Guardians Of The Galaxy video game interview – ‘I wanna tell a story of coping with loss’

metro.co.uk:

GameCentral talks to the narrative director of Guardians Of The Galaxy about Fing Fang Foom’s shorts and what it’s like to make a hidden gem.

Nobody, least of all us, expected Square Enix’s Guardians Of The Galaxy game to be any good, especially not after the disappointment of their Avengers game. Not that the two titles are in any way connected, since they were made by completely different teams, but since Guardians also features a superhero team of bickering misfits it seemed reasonable to assume that both games would share a similar premise. But they do not. Guardians Of The Galaxy is not only an entirely single-player experience but it’s one of the best narrative driven games of the last several years.

Because nobody expected Guardians Of The Galaxy to be any good, and the marketing did little to convince them otherwise, the game wasn’t an immediate hit. In fact, it looked like it was going to be a certified flop, but as people started to realise how good it was, and the game began getting nominated for big awards, the vibe around it slowly transformed and more and more people got to enjoy it – especially once it came to Xbox Game Pass.

The recognition took a little longer to arrive than senior narrative director Mary DeMarle was probably hoping but she was in town recently because the game had been nominated at the Baftas (it had three separate actors up for performance roles but lost out on its narrative nomination to indie game Unpacking). We spoke to her last week about how the game came together, the logic behind its many surprising design decisions, and how she coped with the game’s initial lukewarm reaction.

GC: How fed up do you get with people using the word ‘surprising’ when describing how good your game is?

MD: