WWE 2K20 Developers Reveal How The Fiend Made It Into This Year's Game

WWE 2K20 features a plethora of WWE superstars, including Raw, SmackDown, NXT, and 205 Live superstars for players to control. One of the early surprises though was the game's inclusion of The Fiend, as when he was announced as part of the Bump in the Night content (which released shortly after launch), fans were just starting to see Bray Wyatt's new character take over on WWE television. Sure he had been teased for a while, but we hadn't actually seen him in action much when he was announced for the game, and during a recent conversation with Visual Concepts Creative Director Lynell Jinks we learned all about how the newer addition to the WWE roster made it into the game so soon.

"Well when they first said they'd be right before SummerSlam, we're like, 'Oh, that's interesting. That's not the one that was in the Firefly Fun House', and then you're like, 'Okay, what is that? That's cool.' Then all of a sudden at SummerSlam, you saw the entrance, you saw the lantern and you saw all of it, the victory scene," Jinks said. "We had just done some recordings of Bray doing voiceovers for the showcase for Originals, and we're just like, 'Oh my God.' Then he was like, 'so what do you guys think of the theme?' That's really cool, and he's like, 'it's going to be in the game, right? Oh man, it'd be really cool if it was in the game.'

So the guy that was at the recording session, one of my designers told me about it and I was like ah, yeah, I think it would be really cool. He's right," Jinks said. "You know, we were done adding characters. We were done with Mocap. We were done with everything that we were adding. We're just trying to polish what we've had in the game for months now, and again, this was not on the radar at all."

"I talked to marketing and talked to the WWE and I asked 'what do you guys think of this idea?' They were like, 'That's a great idea. I think people would love it.' Luckily it lines up with the whole theme of what we're doing with Originals, and the fact that it wasn't, it didn't have to be done before on disc and could be part of our first DLC, so just like the timing was kind of in our favor. I wouldn't say perfect but in our favor," Jinks said.

"So we had to cram in one last Mocap shoot, get the models done, get the entrances done, get the lantern done," Jinks said. "The team really came together and got that thing in and I'm happy it's in there, just seeing how well that turned out. To me, this game wouldn't have been complete without it."

At one point they did consider just making changes to the core Bray Wyatt model, but that just wasn't going to cut it, so they decided a new model was the only way to go.

"When we were first looking at it, we were like 'Oh man, we can take the Bray entrance and maybe...', but then we said 'no, no, we've got to do it right. Let's go to Mocap.' Luckily we have our own Mocap studios, we called up the guys at Mocap and they were all on board," Jinks said. "Again, everything kind of lined up for us to do it and we had one shot and one small window to get it done. It required a lot of people to sacrifice their time. I was like, 'Do you see a finish line?' And you're like, 'Cool, I'm almost there,' and then all of a sudden it's actually 'No, we're going to add another couple of miles to you.' But no one was discouraged. Everyone came together and got it done."

"To me, that is one of the things I'm most proud of about this year," Jinks said. "It's just how well our team came together. A brand new team for, there's been like, Dino and I worked together with Sean and Randy, we've worked together for a few years now, so we have that bond, but the majority of the studio was new. This team we built to make this game, 80 to 90% of the guys are brand new to this game. It all happened this year. Just to see this team come together like this to give you guys a game is remarkable. I couldn't be prouder of the team we built."

WWE 2K20 is in stores now.

What did you think of 2K20's version of The Fiend? Let us know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things WWE 2K20!