Hello everyone! Rob Nelson, 2K Sports Producer, coming back to you with another Producer Diary about The BIGS 2. This time I’m here to talk about one of our biggest features in the game, Become A Legend mode. We’re really proud of what this mode has become and are excited for everyone to get a chance to play it.

Overview:

Become A Legend is a mode that allows you to create a player and take him through a journey to become the greatest player of all time. It’s the continuation of the story that began in The BIGS. In The BIGS you created a rookie and your goal was to take that player and his team to the World Series to become the World Series MVP. The story in Become A Legend mode picks up from where that rookie’s story left off. What happens next is that in the future after winning the World Series your player suffers what is thought to be a career ending injury. He attempts to rehab his injury and get back into the majors but after doing everything he can to get back to his old form it’s clear that he’s just lost too much to be the player he once was. He’s out of the league completely for a while and isn’t sure what his next step should be. Eventually, frustrated by the situation he decides to give it one more shot. He decides to go down to play in a semi-pro league in Mexico to prove to himself and to his doubters that he can still play. This is where Become A Legend Mode picks up. 

From here you’ll need to defeat some of the challenges in Mexico and work your way back into the Majors. You’ll play through 5 seasons of your player’s career in Become a Legend mode. During your player’s career you’ll be playing in the Post Season, in the World Series, taking trips to Japan, and breaking records. You’ll compete in a variety of challenges to raise your player ratings while trying to collect enough Hall of Fame votes to get you to Cooperstown. Eventually you’ll face off against Legendary players in an attempt to become the greatest player of all time.

Challenges:

One thing we wanted to do in Become A Legend mode is to increase the variety of challenges you’ll face. Some of the challenges will require your player to accomplish a specific task such as hitting a Home Run or getting a Big Blast while winning the game. Other challenges will require your team to come through in a tough situation such as being down by a couple runs late in the game and needing to make a comeback. We’ll also put you in some unique situations such as playing a game where the AI team starts with full Turbo. We’ll test your pitching and defensive skills by requiring you to hold the other team from scoring, as well as your offensive skills by challenging you to score a bunch of runs in clutch situations. What we like about the challenges we’ve put in place is that the different challenges will test your all around skills as a player. You may be amazing at the plate but you won’t be able to rely on that in all situations. You’ll need to develop into an all around player. Your hitting, pitching, fielding, base running, usage the Turbo meter, and ability to make Legendary Catches will all be tested.

Apart from all the new types of challenges, we’re also going to have new environments for Become A Legend mode. You’ll start off in Mexico as I mentioned before but you’ll also be taking trips to Japan to compete against Japanese All-Stars. You’ll visit our Shibuya, Tokyo Home Run Pinball location, as well as Las Vegas and Times Square. You’ll compete in Mini Games that take place in city streets and run a race on top of the buildings outside of Wrigley Field. You’ll be traveling all around the world facing off against different challenges in different locations. We wanted to mix it up so that you’re not always playing inside standard baseball stadiums all the time.

Choices/Power-Ups:

Another goal we had for Become A Legend Mode was to give you more choices to make along the way. Our map and challenge screen is more open ended than it was in The BIGS. You have more choice as to which order you take on which challenges. If there is a particular challenge such as stealing a base with your created player that you’re struggling to complete, it may be smarter to move to a different challenge first that increases your player’s speed before coming back to the base stealing challenge. 

Along with the choice of which order you compete in challenges and in some cases bypassing certain challenges, you have some significant choices to make during the Player Steal challenges. In these challenges you compete against another Major League team. If you beat that team you have an opportunity to steal a player from that team and put them on your roster. Who you decide to put on your roster will largely be decided based on the Power-Ups that player’s have.

Power-ups are available in both regular gameplay as well as Become A Legend Mode. Many of the top players in the league will have a special Power-Up. These Power-Ups give some players unique abilities that other players don’t have. For example, Prince Fielder has a Power-Up that increases the size of each player’s Wheelhouse on your team (see my Gameplay Diary for a description of the Wheelhouse). Derek Jeter’s has a Power Up that increases his player ratings when his team is behind. Some players give boosts to other player’s power ratings, glove, or speed. Some batters will have ‘no doubter’ home runs that can’t be robbed while pitchers will have special pitches they won’t ever lose or will gain extra turbo for pitching in a batter’s Wheelhouse. There is a ton of variety when it comes to the Power-Ups.

When it comes to stealing players you won’t only rely on the player ratings as you did in The BIGS. Now you’ll have to decide what kind of team you want to build based on the player’s you steal and their Power-Ups. Are you going to build a team designed for playing small ball and focus on stealing players that have fielding, speed, or pitching Power Ups? Are you trying to build a dominant offensive team and steal players with Power-Ups that increase contact and power ratings? Perhaps if you’re a player who’s strong at the plate you’ll want to focus on offensive Power-Ups to accentuate what you’re already good at so that you become dominant. Or if you’re not so great on the mound you might want to focus on getting Pitching oriented Power-Ups to shore up that weakness. If your created player is an Outfielder maybe you’ll want to steal players that give boosts to outfielders, or if your created player is your cleanup hitter you’ll want to steal a player who has a Power-Up that protects the batter behind him and then bat that guy 3rd. There’s a bunch of ways you can go with this to suit how you like to play the game. You will collect a number of player’s throughout the mode and you will have to choose each game who you want to bring in with you. You can choose to bring in the players that will best help you defeat the challenge you’re faced with.

Hall of Fame

If you’ve managed to get into the Hall of Fame your journey hasn’t quite ended. Your goal wasn’t to be a great player, your goal is to become the greatest player. To do that you’ll need to defeat legends of the game. You’ll get that chance in the Hall of Fame section of the game. 

You’ll compete against teams of current all-stars with Legendary players at their head. For example, you’ll need to beat a team composed of some of the best current players around with Dennis Eckersley as their closer. You’ll need to defeat other legends one on one in mini-games and challenges. Eventually you will face off against the best of the best. Guys like Reggie Jackson, the Jackie Robinson, and Roberto Clemente. If you can beat these legends you’ll get a chance to steal them and put them on your team. The challenges will become more and more difficult as you go along and you’ll need these Legendary players to keep you moving forward.

The team at Blue Castle Games has done some amazing work on this mode of the game and we hope everyone will really enjoy it. Be prepared to set aside some time to get all the way through to the end. You’re going to need to be on your game to become a legend. After all, if it was easy to become the greatest of all time then everyone would be doing it!