Originally, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Was A Capture The Flag Game

Seeing Spike from Ape Escape hula hoop into Dante from DMC is the kind of wackiness you’ll see in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. However, Sony’s mascot fighting game was a capture the flag game two years ago.

"Eventually [SCEA] decided on a PlayStation All-Stars type game – a broad concept of let’s take all of these great PlayStation characters and PlayStation universes and bring them together into a single game. And then it became a question of what kind of game do we want to bring these characters in," said Omar Kendall, Lead Game Designer at SuperBot Entertainment, to Siliconera. I asked Kendall about SuperBot’s origins and what other game concepts they had in mind other than a fighting game.

"There were all sorts of little gameplay demos and prototypes. When I talk about the last version of the game before we settled on the current incarnation was this 4v4 capture the flag kind of game. It was a class based game where you had fast runners who were good at capturing the flag and taking the flag back to base. You had defensive dudes. We were taking PlayStation characters and using them like archetypes," Kendall answered.

PaRappa the Rapper was a fast runner in the unseen capture the flag game. Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal was a defender and Kratos from the God of War series was a mid-range attacker. This prototype was coming together, but development switched to a fighting game when the PlayStation All-Stars team wanted to focus on single screen gameplay.

"How do we get four dudes looking all looking at the same thing on the screen in the same room and a brawler style game is what was finally landed on. Once that was locked in in terms of hiring key personnel like myself, Paul Edwards, our lead combat designer, all of those people started coming in to specifically work on the four player brawler," Kendall continued.

Since PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is complete I asked Kendall if SuperBot is considering to release the capture the flag game, perhaps on PlayStation Network or some other medium.

"No, honestly. Two years ago right now that was the kind of game that was being worked on. So, it’s not that old," Kendall replied. "We really pivoted and started making a four player brawler about almost exactly two years ago. While I agree the capture the flag game is personally interesting and I’d love to develop that into something someday, who knows? We felt like the four player brawler, the time was right, the talent was right, and the opportunity was right to bring it out right now."