I saw in a video from Tribute<\/a> that a lot of the writing came from Bryan Lee O\u2019Malley, but you were in charge of \u201csetting things up.\u201d Can you elaborate a bit on that? What did that collaboration look like between you two?<\/p>\nYannick Belzil: The big thing when I came in on Scott Pilgrim EX was to help out with structure. The way the game is played and the way you progress through it usually starts from a huge document that is written by the game designer, Jonathan [Lavigne]. So at first, there was a huge walkthrough document, not unlike many video games online, in a .txt format that is just like, \u201cHere\u2019s the game, you go there, you have to take that item in this level, and this and that.\u201d So there\u2019s a big list, and I would first take that document and try to sort of rewrite it in not exactly a screenplay form, but something that felt more \u201cnarrative.\u201d And then I would go like, \u201cOh, to get on that quest, you\u2019d need a character to talk to us here and give us said quest, or ask us about it, and then when you go and interact with that event, it\u2019d be good if there\u2019s another character telling you about this event,\u201d and then set it up with something funny or stuff like that.<\/p>\n
So I did a whole bunch of that structure early on. When we started the game earlier, Bryan was not all the way in because he was touring for the 20th anniversary of Scott Pilgrim, so he was really busy with all that stuff. But we were just setting up the actual gameplay and making sure to figure out how the game works. So I would come up with premises and structures and stuff like that. And eventually, when he got to join us more on the bigger narrative side, it was him going through these quests and looking at the structure of it and the placeholder dialogue that I put in different places. \u201cThe player talks here to an NPC, let\u2019s say young Neil or Envy, or whichever character,\u201d and so we would go back and forth, and we would talk about sometimes changing sort of the situations so that it would feel better and more appropriate for the characters. And then he would write new dialogue for these exchanges. So I pretty much do a whole bunch of structure and set up things where he could rewrite or sometimes flesh out ideas that feel more appropriate for the world and the characters.<\/p>\n
Something that\u2019s really awesome about Tribute is you guys have made a name for yourselves for high-quality, licensed, retro beat \u2019em up games. Obviously, some of the co-founders worked on the original Scott Pilgrim game at Ubisoft, but then also TMNT and Marvel at Tribute. What\u2019s it like to work on Scott Pilgrim versus these other properties? What goes into making a good Scott Pilgrim game versus a good Marvel game versus a good TMNT game?<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SPEX_Screenshot_Gameplay_04_LEGAL_LINE.png\")
<\/p>\n
Belzil:\u00a0I would say the biggest difference when tackling these characters, because I was also the narrative designer on all these games and the main writer on all these games\u2026 As opposed to Scott Pilgrim, the Turtles and the Marvel characters, which are characters that I love, are made to carry on. They\u2019re made to have many, many adventures forever. And therefore, there\u2019s something that is accessible. They have a solid handle on them to write and create new adventures and create new dialogue about them. Whereas Scott Pilgrim, it\u2019s really so specifically Bryan. I wouldn\u2019t want to say it\u2019s his soul, but it\u2019s the way they are characters that he created when he was these characters\u2019 age, and it\u2019s the age that I met these characters as well. So his perspective on these characters has sort of morphed as he aged. Same thing for me.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s something specific about these characters that I feel like, if it\u2019s not Bryan writing them, or having a strong hand in how the narrative of these characters is created, then there\u2019s something lacking. I remember I would write a lot of placeholder dialogue for these characters. I was like, \u201cOh, okay, this does sort of sound like how these characters would talk,\u201d and then Bryan would come in and rewrite it like, \u201cNo this, this is how Scott talks\u201d \u2014 a specific, endearing way that Brian has on lock. And that\u2019s for the characteristics and the interplay between all these characters. It truly comes from him, and I feel like if you don\u2019t have Bryan on board to write these characters and bring them to life, you\u2019re going to be missing something, or you\u2019ll get something wildly different, maybe.<\/p>\n
Something that\u2019s interesting with Scott Pilgrim, the property, is the Netflix anime [Scott Pilgrim Takes Off] came out and was really a surprise to everyone in terms of how subversive it was. Like, you think you\u2019re getting a remake, and then it\u2019s actually this meta sequel. So in that spirit, what are some of the ways that you\u2019re trying to have fun with the larger world of Scott Pilgrim and do something a little familiar, but also different?<\/p>\n
