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It's been a bumpy road to release for Brütal Legend. Tim Schafer's had to change publishers, deal with a pesky lawsuit, soldier through PR missteps and even handle some post-release DLC. This is all common knowledge, but in a lengthy postmortem at Gamasutra, Caroline Esmurdoc, executive producer at Double Fine, goes in depth on the development strategy for the title and talks about what went right and what went wrong in the creation of this rock gaming opus.

Double Fine adopted the Scrum method of agile software development for Brütal Legend, which allowed the company to create a renderer, terrain and a playable Eddie Riggs for Tim in a mere month. Content creation was fairly steady, Esmurdoc admitted, but around January of this year, the game's content jumped from the 2.5GB generated over three years to a massive 9GB, thanks to multiple teams unloading assets for the game simultaneously.

Esmurdoc also touched on the lawsuit, though she couldn't go into specifics beyond mentioning that the transition between publishers caused "internal unrest and morale dips among the team", and that Double Fine learned Activision would not be publishing Brutal Legend when the game was suspiciously absent from a list of the publisher's upcoming games. Double Fine then pursued a new publishing partner.

More than twenty years and five home consoles later, you'd think Nintendo would get this "third-party support" thing by now. However, EA CEO John Riccitiello says the console manufacturer is still learning how to reach out and offer a hand to games other than their own. "They've always been first-party-centric, and they're learning how to be third-party supportive," Riccitiello told Gamasutra. Looking at November's NPD figures, it's clear that Nintendo has been very good to itself. But is there hope for EA on the Wii? "Third-parties can do a lot better on the platform with the right support from Nintendo."

What kind of "support" are third parties like EA looking for? Most likely, third parties are looking for co-opted marketing opportunities provided by other first-party platforms, like Sony's PlayStation.Blog or Microsoft's MW2-branded hardware. Unfortunately, Nintendo appears content with its hands-off approach to third-party marketing, offsetting all the blame for the failures of GTA: Chinatown Wars and countless other games at the hands of their respective publishers.

You might be wondering exactly how Visceral Games managed to get a level themed after "Violence" into Dante's Inferno -- a game where the lead character spends roughly 100% of his time killing anything near him. We were wondering too, and so it was really nice of Visceral Games and EA to release the above dev diary for the "month of violence" that the game's marketing campaign is currently embracing to promote the game's level based on the seventh circle of Hell.

The real question now: what can we expect EA's marketing team during this month's theme? We're not sure just yet, but given its recent track record, we're hoping no one goes to our Editor-in-Chief's house to give him a lesson or two in violence.

With the recent controversy golfer Tiger Woods has found himself embroiled in, Forbes National Editor Michael Ozanian believes that the biggest name in golf is done being a pitchman. Ozanian claims that companies like Electronic Arts, which publishes the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, will drop Woods "regardless of what they are saying now."

Well, we were actually curious to hear what EA is saying now, so we contacted the publisher. A spokesperson for the company informed Joystiq, "There is no change in our marketing strategy for the franchise. Our strong relationship with Tiger for more than a decade remains unchanged."

Site Gamerinvestments.com believes there's "no way" EA is going to drop Woods. Its logic: "There is simply no other golfer that EA Sports can replace him with and there is no way that they are going to stop making one of their most successful games."

Terrifying video game news site Rely On Horror claims to have recently gotten its hands on the next issue of Game Informer, which contains a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the new methods of Necromorph murder featured in Dead Space 2. According to the site, the Informer article reveals that the game's designers are trying to make the game spookier, placing hero Isaac Clarke (who learned the ability to speak between games, it seems) in more death-defying situations, and likely a few impossible-to-defy-death situations as well.

According to the report, the game's action has moved off of the Ishimura, instead placing Clarke on the similarly monster-infested interstellar city Sprawl, which dwarfs the original game's setting in size. Finally, the article supposedly ends with the developer dropping the following tease regarding multiplayer: "All I can say is it's really fun, and you'll get to strategically dismember your friends." Oh, man -- Bushido Laser-Saw confirmed! Or, rather, it might be confirmed. There's no way to tell for sure until we get our hands on the Clarke-covered magazine.

[Via VG247]

EA has detailed a special edition of Dante's Inferno, titled the "Divine Edition," which is coming exclusively to the PlayStation 3 next February. For the same $60 the Xbox 360 version costs, EA will give you the "special edition," which includes a developer commentary, a Wayne Barlowe "digital art book," the game's soundtrack, and ... wait for it ... a digitized "complete Longfellow translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno." That's right, folks -- you can read the classic work on the same system that's being used to tear it apart. The demo is currently available on the PlayStation Network and will land on Xbox Live on December 24th.

