Spector defends Epic Mickey camera
It's the "hardest problem" any dev faces.
Epic Mickey director Warren Spector has defended the game's much-maligned camera, claiming getting the camera right in any game is the "hardest problem" developers face.
In an interview withMTV's Clutch blog, a full unedited version of which appeared on examiner.com, the Deus Ex creator said "First, 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.
"And if I learned one thing on this project, it's an immense amount of respect for people who have been making third person action and platforming games. Third person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be.
"It is the hardest problem in video game development," he added. "Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it."
Eurogamer's Dan Whitehead awarded Spector's Wii game 6/10 last month. His take on the camera? It "blights the more perilous platforming sections, struggling to keep pace as you climb and drop, and it's an absolute pain during combat."
"What I try to be completely clear about is that this is not a platforming game," Spector went on to explain, in response to gamers' complaints that his team should have followed Super Mario Galaxy 2's near-impeccable lead.
"This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn't tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action adventure. It's a very different camera style.
"What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles.
"And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team," he concluded.
"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. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a 'Mario' competitor, because we didn't."