Warren Spector, the creator of Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, says that offering players a choice is one of the most important things a game can do. With choice in mind, Epic Mickey 2 offers the player many choices and lays out the result of their choices in consequences that affect the game’s story and its environment.
Warren Spector was largely responsible for leading the teams behind games like Thief: The Dark Project and Deus Ex, titles which offered players a wide range of choices and set the foundation for many others, including the recently released Dishonored.
In an interview with AusGamers, Warren Spector stressed the importance of offering the player with the freedom to express themselves in Epic Mickey 2, through their playstyle with consequences to how they play the game.
“You know, I’ve made 22 games now, and they’ve all been about this idea that play style matters. Players always get to make choices, and we show them the consequences, and they get to make more choices.
“And the choices you made in the first game were kind of dialled down, because we knew that we were going to be reaching an audience that was much broader than the audience that was only familiar with that kind of gameplay.
“So this time the choices you make really do have consequences, they really do matter, at as deep a level as they do in a Deus Ex, or a System Shock, or an Ultima game.”
The first Epic Mickey offered a system of choices with its paintbrush and thinner, but Spector believes it wasn’t very elaborate. He hopes to flesh out the choices you make in the new game.
“In Disney Epic Mickey, we did local and global consequence, because those are easy for players to understand. But that mid-level, where what you do is permanent – so when you return to a map, things are still how you left them – that, we didn’t do in the first game, and that’s where we’ve really ramped it up in the second.”
Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is set for release on the PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360 later this month. We will be reviewing the game.