Belzil:\u00a0For me, what I think is fun about Scott Pilgrim EX is that we create a Toronto that you can walk around and have beat \u2019em up, brawling adventures around. So it\u2019s the possibility of having an adventure and then meeting a character that you like from that universe and interacting with them. So that, for me, felt like a really fun way that we can interact with the world. Something that really got to me when I was an early teenager, we went to MGM Studios with my family, and we walked on some sort of a main Hollywood street, a 1930s street. And I thought, \u201cOh, this reminds me of the Los Angeles in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,\u201d and I looked up and I saw Eddie Valiant\u2019s office window, and there was a Roger Rabbit-shaped hole in the window and the store blinds like in the movie.<\/p>\n
And it had a really profound effect on me of, \u201cOh, I am walking in the fictional world that was created in the movie, but it\u2019s real right now.\u201d And that\u2019s something that\u2019s always stuck with me, and that\u2019s something I always wanted interactive versions of fictional worlds to be like. I want to feel like I\u2019m walking into something that feels connected to the original thing that it\u2019s emulating or it\u2019s creating. So that was something really important for us for EX. And so it was putting some lesser-known characters from the books are there as well, and you have all these details that remind you of the comics, of the animated series, of the movie. And it feels like it\u2019s a world that you can walk [into]. Although compared to the anime, I don\u2019t feel like we surprise people, narratively, all that much, but that\u2019s because we want to just create a playground for people to have fun in there.<\/p>\n
To that point of the whole \u201cplayground\u201d element, I was really surprised as I\u2019ve been playing through the game, that it does have a little bit more of an open structure in terms of the different little quests you can take on and different parts of Toronto to go to. It\u2019s not necessarily purely linear, like other beat \u2019em up games. What inspired that particular direction, and once you knew that\u2019s what you were going with, how did that inform your approach to narrative?<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/scott-pilgrim-ex-quest.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Yelzil:\u00a0The idea of giving it that sort of playground aspect comes from the fact that we\u2019re huge fans of River City Ransom, especially the original game. And if you look, especially in the early books of Scott Pilgrim \u2014 even the art style has that familiarity with Kunio-Kun\u00a0[River City] and how it looks and the way the universe is constructed. So these just went hand in hand. And one of our co-founders and the game designer, Jonathan, he had an itch to make a River City Ransom-type of game. So when the opportunity came up for us to do Scott Pilgrim again, we were like, \u201cOh, well, let\u2019s do that. They handshake really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Narratively, for me, it was an occasion to think about how to properly construct a quest. So you know a quest at the end has some sort of boss, and the boss will be in some sort of zone or environment that has certain memorable qualities or character or a vibe. So it was always reverse-engineering, \u201cHow do we get to that point, and how do we set it up at the beginning of the quest, and how do we get there?\u201d That quest is usually sort of locked behind a rift, so then it\u2019s how to construct a narrative that will go along with the gameplay ideas. Because, again, every quest is motivated by using the game mechanics that we\u2019re building in River City Ransom vocabulary.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s really how to thread both together that was a big thing when I started to work on the game. And also, what\u2019s the actual story? What are going to be the characters? What are going to be the ideas? Do we want to invent a lot of new original characters, or should we take into account that fans will want to see their favourite characters, or familiar characters in different surroundings? So we tried to do a mix of both as well.<\/p>\n
To that point, something that\u2019s really fun about the game is the whole time travel element. You can explore different ideas and versions of these characters. For instance, I love that you\u2019re going through The Beaches and then you go through a rift, and then you\u2019re fighting this prehistoric ancestor version of Roxie. How did you all come up with these different versions of these established characters? Were you and Brian just kind of sitting in a room spitballing? How did that all work?<\/p>\n
