First Sense
Daredevil’s debut season has garnered huge acclaim so far, and part of that is due to its darker tone and brutal combat. When compared to Captain America’s political spy espionage, Iron Man’s action comedy tone, Guardians’ cosmic sarcasm, and so on and so forth, Daredevil is a stand out. He’s the only hero thus far to not be roped into the goings on of the Avengers (even Guardians falls in this circle due to the Thanos connection). All of his hopes, his issues, revolve around Hell’s Kitchen. The game should keep that same grounded and isolated feeling. Go the Arkham Asylum route and have only that part of New York be the entire environment for the game.
As a young child, Matt Murdock suffered from an accident involving a truck transporting harmful chemicals that left him blind. But, the accident also greatly enhanced his other working senses. These newly obtained, heightened senses combined with martial arts and athletic skills turned him into the vigilante Daredevil, a persona he uses to fight crime in Hell’s Kitchen.
To truly immerse you in his world, the Daredevil game would be most effective in first person. His blindness is the most important part of who he is, and it wouldn’t entirely be the same if the gameplay revolved around third person. What would first person mean for the player, though?
Being blind wouldn’t just mean not having the foggiest idea of what you’d be looking at. In the game, you would be blind – as in no health meter, no indicator of how close or far away an enemy is, and most importantly, no minimap. You’d have to get around the environment organically, but this wouldn’t mean that you’d be screwed. You’d simply be using Matt’s senses to get to your objective.
Say, for example, you start at Matt’s apartment and a mission starts on the other side of town. But you’ve met someone associated with that mission and picked up the smell of their cologne or the sound of their voice. Similar to how crouching worked in The Last of Us, pressing a button would activate Matt’s enhanced sense of smell, creating small trails that lead you to the mission start. Or perhaps Matt would mentally play back the last thing he heard the mark say via the controller.
In the show, Matt mentions that everything he sees is like fire. Ben Affleck’s Daredevil film portrayed Matt’s vision as just blue, but Netflix Daredevil’s “fire vision” could be utilized for certain play modes or difficulty levels.
Hand Over Fist
The game’s story would pick up on a thread hinted at the end of the series’ eighth episode. (Spoilers ahead) One of the Kingpin’s fellow crime bosses, a Japanese man by the name of Nobu, fights Daredevil in ninja garb and nearly kills the Man Without Fear before being burned to death. The identity of Nobu’s organization is never revealed, just cryptically mentioned as “the Japanese.”
Given Daredevil’s comic book history, it’s more than likely that this is the ninja group known as the Hand. They’ve caused trouble for him in the past, and he has a personal link with the Hand due to his love interest Elektra (who was also briefly hinted at in the show). With one of their men dead and rumors circulating that the “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen” ended his life, it’d be more than justifiable for the Hand to come in and unleash hell on… well, Hell’s Kitchen.
Most enemies you fight in the story would be a member of the Hand, from men armed with assault rifles and bows to ones dressed like actual ninjas, complete with swords and shuriken. In the show, Daredevil played the role of the hunter, but in the game, he would be the hunter and the hunted. While roaming around Hell’s Kitchen, the best of the Hand would attack you at random. You could try to run away and shake them, or you could fight them using every move you have. Don’t give the Hand an inch, because they certainly won’t do so for you.
Daring Stunts
The Daredevil game should most definitely be open world. This opens up opportunities to find random encounters, find information for cases you’ll work in the day as Matt Murdock (more on that later), and go from mission to mission. Each sandbox game gives you different ways to travel. GTA and Saints Row have you jack vehicles or super jump around a virtual recreation of Steelport. Infamous lets you either climb or use your superpowers to ascend high in the sky. The Batman games give you a grapple gun, your cape, and just let you glide around Gotham.
Whether he’s suited up as Daredevil or in his civilian clothes, Matt Murdock is a master gymnast and amazing athlete. He can parkour like nobody’s business, and his billy club (disguised as a blind man’s cane) holds a grapple in it that allows him to swing around Hell’s Kitchen, if he’s so inclined. The grapple and his parkour should be his primary means of getting around Hell’s Kitchen. Car surfing would be viable, but not all that safe or reliable. Parkour, along with the grapple, could also lead to fun race challenges or stunts that require the use of both. Time to get fancy!
Doing first person parkour and stealth wouldn’t be much of an issue following games like Deus Ex and Mirror’s Edge. Combat, on the other hand, will be a tricky beast. Some first person games pit you against one enemy at a time, while others will just open the floodgates and tell you to go nuts. Given Daredevil’s blindness, something like Arkham Asylum’s lightning bolts on top of attacking enemies’ heads would be beneficial. Soundwaves of differing intensity would help differentiate between an armed enemy, a shielded enemy, and so on.
Objection!
Fans of the Ace Attorney games love shouting “objection!” and putting the bud guys behind bars. Daredevil happens to be a lawyer when the sun’s up. So, the only logical choice would be to lawyer up and put the bad guys away.
When he isn’t fighting the Hand, Matt would be taking cases at his firm, Nelson and Murdock. Maybe the player will cross paths someone who suffered financial losses from the Kingpin’s attempts at gentrification, and was screwed out of their money by their insurance company. These missions would have a greater emphasis on stealth than the combat oriented affairs against the Hand, requiring you to sneak around and gain information to help you in your case the following day. A failure to win the case not only decreases your reputation as a firm, it also takes away some XP from your interrogation or detective skill.
Tying these missions in with the Hand, it’d be easy for the organization in this day and age to use shell companies as a front for transporting their weapons or drugs around Hell’s Kitchen. Like Shadow of Mordor, you’d interrogate underlings for information on the lieutenants running each part of the operation – guns, drugs, transportation, etc. Taking them down and convicting them nets you a huge XP bonus. But a failure to convict leads to increased security if you try to go after them a second time.
There also should be a button dedicated to saying “lawyer up, asshole!” when handing someone over to the cops and one dedicated to saying “objection!” in the courthouse. For science, you see.
The Best Defense…
Like the solo Marvel film franchises in theaters that tie to Avengers, Daredevil on Netflix is just one part of a bigger story. Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage will have their own solo shows on Netflix before the four of them come together for The Defenders sometime in the future. While the Daredevil game doesn’t need to feature the future Defenders as playable characters, they should make cameos.
Jessica Jones is a private eye, so looking into one of the lieutenants of the Hand could be her purpose. This would put her on the path to Matt, and after a few missions where they work together publicly and in the shadows, they part as allies. Maybe he teams up with Luke Cage in a street fight, or takes a case of an employee of Danny Rand’s (Iron Fists’s alter ego) Rand Industries. Marvel is usually good at dropping Easter eggs for diehard fans pour over – see the Iron Fist references in Daredevil, for one – and things should be no different here.
Drop us some suggestions on what a Daredevil game should have in the comments below. Or tell us if he even should have a video game!
About the author
