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It's a world of slaughter, a world of fears...
" They said, "What do you think about Mickey Mouse? Would you be interested in doing a Mickey Mouse game?" And I said, "No! Because I don't do games for kids. You've done an incredibly good job of making Mickey lame and irrelevant to anybody over the age of eight over the last 30 years. I don't do games for kids." They said, "No, no, no! We want someone to reinvigorate this character, reinvent this character." I literally said: "You know, this is probably impossible, we're probably going to fail. I'm in.""
— Warren Spector signing on for something very few people could possibly predict.
is an upcoming Disney game for the Wii developed by Junction Point, spearheaded by Warren Spector of Deus Ex and System Shock fame. It will bring back the happy memories from previous Disney movies and Disney Theme Parks.
Yeah, right. ◊
The story begins with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who — after being lost to Disney over a legal dispute, fading into obscurity, and being replaced by his younger half-brother Mickey Mouse — becomes the first resident of a world created by Yen Sid for forgotten and rejected Disney creations and based off of Disney Theme Parks. This world, called the Cartoon Wasteland, exists as a small model on a table within in Yen Sid's tower. Oswald takes this world as his own, presenting himself as a king there, and tries to make it a comfortable home for other lost Disney characters who later join him, but grows resentful of his younger brother over time due to his increasing popularity. Later on, Mickey himself stumbles into Yen Sid's tower by stepping through a magic mirror. He spots the model and begins to fiddle with it, but accidentally spills paint and paint thinner on it. Hearing Yen Sid approaching, Mickey quickly cleans up and flees before he returns. However, his previous transgression creates the Phantom Blot, who overwhelms Oswald and the other toons despite their efforts to stop him, and takes over the Cartoon Wasteland, twisting it into a sinister and dangerous version of Yen Sid's original dream and forcing Oswald into hiding. Years later, after having had already forgotten the entire incident, Mickey is suddenly pulled into the Cartoon Wasteland from his home. Armed with a magical paintbrush that he managed to drag into the world, which can create and erase things with paint and thinner, Mickey must regain the trust of his resentful older half-brother, Oswald, and stop the Phantom Blot to save and restore the Cartoon Wasteland.
This game provides examples of:
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In SPADES. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, former mascot of Disney with a similar personality to Mickey, is now a bitter and distrusting fellow. Also, in the comics and cartoons, the Phantom Blot was just a thief dressed in all black (or the Doctor Doom of Disney in European comics): here, he's been upgraded into a monstrosity made out of ink.
- Anti Hero: If you play towards the dark side of the Karma Meter, Mickey can turn into one of these.
- Anti Villain: Oswald, who, according to Gamespot's hands-on preview, has his bitterness and jealousy manipulated by the Phantom Blot so that he becomes his unsuspecting pawn.
- Big Bad: The Phantom Blot, now an Eldritch Abomination of paint and thinner.
- Big Boos Haunt: Lonesome Manor, the Haunted Mansion level
- Body Horror: And HOW!
- Cain And Abel: Mickey and Oswald.
- Character Alignment: Depending on the Karma Meter:
- Chaste Toons: Averted with Oswald, who's had a lot of kids in the years he's been gone. And much to their father's chagrin, they look up to their "Uncle Mickey".
- Clockwork Creature: The Beetleworx enemies are robots constructed from random parts that have the faces of various Disney characters painted on them. Defeating them requires erasing the painted parts.
- Continuity Reboot: The fact that Oswald continued his career in animation and comics with Universal after Walt lost him, and even eventually looked like an actual rabbit◊, is completely glossed over.
- Crapsack World: And it's Mickey's fault.
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: This video features music from the upcoming game. It's a piece that doesn't know if it wants to be bouncy old school cartoon music, or something far more epic and sinister. Hell, at times it's bouncily sinister... which is kind of worrying.
- Cue Cullen: No one really thought much of this until concept art got leaked.
- Also, there was concern from a lot of people that Warren Spector would completely mess with the spirit of the Disney characters... until it was revealed in an interview just how much he loves Disney.
- Another such draw-in is Disney's dedication to reinventing the
wheel Mouse himself. As Warren Spector put it:
"Disney didn't own the rights to Oswald, so there was no way I could use him as a character in this game. But Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, went to NBC/Universal, which after 80 years still owned the rights to Oswald, and traded Al Michaels, a human sportscaster, for the rights to a cartoon rabbit."
