With Troy Baker seemingly expressing interest in portraying the titular Matt Murdock in a Daredevil video game, excitement for the idea is once again on the rise. This is, likely without coincidence, coming at the same time that the Netflix adaptation of the character, played by Charlie Cox, is rumored to appear in the newest Spider-Man film. This comes after Netflix canceled the series, and it seemed fans would no longer get to see that version of the character in any form.
All of these factors together have put a spotlight on the character. Daredevil has always been a fairly popular character to begin with, so why fans haven’t gotten a video game starring the character in so long is a mystery.
As mentioned above, Daredevil has been a fairly popular character, especially in recent years. While he’s nowhere near as popular as characters like Spidey or Batman, he’s certainly up there. His Marvel Netflix adaptation was the most popular of the bunch, and a lot of fans were seriously bummed out when the series was canceled, especially with what it had set up for its next season.
While a game adaptation should probably do its own thing and not use a previous version of the character like the Batman: Arkham games and Insomniac’s Spider-Man game, capitalizing on this would be a really smart move on Marvel’s part.
The only solo video game adaptation that Daredevil has seen was on the Gameboy Advance back in 2003. The game used the same costumes as the movie released around that time, though it seemed set in its own universe, instead of being an adaptation or continuation of the movie. Since then, Daredevil has been in plenty of video games, such as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, but has not been featured as the title character. Though, another Daredevil game was canceled in 2004.
What makes Daredevil stand out from the cast of other popular characters that haven’t received their own video games is Daredevil’s unique abilities/double-life. Daredevil is, as just about everybody knows, blind. Instead of relying on his sight, he relies not only on his other amplified senses but also on a sonar-like ability that allows him to “see” the surrounding area, just not with his eyes.
A ton of video games have used a mechanic similar to this, such as The Last Of Us and with Batman’s Detective Vision in the Arkham series, so something would have to be done to spice it up a little bit from those games did with the mechanic. Combine this with his sense of smell and hearing, and he could tell exactly what is in another room. He could smell the oil used to clean a gun, could hear the heartbeat of enemies to determine whether they know he’s here or not. There’s any number of things he could tell about what’s inside of a room without being inside of that room, and the developer could introduce a ton of mechanics that could make use of this.
Another really awesome thing that could be done with this is creating enemies that Daredevil cannot sense with these abilities. The Hand, ninjas that Daredevil fights on the regular, are occasionally depicted as not having heartbeats. This could create some seriously tense scenes in a game, where the player cannot rely on Daredevil’s abilities to gain more context for an encounter, as he would have a much more difficult time locating his enemies. It would admittedly be difficult to do this without portraying the entire game in Daredevil’s radar-sense; if the player can still see, then Daredevil can still see. Though maybe, portraying the entire game in a modified radar-sense, one that still makes for satisfying visuals but immerses the player in playing as Daredevil, is the way to go, anyway.
Another really cool and unique aspect of Daredevil is that he’s not only a lawyer, but he’s also a human lie detector. He can tell if someone is lying to him, which has to be one of the best possible abilities for a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. Matt would always know the character of the person that he’s deciding whether or not to defend, so he would always know if someone is being wrongfully prosecuted.
It would be interesting if a potential developer decided to take the game one step further, and give players the opportunity to defend clients in court as a video game lawyer. These clients could be important characters to the outcome of the story, and whether or not the player successfully defends them, or even choose to defend them at all, could drastically impact how the game plays out. This would add a very unique mechanic to a superhero game. One of the only superhero games to do anything like this involving decision-making is the Telltale Batman series, but that game is more or less entirely that mechanic, without combining the action-genre into the mix.
Daredevil also has some of the richest lore to draw from when it comes to comic books. He’s always maintained a certain level of popularity, meaning the character has almost always maintained a monthly comic book. That said, he hasn’t reached crazy-levels of popularity, meaning creators haven’t necessarily been as restricted on what they could do with the Man Without Fear as they might be on characters who are more household names.
Because of this, Daredevil has had some comic book stories that have not only changed the character forever, they’ve changed the medium forever, such as Born Again and The Man Without Fear. While it might not be possible to replicate that kind of impact in another medium, using a character with that kind of storytelling power has the potential to create something truly special. There’s a responsibility when it comes to using characters of this magnitude, but after some of the most recent games based on comic book characters, games have proven that using these kinds of characters can create stories that fans will remember for a long time.
No known Daredevil game is in development.
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