Hey everyone! Isiah from the Invincible VS Community Team back with the penultimate Dev Diary for our base roster. Titan is here and ready to rock. Learn more below!
Titan is a man with ambition and a code of honor. He also happens to be a crime boss. Risen from the autotuned ashes of his predecessor Machine Head, Titan now sits on the throne of an empire, using his newfound power to better his family and his city. If he has to go outside the law to do that, so be it.
Here's more from our Narrative Director, Mike Rogers on how we brought Titan to life in Invincible VS.
“I’m not sure anyone’s got as much inherent cool factor as Titan. He's got a line-in-the-sand set of morals, the ability to think three moves ahead, and the power to back up his words with a punch. Helen Leigh and I looked to what had been established in the show to dial in his attitude, leaning into that balance of cool/collected and unwilling to back down, which makes playing Titan fulfill a completely different power fantasy than the rest of the roster. I’ve always loved writing a good mob boss, and it was a fun challenge to come up with how a street-level character would face a galactic threat the likes of the Viltrum Empire.
Like Kate, Titan is another character where the technical aspect really blew me away. It would have been easy to just let Titan stay in rock form for the whole match, but I love that the team figured out a way to make his Stone Skin mechanic work in gameplay. The first time I saw that Super with the rock particles encasing his head, I knew we were cooking.”
Titan is an expert combatant and a master technician, making him a very “balanced” Fighter. I got the chance to chat with the Combat Design team to get more insight on his move set and gameplay hook.
“When designing Titan, we looked at his signature moves and moments from the show and thought about what unique and interesting gameplay his powers could bring to the roster.
Turning his rock armor into an important gameplay mechanic was the top priority because it’s his primary superpower. We didn’t want it to be just visual.
It was a challenge figuring out the best way to implement his rock armor mechanic in a meaningful way without breaking the game from a balance or technical standpoint. Initially, we considered the obvious choice of giving him extra damage mitigation until his rock armor was destroyed, but that didn’t really create any interesting gameplay.
We decided to make the rock armor provide super armor during his specials and some of his charged normals. Taking hits depletes the rock armor, and when it gets low, we convey that visually on Titan’s gameplay model. When the armor is gone, Titan has no super armor on any of his attacks, making him extra vulnerable due to his slower startups and recoveries. The only way to restore his rock armor is via his Rock On super, turning the armor into a limited resource that depletes an important shared team gauge. Careless play means you’ll be wasting a lot of super keeping his armor up.
Titan is a technical striker. His rock armor allows him to take more risks and bully opponents. However, it also becomes an additional resource that needs to be maintained through the use of super. Without his rock armor, Titan is forced to play more defensively and can be countered and punished more easily than other characters.
Completely killing an opponent’s momentum with Titan’s Rock On headbutt never gets old. Spiking an opponent’s head into the ground with the Touchdown super is also really... really satisfying.”
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Thanks so much for reading our latest Dev Diary. We’ve got one more Fighter to reveal to round out or launch roster of 18! Any guesses on who it’ll be? Be sure to watch the Evo Awards Saturday March 28 to find out!
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