Dark Horse Comics (Sin City, Hellboy) is entering the world of video games, with the creation of a Dark Horse Games division. Everything from iconic character guest appearances to full-scale games are now on the table.
Dark Horse comics is responsible for some of the most acclaimed comic book series and characters of the last 35 years. Stalwart titles such as Mike Migola’s Hellboy, Frank Miller’s Sin City and Gerard Way’s The Umbrella Academy have not only been huge success on release, but have also stood the test of time.
The relationship between comics and video games is almost as well documented as the former’s one with Hollywood, and it’s hardly a surprise. Comic books provide the perfect building blocks – a cast of established characters, episodic narratives and lore – to create an immersive game or film.
On top of this, licensed films and games come with a pre-existing fanbase that mitigates some of the risk of funding an expensive new project.
Various titles from the Dark Horse stable have already demonstrated their ability to succeed on the silver screen, suggesting that the market for video game adaptations could be financially lucrative. Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy films and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City demonstrate this point well.
So far Dark Horse haven’t managed to make the leap into successful video games, with an officially licensed though critically panned Hellboy game from 2008 being the most notable exception.
The Dark Horse Games M.O.
In an interview with VentureBeat, Dark Horse Games manager Johnny Lee stated:
“We right now have spent a lot of time on finding the right in-game collaborations at the triple-A level where the stories and the characters fit. We are in late-stage discussions with several of them. And so if those go well, you’ll see pretty big Dark Horse Comics characters in live triple-A games no later than the end of Q1 next year.”
Which if you ask me, makes it sound like we might be seeing Hellboy himself, or the cast of The Umbrella Academy, soaring through the skies of Fornite sometime soon. Hell, it makes more sense than the Alien Xenomorph running around building never ending staircases.
In the same interview Lee went on to say that he was hoping to transform some older Dark Horse IPs into gaming-first franchises. The ways that this could be done are endless, but interactive comic book style adventures could certainly be a way to kill two birds with one stone.
Personally, I would be really excited to see a Streets of Rage-style beat-em-up game in the world of Sin City – it just seems a match made in heaven. Or hell. Anyways, you know what I mean.
