Obscurities- Brutal Legend
Okay, this is getting ridiculous. For those of you who don’t know Brutal Legend is a proposed game by game design legend Tim Schafer and his Double Fine production team. The game is supposed to be a complete tribute to Heavy Metal. The lead character is a roadie for the band Brutal Legend who comes across a powerful mask which sucks him into a world full of norse mythology references, demon wings, half-naked ladies, and literal face-melting guitar rifts. The main character is supposed to be voiced by Jack Black, the soundtrack is supposed to be stacked with the works of MotorHead and Ronnie James Dio and the gameplay ideas are supposed to be fresh.
Everything Schafer has done is cursed with being great games nobody played, so I suppose that’s the fear publishers have with picking up this masterpiece in the making. But COME ON! What about that synopsis doesn’t sound completely awesome?! You can melt peoples faces with guitar rifts, recruit an army of followers and kick ass in your Mad-Max style automobile.
The complaint I have is no publisher seems to want this game. Activision Blizzard tossed it out, but kept Spyro the fucking Dragon! Spyro’s games were irrelevant years ago. Then people suggested MTV’s Game Publishing company pick it up. This is an awesome idea, they could promote it, make sure Schafer gets all the Metal he wants for the soundtrack and put out likely one of the best games of 2009, but no they wish him luck. Seriously if this game dies due to lack of publishing funds I officially give up my faith in the industry. How do schlock like the entire Imagine series get out the door fine, but Schafer (creator of Psychonauts, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island and pretty much any other good adventure game Lucas Arts used to publish before they switched completely to Star Wars games) has to struggle to find backing. Someone good publish this, seriously.
