A few weeks back, Lies Of P burst onto the gaming scene, forcing audiences to take a patently ludicrous premise—a sexy, lithe version of Pinocchio rampages through a ruined city, killing monsters with aplomb—far more seriously than they otherwise might. Players who completed this puppet’s journey (no small task, since the Dark Souls-inspired game is brutally difficult) were treated to a number of big plot reveals—including a teaser suggesting that developer Round8 Studios is determined to take this “public domain character fights monsters” conceit as far as it can go. (Take it from us: No Marvel after-credits stinger has ever tried to put so much portent into an image as obviously silly as ruby-slippered feet stepping into the carnage, while a mysterious mastermind tells his accomplices that they’ve finally located … Dorothy.)
The thing about Lies Of D (or whatever it ends up being called), is that, while it’s obviously a very goofy idea, it also … kind of kicks ass? Lies Of P was a clear statement that Round8 knows its stuff, both from a gameplay point of view and in terms of taking a bonkers idea like “murder Pinocchio” with the right degree of campy seriousness. Seeing that same ethos applied to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books feels like a good evolution, especially as we let ourselves imagine the game’s clearly horrific take on characters like the already pretty nightmare-inducing Gnome King.
But it also got us thinking: Why stop there? After all, the public domain is filled with beloved characters, almost any of whom could be handed a sword (or harpoon!) and set to work in a modern gaming landscape. And so we’ve put together this list of 10 public domain heroes we’d genuinely like to see get this treatment next (skewing away from obvious irony picks a la recent horror offering Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, or those who’ve already been adapted repeatedly, like the Cthulhu Mythos or Sherlock Holmes) to try to pick out who the next big Lies Of star should be.