EA to publish Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend in fall of 2009

12 December 2008

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Posted by:Josh

Electronic Arts has picked up Tim Schafer’s Brutal Legend for release in Fall of 2009.

Tim Schafer is the mind behind some of gaming’s most critically acclaimed although never-mainstream titles. His works include 1990′s The Secret of Monkey Island and 1992′s sequel Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, 1993′s Day of the Tentacle, 1995′s Full Throttle and 1998′s Grim Fandango. He then left LucasArts to form his own company, Double Fine Productions, which put out 2005′s critically acclaimed platformer Psychonaughts (which is available for Xbox 360 as an “Xbox Originals” download). He then started work on his next game, the metal music opus Brütal Legend.

Brütal Legend is a 3rd person Action/Adventure game starring Jack Black in the role of roadie Eddie Riggs, who sets on an epic quest to build an army of rockers with only a broad axe, a big block V8 and his faithful guitar in hand. Eddie Riggs has been drawn back through time to a mythical world dripped in Rock and Roll folklore; where great Metal titans once ruled and power chords rang from the countryside for all to hear. When an oppressed people request Eddie’s knowledge of modern warfare, he pulls from his own experience in the only occupation he’s ever had, a roadie for a Heavy Metal band. From this springs the most hellacious army man has ever seen, and thus brings this ancient world into the Age of Metal.

Brutal Legend was originally supposed to be published by Vivendi Games however the project was dropped when they merged with Activision this past July (also dropped were Ghostbusters and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, both now being published by Atari and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault among others). Although the game hung in limbo until now development continued on the game by the team at Double Fine (which is now 65 strong working full time) and now they will get to continue developing it for many months longer until Fall of next year which will help ensure that it’s up to the quality you’d expect from a Tim Schafer title. Not only that but EA is going to put all their marketing muscle behind the title to ensure that people will be lining up for it when it hits next year.

Be sure to tune in to the SpikeTV 2008 Video Game Awards which will be hosted by Jack Black, who will be debuting some all-new footage of the game when the Awards air on Spike TV on December 14th.

Check out GameSpot for more fun tidbits including what it’s like working with Jack Black.