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The producer and writer of upcoming PSP arcade-style brawler "Unbound Saga" told me about the game's fictional history, why it's a PSN-only download and how it's different from "Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard."
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At New York Comic Con, I stopped by the Dark Horse Comics booth to check out the book publisher's upcoming PSP title "Unbound Saga."
Yep, that's right -- the PSP. The game, just announced this week, is slated for release in June and will only be available via digital distribution on the PlayStation Network.
Producer and writer Mike Kennedy from developer Vogster Entertainment was on-hand to demo the game. Clearly inspired by the likes of old-school, arcade-y brawlers such as "Comix Zone," "Final Fight" and "Double Dragon," "Unbound Saga" features the story of Rick Ajax, a beefy anti-hero who's aware that he's a comic book character and merely a pawn to The Maker, an omnipotent entity that tries him in various adventures requiring fisticuffs.
Along the way, Rick meets other characters, such as the assassin/spy/thief Lori Machete, and fights his way through over 30 unique enemies (like werewolves, sewer mutants, talking animals) through 120 different areas.
Once Rick meets Lori early on in game, players can switch between the two: Rick's abilities include the standard punch, kick, grab and throw, while Lori can kick, heal and use gas or smoke bomb attacks to poison and confuse enemies. The environments are also completely destructible; Kennedy said pretty much anything can either be broken or picked up and used as a weapon. The game lasts anywhere from four to six hours for one playthrough, but if players want to fully upgrade the abilities of Rick and Lori, they'd need to play it three or four times. There's also a survival mode where players can compare their scores on a leaderboard.
"For 30 years, Rick's been the pawn of 'The Maker' and he's finally had enough of it," Kennedy said, "so it's kind of like the twisted 'Wizard of Oz' journey where he goes to find 'The Maker.'"
Kennedy also explained that the game satirizes comics in general and that there is a whole fictional history behind the character that will fleshed out in a comic book due at the same time as the game release.
"The fictional history is that the comic, 'Unbound Saga,' has been around since the '70s in one form or another," he said. "They've kind of weathered some ups and downs in the industry; they've had their black-and-white version, their manga version, their foil cover Jim Lee version in the '90s. So the idea is that [the video game] is their latest reinvention. The comic will give more to Rick's backstory, his secret origin, what does Lori does on the weekends, and all of the daily nonsense that The Maker puts them through."
With this fictional backstory and self-aware protagonist, I couldn't help but point out the striking similarity to "Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard." Announced las year, it's an Xbox 360/PS3/PC game by Vicious Cycle that parodies other games and features an anti-hero who knows he's in a video game, and also happens to be fighting an unknown omniscient force.
"We did start reading about ["Matt Hazard"] recently, with the whole breaking the fourth wall thing," Kennedy admitted. "We were like, 'Hey, that sounds familiar' but ours is really focusing on the comic aspect. Ours is more of an homage to those side-scrolling brawlers from the late '80s early '90s, while they're pushing all the buttons with video games, like kart racing and whatnot. Their gameplay is going to be totally different. But I am really curious to see what they do."
I asked Kennedy, a veteran comic book writer whose work includes "Star Wars: Underworld," "Superman: Infinite City" and "Alien vs. Predator," how he thinks he can break that fourth wall and make it work.
"It depends how far you push it," he said. "In ["Unbound Saga"], I don't think we pushed it so far that it gets dangerous. I don't want to spoil the ending, but I think the ending is probably as far as we could push the fourth wall in this title. We want to make sure we put a lot of attention on telling good stories in compelling ways so that at the end of the day, it's not just a game, it's a brand. And depending on how well this goes, there's so much more we'd like to do -- more products, downloadable content, more comics."
And finally, I asked, "Why PSP"? "Sony is really pushing their PSP development and marketing right now," Kennedy said. "And we saw that there wasn't really anything like ["Unbound Saga"] on the PSP so we thought that that was really good opportunity. As for why digital distribution -- between producing the UMDs, it's questionable how long that format has left, but the PSP as a device still has a huge lifespan. A lot of people I know use them to watch movies and listen to music, so we're trying to get people to use it to play games again."
Kennedy said that it's "possible" that this game will appear on other platforms, such as the DS. "Unbound Saga" and its accompanying comic book will be available on the PlayStation Network in June.
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