Besides having one of the coolest names on the planet, American McGee likes to oversee games that can be described as unique and original. With a resume that includes American McGee's Alice (a twisted take on the classic children's tale) and Scrapland, it's safe to say that McGee doesn't adhere to convention. His latest game, Bad Day L.A., is a perfect example of this. Due out early next year for the Xbox and PC, this third-person action adventure game is about your antihero of a character trying to get through an over-the-top day in Los Angeles, where things just keep going from bad to worse. To keep things from getting bleak, the game is wrapped in a twisted sense of humor that pokes fun at various aspects of American society. To learn more, we caught up with McGee to ask him more about Bad Day L.A.

Ever had one of those days when it just keeps getting worse?

GameSpot: Tell us about the current state of the game. How far along is it at this point? What parts of the game is the team currently working on?

American McGee: The game is currently in production with development divided between two teams, one in Hong Kong and one in Guangzhou, China. The team in Hong Kong is primarily responsible for management, design, technology, and level design. The team in China is handling art asset production, character animation, and is creating all of our prerendered cinematic content.

The team has been working on the game for a little over a year now. We're nearing the completion of asset production and heading into a phase where we'll be bringing everything together, tuning, and finalizing. That means that the bulk of the development is now shifting entirely to the level designers and programmers in Hong Kong, while the art asset guys move on to other projects.

The team is currently working on things like mission scripting, level polishing, and user interface. At the moment you can play through the first half of the game, although a lot of tuning remains to be done before the experience will be consistently fun. Over the past couple of weeks we've seen a very cool "chaos management" dynamic emerge from the game in an organic way. So in addition to solving the missions and running around defending yourself, you're also working to keep a lid on the constant unrest in the area around you. It's starting to feel something like The Sims with a shotgun.

GS: Tell us about the game's unusual art design. Why did the team decide to use a cartoonlike visual style? Is the line-drawn art intended to be ironic, or some kind of reference to self-help or emergency warning pamphlets?

AM: The art style is meant to be ironic and is making subtle reference to the emergency warning pamphlets that you often see on airplanes. The decision to go with this style was influenced by a number of factors. First, I really wanted a way to offset the graphic nature of the violence that is portrayed in the game so that the focus wasn't gore and death. The game is intended to be humorous, but considering the subject matter that we're dealing with, the art style needs to help blunt the force of the violence a little. Otherwise people aren't going to laugh.

Next, the art style is quintessential "Los Angeles." It does a great job of capturing the city's surreal, gritty, and often ridiculous nature. The art team that established the style is based in Los Angeles, so they have firsthand knowledge of all the little visual details that give the city its soul and character. It seems that the art style has transferred pretty well to the game. Certainly the game is unique in its visual style.

GS: How far along are the game's missions at this point? Can you give us some examples of the kinds of missions and objectives you'll be looking at in the game?

AM: The game script, which describes all the game mission scenarios, was finished some months ago. This document came in at over 120 pages and describes in detail all the various obstacles that the player will encounter throughout the 10 levels that make up this bad day. As I said before, we've completed half the game now, which means about half the missions are available.

Your character wants to escape LA, but he ends up having to help people along the way.

The missions and the characters and stories that surround them are often humorously bizarre. They all involve "rescuing" people in one form or another. Of course our hero is just as likely to kill those he's trying to save as he is to actually save them. In our "fire" level, you'll find the player assisting neighborhood parents to round up their drug-crazed children, going into burning houses to save people's loved ones (which often turn out to be blow-up sex dolls), extinguishing burning babies, and helping a bunch of innocent civilians push a bus into a meteor crater so they can escape Molotov cocktail-throwing gang members.

The humor from these missions often comes from our main character's response to being involved with them in the first place. To say he's a reluctant hero would be an understatement. Often times he'll actively resist helping characters that he encounters, only to relent once he realizes that his escape lies in their survival.