Scott Pilgrim returns to brawl on the digital streets of Toronto in new video game
Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley says he's "not a kind of person who has a master plan." But you might be fooled by the recent spate of works based on his most famous creation, Scott Pilgrim."If I was 12, I would want to do a movie, and an anime, and a video game," he said. Now, 20 years after Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the first book in his series, he's got all of those and then some.The latest is Scott Pilgrim EX, the second video game to star the indie music-loving nerd who previously was tasked with fighting his girlfriend's seven evil exes in duels across a cartoony version of Toronto.It's more than a sequel to O'Malley and indie developer Tribute Games, however. Much of the team originally worked on the previous game while working for Ubisoft, and O'Malley said it was a chance to revisit "unfinished business" and ideas they didn't get to the first time around.Players travel a fictionalized version of Toronto in Scott Pilgrim EX. (Tribute Games)Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game came out in 2011 and roughly followed the plot of the comics and movie. In Scott Pilgrim EX's original storyline, an evil robot clone of Scott kidnaps members of the band Sex Bob-Omb. Scott, his girlfriend, Ramona, and other characters have to rescue their friends.It isn't as interesting a setup as the original comic, but it works for a game more concerned about fisticuffs than messy coming-of-age narratives. Playing as Scott, Ramona or a handful of the other characters in the series, you'll fight gang members, ne'er-do-wells and robots while fulfilling minor requests from other supporting characters across Toronto.Players will travel back and forth around the city, revisiting locations while unlocking access to new ones throughout Scott and company's adventure in a nonlinear setup reminiscent of the 1989 game River City Ransom.At first glance, Scott Pilgrim EX looks a lot like the previous game, with visuals closely hewing to O'Malley's original comic book. But O'Malley says EX also blends esthetic choices from Edgar Wright's 2010 live action film and Netflix's 2023 anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off."It draws on all the lore of the different versions of Scott Pilgrim in various ways, but for the most part it's just so you can pick it up and play it and have fun," said O'Malley, who also worked as a consultant on the game.Time-travel to 2010s TorontoTorontonians will instantly recognize landmarks, architecture and neighbourhoods as most of the locations were modelled directly after their real-life counterparts. A shopping district includes direct analogues to downtown restaurants like Sneaky Dee's, and one store's red sign is a clear reference to the former Honest Ed's.WATCH | Scott Pilgrim EX trailer:Some locations have a fantastical twist thanks to a time travel element in the game; Casa Vana (a take on the city's Casa Loma) is infested with the undead in a callback to the Castlevania games, for example.O'Malley said using time travel makes sense for both EX and the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off anime, "because it's kind of hard to take Scott Pilgrim out of the 2000s or 2010s era.""For a lot of young people, it's like Scott Pilgrim takes place in this alternate world. When it's actually just the world that we had 20 years ago."Bryan Lee O'Malley is the creator of the Scott Pilgrim series, celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024. (Superfan Promotions)Reviving the beat-'em-up genreLike Tribute Games's other recent offerings, Scott Pilgrim EX mostly takes the form of an old-school beat-'em-up, fighting off dozens of enemies on a two-dimensional plane and occasionally fighting powerful boss enemies at the end of a mission."For me and a lot of us in the company, they carry a big feeling of co-op playing with friends, whether it's at the arcade or in your basement on your console," narrative director Yannick Belzil said of the genre.The Montreal-based studio, which was founded in 2011 mostly by ex-Ubisoft employees, quickly built a reputation for retro-style games made with two-dimensional pixel art (think art made with tiny square pixels, rather than high-resolution art that resembles cartoons).In the last few years, it's built a reputation with games based on popular franchises like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Marvel Super Heroes that were popular for arcade-style beat-'em-ups in the early 1990s.For both Scott Pilgrim EX and Marvel Cosmic Invasion (the latter of which launched last December), the team drew inspiration from one-on-one fighting games like Street Fighter and the Marvel vs. Capcom series of fighting games to build on the gameplay of the beat-'em-up, which has historically been a simple affair of mostly walking, jumping and punching.Tribute Games's Marvel Cosmic Invasion takes inspiration from Marvel games from the 1990s, including the X-Men arcade game and the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games. (Tribute Games)"You could almost make a case that the fighting game pushed the beat-'em-up out of the arcades," said Belzil. "And so when it's time to make modern beat-'em-up, it makes sense to try to get back some of that action grammar and gameplay complexity ... so you can create something new, something that feels more different."In EX, Scott and other characters have fast light attacks and slower strong attacks; a power meter that builds over time and allows for stronger super moves and multiple options to grab and throw your enemies — all things longtime fighting game fans will be familiar with.Belzil said the team also researched real-world martial arts and paired them with the character that they thought would best fit them. Scott, for example, uses the Bajiquan Chinese martial arts that he described as "sort of a heroic, strict" fighting style befitting the titular main character.'We're avenging ourselves'Scott Pilgrim EX carries special significance for Tribute Games's longest-serving developers.The studio was founded by a group who had worked on the 2011 Scott Pilgrim game who were mostly based in that publisher's Montreal studio. Soon after production began, however, the team was moved to Ubisoft's then-new studio in Chengdu, China, to finish the game."The directing heads at Ubisoft Montreal thought that it was too costly to develop it in Montreal, so they shipped it to Ubisoft Chengdu to finish," said Belzil."That situation made it so that a lot of things that were initially conceived for the game had to be pared down and cut down so that the game could exist in the form that it did."Belzil says that Scott Pilgrim EX, which Tribute developed and published, was closer to their initial vision of what a Scott Pilgrim video game could be."In some ways, we're avenging ourselves," said O'Malley. "We didn't get to properly say goodbye to that original game. So this one, we get to really have a real crack at it."Key art for Scott Pilgrim EX. (Tribute Games)