- Warren Spector himself takes the Cullen role in this trope. Who'd have thought that thinky-complex PC-gaming fans would suddenly be interested in a Wii (most-casual-of-the-consoles) game starring a cartoon mouse?
- Darker And Edgier: From the concept artwork, this Disney game looks very dark.
- Also, apparently used in conjunction with Lighter And Softer as a gameplay element: happy-looking toon buildings can be altered by paint, whereas the darker, Burtonesque structures cannot.
- Warren Spector. That is all.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Hero Mickey can make the blotlings his allies.
- Disney Acid Sequence: While it doesn't fit the strictest definition of the term, it's definitely surreal and Nightmare Fuel-laden enough to qualify.
- Eldritch Abomination: Phantom Blot and the Beetleworks.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Oswald ALREADY seems to be getting this treatment. About damn time, too.
- Era Specific Personality: The Karma Meter is based on this: Do you play Mickey like the scrappy fighter he was in the early '30s, or the hero he was later in his career? You can also opt to play on the middle of the road, and act more like the straight man he was in the late '30s, and for a while after.
- Evil Overlooker: The Phantom Blot looks down on Mickey in the above concept art.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin: It's Mickey. It's epic. Yeah.
- Executive Meddling: Seemingly averted. Interestingly, Disney's support of the game style is rumored to be related to the business-savvy observation that the company's biggest profits in video games come from ones willing to adopt a semi-dark style, as well as genuinely trying to revamp Mickey Mouse as a genuinely useful (and marketable) character.
- Forgotten Childhood Friend: Oswald's pissed because of it..
- Good Is Not Nice: Mickey, depending on how you play.
- The Goomba: Spatter Blotlings
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Some of the early concept art.
- Hostage For Macguffin: In Real Life! Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, even after 80 years, was still owned by NBC/Universal, not Disney. To get him back into their intellectual property, Disney gave Universal one of their sportscasters, Al Michaels.
- Improbable Weapon User: Mickey wields a magic paintbrush.
- In Name Only: Given the concept art of the character and the revamped origin, the game's version of the Phantom Blot may very well be heading torwards this (for better or worse).
- He's still got the whole "Enemy of Mickey Mouse" thing down.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: A reversed version of "It's a Small World." SERIOUSLY. Yes, Epic Mickey is going to be one of ''those'' games...
- Someone on the development team must have heard how unnerving backwards music made the final level in Braid.
- Karma Meter: If you act like a jerk, Mickey looks more like his older scrappier self (not that kind of scrappy). Being heroic makes you look more like modern Mickey.
- So the choice isn't so much "good or evil", but "nice guy or dick" instead?
- Pretty much. You've got the "Scrapper", based on Mickey's older, more conflict-prone self, or the "Hero", based on his more modern interpretation. And the "Wastelander", a sort of middle-of-the-road choice.
- And let's face it; it's still Mickey Mouse here. 'Evil' was unlikely to have ever been on the cards.
- La Resistance: The Gremlins. They're one of the few groups still actively fighting the Phantom Blot.
- Mad Scientist: Dr XXX from "The Mad Doctor" has been confirmed to make an appearance, building the machines that populate the wasteland.
- Megaton Announcement: For Game Informer and Disney.
- Memetic Mutation: During the time period it was thought Oswald was going to be the Big Bad, /co/ made him out to be either the Disney counterpart to Liquid Snake or an insanely creepy and jealous Eldritch Abomination constantly running with ink and blood. Also The Virus.
- Minecart Madness: Shown in a concept pic at the London press conference.
- Mix And Match Critters: Sort of. The Beetleworx appear to be made up of Disney characters. For instance, this little fella has parts of Benny the cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as the head of Hades.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The Mad Doctor, natch.
- Emphasis on "ambiguous": While he's helping Oswald by building the robot versions of Mickey's friends, he's ALSO responsible for the Beetleworx, which have been described as "evil."
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: What started the whole mess.
- Nightmare Fuel: Picture everything you loved as a kid about Disney. Now picture it if it was a mythos series by HP Lovecraft. Basically, you get this game.
