As the anticipation for Captain America: Super Soldier mounts, so too do the Developer Dossiers from Next Level Games and SEGA! We’ve heard about the game’s environment and why it was chosen, followed by the game’s villains and why they were chosen. Now, the task of implementing Captain America in a video game is discussed.
A great deal of time was spent on integrating the shield smoothly into combat and gameplay, which was an excellent move in my opinion. Captain America’s trademark weapon and accessory is his Vibranium shield, and ignoring its potential would have been a major mistake in his game.
Written by Brandon Gill, Game Director, Next Level Games
Being a developer based in Canada, it was a bit daunting when we first approached the character of Captain America. After reading Brubaker’s Winter Soldier, we all gained a better understanding of the character as someone who always stands up for what they believe in. It’s definitely an universal theme that anyone can get behind, and we found it to be quite inspiring.
The fact that Captain America is also a human in peak condition also made it a little easier to start our early prototyping. There was no need to create flying or teleporting mechanics, and we were able to focus in on what makes him so appealing as an action hero.
We started with a solid, grounded combat system focusing on multiple enemies and close quarters techniques. Once we had something that felt really good as a game, we started to layer on the Cap flavor. More acrobatic moves, powerful strikes and of course we worked the Shield into every possible thing that we could find.
The shield was an interesting weapon concept to design for. Since we had our combat worked out first, we started brainstorming all the places where we could add more “shield moments”.
It quickly became a way to strike both close-up and from a distance. On defense it became the way to defend against close attacks and even counter-attack incoming ranged threats.
It became a very organic part of the game-play rather than being limited to one or two buttons. It factors in to almost all of the player’s abilities throughout the course of the game.
