Alex Ness is a writer at Toys for Bob working on Skylanders Trap Team and I sat down with him at their studio in San Francisco to talk about the story and voices - he does a lot of them, including the Chompy Mage and Broccoli Guy!
© Andrew Edney
The Chompy Mage is a well loved villain and for those of you who don't know much about him, here is his bio:
Believe it or not, the Chompy Mage actually hatched from inside a Chompy Pod. At least that is how his Chompy hand puppet tells the story. Having been raised by Chompies, it is no surprise that the old magician is a little strange. He simply grew up embracing the Chompy way - believing that Skylands would be a better place if everyone was a Chompy - an illegal enchantment which he has actually tried to perform on several occasions. It was this kind of magic that led to him to be locked up inside Cloudcracker Prison, where he met the other Doom Raiders. Of course, they all thought he was completely crazy, but the Chompy Mage can see through the eyes of any Chompy in Skylands - and having a few billion little spies can come in handy when trying to enact revenge on the Skylanders. Plus, he could secure the Chompy vote for any sort of political elections that followed.
Skylanders is redefining the Toys-to-Life phenomenon with yet another ground-breaking innovation, Skylanders Trap Team. With Skylanders Trap Team, players can take characters out of the game and place them into physical "Traps" that kids can take with them, effectively bringing Life to Toys.
Skylanders Trap Team will be released October 10th for the Nintendo Wii, Wii U and 3DS, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and various tablets including the iPad, Android tablets and the Kindle Fire HDX.
And here is some gameplay footage captured from the PlayStation 4 version of the game: