Activision Panel with Stan Lee

The Activision Panel moderated by Electric Playground producer Victor Lucas, had faces such as ever-popular Ms. Marvel scribe Brian Reed and comic legend Stan Lee! Studio head of Activision’s Shaba Games Chris Scholz and Vicarious Visions art director Bryan Shutt were also in attendance. Here are the highlights of this year’s Activision panel:

- When asked what it was like to see some of his character “It’s nice.”
- Two trailers were shown. A new one for Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion, and older one for Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.
- The trailer for Ultimate Alliance 2 showcased Captain America, Hulk, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Human Torch, Thing, and Iron Man. Included was a shot of the famed Fastball Special with Wolverine and Hulk.
- Stan “The Man” Lee just nicknamed Brian Reed: Brian “Razzle Dazzle” Reed!
- Web of Shadows Plot: “Symbiotes are taking over New York. It’s kind of like doing a zombie movie with Spider Man” – Brian “Razzle Dazzle” Reed.
- On what goes into designing Spider-Man’s New York: “Let’s have the city be Spider-Man’s playground.” – Chris Sholz. Spider-Man is new to Shaba Games, who did the DLC pack that came out last year. They’ve done a lot of extreme sports games, like Tony Hawk, and they plan to bring that kind of fluidity to a super-hero game. “With all his abilities, it was a perfect match.”
- Brian Reed on writing for a video game vs. a comic book. “The beginning is always the same.” “When you’re doing a video game, where are the parts we want you to feel involved so that you feel those emotions rather than having the story make you feel that emotion.”
- Chris Scholz on relationship between Marvel and Shaba/Activision: “The thing that’s been great is that [Marvel] wants it to be awesome.”
- Stan Lee on how comic book stories have influenced good stories in video game “Theyve influenced them in the sense that they’re the basis of stories for comic book characters. … They’ve gone beyond movies. To do a movie is difficult, but it’s linear. … In a video game, you’re writing many stories within the stories and its a totally different structure and a totally different philosophy of writing … I get the feeling there’s more work put into these video games than movies. … In the beginning I thought video games were kind of clever, … but now you watch one of these games and it’s like watching the greatest superhero movie. It’s indescribable what you guys have done.”
- Bryon Shutt on taking over from Raven: “Raven did a great job and we have a lot to live up to. We haven’t forgotten what made the original a huge success. Everything from solid combat to cooperative play and just the largest army of heroes. That’s what we’re going to deliver on in the sequal. We’ve got a huge team that’s really excited about this project.”
- Bryon Shutt on the new powers and story: “We’re taking the largest army of super heroes and allowing the player to fuse powers that are greater than their own.” Story: “All I can say is that it starts on Secret War.”
- Stan Lee on what it’s like to see all his characters in one game: “It brings me back to the comics. We started the Avengers, we had all the characters and we always tried to get special storeis with special characters.”
- Stan Lee on superpowers he would fuse together “I’m not really a character fusor together type of guy! If I can come up with one idea, I’m happy! Guy gets bitten by a radioactive spider, I’ll settle for that. If I were going to fuse things, I would say what if Wolverine could walk on walls, and had a suit of armor, and his armor turned green…”