This is a new Disney 3D video game for the Wii with a premise based on painting as a tool capable of controlling entire worlds (including time, history, and culture) and one’s own destiny via the paintbrush, the inherent material properties of paints and thinners, and “imagination.”
Gameplay videos reveal, as predicted from the trailer, the pivotal role of a “Hellblau” colored paint, its slime green paint thinner antidote, and control of the first person paintbrush. The storyline is also based on a branding war between two similarly drawn icons, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse, who were put at odds when Walt Disney lost the rights to Oswald as a character in a contract dispute and created the almost identical Mickey to stake his claim. Apparently your choices in the game affect both the final storyline/environment and the outcome of your character. All these mini-strokes combine to create your image, the image of your world, and the “stroke” of your path through life.
Warren Spector (creator) talks about user-generated character results and the behind-the-scenes movements through different time periods, ranges of successful or accepted Disney creations, states of matter, and realms of color and dimension, all within the wrapper of Disney, encouraging propagation and familiarity with the Disney brand. This is still operating in the same way as many original fairy tales, by providing moral and metaphysical suggestion through the most viral properties of storytelling: entertainment and character empathy.
If the final scene of the teaser video is any indication, all these primal and irreverent paint strokes will gain focus and intent to work toward some new epic goal: coming together once again to focus on the creation of a brand champion.
No actual paint is involved in the playing of this game.
posted by Kari Altmann
