PHILLIP RING TALKS LEGO MARVEL SUPER HEROES 2
"I actually get to work on something I love"
Daniel John
How did you end up in the gaming industry?
I’ve always wanted to get into the gaming industry but I didn't really know how, or exactly what I wanted to do. I first started thinking about whether I could become an animator or maybe a graphic designer. I started at university and earned a degree in multimedia design, and as part of my degree I had to apply for jobs. I applied as a quality assurance tester at EA Games, and they gave me the job! So I started at EA and was there for about ten months. Then I moved over to TT Games, again in quality testing, and while I was there my executive manager came by and asked if anyone could help make a presentation! I did that and then was lucky enough to be asked if I wanted to move over to production instead and I've been there ever since, that was a little over ten years ago now.
That’s a long time!
(Laughs) Yes! But I love it, so.
You’ve had the chance to work on a number of iconic franchises?
It’s astounding, this is stuff I grew up with. I can go back to myself twelve years ago, before I was in the gaming industry, and say, “You’re going to work on Marvel, 'Star Wars', Disney, 'Pirates of the Caribbean', 'Indiana Jones', 'Batman', and all these amazing franchises,” and I’d say, “No?” I would not have believed anyone could get permission to work on all of them! I have been so lucky to get to do this. As a child this is what I used to watch. And I remember my parents saying, “Oh, you are just wasting your time!” (laughs) Even when I started working in the gaming industry, it was a little like, “Is there a future in this?” and you know, yes, I actually get to work on something I love, and have loved for many years. It is such a privilege to be able to say I work on something that handles all these franchises like this.
Have you drawn inspiration from a lot of different comic–books when developing 'Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2'?
From an inspiration perspective, it is really just that we have many Marvel-fans in the office, where everyone on the team contributes ideas and thinks about what could be cool, we don’t have tunnel vision where we say, “Oh we will only tell this story or this event” but we want to mix and make something exciting that people can both say, “Ah, okay, I know where this comes from,” but also experience completely new things they might not have expected to see when they started playing the game, one of the most fun things even for us about working on these games is that we get to see things we didn’t even know existed.
What Marvel stuff didn't you know?
The medieval era of Marvel. It has characters I find hilarious, and it’s pretty fun how that world is set up too. Because you know, it is medieval-England. So it is always gray and rainy in that world!
Do you look at what they’re doing in Marvel’s film universe?
We always look for inspiration from all sorts of directions. But what is good for us is that we aren’t tied to anything, we have exactly the same version of Star-Lord that you get in the Lego-sets, and that’s based on the movie version, so if you have any of the 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' sets, the minifigures match those in the game. But we really get to pick and choose how we want. We think it is fun when Star-Lord pulls out his Walkman and headphones and the Redbone song plays, he dances and everyone dances with him. But we also get to dig into the comics and add things that definitely aren’t included in the film universe.
For example?
Someone like Spider-Ham?! (laughs) You can unlock and play as Spider-Ham in this game. And this freedom is fantastic for us, because we get to do whatever we want in the game, no matter how crazy it might seem.
I liked that Howard the Duck was in the first one…
Howard the Duck returns! And this time he has his Iron Duck suit, with pseudo Iron Man–powers. There are some really bizarre characters in the game, probably the strangest I have seen in a while is Throg. Which is really Thor as a frog, but it’s just like a frog with lightning powers running around. (Laughs) Yes, there are some really cool characters.
Which are your favorite Marvel characters to play as in this game?
Running around as Baby-Groot is really very fun. But also Spider-Gwen, she is just amazing. And she has some really cool abilities. She pulls out a drum and drums on it as that's part of her character, she is actually a drummer in the band Mary Jane’s, that’s part of her story. So that’s her ability in the game. You hold circle and when you release it it hits and enemies get knocked back. And then the character Green Skin Smash Troll, he is probably one of my favorite characters among those I previously had no idea about, but that is just because he has a ridiculous “mustache and police outfit combo” (laughs). That’s something I need in my life. Someday I’ll have that hairstyle.
Will the more obscure characters play a bigger role in the story than they did in the previous game?
Absolutely, we want to introduce them on and off, because in a way we’re introducing players to these characters, and there’s a lot of content both in the story and in the “Free Play”–mode, for example, we have a level where there are multiple versions of Hulk in the Sakaar arena. That’s Green Skin Smash Troll, which is the medieval England version of Hulk, and then we have Maestro, who is basically Hulk from the future. So they’re presented there as part of the story but even the characters that aren’t a direct part of the main story have side-missions that present many of them. There are also collectible cards for each character that you unlock now, which give a bit of information about who they are. You can flip the card and on the back there’s information that says, “This is the character, this is their history and these are their superpowers and abilities.” We realize that there are people who have never seen the previous material and still think they’re really cool. And if someone comes and says, “Oh, I’m really interested in Throg” or someone else, like Black Panther, they might not have seen the movies, so we get to tell those people a bit about who the characters are. And if they want to know even more, great! Maybe even more people will be as happy and curious about Marvel comics as we are!
