In the last decades, superheroes have become all the rage — not just because of the runaway success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also because of beloved games like Marvel’s Spider-Man and the Batman Arkham franchise. But one of the more interesting aspects of the superhero renaissance has been the grittier, grounded, and hyper-violent takes — series like Invincible and The Boys. But no one has been a bigger player in that regard than Daredevil, an already beloved hero pushed to new heights by a phenomenal Netflix series that turns the horned hero into a prestige drama. After years of waiting, Disney has finally brought the hero back with Daredevil: Born Again, and watching the premiere there was a singular thought I couldn’t shake — there may not be a single superhero better fitted to a video game.
If there’s anything the recent string of superhero games has proven, it’s that people want story-based single-player experiences. Square Enix’s live-service Avengers was a catastrophe, and last year’s Suicide Squad was even more so. Marvel Rivals is obviously the exception, but a lot of that game’s success lies in how it tailors the hero shooter experience to already beloved characters. But, in general, the superhero fantasy is best served by epic single-player experiences that really let you embody these characters.
The Spider-Man games have already proven how video games can meaningfully explore the duality of heroes with hidden identities.
The Arkham games work because they make you feel like Batman, both through the bone-crunching action and meticulously designed detective investigations. Spider-Man works because its heavy narrative approach lets players explore the duality of Peter Parker wanting to be a normal young man, and having to take on the responsibility of being a hero. Even a game like Marvel’s Midnight Suns lets you explore the dynamics of relationships between heroes, and what it’d be like to have these super-powered beings live in the same house together.
That’s exactly where Daredevil comes in, as one of Marvel’s most morally complex characters. Good Daredevil stories, like the three Netflix seasons, explore Matt Murdock's tenuous grasp on his normal life as a lawyer — and how his idea of justice clashes with the act of being a vigilante. But past that, there’s usually some deep-rooted exploration of Catholicism and religious ideals like forgiveness and retribution.
Again, video games are perfect for exploring these kinds of dualities, by directly inserting the player and their interpretations into the experience. Bizarrely, there’s also already kind of a precedent for a vigilante lawyer video game — and it’s not likely what you’re expecting.
Daredevil’s powers and strength feel like a literally perfect fit for an Arkham-style combat system.
In 2018, Ryu Ga Gotoku, the studio behind the Yakuza franchise, released a game called Judgment. The game revolved around a disgraced lawyer named Takayuki Yakami, who had turned to the life of a private investigator after a failed case. But as is tradition for the Yakuza games, the heavily melodramatic narrative turns Yagami into a kind of vigilante seeking justice both by his own hands and through the law. Judgment was ostensibly an action RPG in the same vein as Yakuza, but it did feature some courtroom segments where you had to build arguments and present evidence. It was simple, but the idea was there.
Something along those same lines could work marvelously for Daredevil, a split experience where you have courtroom drama and intrigue, mixed with vigilante work — a kind of day-and-night thing where the game is split into two halves. The dual life of Matt Murdock is more compelling than almost any hero out there, even Spider-Man, because of that clash of ideals. The blueprint for gameplay is already out there with games like Arkham City and Spider-Man 2 — but Daredevil’s power of echolocation could open up a wealth of possibilities. That’s especially true if the game is developed with a hand-designed approach, rather than just generic open world options.
We actually do know about a Daredevil game that was once in production for the PlayStation 2, but was eventually canceled. It was supposed to be a third-person beat ‘em up style game that followed the storyline of the Elektra Lives comic. Apparently, it was ultimately canceled because of demands Sony had to change the game, even requesting a Tony Hawk-inspired grinding mechanic. Ultimately, the project moved past the scope of what Marvel envisioned and it was canned.
As strange as it may sound, the Yakuza’s studio judgment, about a vigilante lawyer, is the closest we’ve gotten to a Daredevil game.
The big questions, of course, would come down to who should make a Daredevil game, and there’s a handful of studios that have come to dominate the scene in video games — namely Rocksteady (Batman) and Insomniac (Spider-Man). But Daredevil feels like a chance to try something new that breaks from the mold. Disney and Marvel have gotten much more open to experimenting with properties in the realm of video games — just look at Marvel Rivals, developed by the Chinese company NetEase.
It’d be great to see some kind of left-field pick that’s never made a superhero game, but has experience with the crucial elements that could make Daredevil truly feel like a complex and human experience. Crucially, it doesn’t need to be some record-breaking project with hundreds of millions of dollars of budget. Studios like Ryu Ga Gotoku have proven the power of making more contained experiences that have a more restrained scope, and focus on a few specific aspects, instead of trying to do absolutely everything.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to feel like it has lost its way, video games are an alternative that could keep Marvel's popularity surging. And if Disney really wants to capitalize on that it needs a wide breadth of games with different styles — and not just a blockbuster every few years.
