New footage from Disney Infinity has emerged, demonstrating a few of the game’s activities, its characters, and Disney’s overwhelming urge to push all of its content on innocent children.
Disney Infinity, for those of you not in the know, is Disney’s attempt to replicate the unexpected, massive success of Skylanders. That game, a Spyro The Dragon off-shoot, allows players to purchase action figures that can then be used as characters within Skylanders. No stranger to action figures or hoovering up all the cash in the world, Disney is taking the same tack, only with its massive roster of well-known characters (and, apparently, whichever new characters Disney is trying to force on people).
That trailer above includes a number of familiar characters from disparate films and television shows battling against one another in harmless yet seemingly entertaining activities within the sandbox-oriented “Toy Box” mode of Disney Infinity. For the most part, it looks delightful. Something like a simplistic cross between Minecraft and Skylanders. All of that looks great, and we’re completely behind the project as far as its base gameplay goes.
That said, alongside beloved Disney characters like Woody from Toy Story and Sully from Monsters Inc., Disney Infinity (or at least this trailer) features a surprisingly large amount of Tonto and the Lone Ranger from the recent Disney remake of the classic Western story. This makes sense in a way, as that film was just released and Disney would certainly want to promote it in any way possible.
That said, The Lone Ranger has already proved a critical and commercial flop. There may some kind of small, youthful surge of kids who love the film, but for most of the world, it just looked like a dumb excuse for Johnny Depp to wear a bird on his head in the most racist way imaginable.
I mention all of this, because it stands as a worrying indicator. The prevalence of Lone Ranger characters in this trailer, despite the general public answering the film’s release with a collective “no thank you” could indicate that Disney plans to use Disney Infinity as less of a game and more of a platform on which it can shill its latest films.
I’m genuinely hoping that’s not the case, but did any of you ask for so much CGI Tonto?
Source: YouTube
