Legendary Status

Tim Schafer on Brutal Legend, humour over violence, Casablanca and It's A Small World

Feature by Frank Cifaldi Contributor

Published on June 18, 2009

GamesIndustry.biz How much of that mythos actually made it into the game? Did you have a lot left over?

Tim Schafer

We actually took a lot of it and turned it into animated sequences where the narrator will tell you some lore of the land. Not all of it is in. I think the point of backstory is that you don't give all of it away, or else it's not backstory anymore. It's fun to make a huge backstory and then just show segments of it that kind of suggest the larger story.

GamesIndustry.biz You and I had a discussion a few years ago about your feelings on game design, on how to tell a compelling story without cutscenes, which you said was something you wanted to eventually accomplish.

Tim Schafer

(laughter) What do I know about that?

GamesIndustry.biz You told me at the time that your kind of theory behind that, behind telling a compelling story that is always interactive, was along the lines of riding The Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland but being able to occasionally get off the boat and explore.

Tim Schafer

Are you sure that wasn't Ron Gilbert?

GamesIndustry.biz No, that was you, I've never met Ron.

Tim Schafer

Ron always talks about jumping off the Pirates of the Caribbean, so...

GamesIndustry.biz So you stole it!

Tim Schafer

I always talk about getting off of It's A Small World. That's the ride I want to get off of.

GamesIndustry.biz Why is that?

Tim Schafer

I love miniatures. I always loved, like, miniature things. Like in Psychonauts there's that Waterloo World level. I loved going down with the bug camera and flying down really low and looking at the trees and making them look big. It's that same impulse that makes you put your head down sideways on your train set, you put your eye on track level and the train's coming at you and it makes it look really big. Something about miniatures has always fascinated me, and It's A Small World has a lot of that.

But yeah, what can I say about story? I always thought that someday I could make a game that has a story and no cutscenes, but it wasn't appropriate for Brutal legend, which has an epic story plot. I feel like as long as it's entertaining and you don't feel like skipping them, in the end games are just entertainment, so however you're entertaining people.

GamesIndustry.biz Do you think it's possible to tell a compelling story in a game with no dialogue?

Tim Schafer

Yeah! You can tell a story with environment, you can tell a story with interactive set-ups, you can tell a story any way you want to.

GamesIndustry.biz I had a similar conversation with the two founders of BioWare, we were talking about how to grow the audience through story. Do you feel like there is kind of a story gap preventing people from getting into games, or is it more like a hardware barrier?

Tim Schafer

I think it's a subject matter barrier. Not everybody wants to get into these super violent worlds...and yet here I am making a game about broad axes and decapitation. But I think humor would get more people into games. It's getting better, it used to be that the games industry had a short list of inspirations. You had Tolkien-esque fantasy, Star Wars, and then new things get added. I think GTA brought a whole new level of inspiration. And I think the broader that gets, the more people will be interested in games. If you look at movies, they deal with everything about life. They deal with all aspects of life: romance, comedy, serious dramas. And games are mostly limited to the summer action blockbuster. They haven't really gone outside of that. But I think they will, and hopefully they will soon, or else people will be solidified in their view of games. Their expectations are set.