Read The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy Online
Authors: Bev Vincent
The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (23 page)
Q:Â Â Â That would be around the time when the final books were headed toward publication.
A:Â Â Â It was. We were representing the existing books and then adding them for, I guess, a year or so.
Q:Â Â Â You had a concept inspired by North Central Positronics.
A:Â Â Â We were going to design a new Dark Tower Web site to get away from it being a Flash vehicle. We took this concept of a site that looked like it was made by North Central Positronics. I can't
believe this is actually the inception point for Discordia. It's so far and completely removedâtechnologically, the way the execution is and everything elseâcompared to what Discordia is. That's the first time that the development team that's on it kind of fell in love with doing something about North Central Positronics and Tet. It goes back that far.
Q:Â Â Â How did it get from there to Discordia?
A:Â Â Â We did The Office [an interactive tour of Stephen King's office], saw it was cool, and then we wanted to apply that to the Dark Tower. That was when we went back to the North Central Positronics concepts and the war between Tet and Sombra. We saw the potential of using 3-D to do very cool things. We wanted a special-feature project for the Dark Tower just like The Office.
Q:Â Â Â When Robin Furth came on as director, had you already developed this concept?
A:Â Â Â Robin came on as a director from the very beginning. We had a meeting in the city at this crazy vegan restaurant. Robin was immediately up for Discordia, even though it's kind of expanded universe and it's minimizing the ultra-importance of some of the sacred aspects of the Dark Tower. Discordia said that expanded universe is okay. If you want to think of it as canon, think of it as canon. If you want to think of it as expanded universe, think of it as expanded universe, which is what I do. I believe it gives us much more creativity and freedom to do things. It's a separate thing.
Q:Â Â Â The fact that Stephen King recorded the mission plan at the beginning for Discordia is his stamp of approval.
A:Â Â Â Absolutely. And we really needed that with some of the outlandish things that we brought to the table with the Discordia concept. That really helped.
Q:Â Â Â The Marvel graphic novels were already in the works, so the idea of branching out from King's stuff into new territory had already been accepted.
A:Â Â Â Other than the fact that we were creating a couple of characters, most of the time we would be doing representations of things that were specifically mentioned in the books. Early concepts for Discordia revolved around more espionage-type things going on in
New York City between the two companies. Those ideas were scrapped, and then we moved on to the more creative concepts of the Dixie Pig and going to Mid-World, which was a huge step for us. Representing an adventure to Mid-World is huge, and a big responsibility for me creatively. Getting that changed from a simpler game that took place in New York City to a Mid-World adventure was huge for me. That's the stuff that we spoke about at that initial meeting on one of the hottest days of the summer that I can ever remember in New York. That Op19 would exist. The war between Tet and Sombra is really a great angle to tell a lot of other things, and I think that's the way we all saw it. To tell more about the Dark Tower universe in almost a promotional sense. Discordia continues to grow and evolve, whether you're talking about creative or technology or 3-D.
The development team is quoted as saying we honor the face of our fathers, but we also look at the Dark Tower series as part of an übernovel the same way that Steve does. It's not even close to done. Discordia is just another piece. Everything that we're doing is based on the first seven books, but we don't hold anything that sacred. We're not afraid to get nasty and do crazy things. That freedom allows us to come up with some very cool ideas. Discordia does not honor the Dark Tower series in such a deep sense that we're afraid to do things, which I think was one of the things that we struggled with all the way up to the part where we pitched Arina Yokova, this Mafia character, and all the things that go along with it. Steve said he really liked it.
The game itself is that you arrive at the Fedic Dogan and have to investigate. You're going to have a gunfight. All the principles of the first game will be there, only probably modified and different technology by the time it comes out later this year. Sayre's setting up shop to do the extractions. Arina is fighting with them trying to use the rotunda. For the most part, Arina and her thugs are controlling the whole area. She's living in the castle. She controls the tunnel. She controls the rotunda, and Sayre's low men hold down parts of the Fedic Dogan. That sets the stage for that three-man kind of trifecta, which I always love, when there are three opposing sides. The cool factor about Discordia is that, yeah, it's this game, and that's definitely its primary thing, but it also
details this very cool character Arina, who is obsessed with the Dark Tower, and not only the Dark Tower, but Steve King, too.
While working for Sombra, Arina reads the final Dark Tower book. For several reasons, she is outraged and perplexed by the open ending. Perhaps most important, Arina believes that the Tower is malfunctioning and should not restart its time line at the year that it does, trapping Roland in the time loop. By the mid-2000s, Arina is completely obsessed with Roland's cycle and begins to formulate a plan to liberate her hero.
Q:Â Â Â There are people on the message boards who aren't fond of the way the series ends.
A:Â Â Â That's the thing. I've read essays about how people hate the way that the series ended. Personally, I'm okay with most of it. I think there should have been some kind of crazy epic battle, which is one of the things that I want Discordia to satisfy. But for the most part, I'm reasonably satisfied. I think a lot of people don't like that open-ended thing, and for somebody like Arina, it became a serious problem. She just didn't like it, but she also then is dead set on ending it and bringing peace to the cycle.
