First details on Disney’s Epic Mickey

It’s been talked about a lot, but now Disney Interactive Studios is ready to divulge some details on Disney Epic Mickey. The game is an adventure-platformer with some light role-playing elements and is being developed for the Wii. The game stars Mickey Mouse as re-imagined by Dues Ex designer Warren Spector and his Junction Point game development studio. Spector, who is a self-described Disney fan, taps into the history, worlds, and characters related to Disney’s favorite mouse to create an “edgy and unexpected cartoon adventure.”

“Mickey is an adventurous and rambunctious mouse,” said Warren Spector, creative director and vice president, Junction Point. “I want to bring his personality to the forefront, place him in a daunting world and connect his spirited character with video game players worldwide. Ultimately, each player decides for him- or herself what makes Mickey cool.”

In the game’s fiction, a sorcerer named Yen Sid creates a world where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations thrive. Originally, the sorcerer from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Walt Disney’s 1940 film “Fantasia” was nicknamed “Yen Sid” by Disney animators, although never named as such on screen. In Spector’s game, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit - Walt Disney’s first cartoon star created in 1927 - becomes the earliest inhabitant of Yen Sid’s Cartoon Wasteland after Mickey Mouse is created.

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Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian joins Disney

Disney Interactive Studios has added Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian to its team to head up its in-house videogame development teams. Disney has also acquired another company that Seropian helped found in 2004 after leaving Bungie: Wideload Games.

“We’re really trying to be a magnet in this industry for talent, as we are in so many other parts of the entertainment world,” said Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, in a conversation with NBC. “Having someone of Alex’s calibre join us is a tribute to the great people we have here already.”

The company also owns Junction Point, which is bought in 2007, bringing along Deus Ex creator Warren Spector into the family. Spector is rumored to be working on a Steampunk style game starring the iconic Disney character Mickey Mouse currently codenamed “Epic Mickey.”

Finally and probably most important of all, Disney now owns Marvel and all of its licenses after making it official at the end of August - though shareholder approval is still pending on that deal.

Source: GI.Biz

What is Warren Spector’s secret Disney project?

Epic Mickey. That’s what the media is calling Warren Spector’s super secret project for Disney. Back in 2007 Warren Spector’s Junction Point studio was bought by Disney and the man behind Dues Ex has been busy working on something ever since. But let’s start at the beginning.

At the end of 2008 Gamasutra talked about a secret project they’d seen concept art for that indicated a title codenamed “Epic Mickey.” The concept art featured “pencil sketches of cities assembled from junk” and “a surreal seashore invasion scene, in which machines wearing the faces of the Seven Dwarfs deposit old-fashioned renditions of Disney characters onto the beach with mechanical hands.”

An even earlier report from 1Up offered this small tidbit of information on the project:

Ever since Disney bought his studio, thus crushing our dreams for Ninja Gold, we’ve wanted to know just what the heck ace developer Warren Spector is working on. Hints were dropped on GFW Radio, but Quartermann claims to have the skinny. Word is that Spector’s new Disney project will be a platformer looking to compete with a certain pesky plumber. And who’s big enough to take on Nintendo’s star? Only the mouse himself!

And so, here we are today, with some new information: new artwork uncovered by Neogaf, and details unearthed by Superannuation point to Epic Mickey featuring familiar Disney characters and locations with a steampunk setting.

The Neogaf art shows a robotic scorpion with a bear head, a spider-like robot with mouse ears, a steam punk style cityscape, a castle, a giant jug of paint thinner with Mickey Mouse on the label on a beach and a number of other conceptual sketches. The artwork was found on the web site of artist Gary Glover, who worked for Junction Point as a concept artist from 2007 - 2008.

Further proof comes from Superannuation who uncovered a mention of “Epic Mickey” in the resume of current Junction Point Studios concept artist Tony Puhlham - including the fact that the game is being developed for the Wii.

Of course “Epic Mickey” is probably a codename for something else, but at least we now have a general sense of what it is Warren Spector has been working on for almost two years.

More details when we have them.

Dissenting Opinion: Let Them Talk

If you didn’t happen to agree with Crispy Gamer’s pre-E3 feature, The 10 People We Hope Will Shut the F*** Up at This Year’s E3, then you might want to check out N’Gai Croal’s rebuttal, Let Them Talk.

In this editorial at Edge Online, Level Up’s N’Gai goes over the reasons why all of the industry heavyweights we mentioned in our article should never shut up. He also raises some interesting points on why developers can never jump into a public discussion and play the role of the “regular guy,” despite actually being regular guys (Dennis Dyack can tell you some war stories about that for sure). Here’s a sample from the article:

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Junction Point Does Disney / Pixar

Warren Spector is one of the most fascinating developers on the planet, and when he talks anyone with even an inkling of sense and an interest in gaming tends to listen (that’s one of the key reasons he’s highlighted in our list of “The Six People We Wish Would Say More at This Year’s E3″ (at the rear end of our The 10 People We Hope Will Shut the F*** Up at This Year’s E3 feature).

So those wanting to listen to Spector will be happy to hear that he has revealed a tiny bit of information on the first game he’s working on under the Disney Interactive banner. While details are still razor thin, Spector says that his first project will be a deep collaboration with Disney Feature Animation and Pixar. Imagine a game with Pixar characters featuring the developmental direction of the man who helped bring us such games as Ultima Underworld, Deus Ex, Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, System Shock to Thief. Here’s what Spector had to say in his blog- after the jump..

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