Invincible VS Story Mode Deep Dive: Fight To Save The World | Official Xbox Podcast

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Thanks, Nolan. Hey, everybody. Welcome into the Official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox. I'm Jeff, and today I'm very, very excited. I've been secretly playing a little something that was just announced to the world today. I am talking about the single player story mode from Invincible VS. As a huge fan of the show on Prime Video, I've been having a ton of fun with it. For anyone else who's super into Invincible like I am watching the show right now, I'm very hyped that we get to talk all about it today. Joining me in the studio to tell you and I all about it is from Skybound Games, Mike Willette, the executive producer of Invincible VS and a return guest to the show. Thanks for coming back.

MIKE WILLETTE: Thanks for having me back. God, it feels like yesterday, but it's been a long time.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: It's been 10 months since you came in here. It was right up to the Xbox Showcase last year. The game was announced. Immediately, you came on. You talked about your experience. Why don't you just sort of refresh everybody, I think, a little bit and we were just talking, you worked on Killer Instincts on Xbox One back in the day.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, since the last time I saw you, we were at San Diego Comic-Con with Battle Beast and then Omni-Man, so we were at Evo. Right after Evo, it was New York Comic-Con, Cecil --

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Kind of surprising to see Cecil --

MIKE WILLETTE: Everyone was shocked, and I'm, like, you don't understand the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that he uses in order to get around the battlefield, so that was really exciting for us. Then another big moment that we had was at the Game Awards with the Ella Mental reveal, so our first original character created by Robert and Cory.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: That's really cool. Well, we will talk more about Ella a little later on. I was definitely, like, wait. I guess I'm not fully caught up on the show, and then, I am caught up on the show, and I still didn't see her. Then I realized this is a totally original character, a good story there. We'd just love to know now we're just about a week out from when Invincible VS ships on Xbox ships on PC. It is an Xbox Play Anywhere game. I'm looking forward to enjoying single player mode, which we'll talk more about on the go because I think that will be a really good workout for my Xbox Ally X, but how's the team feeling and what's left to do here in this last week or so?

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, my goodness, the team is excited, incredibly excited, energized. For us, it's really the start of the journey. When you launch, it's not, oh, walk away. No. It's building up that relationship with your community, with the players, making sure that, hey, we have a lot of really cool stuff on the way, things that we tease like Universa and Immortal stuff we'll talk about later.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yep. We'll talk more about that in a little bit, yeah.

MIKE WILLETTE: For us, it's, it's really just the first step, just getting out there and playing Invincible with the masses.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: If we know anything about the fighting game community, you will get feedback instantly, and I'm sure have plenty of action on --

MIKE WILLETTE: Instant and often, and "Oh, this is broken" or "This character's OP," but you know what? We listen to all that feedback. We take it to heart, and we really want to make something that's lasting for everybody.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Love that.

MIKE WILLETTE: We're just so excited to play with everyone, really.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. Very good, so VS, obviously, it's in the name. We've seen a lot of footage of the game and people playing a three-on-three tag against each other, but just announced now is single-player mode. We there's an arcade mode, and there's also a story mode. Before we get into it, do we want to watch a trailer, because there's a trailer just came out, I think, today?

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, absolutely.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Let's look at that. We'll live react, and then we'll talk a little bit more of what's in these modes? [ Music ]

INVINCIBLE: Dad, please, you don't want to do this.

OMNI-MAN: I came to this planet for one reason: to conquer it. [ Music ]

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: This looks straight out of the show. This is a scenario we've seen before.

MIKE WILLETTE: For us, it's really about bringing the authenticity, but also bringing surprises.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, I don't think we see Battle Beast lining up on the same side as the Viltrumites, which we just saw very quickly.

INVINCIBLE: Hit me as hard as you can.

CONQUEST: Happy to --

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I do hate Conquest, especially this season --

MIKE WILLETTE: But I kind of love him at the same time.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, you do. You do. Just so everyone knows, we're recording this about midway through Season 4. I think it's five episodes in, give or take, so no spoilers. I guess the season is just about wrapped up now. We don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. Do you know what's going to happen?

MIKE WILLETTE: I might know what's going to happen.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: You might know. Don't tell me. Cause I'm just --

MIKE WILLETTE: No, no, no, no spoilers here.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I feel like we're in for a world of hurt, but I think that comes with the territory, right? Cool.

