I've been doing this blog for about three and a half years now. And before that, I wrote a novel and about a half-dozen roleplaying books. So I think it's fair to call myself "a writer," or, at least, a serious hobbyist. And I say this because as a writer, I am stunned by Brutal Legend. I don't know how Tim Shafer did it. It's like a damned magic trick the way this game just instantly sells its world and its characters.
From his first scene, you know who Eddie Riggs is and you become immediately invested in his predicament. Hell, I could have played a whole game worth of him being a roadie for Kabbage Boy, based purely on the strength of the first three minutes of the game.
Then he gets transported to "The Age of Metal" and it's like a master class in sketching out a compelling fantasy world. And I'm not even talking about the art design here. Eddie's early monologues, where he correctly predicts that the battle nun will be a horrifying mutant, or where he prays to the gods of evil to move a captured enemy vehicle, tell you everything you need to know about what sort of world you're in and what sort of story you're going to experience.
And then the art design reinforces that. I'm not any sort of connoisseur of heavy metal, but it doesn't matter because it is nearly impossible to find a camera angle in this game that does not capture something awesome. Like, sure, there's this layer of irony that comes from knowing that the cross-shaped megalith or giant chrome engine embedded in the sides of a canyon are inspired by a particular musical genre, and thus it's funny that this celebration of macho excess has been realized in a digital world. And yet, it is also a distinct fantasy world of epic scope and grandeur.
There's this thing fantasy stories commonly do, where they're set in what amounts to a post-apocalyptic world. The protagonist is part of a civilization that has been built on top of the ruins of some prior civilization that was both immensely accomplished and tantalizingly mysterious. And in fantasy games, interacting with these ancient ones is often the most memorable part. There's this great optional area in Final Fantasy VI where you see a drama play out between summoned gods and the wizards and royalty that bound them. And of course, the titular Remnants were the best part of The Last Remnant, and so on and so forth, going all the way back to the dungeons of Dungeons & Dragons.
But I'm going to make a bold statement here - no one has ever done it better than Brutal Legend. The backstory is that the world was once ruled by this enlightened race of titans, who tutored both humanity and demons before mysteriously vanishing. And you can see the mark they made on the world almost everywhere you go. There's this 20-story-tall stone guitar just sitting in the middle of a field - is it relevant to a quest? Do you have to fight some kind of guitar-monster there, or perhaps navigate through a musically-themed dungeon? Nope. It's just a giant artifact, left over from when giants ruled the world. You can stare at it, be awed by it, and know deep down in your bones that everything you do is in the shadow of what the ancients left behind.
Sure, this ancient race only exists because the game-creators wanted to build a semi-coherent world around an implied Heavy Metal mythos, but then their inspiration, the fantasy-flavored lyrics of certain heavy metal songs, was itself inspired by the foundational classics of fantasy literature. Brutal Legend is a quotation of a quotation and the net effect is like double-distilled moonshine. Maybe you don't get the same subtlety and nuance as you would in a straightforward fantasy game, but the essence of the genre is right there in your face, in all of its eye-watering glory.
There's this sense that as you play along with Brutal Legend's story, you can predict what's going to happen long before it actually happens. Lars, the leader of the resistance, is a fairly typical fantasy hero and his journey, as seen through the eyes of Eddie Riggs, is one that follows a fairly standard trajectory. And I would argue that that is a strength instead of a weakness. First of all, the game doesn't need to waste a lot of time establishing who these people are or why you should care about them. You know: heroes = good, villains = bad. But secondly, Brutal Legend actually manages to do something really clever here. By making the main viewpoint character someone who plays more of a supporting role, it explores a rather conventional story from an unusual perspective - a heroic fantasy narrative seen through the lens of logistics and diplomacy, rather than personal valor.
Making the game an RTS is therefor a thematic necessity (and as I understand it, Brutal Legend was supposed to be an RTS from the start, the adventure and open-world elements were later additions), but I'm getting ahead of myself. Mostly I've been focusing on gathering collectibles and exploring the world. I haven't actually gotten to the RTS sections yet. I've been putting it off because I remember them being half-baked and tedious, but I should probably just bite the bullet and move on, because the game's story and characters are great and I won't see very much of them wandering around the (admittedly badass and evocative) wilderness.
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