SAN FRANCISCO — Gamers are heartbroken after early development concept art for the widely hated fourth entry of the popular game series Soulblade leaked online showing off a much better game than what was actually released.
Soulblade IV: Bloodflow was widely panned by fans of the series for abandoning the story of the previous games and moving the series in a completely different direction. The concept art shows a game much more aligned with what fans wanted.
“It’s clear based on these images that the fourth entry would have focused on the aftermath of the third game’s ending rather than completely ignore and undo it,” said series fan Jacob Heller on Twitter. “These images are awesome, they’re dark and disturbed like Soulblade is supposed to be, not that bright cel-shaded bullcrap they made just to appeal to normies.”
One of the most severe backlashes that Bloodflow faced was the redesign of protagonist Raphael and antagonist Mephisto but the concept art shows they were originally going to more closely resemble their iconic looks.
“Look at these images side by side. Look how overcomplicated they made Raph compared to this nice simple approach they were originally going to do. How could they think what they did was good? It’s character assassination. Don’t even get me started on how they massacred Mephisto. The concept art shows the most badass thing I’ve ever seen and in the final game, they made him look like an English professor. I hope they shut down,” said user RaphxMeph on the Soulblade subreddit
Mark Boyle, one of the lead developers of Bloodflow was interviewed about the leaked concept art and gave insight into their design decisions.
“The initial pitch for the game was an entry that would not only resolve the story beats of the last three entries but tie it all together cleanly while expanding on fan-favorite elements from the original games,” explained Boyle. “We knew that fans would love it but we also were aware that a lot of the fandom became quite unruly and demanding so we decided to stick it to them with this new direction. It was to send a message really. And the higher-ups at the publisher were very pleased with the layoffs they could justify after the poor sales.”
At press time, the studio released a statement online defending the game and telling fans to look forward to the new direction of the franchise. The statement was viciously ratioed.
