Invincible VS just announced its eighth playable character: Cecil. The no-nonsense director of the Global Defense Agency is a surprise addition to the roster. He lacks any superpowers, so it’s hard to imagine him lasting more than a blink of an eye against the likes of Omni-Man and co. But Invincible creator Robert Kirkman was adamant Cecil be in the game, and left it to the developers at Quarter Up to figure out how to make him work.
Their answer is to lean on all the cool gadgets we see Cecil use in Invincible, which in this 3v3 tag fighting game levels the playing field somewhat. But there’s more: Invincible VS has a sizeable Story Mode in which Cecil plays a crucial role. Kirkman and Quarter Up won’t say much about it, but they describe is as a “playable episode,” so expectations are high.
In this interview with IGN, Kirkman, Invincible VS executive producer Mike Willette, art director Dan Eder, and narrative director Mike Rogers, talk as much about Story Mode as they are allowed to right now, and delve deep into how Cecil actually works in the game. Read on to find out if Invincible VS is canon to the show, details on Cecil's kit, and much more.
IGN: It must have been an interesting challenge with Cecil. He doesn’t have any superpowers, but he’s smart and can teleport and uses a lot of weapons. So how did you go about making him work in a fighting game?
Mike Rogers: From a lore and narrative perspective, Cecil's always in control. We often see him as the man in the ear or the man watching the screen, but people forget that he's a trained agent. He knows how to get his hands dirty and he's got all the tech and all the money of the U.S. government behind him that can allow him to do that. There's just a lot of cool things that we've got in there that allow Cecil to be a really different character. We wanted him in there. There was no way we wanted to exclude him. And we saw opportunities like using his teleporter, like using Reanimen, like using The White Room, to get him in there in a unique way that people might not expect.
Mike Willette: From a gameplay perspective, you have all these different types of archetypes, and where Cecil really fits in, in a really unique fashion in our system, is manipulating space, almost like he manipulates people, right? So the ability to put out projectiles like his Sonic Mine, that will basically just hover in space and then detonate after a few seconds. So he can put hazards, put roadblocks, put almost like a bullet hell for the opponent to try to get through. And because of our active tag system, he connects one time, he can tag in one of his assists. And so he's got a lot of utility for just manipulating the screen, getting around it, pelting the opponent from afar, making it frustrating for them, and then putting him back into our combo system.
IGN: So is he a zoner, would you say?
Mike Willette: Yeah, absolutely. So his combo structure, while he does have auto combos like most of our characters, and the magic chain of light, mediums and heavies, he has a lot of utility for the mid and the long range. He can make people try to chase him down. He has a lot of boosted moves that can cause pop-up or hard knockdown. Or for his… we call it Shellhock, he goes down with a Flaxan weapon and he basically launches like a grenade, but when you boost it you can launch multiples. You can do it
while retreating and try to fill the screen and try to just set up roadblocks, so you can kind of like reset and then continue to pelt from afar.
So he can manipulate a lot more than other characters can, because he has to use these tools. He doesn't have an air dash. He doesn't have double jumps. He uses the teleportation a lot to make those old bones work.
IGN: Robert, I'd love to know what your input was on this. He’s not the obvious choice for a fighting game when you look at the characters in Invincible. I'm sure fans will love that he's in there. Was he a character you were keen to see realized in a fighting game particularly? How did it come to be that he was in the game?
Robert Kirkman: His presence in the game is something that's really exciting for me because it shows the versatility of what these guys are trying to accomplish with the game, by having characters that you wouldn't expect and working out how Cecil can be equally matched with all the other people that are coming into it.
It's really great the way they're pulling in story elements. There's a lot of character that is intact from the comics and the show that is clear in every frame of these characters. Cecil actually puts his hands in his pockets when he moves backwards, which to me was something that I thought was just absolutely brilliant. And it's just a really fun aspect of the character that's there visually as he's moving around.
There's definitely a wish list of characters that I wanted in the game. And Cecil was one where I thought it would be really cool and unexpected if he were to show up in the game. Never in a million years did I think they would be able to pull it off and pull it off this well.
I'm gonna tease too much… I'm going to get in trouble, I can't say anything! But I'm very excited about this game!
IGN: I wanted to ask you about the story and the story mode. I don't know if that's something that you can talk about at this stage, but it'd be great to get some input on the narrative side of things, because I do understand that you're going big on that.
Robert Kirkman: I've been working very closely with Mike Rogers, the narrative lead, and Helen Leigh, who's one of the key writers on the series. She wrote the Atom Eve special episode with me and has done a lot of great episodes for the show. What we're really trying to do is provide an in-game experience that is like watching an episode of the television show. It’s a really cool story that uses the characters in a really exciting and authentic way, and I think goes into some directions that people are really going to be surprised by. There's a lot of unexpected twists and turns.
Mike Rogers: We wanted it to feel like a playable episode. It's this standalone narrative. In the same vein that the Atom Eve special is like a special episode, this is a special episode, too. And just getting to work with Robert and Helen and really craft something that feels right for the Invincible universe, it's been a real treat.
IGN: Is this canon, or is it like a What If? sort of scenario? I know it's an original story, so it's not something we've seen before. But, you know the fans will wonder how it all ties in with everything. They always do. I mean, I do! So what do we actually have here?
Robert Kirkman: It definitely fits very neatly into the narrative of the show. There's a tremendous level of care going into making sure that the characters are authentic and that everything works. Internally, there's actually a window where we're like, ‘Yeah, could fit there.’ But, you know, we're not going to talk about that.
Mike Willlette: Just sit back and enjoy yourself!
