The Director of God Of War, Cory Barlog has recently shared his ideas for a Superman game, some of which seems to have drawn its inspiration from Persona and Smallville.
This happened at a PAX West Panel called “The Quest For The Perfect Superman Game”. The panel featured Jared Petty, Kat Bailey, Sydnee Goodman, Greg Miller and Barlog as they discussed the games based on the hero released in the past and what exactly would it take one to make the perfect one. Most Superman games haven’t been received as well as other superhero games and while the panel was purely theoretical and doesn’t necessarily imply that they are working on a Superman game already, Barlog did have some nice ideas for his own take on the game.
The God of War Director first joked about a game where Superman has a child whom he has to learn to teach and adapt, which could be a nod to his most recent God of War game. However, on a more serious note, his pitch for the game threw some light on the Smallville TV series and the game series, Persona.
The players would get to control a younger Clark Kent as we saw in Smallville series who goes to school and lives a normal life. The game will show Kent coming to terms with his abilities and him balancing his heroic alter ego and coming of age moments. He also stated that such an idea might lean too far into Persona; something he’d like to avoid.
Instead, he pitched another idea where one can play as a version of Superman who has to realise that he can’t help everyone around him. He insisted that players will also hear people asking for help on a small scale but no one would know who Superman was. As the player saves more people and makes oneself known, the cries of “Help” will change into “Help Superman”. It’s then that the player–and Superman would get so many requests that they’d realise that they cannot save everyone and the players will have to deal with the consequences of that.
The game, in a nutshell, will be about Superman coming to terms with the fact that he cannot save everyone while he still continuously fugues out a way to do so. He continued by saying that Ninja Theory will be the most appropriate fit for a game like this. Ninja Theory has earlier made games like Devil May Cry and Hellblade.
