into a 3D gaming environment. Players could see how exploiting each mechanic made for a different experience. Gamers were given the option to assist or ignore the world that Mickey ruined. The outcome was the same; Mickey would escape the Wasteland, but the choices he made in doing so changed the way those left behind treated each other and how the world ultimately looked. These were the things highlighted in the series of clips played at the end of the game. Players could get all good, bad or mixed endings depending on the choices they made.
The harshest criticism and the biggest failing for Epic Mickey would probably have been the camera. There were a few places in the game where the camera made navigating platforms or aiming paint and thinner a chore. The camera forced a certain perspective on many outdoor environments and set a fixed side POV during the projector levels. In many instances the camera tried to focus the attention of the gamer in a certain direction. These were "look here" moments, a design cue used in many games by different directors. In shooting games there were set pieces, buildings exploding or planes crashing to draw the attention of the gamer, in an adventure title the player got a sense of scale when the camera panned back and then zoomed into the action. Some of these forced angles broke the illusion that the developers had worked hard to create, it was true of some portion of Epic Mickey, yet true of other adventure games including God of War or Shadow of the Colossus. Yet as bad as the camera was, it was not completely broken and it didn't break the game or experience. A press of the "C" button reset the camera position in all but a few locations. Those that complained most vocally about the camera problems should have mentioned that pressing a single button would have resolved many of the issues. Epic Mickey had gotten an unfair amount of negative criticism and bad word of mouth. These things have all but crippled sales in Europe. It would be a shame to see gamers not giving this title the benefit of the doubt because of bad reviews or harried reviewers. The game deserved far more attention than it has gotten and certainly second-look from the most biased critics.
The Disney name had been more of a miss than hit among gaming circles. It would be understandable if they released another flop and review scores were warranted. Yet as far back as the 8-bit era there have been titles like DuckTales to show that Disney could be synonymous with fun and original adventure gaming. It had been through the work of Capcom, which translated Disney Afternoon and movie franchises into titles. It was through Sega, that brought originality into the 16-bit generation with the Castle and World of Illusion. It was through Eurocom that created the last great 16-bit gems Maui Mallard and Mickey Mania, which acknowledged a love for the classic characters through superb animation while allowing changing tastes to influence game, character and level design. It was through UbiSoft that Disney first gained prominence in 3D with Goin' Quackers and PK: Out of the Shadows. It was through Konami that Disney learned that their characters could be icons in different genres with Disney Sports Soccer. And last it was through Square-Enix that Disney found success connecting classic characters to current gamers with Kingdom Hearts.
Epic Mickey was far more than the sum of its parts. It represented the culmination of almost 20 years of Disney videogame history, 55 years of theme park history and almost 90 years of animation and comic strip history. It represented a fundamental shift in the way Disney would be approaching their library of characters and how they would communicate with audiences. Animation was the legacy the company began but gaming was the medium that they could use to reconnect with fans. Epic Mickey was also more than a love letter to the characters or the parks. It captured the spirit of the mouse the same way that Steamboat Willie did generations ago. It expanded on the classic theme and allowed audiences to understand the character and give him a broader range of personality. This would not have been possible without advances in gaming technology, no movie or linear story could have done the adventure justice. No videogame saturated with fanservice would have been able to convey the same elements. Epic Mickey would not have been possible without an exceptional level of storytelling and guidance from a producer that was passionate about the source material. The plot was sublime, the characterizations impeccable, with generations of figures brought back from obscurity and made new to audiences. Some of the gameplay mechanics harkened back to the classic side-scrolling adventures while mixing them with build or destroy environmental abilities in 3D.
Epic Mickey was a fine game and a fun experience. It was an honest contender for game of the year in 2010. Unfortunately sales determine if Disney will continue to put this much effort into future titles. It is entirely possible that Disney will return to cheaply produced licensed titles thanks to the negative reviews on Epic Mickey. Gamers can go back to expecting little from the House of Mouse and be pleasantly surprised the next time a DuckTales or Castle of Illusion experience comes up (usually once every decade). Despite the massive ad campaign the gaming press will more likely be the determining factor for sales. They could disavow any responsibility for their overly-harsh reviews and back up critics as a matter of editorial integrity. If these critics failed to rate Epic Mickey on how much it actually accomplished, on how well it was made or how original the concept was then shame on them. If they failed to give the game a serious look and really take the title apart and review it without any preconceptions then the review scores are moot. Readers of this blog can play and tell me if it felt like an average-at-best experience or something more profound. I contend that it lived up to the epic title.
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