Playboy magazine held a pretty sweet interview with Tim Schafer of which checking out is encouraged. Although the questions were apparently asked before Br?tal Legend was announced, the article is pretty lengthy and has some good stuff. Good stuff, man.
You might be tempted to turn off your computer and go to sleep after all that reading, but if you do you'll miss this second, even longer interview with Tim by the guys at IGN Australia. Let's take a look at what's going on in there:
IGN AU: Are you worried about the ESRB at all?There's also a bunch of new screenshots and concept art scattered throughout so you'd pretty much have to be a huge idiot to not already be there.
Tim Schafer: Oh I'm not worried about them at all. They're going to hate it. I mean, mostly we're just making it to our own personal tastes. I mean, I feel, personally, that you can't make a game with a broad axe in it and not have a decapitation. I feel almost like, that would be a bug. Technically speaking. But I think if you do it with a sense of humour, and you do it over the top, I think it's still kind of light hearted. On the medieval battlefield, chopping someone's head off with an axe is different than beating a hooker to death with a pipe, y'know... I think that fantasy violence can be done in a way that feels - it sounds strange to think that chopping someone's head off can be light hearted, but I think it can be done, as any Monty Python fan would know.
Tim Schafer in Playboy: "We were talking about the possibilities of episodic content 20 years ago at LucasArts. It was always shot down by the marketing department."
It's all fun when it's Ronzo making the wild claims, eh?
I think the origins of the joke come from Ron Gilbert's name being plastered shamelessly over Monkey Island 1 and 2, implying that he did everything on his own - a view that seems to be supported by legions of fan boys and girls over the years who have almost deified Gilbert. It's not Ron's fault - I'm sure he doesn't see Monkey Island a single effort, or want it to be viewed that way, but that's sort of the way it is. People forget the input that Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman had for The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel. But then I suppose they also forget Bret Barrett and Athony White.
If I remember rightly, a hidden feature was found in Monkey Island 2 that said that the game was designed "with no help from Ron Gilbert at all," which it seems is an early version of the joke (I'm sure Gilbert had the main input for both games).
Anyway, it's a bit of fun.
I guess it's just weird and rare that he, Grossman and Schafer all collaborated on a game. It'd be a bit like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick teaming up to make a movie, or something.
I did NOT mean svengali. I actually meant oracle, or similar.