MIKE WILLETTE: That is definitely par for the course in the world of Invincible, yeah. [ Music ]

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I'm seeing a lot of Chicago. We're seeing --

MIKE WILLETTE: You get some glimpses of the Titan's penthouse in there.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Oh, yeah.

MIKE WILLETTE: Some new locations, we really wanted to take you around the world.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: You know, here we are in Season 4. I miss Rex. Jason Mantzoukas is an amazing voice actor, and he's part of this, isn't he?

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, absolutely. We love Rex. The awesome thing about when you make a fighting game, it can be a dream match of sorts. There's encounters and things that never exist in the comics, or even in the show, that you get to touch upon. Even if it's not in a story mode or even an arcade mode, all these characters have unique interactions, and it just feels right.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yes. Why don't we talk about that a little bit? Spell out, what is story mode?

MIKE WILLETTE: Especially coming off of the show, you need more Invincible, right? Story mode itself, it's a new story crafted probably sometime in Season 3, it could plausibly happen for sure. It's basically like a standalone special episode of the show that you get to experience, crafted by the creators of the show. Helen Leigh and Mike Rogers, both together, penned what you'll play through with Robert's involvement and the creators.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Robert Kirkman.

MIKE WILLETTE: Robert Kirkman.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not on a first name basis with him yet, but, you know --

MIKE WILLETTE: I pretend that I am on occasion, but he's awesome. He's awesome. He loves games, and so, this was this awesome opportunity to give you more of what you love in this action-packed game, basically.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: It's funny. Last year, when you first announced the game, I honestly had consumed no Invincible content at that point. I'd never watched the show. I had never read the comic, and you all were so hyped about it and being able to work on this IP that I got into it over the summer. Now I'm completely Invincible pilled, if that's a thing, and so obsessed with it. When we had a chance to do this episode, I quickly wrote down my name to host, and I love being able to play through some of the story mode before coming to chat with you. Something I noticed, especially early on, I was like, wait, I think this was Mark taking on Omni-Man for the first time. We've seen this battle before, or when Viltrumites, Thula and Lucan, appeared on Earth and Invincible was fighting them off alongside Eve, I was like, okay. Oh, we're going to do like a grand tour through some of the previous story, story stuff, but then stuff starts to take a little bit of a turn, and just, something seemed a little bit off here. Can you talk a little bit more about what we're going to experience through special episode, as you call it?

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even taking a step back, it's almost like your first interaction, and it was also my first interaction with the series itself, because the way it presents itself, you're like, oh, this is like the silver age of comics, these heroes, the way it's presented, and then, all of a sudden, bam, it's not what you think that it is. It's like the first time you saw Omni-Man just wipe the floor, and I'm using, with Guardians of the Globe. When I say "wipe the floor" I mean, you know, epically murder. You're like, oh, this is not what I was expecting at all. That's what's so awesome about Invincible is it's not always what it seems to be. There might be things that are very familiar, but they're going to be different in a very good way.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Speaking about wiping the floor, just if you want to know about, well, how authentic is this to the show, there's a screen that shows when you first launch the game, and it says, "Warning: This game contains strong language and scenes of explicit violence and gore." I'm like, yeah, check. Then it goes, "No, seriously, there's a lot of blood. Buckle up." You do not disappoint. I will say just from --

MIKE WILLETTE: We wanted to give everybody fair warning.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yes. I don't think this is a mode where -- there's no, no-blood mode in this game.

MIKE WILLETTE: No, but we did put in -- we announced this at Evo last year, there's a creator mode. Essentially, it turns off all the crazy dismemberment and all that kind of stuff. There's still blood and there's still damage that happens to your costume, but it's nowhere near the level of violence that you can potentially do. For the squeamish or the weak of heart or the people that don't want to get demonetized making cool content, it's in the settings. You can adjust it. Play the way you want to.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I will say, using Anissa when I was playing a little bit last night, I couldn't help, but just destroy people. Jibs were everywhere. It was pretty awesome. I think I have a favorite character now. We've talked about the story mode here a little bit as one thing. Why don't -- can we actually roll some footage? Can we see a little bit and then maybe talk through what we're seeing here?

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. Well, let's do it. [ Music ]

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, Rex, I miss you.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I love these little, almost chibi sort of animations. I've seen quite a few of them like Battle Beast. I didn't know battle beast could be cute, but you know what?