Belzil:\u00a0When you create a game like this, you\u2019re in a map, and the player will be walking all over this map and going back and forth through different places. So you\u2019re thinking about how every zone has to be memorable so that the player can remember it. Even though I look at the map all the time, and probably most of us will look at the map, they have to remember, \u201cOh, there\u2019s a prehistoric zone, and there\u2019s sort of a Western train part, and then there\u2019s a post-apocalyptic zone, but there\u2019s also a beach, and there\u2019s this and there\u2019s that.\u201d So we wanted to have really strong zones that would feel different.<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SPEX_ROXIE_LUCAS_SCREENSHOT_11_LEGAL_LOGO.png\")
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And then it was also talking with our amazing art director and background artist St\u00e9phane [Boutin] \u2014 \u201cWhat do you want to draw?\u201d Because again, even though you can have a variety of urban environments that are memorable, it\u2019s going to be even more memorable if there\u2019s a Flintstones-esque B.C. period, and there\u2019s going to be a certain high school that really looks like 8-bit River City Ransom. So we would come up with wacky environments, and then that\u2019s how we figured out that, \u201cOkay, so there\u2019s some sort of element of time travel or dimension travel happening here, and because these zones will have strong visual identities, a boss that is matched to that identity would be really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
So then it was like, \u201cOh, well, we can make Todd a dinosaur and Roxie a primal cavewoman.\u201d We come up with ideas, and we use some sketches. We send those to Bryan, and then he either likes it or he doesn\u2019t, or sometimes he\u2019ll do another sketch, like, \u201cOh, I think Roxie should look like this, more cat-like, and less cavewoman-like,\u201d and so on. And that\u2019s how we eventually come up with the characters that you see in the game.<\/p>\n
Something that you guys do really well at Tribute is that the characters are so colourful and you bring out a lot of their personality through the art direction and the gameplay and the narrative. They all feel distinct. When you\u2019re designing all these characters, I\u2019m curious the role that the narrative plays in that. When you play as Scott versus Ramona versus Matthew, you see their little sort of character personalities fleshed out, and then obviously there\u2019s little bits of dialogue as well. So what does that dynamic look like between you on the narrative side and then the artists and the gameplay designers to come together and design these distinct characters?<\/p>\n
Belzil:\u00a0Yeah, that\u2019s a big thing when making them \u2014 character is part of narrative as well, even though it\u2019s not plot or necessarily what most people would consider a story. So I do research and I just push it across the table to the artists, and they can use it as they see fit. But in the case for, say, Scott. Again, the designer, Jonathan, knows how he\u2019s going to fight. He\u2019s going to have this more Ryu\/Ken Shotokan karate type of fighting \u2014 a basic heroic fighting style. So when [Jonathan] does that, what I do is that I look through my favourite martial arts movies and I look up stuff about actual martial arts and what these martial arts are considered to be \u2014 heroic, straightforward and clean.<\/p>\n
Luckily, because we were working both on Marvel and Scott Pilgrim at the same time, I saw how the 15 playable characters on Marvel would have different fighting styles. So I was like, \u201cOk, Scott should do bajiquan,\u201d which is this really cool type of martial art with a lot of elbows and knees and straight punches, and then I find action scenes from certain movies, or just diagrams of these moves, of these martial arts. And I say, \u201cOkay, well, here\u2019s what I think Scott\u2019s martial arts should be.\u201d And so that adds a lot.<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/scott-pilgrim-ex-combat.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And also, again, with these characters, we have the anime, we have the books, where there\u2019s a lot of characters in the original art. So I take captures of these panels and also add them to the document. We worked with [artist] Jonathan Kim, who drew a lot of the basic frames for the moves of the characters. So he has all that info, and he can use it to add certain flourishes or character bits to the moves. And that\u2019s how we go for bosses, playable characters and references for stuff like that. I gather a whole bunch of stuff, and I leave it to our wonderful artists to pick what they like from it.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Scott Pilgrim is so intrinsically Torontonian, and in the game, of course, you have a lot of recognizable landmarks \u2014 the CN Tower, versions of Honest Eds and Sneaky Dee\u2019s and Pizza Pizza, High Park, the Distillery District, etc. Of course, Toronto is such a big city, and you guys are not a massive team and can\u2019t include everything. So, how did you decide which parts of Toronto you wanted to include? Would you go to Toronto and scout? Would Bryan pitch things that had to be there? How did that all work?<\/p>\n
