Brutal Legend Preview

VideoGamer.com: How much of a hand have you personally had in the dialogue for this game?

TS: I wrote all of it.

VideoGamer.com: When you started out writing the dialogue, did you have any ideas about how the style had to be, or did it grow and form its own identity as you wrote it?

TS: I don't know if I made a plan for the style of the dialogue. I mean it's very, in some ways it's an art style, you know the Double Fine style of dialogue. The story has some serious dramatic elements to it and epic elements and surprising turns, but then on a moment to moment basis the dialogue can be kind of casual and jokey. That's just how we approach all the writing for our games.

VideoGamer.com: Did Jack Black have the freedom to improvise?

TS: Yeah, I mean he takes a line and works it and works it and works it, and then sometimes it would just take on a life of its own. Sometimes after he thought the mic was off he would just do a joke version of the line, but that would be the funny one and that would be the one that we would use.

VideoGamer.com: Is that how you get the best out of Jack Black?

TS: Yeah you never know. Sometimes we just showed him game footage and let him say things while he watched it and recorded that.

VideoGamer.com: Jack Black's presence in the game seems to be what everyone's focusing on, but there's a game underneath. How would you describe that game underneath?

TS: I was interested in this idea of a character who was a roadie who went back in time to a heavy metal world, and then the story of what that character would go through. Just thinking about well okay, we have this world, where does this world come from? How was it created? Who were the ancient gods of it? How would the current characters interact with these ancient gods? Who derived from who? Who made mankind and all this, where did heavy metal come from?

VideoGamer.com: It's a lot to think about.

TS: Yeah. A lot of it was inspired by Norse mythology, which gets into all of that, like where the world came from? Who made man? Where the giants came from? The giants hate the gods and all that stuff. So it was fun to figure that out for a whole world we had just created and have it be the world of heavy metal. And the idea being, like, it's not another world, it's the past, in that everything we have now that is heavy metal is this echo and memory of this ancient world that was real.

And so that led to, well what would happen in this world? It didn't seem to be a game about talking. It didn't seem like an adventure game. It seemed like action adventure just right off the bat. You've got to be swinging this broad axe around. I want to have guitar playing in the game, I want to have hot rod driving. But mostly I wanted that moment of being on the battlefield surrounded by your warriors, headbangers and rocker chics and going charge! And just leading these people into battle. That's where our battlefield gameplay came from.

VideoGamer.com: Now that the project is pretty much coming to an end, what achievement are you most proud of?

TS: I feel like what we wanted to do was make the ultimate heavy metal game and I feel like we've done that. I feel like we made the game that captures the spirit, not just literally captures the music, but captures the spirit of the music and the lyrics and lore and has the right bands and has the soundtrack - we're really proud of that. Like the really legitimate acts that people maybe don't usually include in games. Yeah there's stuff like Mötley Crüe that people have used before in games, but then there's stuff like Omen and Brocas Helm and stuff that I don't think have been in games before. I think it's great to make a game that I'm proud to show. People who really, really like heavy metal will be like, look, this is a sincere tribute to the art. I like to think it turned out that way because that was really important to us.