"Epic Mickey" gets less epic

I'm just going to get this out of the way right now- they really need to change the name of this game, because over here "Mickey" is a fairly outdated but still widely recognizable slang term for penis, and so "epic mickey" puts one in mind of.... well, you know.

So anyway, Epic Mickey, Warren Spector's intruiging "dark mickey mouse" game that's been kicking around for awhile in concept art form, has been revealed with proper screenshots and everything, and.... I'm dissapointed.

The artwork for this game got me interested with it's portrayal of a wonderfully dark and twisted rendition of familiar Disney icons, whereas the actual game looks far closer to a generic cartoon platformer. It has none of the apocalyptic feel of the original drawings and paintings. I can only assume that artwork was just a proof of concept, which was later flitered through another artist for use in the actual game.

 Before:

After:

 

At this point I should add a number of caveats. The game is scheduled to come out next Autumn, ie it's a year or more away. And we've only seen a few screenshots of a few small areas. Given that, it's not really fair to pass final judgement on the game. It's quite possible there are parts (such as the "Cartoon Wasteland", a hub world that the initial artwork seemed to be portraying) that are more similar to what I was expecting. And who knows, maybe the developers will see the light and totally re-jigger the game's appearence- Borderlands did it after the game was nearly finished, so it's definitely not too late.

I should also point out that all of this is totally seperate from my thoughts on the actual game as a whole. The actual graphics are pretty good for a Wii game, and to be fair that first screenshot with the stained glass window is actually pretty cool. The gameplay seems to have some really interesting twists and the story is very much in the spirit of those first pieces of artwork, with Mickey transported into a Wasteland created by Yensid (apparently a sorcerer from Fantasia and yes, his name is "Disney" backwards) inhabited by minor and forgotten Disney characters and ruled over by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. There will be a branching morality system and Specter has stated that he's taking inspiration from the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman (!).

In short, I actually think Epic Mickey looks like a really interesting game, standing head and shoulders above most of the over-hyped upcoming releases in terms of imagination. It's just a shame someone has decided not to give it a visual style to match it's story and gameplay.


(Incidentally, Spector apparently harbours a desire to make a game based on Northern Lights/The Golden Compass. My only response to this is yes please. And get the guy who did that awesome concept art for this game on board.)