Do you feel you’ve been lucky with how popular ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ really gotten since the first 'Lego Marvel Super Heroes' game came out?
(Laughs) This is very interesting, we have massive Marvel fans in the office, so when we sequel teased ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ at the end of the first game…
I didn’t know who they were…
Exactly, and there were a lot of people like that. It came from people in the office saying, “These are a cool group, we want them in the game!” But yes, of course, since then the movies have come out, and the movies have made them really big. And that’s good, in the sequel we’ve now been able to do something new where Star-Lord is now a known name. People immediately recognize him. But this isn’t just a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' game. What’s good for us is that we can start from them, like we got to make Sakaar, and there’s this big battle against Eson the Searcher, but after that we quickly continue to bring in other pieces. There are levels where you play as Kamala Khan, White Tiger, and Spider-Man, who go on missions. And then there are other parts where Doctor Strange teams up with Captain America, but even Captain from Texas, the Wild West–version of him, becomes part of it, so we haven’t just focused on a single set of characters. We’ve really mixed it up. This also leads to some really fun moments, showing what happens when one character meets another, how they work together, or how they clash.
Does Marvel ever have requests for what they want to see in the games?
We work very closely with both Lego and Marvel, and the great thing is how open the dialogue with them is. It’s never been that they come and say, “You must see this” or “This must be included in the game”. It has never felt mandatory to include or do anything specific. We have conversations about characters, abilities, stories, and they share things with us. Things that could be completely new and then we think, “Cool, that’s something we want to include in the game!” It’s a very good relationship we all have, they completely understand what the Lego games are about.
How long have you been working on this sequel for?
Officially? (laughs) For a very long time to be honest. We have always been interested in the idea of going back and creating an original story within the Marvel universe. I mean, we had a lot of fun when we made the ‘Lego Marvel Avengers’ game, too. But being able to do something our own way also means we can set our own direction. So the second we finished the first ‘Lego Marvel Super Heroes’ game, we started writing things down on paper, what we wanted to do in a sequel, and where we could go. So yes, we’ve been working on it for a while, even if just conceptually. But then we started digging into it. It has been somewhat of a “over a couple of years” thing, it’s a game we’ve had our eyes on.
What was your first ambition for making the sequel?
To push boundaries with the engine, with technology, "what can we do differently" and how can we really change things. Because you know we knew we wanted to return. At the end of the first game we made the small teaser, if you finished the story there was a certain scene, that scene we just talked about, Star-Lord arrives together with Nick Fury, and that was our little teaser that we wanted to do something more and maybe also wanted to take players away from Earth. And in the sequel, of course, it’s now through Guardians that we get to explain what it’s all about.
And the big bad is Kang the Conqueror?
Kang is our big bad enemy! What is great about Kang the Conqueror is that he's a time traveler, so we’re not just saying, “Let’s go somewhere that isn’t Earth,” but “Let’s also go to different time periods!” So that is ancient Egypt, medieval England, Asgard, the planet Sakaar, and New York again but now from the noir-era.
Kang is ridiculously powerful, even if he would be defeated he could just travel back in time. Why does he not just end it?
Oh this is good, it’s about Kang’s character, he’s from the future and he’s a time-traveler, so yes, he definitely could cheat. He could go back and say, “You know what? I’ll just defeat all these Marvel-heroes by showing up when they are little kids and then the problem is gone!” But it’s not about that. It’s almost noble how he approaches things. The reason he brings all these places together and with everything happening in the story is because Kang loves a good challenge. He loves conflict. He wants to know that he can beat them when they are at their best. He would never cheat or do anything half-hearted. And that’s why he does things this way. Because as you say, he could actually cheat and just travel back. “I’ll fix these problems by killing your parents” or something like that. But he wants to know he’s the best ever. That’s what drives him.
So there won’t be an ‘Oxenfree’ like ending where time just starts over from the beginning once all of the villains are defeated?
(Laughs) We actually have something. There is a pretty interesting thing that happens when you finish the story mode. I can’t go into details because it would be a spoiler, but it involves Gwenpool, the Gwen Stacy-version of a certain other character. She has the ability to talk directly to the player, then she breaks the fourth wall. Something happens there that gives you a reason to want to stay in Chronopolis and play a few more hours.
