Epic Mickey: Difference between revisions

The story begins with Walt Disney's original cartoon star, [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit]], after finally getting Walt some success and recognition, [[Too Good to Last|being taken from him]] over a budget dispute, fading into obscurity, and being [[Captain Ersatz|replaced by his younger half-brother]] [[Mickey Mouse]]. [[Throw the Dog A Bone|Fortunately]], he becomes the first resident of a world created by [[Fantasia|the wizard Yen Sid]] for [[What Could Have Been|forgotten and rejected Disney creations and ideas]]. This world, called [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Wasteland]] (based on the [[Disney Theme Parks]]), exists as a small model on a table within Yen Sid's tower. Oswald takes this world as his own, presenting himself as a king there. Soon after, Oswald teams up with [[The Mad Doctor]], another early resident of Wasteland -- together, they create the [[Mecha Mook|robotic]] [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|Beetleworx]], which serve as construction tools for Wasteland, as well as relocators for new residents of the world, and together they try to make Wasteland a comfortable home for the other lost [[Disney]] characters who later join them -- but Oswald grows resentful of his younger brother over time due to his increasing popularity. In a vain effort to emulate the life he never had, he makes a ''very'' large family with his [[Interspecies Romance|feline girlfriend]] Ortensia, and has [[The Mad Doctor]] build [[Robot Buddy|robotic copies]] of [[Donald Duck]] and [[Goofy]] to help him recreate the adventures Mickey went on -- but even this fails to fill the void.

 

 

Decades later, having long forgotten the incident, Mickey is suddenly pulled into Wasteland from his home via the Blot. Mickey manages to grab the magic paintbrush before he is pulled in, so he can create and erase things with paint and [[Black Magic|thinner]]. After narrowly escaping from Dark Beauty Castle and the Doctor and Blot's attempt to remove his heart, as well as having a brief encounter with Oswald, Mickey's initial goal is to simply return home, but his discovery of the miserable state of Wasteland and its inhabitants, including old friends like Horace Horsecollar, cause him to change his plans.

Now the mouse must regain the trust of his resentful older half-brother Oswald, foil the Mad Doctor, and stop the Shadow Blot to save and restore Wasteland, all while trying to keep his heart, the symbol of those who remember and love him, which is all the Blot needs to escape into the real world.

 

 

A sequel is currently in development, ''Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two'' (selected from a batch of subtitles that also included ''Return of the Mad Doctor'' and ''Mystery on Mean Street''). It is set for release on multiple consoles and will feature co-op play, with a second player controlling Oswald, who flies like a helicopter and attacks with electricity. The game will also be a musical, with Mickey's moral choices affecting the tunes, and among the new areas open in Wasteland is Frontierland. Marv Wolfman (''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'') will co-write the script.

 

<!-- %%comment%% No Edit Wars between "Phantom Blot" and "Shadow Blot," please. -->

* [[Action Bomb]]: Spladooshes will sleep happily, but [[Stuff Blowing Up|if they wake up...]]

* [[All There in the Manual]]: A currently-available free iOS app has stories of the Wasteland before Mickey messes it up.

* [[Anticlimax Boss]]: {{spoiler|The final boss.}} You shine some lights in his face, then go inside him and perform surgery. It's challenging, but not really the fight you'd expect.

* [[Anti Frustration Feature]]: Mickey's reserves of Paint or Thinner will slowly return to one-third capacity if they ever fall below that amount.

* [[Apathetic Citizens]]: The citizens of OsTown and Mean Street doesn't seem to mind that their cities are literally the only places that [[The Mad Doctor]] and [[Blob Monster|the Shadow Blot]] haven't conquered yet. Heck, they won't even react when Mickey goes [[Grand Theft Auto]] on them. Thankfully averted with the Gremlins, who seems to be the only people around who at least try to help you.

* [[Art Attacker]]: Mickey uses a brush and paint thinner to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]].

* [[Art Shift]]: Gameplay segments use a relatively orthodox graphical style reminiscent of ''[[Super Mario Galaxy (Video Game)|Super Mario Galaxy]]''. Cutscenes, however, are 2D and in a style influenced by the late [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Blair Mary Blair], who did concept art for several [[Disney]] movies and the art for "It's A Small World."

* [[Big Bad Duumvirate]]: [[Blob Monster|The Shadow Blot]] (now an [[Eldritch Abomination]] made of paint and [[Black Magic|thinner]]) and [[The Mad Doctor]], described by Spector as being the "brawn and the brains" of the pairing, respectively.

* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Attempted, but unfortunately subverted when {{spoiler|Mickey and his friends try to use the Rocket to defeat [[Eldritch Abomination|the Shadow Blot]].}}

** The Lonesome Ghosts travel map as well, plus the aptly named The Haunted House.

* [[Black Magic]]: The thinner. You actually need it on occasion, but if you're doing a "good" playthrough, you won't be using it a lot.

