Story goes that the multiplayer was actively hidden in the marketing. They actually wanted the game to use the guitar controller and be closer to what Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock was supposed to be, so yeah take from that what you like. Again, from what I’ve read the near-complete quality of the single-player experience is amazing going by where it came from. Certainly made me reconsider the game, because I too was quite disappointed with what seemed like at amputated single-player experience.

It also being tacked on I think would be a real pity, because the world was so original, creative and an inviting place to explore. To me the real content of that game is in single player campaign. And to say it was tacked on doesn’t seem right to me. When we were first shown it, it was all about the single player story. If it was the publisher demanding something, they must have demanded it early. Additionally it doesn’t seem like Schafer was against it with how much of a unique push he put behind it.

When you as the player have finished the campaign, you have been trained in all the skills and mechanics needed to take the fight online. Is this the third act? A return to the glorious age of metal, where warriors fight hard and rock out in order to please the fans and put on the best show, ever. And who is the man behind the army, waiting in the wings (or floating above, with wings, as it were) making sure everything goes smoothly? When something needs fixing, he’s right there we he needs to be, lending some muscle, playing a solo or teaming up with a headbanger, and before you know it he’s gone and the show continues like he was never there. Eddie Riggs, Roadie.

But I also felt that the narrative in general became a let down after the first act. Now by narrative, I don’t necessarily mean the story or plot — there’s probably a better word for it — but I thought a lot of the supportive elements of those aspects started washing away.

In the first act you have this amazingly beautiful and cool place to explore. Its landscape is dotted with all kinds of “Metal” monuments, characters and beasts.

But the rest of the game just boils down to “ice world” and “jungle world.” They don’t really do anything with them to continue the theme of the game. Even the last area, which I realize is supposed to be the Goth mirror of the first area, doesn’t have the same consideration put into it. It’s just oppressive and bland.

Maybe it’s a separate issue, but I feel that a lot of the narrative elements of the game, not only the three-act structure, weren’t taken to their natural conclusion.

So it ends up being a question of what kind of critical traction you can get over Brutal Legend by calling it “epic” when what you’re talking about is a folkloric narrative pattern that slips into epic through the _Odyssey_ and then makes its way through Apollonius and Vergil, and not talking about the nature of the oral recompositional tradition that gives us what homeric scholars see as the most important part of “epicness.”

Or, to put it another way, “epic” as a critical term doesn’t seem to me to get us anywhere unless we’re talking about a material culture of interactive storytelling–as opposed to narrative motifs that are shared across times, genres, and media technologies.

If that’s so, then perhaps the story is just there to support the multiplayer, but I can’t really believe that, either, as the game story seems to be really good up until that point where it just… stops.

To me, it’s the biggest failing of the game.

One thing I want to try and explore, but realized I couldn’t was the concept of Brutal Legend as the epic. One part of that is the presence of the epic hero, which I covered, but I think there is much more there in the story. I speak for of the Odyessy than the Iliad, becuase I’m more aquainted with that work, but I think Brutal Legend actually fits the latter in terms of ideas and concepts. The special armor crafted by the gods for Achilles being the Deuce for Eddie Riggs. Ophelia takes the form of Briseis and in the second half both Helen and Paris. Lars an amalgamation of Agamemnon and Ajax. It could even conform to certain mythic ideas in the Aeneid. I’m rambling at this point, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.

I ended up deleting nearly a page of material examining the Nordic and Greek mythilogical influences in the backstory. Such backstory is usually neccessary for the classical epic that I couldn’t help but feel that there is such a connection to Brutal Legend, as you say, being a full formed legend.