So you said this is a original story. How did you come up with it?
It’s a completely new original story. What we thought was we have this bad guy named Kang the Conqueror and what would be a good way to find out who he is and what can we then do with that, story-wise? What turned out incredibly well is that we could collaborate with a certain person named Kurt Busiek, who has previously written Kang stories for Marvel. He’s been a brilliant resource for us, he knows his Kang! So with our original story we’ve worked with a Marvel writer to create it, and we had very good communication there. We could say, “We think it would be cool to include this location,” and he could say, “Yes, that is a brilliant idea. And then you can also include all of these different characters!” Which were characters we hadn’t thought of ourselves.
So, where are we with X-Men. You mentioned Gwenpool as a “variant of a certain character” which of course is Deadpool?
Oh. That is always a bit tricky, and unfortunately, we can only talk about the characters you already know are in the game. But we have an enormous roster of characters. There are lots of awesome characters included in this game.
Is it a copyright issue?
As I said, it’s complicated. I can’t go into that. I’m afraid I can’t go too much into this.
Some of these characters, like Groot and Baby–Groot, one character taking on different forms, is that used in gameplay?
Oh yes and Groot is a great example for that! We explain it as part of the story that he gets a bit of Kang’s powers, so players can shift between playing Adult-Groot and Baby-Groot with the press of a button and depending on who you are and what abilities you have, it might be something specific where you need to use the Adult-Groot or it could be something else where you want to use Baby-Groot, instead. I have already spent far too much time just running around as Baby-Groot in Chronopolis, I just think that he’s so cute. But yes we definitely wanted it so that when you switch characters there’s always a reason to do so. The characters give you "different abilities".
Is Chronopolis a fully open world?
There are different locations that all exist as part of an open world. Chronopolis is where you go in and out of the levels, and you keep returning there continuously.
Is time-travel also a gameplay mechanic?
Some characters have the ability to manipulate objects using time-travel mechanics. So, for example, you might come across a collapsed doorway and what you do then is use a character who has the ability to manipulate time to rewind until you can go through the door. But you can also send certain objects into the future, and you find secrets by using different abilities, and it really is the characters you expect to have certain abilities, based on who they are. So when you finally unlock Kang for example, he has this unique ability. We wanted to make it something of value in the game so that’s why we included it both in the story but also as an ability, an ability players can use.
The story itself is not linear?
No, it takes different paths. Once you’ve played through the first levels, we give you the option to choose which level you want to play next. There are different teams and you can sit there and choose, “I want to play as that team now!” and then do that mission, and when you come back you instead choose, “Okay, now I want to see what happened here instead.” So it’s a divided story where you can play through the missions in different order, but also of course we wanted everything to come together at the end and that’s like the big finale.
Can some of the missions disappear, if you choose a different path?
You still have the option to go back. But! We did think about having it so that when you play through it, some missions disappear, but, you know, this is a huge game! (laughs) So, telling players, “Actually there is much more content but you didn't get, you have to start over from the beginning again”, that didn’t feel right for us. Instead, we decided that when you’ve played it, you can go back and play the other levels. And as I said, this is one of the biggest games we’ve ever made, there’s a huge amount of content, in the “afterplay” we think there’s already a massive time investment, for those who want everything. With all trophies and collectibles. We thought it would be a bit unfair to then say, “No. Now you have to do this again, three or four more times!” (laughs)
What about multiplayer stuff?
We actually have some completely new multiplayer-things in this game, the entire game can be played co-op with friends from start to finish, and what is also great is that we looked at what the best possible co-op experience would be. So, if we take the Nintendo Switch, for example, you have two Joy-Cons, so you can play co-op with them. You just take them out, have one each, and play the entire game together. We also have a four player mode, a Battle Arena, with different kinds of competitions. You can, for example, play two vs. two, you can play three vs. one, collect Infinity Stones and place them in The Gauntlet. This is actually something that we have never done for a Marvel title before. We let these overpowered characters face each other, just think of something like 'Out of Time', it’s fun, classic Thor can go up against Thor Jane Foster. So we get to see who actually wins! (Laughs) We are just really excited about this.
Does one have to play the first game before the sequel?
No, no! We thought a lot about this, so "if we make a sequel", would it then be necessary for players to know everything that happened in the first game? But no. What’s great about this is that it’s completely standalone. If you’ve played the first game, great, you can then see the link and how the stories connect, if you have not, if this is your very first Lego game, you can still jump in and have a completely new and fresh experience, and you get a brilliant original story! So it is good if you’ve played the first, but if not, it really doesn’t matter. But you know, there’s still time to buy it and play it before the sequel comes out.
You can still get it before 'Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2' (laughs).
