14 DAY TRIAL // Tim Schafer, the leader of Double Fine Productions and the creator of cult classics like Psychonauts, has some ideas for Brutal Legend 2 but he revealed that he'd need a lot of money to make that game a reality.
Brutal Legend appeared at the beginning of the last console generation, delivering a hack and slash experience with a heavy metal theme and quite a lot of real-time strategy mechanics. While the game certainly looked great and starred Hollywood actor Jack Black as the protagonist, it didn't live up to expectations in terms of sales, so publisher Electronic Arts scrapped the sequel project.
Since then, Double Fine has been doing really well in terms of independent games, releasing titles like Costume Quest or Stacking, while bringing more ambitious projects to life using money gathered via Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns.
While talking with Edge, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer has confirmed that he wants to do sequels to practically any game, provided he has enough money.
"Now that we've shown that we can make our own opportunities with Broken Age, people are asking again if we can do that," Schafer said. "But I don't know if I could Kickstart a $30m game, which is roughly what Brutal 2 might cost. But while we could do that sequel, we also have a bunch of new ideas that we want to make instead, which has been the main reason we haven't done sequels."
While talking about these ideas for Brutal Legend 2 in particular, Schafer seems to be focused on making the RTS mechanics better and easier to understand for new players, who shouldn't think that the title is just a mindless hack and slash one.
"I think there's a lot we could do to make the RTS elements better, and better explained, and I would love to get the opportunity to do that. But there are some people who would be like, 'I just wanna do the story and I really don't want all these other elements,' and the question would be to what point I'd allow those people to change the game."
"Part of me just likes [the idea of] fixing what's there and being true to the original. Because the original idea for the game happened all the way back when I played the first Warcraft. I wanted to do a version with big daddy rock demons and hot rods. It's so core to what the game is to me that I can't imagine getting rid of that."
Double Fine is making money with its new projects and has even started offering other indie developers publishing deals but, so far, it seems unlikely that it will risk that over Brutal Legend 2.