MIKE WILLETTE: Very, very much so, a lot of people were fighting to become a beta beast through that little chibi icon in our game credits over the beta.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Oh, yeah?

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah.

INVINCIBLE: Dad, please. You don't want to do this.

OMNI-MAN: I came to this planet for one reason: to conquer it.

INVINCIBLE: That makes no sense. What about mom and your friends and me?

OMNI-MAN: Your mother, the others, they don't matter, but you --

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: So that's J.K. Simmons we're hearing, right?

MIKE WILLETTE: That is J.K. Simmons, yeah.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Very cool.

MIKE WILLETTE: Very cool.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Do you want to talk a little bit about the voice talent in this game because it's really good?

MIKE WILLETTE: Yes. We tried to get as many people from the show cast as we possibly could, so J.K. Simmons, Jillian,

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Atom Eve, his voice.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, who plays Atom Eve, Michael Dorn, who plays Battle Beasts.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Can we just talk a little bit? I'm wondering, so Michael Dorn also, you know, Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation has caught so many strays. It's been like some of the funniest stuff, like in the spaceship that they're taking out there. I'm very, very curious what Michael Dorn thinks about all of that. We'll find out. That's a story for another episode --

MIKE WILLETTE: I hope he's a good sport.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: -- because it's been some good stuff.

MIKE WILLETTE: He's awesome. I just remember watching cartoons with him like I am Weasel and stuff on The Cartoon Network back in the day. Then, obviously, Star Trek, and then, to get to have him in the game is an honor. It's so good.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: In that first battle, that could have taken place at the end of like Season 1 of the show, the first time we saw Mark and Omni-Man go against each other, but then we have Lucan show up, and I think Thula is going to show up here too.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yes, something uniquely different right here is Omni-Man is fully with the Viltrumites.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, and that was the case here.

MIKE WILLETTE: That was not the case, yeah. [ Music ] Earth's biggest fears are coming true.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yes. Yeah, it would have been over pretty quickly. Fortunately, Invincible is not fighting alone.

ATOM EVE: Sorry, I'm not letting you kill my boyfriend today. [ Music ]

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: This all looks so good.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, we worked with the animation team at Skybound to produce all of story mode.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Your suspension of disbelief, you're right into the story, right away. It's very cool, but there's a lot of detail in the characters and the shading and the stuff that's differentiated from the show but adds a really cool touch to that. I mean, our goal is to be authentic to those original designs from Cory and Ryan and everything that was done in the comics that got translated to the show, and it's like our natural evolution. It was like comics to show, show to game, so making sure that those designs ring true without over-complicating it and being honorific of the simplicity, but adding key details where they're important and they matter the most. We want these characters to always feel like they're supposed to.

OMNI-MAN: Your friends won't change your situation.

INVINCIBLE: Neither will yours.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: This is when, in the story mode -- the first battle was one-on-one, but now we're in a full 3V3 here.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, so you're getting a sense of the mechanics, especially after you've run through the tutorial, then you get to start putting these things into practice. I know you're a big fan, but Jason Manzoukas is Rex in the story, which is fantastic.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: He has a great line when he fights Omni-Man, and I don't know if it's going to happen here or if it's later on where he's just like, "Eat shit, Mark's dad."

MIKE WILLETTE: I don't know. Did you say a person that curses? He's one of my favorites.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, good, yes, exactly. I would love to talk a little bit about -- this is maybe a little bit more on the mechanics side. If you're playing on an Xbox controller and you hit the X button like five times, you can put together a pretty nice combo, but this is by no means like a baby's first fighting game. I think if you're playing with someone of equal level to you and you're not like super technical, you can go and you can have a great time. As I was going through the tutorial, there's all kinds of ways to prevent a combo, to fake people so that they don't do the defensive moves. There's the level of almost chess-like mechanics that are in this that have to happen so quickly are like really -- it really can cater to that higher level player.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, absolutely. For us, it was about approachability. That's so if you're playing with your best friend and you're sitting on the couch, you can immediately just dive in and feel really good about yourself. We have an auto-combo system that starts the show and lays out what the golden path of combos looks like, going from normal attacks, to special attacks, to super moves, all that kind of stuff, so it feels really gratifying to do. Then we have the magic combo system, which is a little bit more manual, where I'm doing light attacks, medium attacks, heavy attacks. Then I'm learning how to cancel those into things. Eventually, I'm starting to bring in my partners.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: By the way, when Rex just sort of just throws the charge point on it.

