Let’s skip the small talk, shall we? Epic Mickey is a tale about the ‘forgotten’ Disney stars: the rides, the characters, the lesser-known cartoons, a source close to EuroGamer reveals. When no one no longer cares about them, they’re cast into a dark void; a forgotten world of broken machines and bitter personalities.

This void is run by Oswald the Rabbit – Walt Disney’s first creation – and Oswald’s jealousy of Mickey Mouse has tormented him for years. Now, Oswald is ready for revenge. To help him with this task, Oswald unleashes The Phantom Blot to wipe out Mickey and his cartoon world. The Blot pollutes the Disney universe with sticky black ink that makes colors run and fade, so it’s up to Mickey to restore peace and order.

This is where Mickey’s new tools – paintbrushes, erasers, thinner, pencils and other artist tools – come in. Mickey has to draw and scribble his way through levels, mending broken bridges by applying the right color paint or peering through walls after applying thinner. He can even clear rubble from his path by erasing parts of the world, which all can be down with the Wii Motion Control.

The source tells EuroGamer that Epic Mickey is a game about thinking and artwork – laterally considering your environment in order to overcome puzzles. Also that, Mickey will be getting “his first makeover in years”. “That’s why no one’s seen his face yet,” their source explains. “But he’s far more retro than you’ve seen him for years.”

Besides recent reports, it seems that unannounced Final Fantasy project is alive and well. According to a report posted by GameIndustry.biz, sources confirmed that the unannounced Final Fantasy project that was in development at GRIN is now in development over at Square Enix.

You see, Square took the project off GRIN’s hands after only six months of development due to concerns over quality. Sadly, because business laws in Sweden prohibits companies from going into debt without severe penalties, GRIN was subsequently to bear its wage burden without new projects, and had to closed its doors. Square didn’t respond to the news.

And… the news about Halo: Reach just keeps coming, and coming. Probably one of the most noted things about Halo 3: ODST is its survival-like mode, Firefight. When speaking to Eurogamer, community lead Brian Jarrard revealed that Firefight isn’t set in stone for ODST, and it could make a reappearing in a future Halo title.

“I can’t talk too much about Reach specifics, but hopefully the game mode’s going to be received as well we think it will be, and people are going to enjoy it. I don’t think we’ve ever been known to really take things away from each successive release, so I think it’s safe to say that if Firefight gets a lot of traction and people love it, it probably has a good future home in our next title as well,” said Jarrard at PAX.

FreeStyleGames studio, the developers behind the upcoming DJ Hero title, have been hinting at the possibility all of E3, but the developers over at Neversoft, known for the Guitar Hero series, haven’t put their two cents into the equation, until now.

“We’ve worked with [DJ Hero creator FreeStyleGames], talked to them about the game for a couple of years now, looked at different builds and played it,” GH director Brian Bright told Eurogamer TV. “We would love to integrate in the future.”

However, Bright went on to say that the games release dates did not allow the team to include the option in the latest major Guitar Hero installment.

“Unfortunately for Guitar Hero 5, we ship a few months before they do. [But] we’d love to explore instrument compatibility in the future; we’ll see where it goes.”

Yes!!! Mark Rein has confirmed to Eurogamer that Epic Games, the developers behind the Gears of War series, does indeed have “something new to announce at [this years] E3″.

“Yes we will have something new to announce at E3,” said Rein, before apologising that he couldn’t say anything more until the event. “And I’m looking forward to seeing the show back to its former glory.”

The developer is currently finishing up work on the Gears of War 2 expansion Dark Corners, which set to release worldwide on 28th of July.

It looks like there’s going to be another important no-show, go to the show at this years E3. Despite already having five titles that we already know they are working on, the developers behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Rockstar Games, don’t have any plans on showing anything at this years E3 event, as reported by EuroGamer.

Although, Rockstar has revealed that its not going to rule out announcements during the show. However, when asked about rumors that they have plans to reveal the second downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV they stated that, “we don’t comment on rumour and speculation.”

Talk about a bold statement. Developer Bethesda Games, know for the Fallout titles, are feeling pretty good about their newest project with Splash Damage in Europe, enough to call it a both a “genre-breaker” and a “killer app.”

“We’re not announcing the name yet, but it’s a first-person shooter. That’s a product that we believe is a genre-breaker, it’s a real killer app,” European managing director Sean Brennan told GamesIndustry.biz.

“From a quality perspective we’re pitching that along the same lines as Fallout 3. We’ve kept it under lock and key, there are so many innovative features in there we don’t want to reveal them too soon. We’ve spent significant resources developing the title. And that’s a great example of our European work.”

They have finally said it. When speaking to EuroGamer, Bungie revealed that they currently have ‘no plans’ to continuing the Bungie Halo sage after ODST.

“We’ll never say never, but currently Bungie has no plans to make new Halo 3 content beyond the release of ODST,” Bungie told Eurogamer. “We will, however, continue to support the Halo 3 online experience with regular updates to matchmaking playlists and wield the Banhammer as needed.

“With Forge and the Mythic map Sandbox we’re already seeing the community stepping up to create some great new maps and gametypes that will offer more variety and longevity to the game down the road.”

However, games producer Allen Murray said that the studio would work on Halo 3 for “probably” two more years before given it up.

The original Dead Rising was a solid Xbox 360 exclusive that kept gamers playing over and over again, but that was about it for the game title, until now. A source close to Canadian developer Blue Castle Games has told the guys over at Eurogamer that the studio is making a sequel to Dead Rising. Rumours that the Vancouver-based outfit was working on the zombie project first emerged last year, but neither the developer nor publisher Capcom has confirmed anything on the record.

The source said: “Everyone’s really excited; the team has obviously seen the rumours and it’s been hard to keep quiet, but they can’t wait to show off the game.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t quick to give any details on the title or when we’ll be likely to see it. Blue Castle has so far released two baseball titles all with 2K Games, including The Bigs, and the recently announced MLB Front Office Manager.

[Blue Castle making Dead Rising 2 via Eurogamer]

Today, EuroGamer had the chance to talk to Media Molecule’s co-founder Mark Healy, he told EuroGamer that, “There’s definitely scope for a PSP version… We’ve had discussions and talks, [but] nothing concrete at the moment.” He then went on to tell EuroGamer his ideas for a handheld version of the game, “It’d be great to make – for the people who are really into the Create side – some kind of companion products that allow you to create things while you’re on the train,” he said. “One thing that I’d love to add is the ability to create you’re own music, for example, that you can import into the game. That seems like an obvious one to do and it’d be quite easy really.”

As you can see by the little information given there’s still alot of room for a PSP version of the game it’s just that the team needs a little bit of creativity to help them make another game. Hopefully there will be a bit of creativity and we will be able to see the game on the PSP.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Cliff Bleszinski told them that his favorite aspect of Gears 2 was getting into, i quote, “Dom’s head a little bit more, figuring out who this Dom Santiago is, who his wife was and what wound up happening to her.”

He also said that he is “excited to see the large scale battle scenes and a lot of the coolness we’re putting in the multiplayer feature set.”

[Cliff Bleszinski and Kudo Tsunoda Interview via Eurogamer]