What happened to Brutal Legend? [History of Brutal Legend]

sometimes reviewers will make these wonderfully sweeping statements like this game is unique or dreams to do something completely different and then upon watching the review notice that it wasn't actually accurate however if you were one of the lucky people who played brutal legend you will know that this game did indeed do something different and as my wife would charmingly put it had more wonderfully colorful ideas than a unicorn vomiting rainbows but seriously this game was absolutely golden but has unfortunately become one of those titles that you go yeah i remember that i think yeah i think i saw that i think yeah i know what it is yep i definitely oh no did i play it i can't remember but i guarantee if you had played this game you would definitely remember it and if i wasn't so reserved i would probably say it's an absolute crime that this game has not been remade or remastered well maybe a misdemeanor i don't know what that means but it's certainly a damn shame we never got another one hello everybody i'm roy mccoy and in this video i'm talking about one of the most interesting hybrid games that i've ever played and asked that all important question what happened to brutal legend seriously what the hell happened to it and this video will go a little bit like this first of all i'll talk about what was brutal legend before moving on to the development history then effectively looking at what went wrong with it why have we not had that sequel before finally asking the most important question could we ever see another one before we get started don't forget to hit that like button as it really does help this video to do well and if you're feeling really courageous please consider subscribing but after those shameless plugs let's talk about what happened to brutal legend so what is it well this is probably the most difficult part of the video to be honest because describing what brutal legend is well it's probably easier to just say what brutal legends isn't it's definitely not a city builder but seriously what it actually is is a hybrid between a third person action adventure game and a real time strategy which sounds like they're going to clash quite a lot but somehow seemingly blended really well together it was the brainchild of tim schaefer who created the game with his development team double fine productions if you don't recognize his name he is the person that brought you some of the most wonderful games like grim fandango psychonauts and even did a lot of work on some of the monkey island games in other words this guy had a gaming pedigree especially when it comes to comedic games the game also featured a whole host of talents including the voice acting of jack black ozzy osbourne and lemmy from motorhead and if you're wondering how those last two creep into the game this is a heavy metal themed game so if you love things like heavy metal comedy and pretty much every genre out there except for city building then this game had something for you it even had parts that looked a bit like guitar hero that's what it was so now let's talk about what happened to it our story begins in the year 2007 when work began at double fine productions on brutal legend shortly before they completed psychonauts the game was initially meant to be published by vivendi games but if you ever played it you'll notice that familiar logo is there ea because in the end the publishing rights fell to them and double fine productions work began on the game and the initial focus of the production was on the main character of eddie who was eventually voiced superbly by jack black the character of eddie was a roadie who had an unfortunate accident and was transported to this heavy mental fantasy world the team initially wanted to know what the character should be doing and it was basically this killing things with an axe playing a rock guitar and driving around in a hot rod like i said at the start this is a game that did things differently and effectively that's what we get in the final game work began on the multiplayer sections which were actually real-time strategy battles where you take control of a group of combatants and effectively lead your army into battle against a group of other combatants destroying statues attacking stages defending stages you name it it was in there and you even had the capacity to fly around the map as a winged demon version of yourself however to avoid the stigma that came with real-time strategies of the time schaefer wanted the game to invest much more in the third-person action-adventure elements which saw the scale of the project boom and unfortunately coincided with the time of vivendi and activision's merger and tim schaefer and his team found it very difficult to convince the new publishers to fund the bigger project eventually activision blizzard decided to drop the game for several reasons including the ever grown budget development delays and they're just not feeling that it was a workable title so then the game entered a period of not so much development hell but more a period of limbo and that was until ea stepped in and finally came on board to publish the game and fund the rest of the project and this is the point where our story bleeds into that what went wrong section as after ea took over things got a little bit heated with activision blizzard claiming they'd never totally dropped it and they were still in talks to continue developing the game then eventually activision on june the 4th 2009 filed a lawsuit to prevent the publishing of the game claiming their