Brütal Legend

The team didn’t want to get their hopes up about getting Black to do the voice, but “someone told us he was a fan of Psychonauts, and we thought: ‘What? That’s crazy!’ So through people’s people, we got this meeting set up — just me and him on the roof of the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. I brought this binder of concept art and laid it all out for him, and he liked it. I really would say he’s starring in the game, because he’s brought life to Eddie Riggs. He’s a huge gamer — I’ve seen his Achievements, and he plays games like Mass Effect and BioShock all the way through and then plays through them again — so when I explain dialogue choices in the game, he gets all of that stuff. He knows, and he wants to make it good.”

Jack also gets metal culture — something Brütal Legend riffs on constantly. But will the average gamer get it, too? “It’s not a game just for metalheads,” maintains Schafer. “The jokes we’re making about metal, people also get outside of metal. At the end of it, it’s still a human story about Eddie’s aspirations and the love interest and stuff, and that’s stuff that anyone can relate to.”

Plus, the gaming landscape has shifted a bit in Brütal Legend’s favor over the last few years, thanks in part to a small developer in Boston. “We started pitching this game before the first Guitar Hero came out,” says Schafer, “and we got feedback like, ‘It’s good, but have you thought about making it a hip-hop game, or making it country?’ And then Guitar Hero debuted, and that stuff changed. Harmonix had such great taste when they created the tracklist. It’s obvious that music fans picked those songs. So metal really has had a resurgence.”

That, combined with other pop-culture touchstones, put Brütal Legend on track for its 2009 release. “There’s a scene in School of Rock where Jack is singing ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin,” Schafer recalls. “He does this thing, ‘Hammer…of the gods!’ And they cut to a shot of the girl in the van, and there’s an Iron Maiden sticker on the wall. And I felt, ah…it is rising in the zeitgeist…it’s time! It’s time for this game to be made!”

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