I worked as a Cinematic Designer on the 3rd person action/adventure/comedy game Deadpool (Xbox 360, PS3) at High Moon Studios – Activision in Southern California. Here is a video walkthrough of the first chapter of the game in which I was the designer on. I pitched the idea to and collaborated with the lead designer on creating this space:

Achievements

July 2012 – April 2013

• Directed and designed the first chapter of the Deadpool game; a player controlled, noncombat, story driven space in which the player is free to explore. It contains multiple scripted environmental storytelling interacts and custom in-game cinematics that serves as an introduction to the Deadpool character.
• Scripted complex player interactions on cinematics, NPC’s and the environment across several levels.
• Conceptualized and implemented real-time, interactive and pre-rendered cutscenes.
• Contributed to the overall story by writing character dialog and scene scripts.
• Collaborated closely with Leads, Design, Mechanics, Code, Writing, Animation, Art, VFX and Audio departments throughout the development cycles.
• Optimization, performance polish and bug fixing.

Following a phone call from the game’s developer establishing the creation of the very action game I was playing (Inception!), the fourth wall-breaking Wade Wilson set about exploring his dilapidated apartment, an amusement park of alternating disgust and brilliance. One minute he’s asking his dog how the ball-licking is going, the next he’s commenting on the shoddy polygon model design of his furniture. He inflates a blow-up doll, one of the voices in his head (he has two) commenting, “We’re not going to put our penis in that, are we?” Then he’s having a conversation on the telephone with his own voice actor, the prolific Nolan North.

What seems like a series of cheap gags and gross-out moments is actually a glimpse into the tortured psyche of Marvel’s “Merc with a Mouth.” There’s a hero inside Wade Wilson, floating deep beneath a sea of psychosis, where the call to action can be hard to hear. One could argue that this entire scenario — the High Moon Studios phone call and subsequent “video game development” — is an elaborate mental construct created to lead Deadpool down the path of the righteous.

As he wanders aimlessly about his apartment, there’s an insistent knocking at his door. It’s the script to the game being delivered — or is it? Is Deadpool playing with his own head and, by extension, mine? Kotaku Review

Deadpool is a hilarious comic book, and the video game based on the character lives up to that reputation, delivering a crazy amount of one-liners. The JRPG references in this particular screenshot crack me up. Kotaku Story