RoboCop Rogue City Gameplay Trailer Reaction

Article by Kieran Burt

RoboCop Rogue City will be the newest entry in the RoboCop franchise, offering audiences the chance to clean up Detroit, with a trailer mostly focusing on the action, with a hint of story at the end. 

The trailer begins with a news announcer setting the scene, and why they need a Roboco – Detroit is in the middle of a crime wave and normal police offices can’t hold it – simple yet effective set-up. Too much justification for a videogame is often boring, players often want to get right into it. Though it does have me wondering about if the game has a feature where players can call for or have back-up. Cleaning the streets up all by yourself would lose its magic after a while.

The next series of clips offer a lot of first person gun action in different areas of the city, the news network, a bank, the streets of Detroit and a concrete building. Hopefully these areas will all be visually different from the same copied pasted areas in developer Teyon’s last game, Terminator Resistance. There has been no confirmation on if this game will be fully open world, the trailer very much downplayed this viewpoint as all of the environments seem to be fairly linear. But not having it open world would be a mistake. Exploring Detroit at your own pace would set it apart from the open level system of Terminator: Resistance.The first person open world is relatively rare, so it would allow the game to tap into more of a niche. 

At the end of the trailer, a hint of story is given, with the revelation that the robot hesitated. This indicates that the game will engage in all the deep philosophy that the franchise is known for. It would also be interesting if the game injects modern political themes into its narrative, as in recent years the police have come under intense scrutiny for their violence. This would be a great way to update some of the themes, and connect with modern audiences. 

This faithful recapturing of the franchise shouldn’t come as a surprise. Teyon had a faithful take on Terminator Resistance that pleased a lot of fans. There’s evidence of this in the trailer, with the iconic Robocop design being chosen, and the targeting system being the same as the film. But perhaps the biggest giveaway that the developers understand the franchise is Peter Weller, the original actor for Robocop, will return to star in the game, meaning there won’t be a jarring jump between film and game. This undoubtedly is the best part, meaning that Rogue Nation will feel like a logical expansion of the Robocop franchise. 

Robocop Rogue city releases June 2023 on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch and PC.