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Interview: LEGO Legacy’s creative team discuss their latest Ghostbusters collaboration

Crossing streams with Gameloft

Interview: LEGO Legacy’s creative team discuss their latest Ghostbusters collaboration

If you’ve been following our LaunchPad coverage closely so far, you’ll be more than familiar with LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed. After having made its global debut last February, the turn based RPG has received a plethora of content updates, and this Thursday we announced one of its most exciting collaborations so far with the Ghostbusters entering the collect-a-thon.

We received a unique opportunity to quiz LEGO Legacy’s creative team (Game Manager, Bryan Cook & Creative Director, Arnaud Bonnard) about: the success of the game so far, the challenges with delivering new content, and what the future might hold for this fantastic game!

Q: What are the biggest challenges with bringing new content to such a popular title?

Brian Cook: Finding characters that fit the game is really challenging. Not only does each minifigure have to meet a number of criteria, they also have to work within at least 1 team of 5 minifigures. While these limitations have been challenging, they have also led to some pretty funny results. The Hiker's healing campfire joke is the direct result of this kind of thing. We knew he was an awesome character and we knew we needed a healer... so how does a camper heal people? Campfire tunes! Ghostbusters is an example of a time when it almost wrote itself, they are the perfect team and their ultimate had to be them crossing the streams.

Arnaud Bonnard: One that is dear to me is how to maintain this balance of bringing new content that is relevant to the players (famous minifigure, solid gameplay, etc.) without diminishing the effort they’ve put on previous characters already. It’s a collection game and it’s important that you feel proud of your entire collection and that no minifigure or set isn’t worth it!

Q: How did the developers go about capturing the personalities of the Ghostbusters for LEGO Legacy?

[BC]: The movies were really ripe with material, so in this case it was about filtering through all of the great moments and choosing a few that are really iconic and suitable to the game. Then we fit their personalities with in-game abilities to give them a strong value to use. An example is that Egon is especially effective against stealthed enemies because of all of his gadgets and brain power.

[AB]: From the ability design to the animations, from the minifigure description to the ability names, there are tons of nods to the movies! We like to think that our players spot them as they play. I’d also quickly mention our deep link with LEGO: we’ve worked on so many minifigures and sets together already, they’ve been very supporting, sharing their stories & in-house knowledge; we feel like we’re a small part of LEGO and it helps us a lot to capture the DNA of the minifigure personalities.

Q: What do you feel is the most appealing aspect of LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed?

[BC]: I really enjoy the tongue in cheek tone that we have achieved. Everything is chosen to be slightly silly, while not feeling childish. I still really enjoy unlocking new minifigures to see the humourous animations they do. A current favourite is the look on the Ghostbusters’s faces just before they perform their ultimate ability. They all look a little unsure.

[AB]: This “package” of a game being really deep while looking easy and accessible. LEGO Legacy is worth trying even if you don’t like the genre, or you think you’ve seen it all. As it’s also worth reconnecting with a brand that carries so many positive values.

Q: What is the game’s community like and have any fan suggestions made their way into the game?

[BC]: The community is great. They've been really supportive and offered a bunch of great suggestions. Fan suggestions make it into the game all the time, often in the form of quality of life suggestions. Their comments also come up a lot in our day to day meetings. They're almost like another voice in design meetings.

[AB]: We have a dedicated section in the official Discord for suggestions, and many actually got pushed in the game, from a balancing change to actual features!

Q: Any hints as to what we can expect in future?

[BC]: Well, we are working on a big guild raid feature for the fall and we're already working on our next deal with an external IP.

[AB]: We’ve teased the community that we want to work on the SPACE theme next, surrounding the raid update. It will bring cool new gameplay possibilities that should shake the meta up! And then… we can’t talk much about it yet, but we’re quite interested in going underwater!

LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed is available to download right now from the App Store and Google Play.

Head to the Pocket Gamer LaunchPad hub to find all of our exclusive announcements from our three-day event.