*** And don't even get started on Oswald when he was the main villain... [http://hamilton74.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d37hkgg Phantom Blot Oswald anyone?]

** In the final game, Mickey absorbed some of the Blot when dragged into the Wasteland, resulting in him appearing to ooze drops of ink. If you favor using [[Black Magic|thinner]], lots of ink will float off of him as a result.

* [[Breaking the Bonds]]: How Mickey escapes the Mad Doctor in their first scene.

* [[Bridge Logic]]: An option for getting through the European section of Gremlin Village.

* [[Clockwork Creature]]: The Beetleworx enemies are robots constructed from random parts that have the faces of various [[Disney]] characters painted on them. Defeating them requires erasing the painted parts.

** The Small World Clocktower Boss as well.

* [[Comic Book Limbo]]: This is essentially the setting.

* [[Conspicuously Light Patch]]: The main way of identifying what you can use Paint or Thinner on. Surfaces with bright, vibrant colors are composed of Paint, while thinned objects leave ghostly silhouettes behind. Additionally, anything you can spin move to activate or smash for shineys flashes iridescent.

* [[Cowboy Bebop At His Computer]]: Gametrailers.com mistakenly labeled [[Fantasia|Yen Sid]] as [[The Sword in The Stone|Merlin]]. This was later corrected in the pop-up version of the opening cinematic.

** Not to mention how many people mistook the game as ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] III'' when it first debuted.

** Mickey can use thinner to make it ''[[Video Game Cruelty Potential|worse]]''.

* [[Creative Closing Credits]]: Available right from the start in the Extras menu, featuring Blotlings doing various antics with the Brush.

* [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]]: What happened to Captain Hook and the members of his crew that were turned into Beetleworx. {{spoiler|The latter can get better by turning back, the former without.}}

* [[Deadly Rotary Fan]]: There are a series of these in the "World of Gremlins" dungeon (which imitates the "It's a Small World" ride). They spin too quickly for Mickey to easily get through unharmed, but he can use paint thinner to erase some of the blades long enough to pass by unscathed.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Gremlin Gus seems to be a bit of this. Considering [[Roald Dahl|who created him]], it makes sense.

* [[Leitmotif]]: [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] and [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] have their own distinctive themes.

* [[Limelight Series]]

* [[Lost Forever]]: ''Every single action stage''. According to [http://www.totalvideogames.com/Disney-Epic-Mickey/preview-15659.html this article], once you clear an action stage, you can't go back. Oh, and the game autosaves after important decisions. According to the dev team, this is so that players can't go back on their choices.

** Fortunately, there's a [[New Game Plus]] option that allows you to go back to old levels.

* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: A fireworks version is used to defeat the {{spoiler|real Shadow Blot}}.

* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: [[The Mad Doctor]] is manipulating [[Blob Monster|the Blot]] for his own means. {{spoiler|[[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] is manipulating [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] to build the rocket for him}}.

** The Japanese version just added to the title so it's called "Disney Epic Mickey: Mickey Mouse and the Magic Brush".

* [[The Merch]]: Showing up in [[Disney Theme Parks]] this year is a lot of merch featuring old [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] (including at least one shirt featuring a shot of him from ''Gallopin' Gaucho'', a short that fell into company [[Canon Dis Continuity]] for having [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] light a cigarette -with his foot- among other things.) This game is why.

* [[Mercy Invincibility]]: Cruelly averted... fall into a pool of [[Black Magic|thinner]] without a nearby platform -- or end up underneath one -- and you're almost guaranteed to quickly lose ''all'' of your health pips. And the [[Camera Screw]] the game often offers doesn't help at all.

* [[The Messiah]]: [[What Could Have Been|Hero Mickey.]]

* [[Minecart Madness]]: Shown in a concept pic at the London press conference.

** In game, a variation of this [[Trope]] appears in the Travel Map Trolley Troubles. You don't have to stay atop the trolley, but it is necessary to keep it with you and to open gates for it to complete the map. May cross over with a strange type of [[Escort Mission]].

** Not to be confused with the animatronic [[Donald Duck|Donald]], [[Goofy]], and Daisy seen around the park. These guys used to [[Word of God|repair the Wasteland, and assign the forgotten characters to where they would live]]. After [[Black Magic|the Thinner]] Disaster, everybody just kind of did their own thing.

* [[Mook Maker]]: The Beetleworx creators which will spit out another Beetleworx as soon as you've destroyed one. {{spoiler|The real Shadow Blot is one of these too, since all the Blotlings and the small Shadow Blot are just pieces that escaped out of the bottle.}}

** Emphasis on "ambiguous": While he has helped [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] by building the robot versions of [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey's]] friends and the maintenance Beetleworx, [[The Quisling|he switched to the Blot's side when he started winning]] and is now his partner in the [[Big Bad Duumvirate]].