investment into the project meant that they still had a valid claim on its future in response double fang countersued citing the activision had dropped the project during the vivindi merger eventually things were settled out of court but various reports state that it took a huge toll on schaefer with some even going as far to suggest that the quality of the final product was slightly affected by these events however the game was finally released on october the 13th 2009 and came to the consoles including playstation 3 xbox 360 and also the pc it's important to state at this moment that reception for the game was positive and as of making this video brutal legend still holds a metacritic score on the playstation 3 of 83 with the 360 slightly behind on 82 and pc bringing up the rear with 80. however these are great scores critics mainly praised the voice acting the heavy metal theme and the soundtrack and i have to say jack black pulled it off he was incredible in this game but as i said in the introduction this game had a whole heap of talent including tim curry and ozzy osbourne who doesn't want to play a game with ozzy osbourne in it the main criticism towards this game is that it seemed to be a jack of all trades now it did pull off that hybrid status but there were some things missing for example the lack of a mini map why would you not have a mini map in an open world game likewise your main character couldn't jump yep that's right he couldn't jump why would you not include that i don't know i don't know likewise some of the critics stated that the rts elements were just a little bit too light and the advanced tactics weren't obviously apparent sadly a lot of the critics found the hybrid gameplay a little bit confusing with a number of them stating that it would just be a better game if it was that third person action adventure in the rock world side missions were also a bit of a sticking point but on the whole as i said most of the reviews were positive in terms of sales it didn't sell overly well now it's sold well compared to other double fine production but when you're dealing with a company like ea you need to aim big and initial sales in the us were around 215 000 copies which is not bad but not great the lack of sales the kind of bickering between activision double fine productions and the confusion about what this game actually was seemingly was what went wrong but i have to say this game i loved it and i have been hoping for a long time for a sequel and apparently back in the day work did commence on a sequel after double fine thought they'd been greenlit on the production unfortunately ea had different ideas and cancelled the title but that isn't where our story ends oh no we have some information about that wonderful sequel schaefer stated that the sequel would have been three times the size of that game and include new factions and more wonderful voice talent sadly that sequel hasn't materialized in the cancellation by ea and the amount of time that double fine productions put into the pre-production of the sequel right before ea pulled the plug almost saw double phone productions going bust and after that double fine productions returned to working on much smaller projects but as i mentioned towards the start of this video brutal legend was a passion project for tim shafer so could we ever see one could we ever see a new game well the head of the developer tim schaefer is interested in making a sequel over the years he has made multiple mentions to it he talked about it in 2013 but highlighted that he needed the funding and something significant happened in the year 2015 now remember that i mentioned that this game came out shortly after psychonauts well in 2015 psychonauts 2 went into production thanks to a crowdfunding campaign and he said if psychonauts 2 does well there is a good chance a new brutal legend will come along even as late as e3 2017 when that was a thing in a physical space and not online he stated that brutal legend would get a sequel so come on we have to see it and i said at the start it would be at the least a misdemeanor if this game didn't get a remake remaster or sequel and i personally think it's coming psychonauts 2 is due for release in 2021 judging by the previous game with its two-year development cycle i reckon in 2023 2024 we could get a new brutal legend game tim schaefer a creator of amazing games who gave us this underrated classic because even though it's got a good metacritic score not enough people have played it if you haven't played it maybe it's time to dust off your playstation 3 or your pc and get playing it but i hope in around the year 2023 2024 we're talking about brutal legend 2 or even brutal legend the remake let me know in the comments below if this is something you think could happen i firmly believe it will and if it's something that you would like to see and of course tell me about any other games you'd like me to cover in my what happened to series but from me today i just want to say thanks a lot for watching and this is roy mccoy out you

Channel: Roy McCoy

Views: 26,896

Keywords: roy mccoy, the real roy mccoy, brutal legend, 4493, what happened to brutal legend, brutal legend 2, brutal legend remake, where is brutal legend, brutal legend history, jack black, jack black game, brutal legends, brutal legend sequel, history of games, what happened to, what the hell happened to, burtal, tim schafer, wha happun, matt mcmuscles, gamespot, games, video game history, real roy, ps3 games, jack black films

Id: kzJheLc68PQ

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021