MIKE WILLETTE: I think only he and Conquest actually have taunts that hit your opponent. It's not like a ton of damage, but it's cute. I think Rex's is the only one that will actually overkill too. He'll toss a coin at you and it'll just boom.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. I can't wait to see that.

MIKE WILLETTE: It's just a shower of glorious chucks.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. We had mentioned this earlier on, but when Ella Mental was first announced, I was, like, wait, here's a new face, but she's a completely original character voiced by Tierra Whack. Tell me about the process. How did you go and sort of go, plenty of characters in this world. There's tons in the IP to be able to draw from, but we've got an idea for somebody really cool. Did you go, did you say, hey, Robert, let me -- first-name basis. I've got something to add to this world. I'm curious.

MIKE WILLETTE: It really originated from our Art Director, Dan Etter, because Dan came up to me. We were working on a bunch of characters at the time, and he goes, "Mike, what if we did like our own original character?" I was like, Dan, shut up. We've got all these other characters we've got to do it. He goes, "No, seriously, what if we add another one?" and it was something we'd always talked about. I'm, like, you know what? It doesn't hurt to ask. I talked to Mike Rogers, who was working on narrative. I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to ask Robert if it's cool, if we ask him to create us a character." He's like, yeah, why not? Let's do that. We went to Robert, like, hey, Robert, how would you and Cory like to make a unique, original character just for the game? He was like, really? I'm like, yeah.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: This is not how you expected this conversation to go.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yeah, I didn't expect that at all, and he was like, yeah, it sounds like a really cool idea. I had already chatted with our game director, Dave Hall, and we'd always talked about it'd be great to have more characters with just crazy, unique abilities, whether it's ranged attacks or something just off the wall. That was the only guidance we gave Robert. We're like, yeah, we just want something that's crazy. He came back, and of course, in a very Invincible fashion, he goes, how about this character named Ella Mental? It's a small little bio and a concept sketch from Cory, and that was it. We're like, oh, goody. Then we just got to work. A lot of work from the character team, like solving, like, hey, taking again, like a 2D concept, and how do we, like, realize that in 3D with our material systems and the way that we do dismemberment and all the bells and whistles, and then more so than the other characters at the time, it's like, oh, wow, this VFX set is way bigger. It's way different, so it's all the elements, earth, fire, water, wind. How do we combine all those things? How do we showcase them really well, and super specials, normals, and ultimate attacks. It was such a cool thing, and then, finally, just figuring out who's going to be the voice of this character? Then, I don't know what you call it, serendipity or just Tierra came up, and she just killed it. It was just so awesome to see her performance paired with the animation and the character, that's the character. That's the way it's always supposed to be.

ELLA MENTAL: My name is Ella Mental. You seem pretty cool, but that won't stop me from kicking your ass.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Mike, this must be like almost a dream come true, in that the character that you worked with Robert and crew to get made is actually now going to be showing up in the comic world.

MIKE WILLETTE: Yes. I think it was back in February, Robert announced that Ella Mental is going to have her origin play out in Capes, which is crazy, super awesome. Maybe one day she'll make it onto the big screen, too, so it's very exciting. I'm so happy that our team could help make that a thing.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, I mean, it all started from a conversation, so that's -- sometimes you've just got to ask, right?

MIKE WILLETTE: That's the most important thing. Nothing ever gets done without swinging the bat, so sometimes, you just have to go ask or just go do it.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I feel like you're one of these people who really likes their job. Am I close on this because the level of excitement here --

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, yeah, well, yeah, Italian mother, too, so I talk a lot with my hands, but yes. You can't have a greater job in the world than to bring happiness and joy to people, right?

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Amen. I love that. Yeah, speaking of joy, whenever there's a game like this, based off of an existing IP with a big cast, there's people that have their favorites that aren't there. You're not done with this initial lineup of characters. There's more coming and you've already announced a couple of these, right?

MIKE WILLETTE: Yes, so our Character Pass for the year is four characters. We've announced two of them, Universa and The Immortal, but the other two, we're keeping really close.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Okay. All right. We're not going to pry that out of you.

MIKE WILLETTE: Can't say anything yet, but believe me, you're going to be, like, oh, they cooked. This is so awesome. I can't wait.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Good. All right.

