Posted by Raine Hutchens on Dec 8, 2010
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Spector Speaks Out On Epic Mickey Camera Issues
Now with the critical admiration for Disney Epic Mickey’s astonishingly reimagined world of the Disney universe set aside, you can see that the game has been on the receiving end of constant criticism for it’s shoddy camera design. Junction Point Interactive Creative Director Warren Spector took a minute to acknowledge the criticism and lay out a repose of his own, admitting that, “Third person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It’s the hardest problem in video game development.”
He spoke with MTV’s Clutch Blog and deflected some of the criticism that had dogpiled the game towards the third-person action genre in general, explaining that, “There has never been a game that I couldn’t break if you give it to me for 30 seconds. I mean, I will break a camera in any game ever made…Everybody gets it wrong. It’s just a question of how close to right do you get it.”
Spector then proceeds to let the cat out of the bag, explaining a lot of behind-the-scenes details about the camera development process for the game, suggesting that because Epic Mickey is such a blend of platforming and adventure that the camera had to be designed in such a specific way so as to accommodate a variety of gameplay options.
He continued, “So in a platform game you want the camera up higher in a steeper angle because the important thing for the platform player is to be able to see the next jump clearly. In an action adventure game, like Zelda for example, you want the camera down lower so you have more tactical awareness because there are enemies out there. There are traversal problems that require a tactical awareness that a high camera does not provide.”
As for those critics who are voicing their opinions on the camera design, Spector stated that he is “proud as hell of my camera team,” and “If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they’re misunderstanding the game we made, it’s not for me to tell them that they’re wrong, absolutely not.” Finally Spector finished with, “I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a ‘Mario’ competitor, because we didn’t.”
Do you all agree with the camera critics? Is is really that bad?
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