Nowadays it seems that everybody is in love with Deadpool. You can’t go to any sort of comic convention without seeing at least ten fans cosplaying as the titular character. Deadpool received a massive boost in popularity with the release of his very own movie in 2016 starring Ryan Reynolds. Deadpool has become the highest grossing R-rated movie and highest grossing X-Men movie of all time. Needless to say, people can’t get enough of the merc with a mouth. Fans have to wait until 2018 to see the sequel to Deadpool, so where else can they get their fix? We discuss a possible Deadpool 2 game – a sequel to the Deadpool video game released in 2013.
It’s High Moon
High Moon Studios released a Deadpool video game back in 2013. Before release, everything seemed fine. High Moon Studios until this point had released a handful of games that included two well received Transformers game: Transformers: War for Cybertron and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. High Moon brought in fan-favourite Nolan North to voice Deadpool who had previously voiced Deadpool in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. They also brought in Deadpool comic book writer, Daniel Way. Everything seemed really promising leading up to release day and then it came out.
Mediocre at Best
When Deadpool came out it received lukewarm reviews, receiving lots of 6’s and 5’s out of 10. Having played it myself, I would agree with most of the reviews. It was average, the only part that really stood out from countless other hack ‘n’ slash games was Deadpool himself. His antics and fourth-wall breaking jokes were what kept the game enjoyable to play. Other than that it was a standard hack ‘n’ slash: go into one room, kill enemies and then move on to the next room. So what went wrong? The developers had a good pedigree, they had a good writer and they had a budget of $100 million (which is more than what Witcher 3 had). Turns out it might’ve been Activision.
An ex-High Moon Studios employee said, “We had a couple of weeks where we crunched pretty aggressively on Deadpool. Having Activision cut and cut and CUT just took its tole on so many of us. For a studio to demand that we do mandatory overtime for a project and then keep cutting so much time and money from it was ridiculous. At about halfway into development we were told that we weren’t even aiming very high in terms of score.
Can you imagine working on a game where your higher ups say “yeah we’re shooting for a 64 or lower” and then have them give you mandatory overtime?”
Credit: gamespot.com
No Future
High Moon Studios saw a huge reduction in staff right before Deadpool came out. Activision let go 40 employees globally and High Moon Studios started helping Sledgehammer Games with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
With the huge success of the movie and its upcoming sequel, you’d think a sequel to the game would be in the works or even a reboot. If it does happen, one thing is for sure: High Moon Studios won’t have anything to do with it. There’s a chance Activision won’t have any part in it either. Back in 1998 Marvel and Activision signed a publishing deal where only Activision could publish Marvel games. In 2014, that agreement came to an end and subsequently, you can no longer download a slew of Marvel games as a result.
The end of this contract with Activision doesn’t mean it’s all over for Deadpool. In fact, it could mean the exact opposite.
Marvel’s Comeback
Marvel have recently signed a multi-game contract with Square Enix. They’ve announced that they’re developing an Avengers game and more. Insomniac is also developing Spider-Man for Playstation 4. We’re starting to see more developers work on Marvel games, which is exciting because comic book games have never been as successful as comic book movies.
With Marvel starting to take a bigger interest in releasing quality video games (let’s face it, they haven’t all been great), there’s a chance Deadpool can make a return.
Credit: oceanofgames.com
Why Should We Get a Deadpool 2 Game?
Now that all of the facts are out of the way, here’s why I think we should get another Deadpool 2 game. It should be clear now that we’re not going to get a sequel to the 2013 game and that’s okay. The idea of another developer making a Deadpool 2 game is more exciting to me than getting a sequel. Can you imagine Platinum Games making a Deadpool 2 game? Platinum have proven on more than one occasion that they can develop a great hack ‘n’ slash game and can handle comedy. Platinum Games should be a no-brainer but Marvel could try something new.
Telltale could make an interesting Deadpool 2 game. They’ve proven so far that they can do anything and are currently working with Marvel on Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s not completely out of left field for Telltale to announce they’re working on a Deadpool 2 game.
Deadpool is one of the most exciting characters in comic books. His fourth-wall breaks and jokes are more often that not hilarious and keep him different to other comic characters. Telltale have made hilarious video games in the past, just look at Tales from the Borderlands. They could easily nail the comedic side of Deadpool. Then there’s always the jokes that Deadpool would know that he’s in a Telltale game which gives Telltale the opportunity to poke fun at themselves.
There’s so many different options you can make with the character. Any idea for a new game has the potential to be great. With the movie making so much money, a new game has the potential to be a gold mine. If nothing happens, there’s always the Lego games and the movies.