Modern Warfare 2 has made blowing up American capitals so passé. EA Montreal is far more visionary, preemptively blowing up the largest city of our future masters: Shanghai. The explosive intro to Army of Two: The 40th Day certainly fits the studio's new "blockbuster-type" focus and reassures doubters that this game will be a more serious affair than the first. Perhaps you've noticed the deliberate lack of bromance in this clip?

With a second year of major layoffs at publisher Electronic Arts, questions about morale and investor perception surround the company. EA CEO John Riccitiello told IndustryGamers that in the case of morale, those who survived "understand the logic, they agree with it and support it and think we're a stronger company for the moves." The exec stresses that those who remain are "all excited about [EA's] move into digital and direct-to-consumer" -- something that may not have been true when he brought up the strategy two years ago.

Riccitiello also feels that there was a lot of bad press relating to EA's Q2 results -- the one with all the layoffs -- and that "a lot of negative articles were written that entirely missed the point that [EA] felt [it] had a great first half ... sometimes people almost believe more what they read in a newspaper than what they hear from their own company." In fairness, that seems rather understandable, given recent events in corporate America.

In case you were wondering what Dante's Inferno would be like if it were made into a book, EA has just announced that the first issue of the Wildstorm comic book based on Visceral's upcoming action game has shipped to retailers. The first installment of the six-issue miniseries, for which the full cover art can be seen after the break, provides the background for Dante's demon-slayin': the murder of Beatrice, and Dante's subsequent trip into the abyss to rescue her soul.

If the concept is something you're into, and if the cover art captures your attention, why not swing by your local comic shop on the way to Hell?

If you claim to love Tim Schafer, the new Brütal Legend DLC, "Hammer of Infinite Fate," is your chance to prove it. When it arrives on Dec. 17, you'll be able to pay the designer the ultimate tribute and carve his giant, disembodied head into Mount Rockmore. Sure, you're still a stalker, but in a totally socially acceptable way. You'll also get the Oculus of the Lost, a Deuce upgrade that shows every collectible on the map, as well as new outfits for Eddie and four new multiplayer maps.

The pack's apparently going to be a bit cheaper for PlayStation 3 users, who will pay $4.99 compared to 480 MS points ($6) on Xbox 360. That might be a misprint (we've asked EA for confirmation), but we recall that PSN users did get the first DLC free for two weeks. Teacher's pets.

One of the more convenient (and pricey) methods for games acquisition -- Microsoft's Games on Demand service -- has just added a pair of new titles to its North American library: Disney's Bolt and EA's Trivial Pursuit. Each can be yours for $19.99, granted you have the respective 5GB and 2GB of space for each. Prices and availability vary by region, but the insatiable, shameless desire for Achievements that would drive you to actually purchase these games is universal.

Shortcut: Add Bolt to your download queue [via Xbox.com]
Shortcut: Add Trivial Pursuit to your download queue [via Xbox.com]

If you were wondering what the world of Mirror's Edge would look like from a side-scrolling, out-of-body perspective, your answer can be found in the above trailer for the platformer's iPhone port. Though the handheld obviously lacks the processing power of the 360 and PS3, the game still manages to retain the first installment's crisp visual aesthetic. Also, there's a lot of roof-jumping, which we remember being pretty prevalent in the home console version of the game.

However, the video still doesn't clarify how the original game's fairly complex control scheme will port over to the iPhone. "See, to scale this wall, you do a quick tap, then a tappity-tap, and then half a tap, and then you shake your iPhone violently. No, no, half a tap. How are you not getting this?"

While we're thinking of it, is anybody else getting a total Guyver vibe from the new duds? No? Just us? Fair enough.

BioWare has just released a new trailer for Mass Effect 2, featuring the exploits of strategic tactician "Commander Shepard the Engineer" and his murderous robot. Much like the first game, engineer class players will rely more heavily on strategery and tech management than direct confrontation.

Lead gameplay designer Christina Norman guides us through some combat-heavy gameplay, which depicts the aforementioned android aggressor along with some cool abilities, like freezing enemies on the spot and hacking mechanized enemies. Oh, Mass Effect 2, you had us at killer 'bot.