- Don't forget this.◊
- Warren Spector is specifically aiming for this:
(After speaking of luring people in with nostalgia and then surprising them): "On top of that, I really want to scare kids. I want to go to Disneyland and see a 10 year old kid crying: "Oh mommy, the clock tower's going to come to life and eat me!" That's my fondest dream. Disney scared the pants off me when I was a little kid. Disney needs to scare kids!"
- This is either going to work because parents see Mickey on the cover and buy it thinking Animation Age Ghetto - or fail spectacularly because parents see previews and then specifically avoid buying the game for their child because with this level of horror it can't possibly be suitable for a child to play.
- Nostalgia Level: The 2D side-scrolling "transition levels," which take their inspiration from Classic Disney Shorts. So far, we've seen a "Clock Cleaners" themed level, and a "Thru The Mirror" level has been hinted at.
- Retraux: The Mouse himself, with a design and personality harkening back to the twenties and thirties.
- Special mention, however, must go to the "Scrapper Mickey" design, which goes all the way back to "Plane Crazy" for inspiration.
- Robot Buddy: Oswald tries to keep his sanity with the help of his robot friends. They◊ aren't◊ all that well put together though.
- Sealed Evil In A Can: This version of the Phantom Blot was unleashed upon the Cartoon Wasteland by Mickey's own mistakes.
- Shown Their Work: Besides including some of the more obvious theme park icons, some sketches even feature early Disneyland icons like the Moonliner and Clock of the Future. Not to mention that the whole game is about obscure characters coming back to the spotlight.
- The Gremlins are from an unmade World War 2 film, though were still used in some military unit insignia and comics.
- Speaking Simlish: Instead of full voice acting. Though it works in being reminiscent of the early sound cartoons.
- Steam Punk: Not quite as heavily present as the concept art led many to believe, but elements of the style are still there - most notably in the Clock Cleaners level and the design of Robo-Donald.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Mickey and Oswald. Justified by the fact that the former was originally created to be an Expy for the latter.
- Tainted By The Preview: Is slowly creeping in with the first screenshots. Many are unhappy the finished product isn't quite as Darker And Edgier as the concept art was, or that the in-game graphics don't look as pretty as Super Mario Galaxy (...hello, there's still one year of development ahead).
- Took A Level In Badass: The Blot. Warren Spector even says he was a lame villain, and they decided to make him a bit more powerful.
- Toon: Most of the main characters. The Beetleworx, weirdly enough, combine elements of this and Eldritch Abomination.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Dost thou remain an ideally friendly mouse...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...or regress back to what thou once were?
- Wartime Cartoon: The Gremlins were originally from an unmade one of these.
- X Meets Y: Some people interpreted the concept art as American Mc Gees Alice meets Disney. With actual screenshots coming out, it's now being compared more to Psychonauts.
- We're Still Relevant, Dammit: The whole "angle" of this game.
- Your Mileage May Vary: Already this is getting this reaction; particularly with Warren Spector's general attitude about it.
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The story begins with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who — after being lost to Disney over a legal dispute, fading into obscurity, and being replaced by his younger half-brother Mickey Mouse — becomes the first resident of a world created by Yen Sid for forgotten and rejected Disney creations and based off of Disney Theme Parks. This world, called the Cartoon Wasteland, exists as a small model on a table within in Yen Sid's tower. Oswald takes this world as his own, presenting himself as a king there, and tries to make it a comfortable home for other lost Disney characters who later join him, but grows resentful of his younger brother over time due to his increasing popularity. Later on, Mickey himself stumbles into Yen Sid's tower by stepping through a magic mirror. He spots the model and begins to fiddle with it, but accidentally spills paint and paint thinner on it. Hearing Yen Sid approaching, Mickey quickly cleans up and flees before he returns. However, his previous transgression creates the Phantom Blot, who overwhelms Oswald and the other toons despite their efforts to stop him, and takes over the Cartoon Wasteland, twisting it into a sinister and dangerous version of Yen Sid's original dream and forcing Oswald into hiding. Years later, after having had already forgotten the entire incident, Mickey is suddenly pulled into the Cartoon Wasteland from his home. Armed with a magical paintbrush that he managed to drag into the world, which can create and erase things with paint and thinner, Mickey must regain the trust of his resentful older half-brother, Oswald, and stop the Phantom Blot to save and restore the Cartoon Wasteland.
