Costume Quest

It's a funny sad space marine. He is kind of a funny space sad marine, actually. No! He's not a marine, he doesn't have a gun.

A generic space warrior. That one is also based on a costume I made as a kid. I really wanted to be Darth Vader this one year but my mom wouldn't buy me the official Darth Vader outfit, so I had to make my own outfit out of stuff I found around the house. It just came out looking like this hodgepodge crappy space warrior.

That's the sequel to Funny Sad Space Marine.

Battlecob? You changed it. That's even better. Battlecob!

An every town suburban neighbourhood, like we grew up in...

And there's a shopping mall. I think that level is awesome. In a way it's an homage to the mall level in EarthBound.

You didn't tell me there's a mall in EarthBound.

There is.

Oh, we've got to cut that then. That's totally derivative.

They don't trick or treat in the mall.

I like that level because it was fun to think of names for stores. That is always my favourite thing on The Simpsons, when they come up with, like, A-1 Baby Crutches or something, as a name for a store.

It comes and goes. For some reason, when I was writing the store names for the mall – that was one thing I contributed – I don't know why I thought it was so funny, but there's a store called Husky Toddler. I laughed and laughed. I really amused myself with that. I'm not saying it's a great joke, but it made me tear up. Husky Toddler... It's so mean.

It's not like Monkey Island. It doesn't break the fourth wall. It stays within a fantasy world.

Mostly we work hard on defining our characters and their back-stories and think about where they came from, what they care about. And then, in the moment of writing, you're like an improvisational actor. You're acting out the lines as if you were those characters.

I try to make them real. To me, humour is all about surprise. I try to put in not the line you were expecting, but some surprising line in instead. By keeping the characters real there's a lot of empathy. We try to write them like they're real people we care about. That makes a certain tone in the game.

Well there's nothing wrong with slapstick Tom and Jerry stuff.

Sometimes that comes across in the animation, though. Not really in the writing.

There's a lot of physical comedy that's pretty funny in the game, like when that monster – it's so unnecessary – he falls off that dumpster and topples into the trash can. I always crack up on that. That's not exactly high brow. I'm not snob when it comes to comedy. But I do try and use Einstein's theories a lot when I'm writing, because he's very smart.

It's a response to Stephen Hawking theology. It's a subtext. He's represented by the cat's butt.

Oh, you're going to have play it again.

In here [points at own heart]. The cat butt is in here, in your heart.

Not at all. Actually I really enjoyed it. It was fun.

He's a really nice guy.