MIKE WILLETTE: I'm not telling anybody anything yet.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Can I pitch a character?

MIKE WILLETTE: Oh, absolutely, why not? Ideas are free.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. Well, here's, here's my idea. It was not an idea because I'm just saying here I like this character. I think it'd be really cool to bring in Oliver. I'm going to -- by the way, I have no idea who the character's going to be. It would be really cool to bring in Oliver, but because he's growing so fast, he's Thraxan. He gets older round to round, so if you keep up -- every time you knock out, like maybe it's the second round --

MIKE WILLETTE: It's very interstellar we're going.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: If you keep them on the bench and then you knock out one of the characters, he should be a little bit older because he starts off as a little -- anyway --

MIKE WILLETTE: It's an interesting idea.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: -- you can have that one for free. That's how you politely say we're not doing that.

MIKE WILLETTE: I also like that idea for a Flaxan. That would be kind of cool too.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Anyway, you can, you can take that one, free credit. I am signing over the rights to the IP that I have no control over, over to you. Go ahead and take it. Of course, there's more to Invincible VS single player than just the story mode. There's also an arcade mode, and this has progressions, unlocks, things like that. What can you tell us about it?

MIKE WILLETTE: Absolutely. However, you like to play the game, we want to reward you for investing your time, whether it's I grind online, I'm playing my locals, or I'm playing my arcade mode, there's a character and a player progression where you can lock things for your player card, different versions of the environments, music tracks, concept art from the series, from the game, from the comics. There's lots of really cool stuff. We wanted that to be part of your progression and rewarding you for your expertise in the characters as well. The arcade mode is just a way for you to go in rather quickly too. If you want to do quick matches, quick ladders, or you want to do increasing difficulty, more fights, however you want to play it, but every point character has a distinct ending. It's a bunch of little like rewards and unlocks for your time invested into playing the game.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: I did this last night with Ella. I was, like, I want to know more about her, and it's the first character you pick, because you pick --

MIKE WILLETTE: Yes, your point character, so your point character will receive that ending. Every character that gets introduced to the game has one of these.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: All right. Very, very cool. We're actually running out of time here, which it's hard to believe because I feel like we could sit here and talk. We were also talking about pinball for like 45 minutes before this, but --

MIKE WILLETTE: I do love pinball.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: We're going to have to have you back up for a third time. I don't know. Has anyone ever been on the show three times? Probably. Anyway, I want to ask you just one of the favorite things, which is what we like to ask everyone with Invincible VS releasing again, April 30th --

MIKE WILLETTE: April 30th.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: -- really soon. When players first pick up the sticks, they first dive into the game, what are you personally most excited for them to discover within Invincible VS?

MIKE WILLETTE: For me, what I loved about fighting games is the discovery that I'm playing with my friends. So what I love is for when you pick this game up, whether you're playing on online or offline with your besties and you're huddling around, those moments of discovery, when you're just playing, that brings me such joy. Some of my most-fond memories growing up, whether it's a high school or college, was just fighting, whether it was Mortal Kombat or Hyperfight, or Street Fighter. Just figuring things out, tick throws, and all the figuring out of what the fatalities were, we didn't have the internet.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Oh, believe me, I remember people in the arcade would cover their hand. They didn't want you to see like how to do a Babality. Maybe you could pry that out of somebody if you beat them.

MIKE WILLETTE: All my stacks of Game Pros are laying in the corner, but I want those moments, the shared moments between people as they're playing together, when they see their first overkill or they did their first counter tag or they countered something, they baited someone with a feint. Those are the moments that I hold precious. I hope they experience the same thing and just the love and passion that was poured into the game for those moments. I hope they get to experience those.

JEFF RUBINSTEIN: Well, so do I, very well said. Mike, thank you so much for joining us here, and good luck with the release. Also, a great time to catch up on Invincible on Prime Video, if you haven't done that already, so you can go and eyes wide open for the things that you're going to see here in this special episode of the single player story mode. Invincible VS coming out April 30th, Xbox Series X and S also Xbox Play Anywhere, so you'll be able to enjoy that on handhelds, on PC, all the good stuff. I'm definitely going to be playing it, but until then, Mikey, thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you on the next episode of the Official Xbox Podcast really soon now, so we'll see you then, bye. [ Xbox Sound ]