Belzil:\u00a0It\u2019s a mix of both. First, what can be there is what can fit through our sort of skewed, shoebox type of perspective of the game. So that\u2019s why you only see the CN Tower from pretty far in the horizon, because that becomes a hard one to fit into the perspective. But yeah, there\u2019s a lot of stuff like that. Like High Park, our art director, St\u00e9phane had seen it on a trip to Toronto and he thought it was beautiful, and that\u2019s why there is this sort of medieval type of era in the game. Because he saw High Park, he saw that a castle there, and he really liked it. And that\u2019s how it became some sort of White Castle, Burger King-type of place with all that stuff \u2014 that\u2019s how that fed together. And so that\u2019s how we chose these places.<\/p>\n
But other things, like, say, later on in the game \u2014 there\u2019s the Vegan Police Department, which has a pan-up, and it\u2019s sort of based on the Robarts Library Building. But that was something that Bryan suggested to us because we were like, \u201cOh, what kind of building would be good for the VPD? What has sort of that visual pizzazz?\u201d And he suggested it to us because it has such an awesome brutalist shape \u2014 it looks like a building that OCP might build in Robocop. So we thought, \u201cOh, that would fit really well!\u201d That\u2019s how that made its way into the game. So it\u2019s a mishmash of all that stuff you mentioned.<\/p>\n
Sometimes there can be a bit of a friendly rivalry between Toronto and Montreal, Anglophone and Francophone. What was it like as Montrealers to work on something that\u2019s so quintessentially Torontonian?<\/p>\n
![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/scott-pilgrim-ex-map.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Belzil: It boils me. I am so angry about it. [laughs] No, it\u2019s funny because our very first idea for the game, before we really got into it more with Bryan \u2014 one thing we suggested was, \u201cOkay, Sex Bob-Omb are on tour, and they\u2019re in Montreal, and as soon as they arrive in Montreal, their truck gets stolen, and they have to go across Montreal to find their stolen instruments once more.\u201d And we were pretty excited about making a super cartoony version of Montreal, with all the stereotypes that we know to be based in some sort of truth. And we thought that, \u201cOh, well, that\u2019s a fish out of water, it\u2019s Scott Pilgrim in Montreal.\u201d And eventually, that got pushed away, but it would have been pretty fun for us to do that.<\/p>\n
But otherwise, no, it\u2019s really cool because Toronto is the place that gets the bigger shows that sometimes don\u2019t come to Montreal. [laughs] Which is why sometimes my lady and I go to Toronto. But it\u2019s a really nice place, and there\u2019s still a whole lot of stuff to make in a visual game with memorable locales. So it was really fun to put that in there, but also to sort of create and adapt the Toronto that Bryan created in his books. So when I get that question, I think, \u201cYeah, it is Toronto, but it\u2019s sort of Bryan Lee O\u2019Malley-drawn Toronto first, rather than the actual Toronto.\u201d We try to have a bunch of real bits in there, or in the case of the Robarts library, somewhere that was not in the books. But otherwise, we think of it as a real but adapted location, rather than the real city, in a sense.<\/p>\n
What is it like as Canadians to get to make this game set in Canada?<\/p>\n
Belzil: Oh, it\u2019s really fun. Just the fact that you beat up these bad guys, and you can pick up Canadian coins. We get something out of that \u2014 we relate to it a bit more. It\u2019s really, really fun to be able to add that colour. Because again, we worked on TMNT, so you do the iconic cartoon New York that almost becomes somewhat of a default action-adventure setting. And we have some New York levels in Marvel Cosmic Invasion as well. We\u2019ve done those, and they\u2019re great, but sometimes you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, it\u2019d be fun to have a different cityscape that looks different.\u201d And it could be from anywhere else in the world, but we\u2019re really happy to have ours with recycling bins that are a different colour and with signage that feels more like the ones we grew up with. So that\u2019s always a fun detail.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for language and clarity.<\/p>\n
Scott Pilgrim EX will launch on March 3 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X\/S, Nintendo Switch and PC.<\/p>\n
Image credit: Tribute Games<\/p>\n
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2010, Ubisoft Montreal and Chengdu released\u00a0Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, a retro-inspired side-scrolling beat \u2019em…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,202837,874,2338,102726,202838,61,202836],"class_list":["post-510118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-games","tag-gaming","tag-montreal","tag-scott-pilgrim","tag-scott-pilgrim-ex","tag-technology","tag-tribute-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}