This is why she killed everybody and took over in the rotunda and the tunnelsâto use this recently discovered ancient device that North Central Positronics engineered. It's the “offer you can't refuse” thing that they show her when they got her to work for them. It's called a snapper. It allowed maintenance crews to test the functionality of doors. They could go through any door, one-way or not, and return at the click of a button. The base of the snapper is a brasslike disc about the size of a large pizza. It stands about four inches tall and hovers above the ground, with dim green light emanating beneath it. The base houses a removable device similar to a pocket watch and chain named a clicker. This has the button that returns the user to the base, as well as basic controls for the snapper's cloaking features.
Once Arina figures out how to use the snapper, she realizes that she can pretty much do anything that she wants. She travels through time and space to countless “wheres and whens” while performing dangerous interdimensional field research and espionage, all in an effort to gain as much knowledge about the Tower
as she can. She can travel to the farthest reaches of time and space and always return to Mid-World at the same time as when she left.
She's used the money from the heist to fund this effort, to lure men to work for her as protection, or people to go through doors using the snapper to test it and see where it goes. She's funding a rather extensive venture. The ghost town of Fedic is being held by Arina's thugs and mercenaries. That's where a lot of that money goes. At the end of it, we learn through journal entries and some clue that 1) Arina has been going through the doors for what is technically hundreds of years; and 2) that she is dead set on ending Roland's perpetual journey and she has figured out how to do it. She is basically on the loose somewhere in time, is the way we leave it.
A F
EW
W
ORDS WITH
R
OBIN
F
URTH
When Stephen King was preparing to work on the final three books in the Dark Tower series, he hired Robin Furth to be his research assistant. He wanted her to index the first four books and make notes of the major characters, places and events so he could refer back to them for continuity. That project led to her book
Stephen King's The Dark Tower: A Concordance
. As an acknowledged expert in the Dark Tower, she went on to write the scripts for the Marvel graphic novel adaptations (see interview later in this book), which was her first step in expanding the Dark Tower universe beyond what King had written.
She became the director of the Discordia project for King's official Web site, writing the text content associated with found items and making sure the details in this interactive experience remained consistent with the overall mythos. The following interview was conducted by e-mail in March 2012, prior to the launch of Phase II of Discordia.
Q:Â Â Â Brian Stark mentioned a dinner at a vegan restaurant in New York on a very hot summer day, where the basic concepts of Discordia were hashed out. What are your memories of that day?
A:Â Â Â I remember that dinner very well! Marsha [DeFilippo] and I met Brian, Judy [Hahn], and Judy's son, Jordan, at a vegan restaurant. At that point Brian and Judy were still trying to decide the best approach for Discordia. Brian really wanted to make his espionage tale work within the context of the novels so that he could stay true to the Dark Tower universe. Inevitably, the conversation drifted to
“Tet versus Sombra,” since that is such a big part of the final Dark Tower novel. After that, the project really grew wings. In retrospect, I attribute that dinner to
ka
.
Q:Â Â Â Did the fact that you were already involved with the Marvel adaptation make the decision to move into an expanded world experience easier?
A:Â Â Â The fact that I was already involved with the Marvel adaptation really made a difference when it came to working with Discordia. For that first thirty-issue comic book run, I had to fill out Roland's backstory (the “lost years” between the end of Roland's Hambry adventure and the battle of Jericho Hill), so I'd already been involved with adding detail to the Dark Tower universe. (As you know, for any Dark Tower fan, that is an incredibly exciting but incredibly daunting prospect.) Hence, when we started talking about Arina's tale, it felt like we were doing something very similar, but in a different time stream, if that makes sense! In both cases, we had the backing of Steve, which is always the most important thing.
Brian is always really modest and makes sure that credit for Discordia is evenly distributed, but he is really the brains behind this operation. He and Judy have put untold hours into the project. It's amazing.
Q:Â Â Â What is your role as director?
A:Â Â Â I make sure the details are right, and I write the journal entries and item descriptions. Brian and I went over the floor plan for the Dixie Pig, the mind-trap tunnel, and for the rotunda many times, making certain that all the details were right on the money. We even swapped sketches, just to make sure. Writing the journal entries was an amazing experience, because on one level, I actually became Op19. I wandered through the Pig as if I were actually journeying there. It even affected my dream life. I'm not great with technology (you should see my dinosaur of a computer), but Brian was incredibly patient and has really educated me about computer games. It's been great.
Q:Â Â Â Listening to Brian talk about Arina, it was like he knew this woman. Like she was real.
A:Â Â Â In the Dark Tower universe, Arina
is
real!
HE
D
ARK
T
OWER
: T
HE
M
OVIE
A
s long as there's been an Internetâeven back in the days when people communicated on bulletin boards using dial-up modemsâthere have been ongoing discussions about who should be cast in a movie version of the Dark Tower. Series fans seem to assume that it will happen eventually, especially after the highly successful adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings
. If that complex fantasy series could be turned into a movie, then why not the Dark Tower?
Clint Eastwood was an early favorite to play Roland, but as the decades passed, it was clear that the actor on whom Roland was modeled had become too old to play the thousand-year-old gunslinger. These discussions continue, however, with each new generation of reader suggesting the latest and greatest actors to fill this fantasy cast.
At New York Comic Con in February 2007, King sat on a panel with many of the creative people involved with the Marvel Dark Tower graphic novels. King told the audience that he'd refused offers for the film rights to the series because he didn't think much of the chances of it being a good movie. Though he usually doesn't care much about what happens with many of the movies made from his worksâbeyond hoping they're good because he is a fan of moviesâthe Dark Tower is important to him. He regards it as his life's work.