* [[Motor Mouth]]: [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald.]] Just try to keep up with what he's saying when you first meet him.

* [[Multiple Endings]]: Depending on [[Karma Meter|how you fought the bosses]]. {{spoiler|Although it seems that only what happens to certain characters changes in the various endings.}}

* [[New Game Plus]]: Film reels and pins carry over between playthroughs.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]: Seriously, the plot focuses on cartoon characters who are jealous and/or depressed because they're not popular with audiences anymore!

** Heck, the only fourth wall the characters don't break is their relation to the actual player.

* [[Notice This]]: "Toon" objects (surfaces affected by Paint or Thinner) are lighter and more vibrantly colored than objects surrounding them; even when thinned, they leave a ghostly silhouette behind so the player can recognize that something's supposed to go there. This is similar to the [[Conspicuously Light Patch]] of traditional cel animations, where foreground objects were lighter tone than background objects due to being placed on a separate layer.

* [[Not So Different]]: [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] and [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]]. According to [[Word of God]], [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] and [[Blob Monster|Shadow Blot]] count as this, too. {{spoiler|They both want to be famous in [[Real Life]] and use [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey's]] heart in order to become that, and they're both willing to use less than morally right ways to get that heart; Oswald through deception and Shadow Blot through brute force}}.

** If you turn around while in first person view however, he doesn't stop teasing you.

* [[Not the Fall That Kills You]]: Between [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey's]] [[Double Jump]], his spin attack, and his brush techniques, there are many ways to soften his momentum before actually impacting the ground.

* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted; there are two extras named Ian. No attention is brought to this, though the game distinguishes them by referring to the pirate as "One Eyed Ian" and the ghost simply as "Ian."

** Then there's Constance, the one who was the original owner of the Lonesome Manor who was suspected to have killed all her husbands with the hatchet that you have to find for Horace, and there's the NPC Constance you can randomly talk to in Ventureland if you rescue the pirates.

* [[Only Six Faces]] / [[You All Look Familiar]]: [[Justified Trope|Justified]]! [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] the similar appearances of many characters on his first walk through [[Hub Level|Mean Street]]. [[Deadpan Snarker|Gus]] describes them as "rough drafts", "extras", and concepts of characters "left and forgotten on the drawing board".

* [[Percussive Maintenance]]: [[La Résistance|The gremlins]] can fix ''anything'' by whacking it with a wrench. {{spoiler|Also how [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] gets the rocket to work.}}

** [[Subverted Trope|Or]] you can simply continue to send Hook careening into the ship's walls, masts, and deck boards until he breaks apart from all the repeated impacts.

* [[Redemption in The Rain]]: Justified. {{spoiler|It "rains" paint during the ending, restoring the Wasteland to its original state.}}

** Also the Slobbers (if you painted them friendly and somehow enough [[Black Magic|thinner]] got on them to turn evil again). They have {{color|red|red}} eyes only when they aren't under [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey's]] influence.

* [[Remilitarized Zone]]: The travel map based on the [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] cartoon "Great Guns".

* [[Tron Lines]]: Covering [[Crapsack World|Wasteland's]] version of [[Tomorrowland]], Tomorrow City.

* [[Underground Monkey]]: Spatter Blotlings and Beetleworx adopt different outfits and textures depending on which level you encounter them in.

{{quote| '''[[Deadpan Snarker|Gus]]''': "It's true what they say about you, you can make friends with anybody."}}

* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: ...or regress back to what thou once were?

* [[What Could Have Been]]: The setting is an [[In Universe]] example, with some characters lamenting things turned out differently. Oswald is especially like this.

** IRL, many gamers who followed the development of the game from the beginning, feel that the final product was significantly lacking in the kind of surreal, eldritch horror that much of the concept art was promising. One wonders what game we might have gotten if the developers had simply seen how much they could get away with...

** And [[Deadpan Snarker|Gremlin Gus's]] basic reaction if and when [[Mickey Mouse|Mickey]] chooses a treasure chest full of E-tickets over the safety of Gremlin Calvin and sends him flying via catapault.

{{quote| {{spoiler|'''[[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]]:''' I should have known! You stole my life AND ruined my home! That's it! [[Bring It|You and me, Mouse! Right now, c'mon!]] I've been waiting for this for years! This is gonna be my moment! (Cue [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald's]] fury accidentally breaking the seal on the [[Sealed Evil in A Can|REAL]] [[Eldritch Abomination|Shadow Blot]].)}} }}

** After completing one of Pete's "Bunny Kid Round-Up" quests on [[Hub Level|Mean Street]], [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit|Oswald]] will complain if you talk to him. Of course, if you ''don't'' complete them, then Pete will be pissed and won't become a nicer person in the end of the game.

[[Category:The New Tens]]

[[Category:Epic Mickey]]