RoboCop Rogue City launch trailer: Honoring the pop culture icon

In game dev, getting your hands on a legendary IP and having a chance to retell the story in a new light is always a treat. Heroic, Room 8 Group’s Trailers & Cinematics Service Line, was proud to have had a chance to work on Nacon’s latest hit, RoboCop: Rogue City. Join the minds behind the game’s launch trailer—Sandy Heslop (Head of CG) & Serhiy Yehorov (Trailer Production Team Lead)—as they share Heroic’s creative journey. Let’s discover the backstage of scriptwriting and gameplay capturing together, while geeking out over the movies along the way! 🤖

Scripting and Storytelling

Our creative voyage began with a rigorous pitch test, where the trailer team crafted several script iterations to encapsulate the essence of RoboCop: Rogue City. After we narrowed down the list of the stories we can tell through the brief trailer format, the client was especially intrigued by introducing Mediabreak anchor Casey Wong as a narrative “guide” to the game. Having an external narrator is usually a great way to immerse the viewers into the game context and give the feel of what is going on in its world. 

A really broad and general overview of the trailer idea was to show a live broadcast from the police department, overviewing the downfall of the city under the recent crime wave. With a situation this dire, it is no surprise that the report is interrupted by a crime in progress. This, of course, gives RoboCop a chance to shine (literally and metaphorically)—driving to the scene and dealing with the bad guys. “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me,” you know the drill. The basic idea may sound a tad simplistic, but with franchises like RoboCop, it is crucial not to go too far with realism or seriousness. Having just a little cheesiness and capturing the vibe of the 80s action movie set in a dystopian crime-ridden city sounds easy on paper, but distilling the essence of what makes RoboCop cool was still quite a task.The standout feature of this collaboration for us was the unprecedented creative freedom afforded to us by Nacon. We found ourselves amazed by how transparent the collaboration was and how much trust in terms of “making things look cool” they put into the trailer team. The meticulously crafted launch trailer speaks for itself. Still, capturing game footage and adjusting it to be more “RoboCop-ey” was a creative trial in and of itself.

Tinkering with the Engine and Gameplay Elements

After landing on the final script, the other part of trailer development began: making our shared vision come to life. As we kept working on a trailer and capturing game footage, the team considered numerous scenarios, evaluating different “dosages” of cinematic vs. gameplay parts incorporated into the video. The early scripts had us envisioning 3-4 custom shots within the video being supplemented by in-game material. As the trailer was developed, and we played around with visual language, this number eventually grew, leading us to making 29 of those—to make the allusions to the other RoboCop properties truly stand out. With that in mind, an astounding 85% of all assets in the trailer are taken directly from the game—with the rest 15% or so being crafted from scratch, replicating the in-game contents.

Another thing worth mentioning is the curious approach we took while capturing the in-game footage: the camera movement. Remember, this game differs from Call of Duty or Battlefield in terms of shooting mechanics and general gameplay. Moreover, RoboCop is part man, but he’s also part machine. He moves like a piece of metal junk, and each action has to feel mechanical, methodical, calculated. So, the artists who shot the gameplay footage for the trailer had to “transform” and record movement as if they were RoboCops, too. This was an fascinating experiment, as it enabled the team to delve deeper into the character, expanding their roles from trailer specialists and QA testers to something along the lines of actors.

Paying Respects to the Movie

Making iconic characters everyone knows and loves cross mediums—be it a video game being adapted into a movie or vice versa—takes more than meets the eye. Aside from IP rights, budgets, and technical prowess, there is a key aspect critical for the mission to be successful. To make something the fans will love, you need to be a fan yourself. When it comes to RoboCop: Rogue City, everyone hit a jackpot: the Heroic team were absolutely geeking out over the game and the franchise as a whole.

As we started with this project, we adopted the film-oriented approach as our guiding principle. After all, creating a trailer for a RoboCop game without referencing the 1987 movie would be, without understating, blasphemous. So, we strived to seamlessly integrate scenes, phrases, and concepts from the original film into the game’s fabric, making it as true to its spirit as possible. The launch trailer strikes a perfect balance at referencing iconic artifacts from the movie and being its own, original thing. No wonder: Rogue City may well be one of the most compelling RoboCop stories to be told! 

The game features a ton of Easter eggs that the fans will love. And, considering how many iconic moments and concepts there are, the references are easy to spot. One of the many your eye may subconsciously catch is the famously brutal way of RoboCop dealing with a criminal—when the lawbreaker gets shot in the groin. We understood that conveying the brutal way the protagonist deals with the enemies is paramount, but the game trailer still needs to be relatively acceptable for most age groups. Took us some time and effort, but after recording 47 versions of the shot, we got the perfect one! 

As for other references, our inspiration with the movies is quite obvious. The moment when the RoboCop’s car is heading to the crime scene. The shot when his leg steps out of the vehicle on asphalt. Practically all visual elements, down to the way light reflects on the protagonist’s armor, are dictated by the film aesthetics. And the great thing is, all this footage can be found in-game, so implementing it in the trailer was a no-brainer. This proved to be fruitful, as the trailer really resonated with everyone: from gamers not too familiar with the IP to the hardcore RoboCop enthusiasts.

Conclusion

As we seamlessly integrated cinematic and gameplay elements, searched for aesthetic inspirations within the original movies, played around (very carefully) with the game engine, we couldn’t be more happy with working on this project. Nacon and Teyon created a truly faithful adaptation of a legendary franchise to a video game, greeted warmly by the fans and becoming one of the best RoboCop stories to be told. If anything, our work on the launch trailer is a great way to underscore the importance of client trust and pure nerd power as the key drivers in the industry—especially when working on a beloved intellectual property like RoboCop.