Rocktober, Brütal on Game Pass and the Importance of Fun
Rocktober 2020 marks Brütal Legend's 11th birthday.
ELEVEN YEARS...
To celebrate this "pounding of Creation's Hammer upon the Anvil of Time" - aka being made to feel old - Eddie Riggs and co. have been unleashed on Xbox Game Pass.
We're marking this opportunity to re-visit Eddie and the gang with a word from Brütal Legend's art director Lee Petty.
Lee took up the position of art director at Double Fine when work was already underway on Brütal. His first task, as he saw it, was to fully appreciate the game's origins to best understand Tim Schafer's vision for its eventual destination.
"Tim and I are both metalheads," Lee confessed when we spoke to him about his memories of the project, before adding with a wry smile "Tim's much older than me, but we had a similar upbringing when it comes to that whole thing. We were drawing from the same well and it was really easy for me to see, from talking to Tim, where he wanted to go."
The shared understanding led Lee to quickly identify one of his most important early tasks, as he saw it.
"I put most of my energy - aside from the high-level art director duties - into trying to make a single-player world fun to drive around in your car while listening to metal and seeing cool things every once in a while that encourage you to go over there."
This sense of fun persists beyond Lee's focus on Double Fine's game projects. He is known, it is fair to say, as something of the office joker. A role he is happy to play for both his own amusement and that of those around him.
"We’re making games not doing heart surgery and so I think keeping things fun and informal, even when things are hard, is important."
As a good roadie who is ever aware of the importance of bolstering others, Eddie Riggs would surely approve.
