The Hollywood Byte #38: Family Guy

Steve Callahan got his first experience with game development as he wrote the script for the new Family Guy video game with Patrick Meeghan and Kurt Butler. The Hollywood writer didn't have much of a gaming background outside of playing Pong a few times when he was younger. But his co-writers are big gamers, and 2K Games knows a thing or two about video games, as well.

"We did it in collaboration with the game company," said Callahan. "They pitched us what would be cool elements of gameplay and then we brought to them what we thought could be a fun way to take elements of the show and even reference past episodes and mix that with some new content and come up with a way to play a story line with three of the main characters."

The main characters gamers will control in the game are Peter, Brian and Stewie, but every character is also represented. Mayor West, Cleveland and Quagmire are all in the game. Players will actually be able to take control of these other characters in Stewie's story, because he has mind control.

"The game exists in an alternate universe," said Callahan. "It definitely feels like the show. Everything you see feels like it could be an episode. In many respects, we draw from past episodes. Peter's story line draw heavily from an episode called "PTV," where he creates his own television station in the garage. Stewie's story line focuses on his nemesis Bertram from the TV show. Brian's story line refers to an episode in season three called "Screw the Pooch," where the family goes to visit Peter's parents and he ends up impregnating their greyhound."

The ability to control three different characters opened up the gameplay. Peter's story provides a lot of combat. After getting hit on the head by the PTV satellite, he thinks that Mr. Belvedere is out to get him and that innocent citizens are underlings of Mr. Belvedere. A lot of Brian's gameplay is evading Carter Peterscmidht and people he has put on his trail. Stewie's gameplay revolves around lots of weapons and gadgets as he battles Bertrum.