River City Girls 2: New Marian gameplay and character design details revealed

blog.playstation.com:

Hi, I’m Bannon Rudis. I’m one of the directors over at WayForward. WayForward does those Shantae and River City Girls games, among many other things. I have personally been making River City games for almost a decade now alongside Arc System Works. I started by reverse-engineering River City sprites and animations and trying my hardest to figure out how to animate. This pushed me towards my path of game development. But I know you are not here for me. Marian, one of the new playable characters in River City Girls 2, is the main attraction of this article, so let’s jump right into it.

Marian has a long and storied career as a damsel in distress. For many decades she was either publicly assaulted on the streets, kidnapped by a shadowy gang of criminals, held hostage in exchange for magical stones, or straight up gunned down (though she was later resurrected). Needless to say, she’s had it pretty rough. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that her friends, Billy and Jimmy, fought to the death over who got to date her. It’s a bit much.

Marian’s final production art, along with concept art showing her heavy-hitting moves in action.

Times have changed and so has Marian. No longer is she the helpless victim to these street thugs, villains, and maniacal skeleton wizards. Over the years, Marian has trained her body to reject the kind of physical and mental abuse she has unwillingly received over the past several decades. Unsolicited punches to her gut were merely a faint memory of the old Marian.

Two of Marian’s many expressions. Something mysterious seems to be afoot!

Marian learned the ways of boxing and wrestling. She didn’t want to be pigeonholed as the “slow but powerful wrestler” type. Her quick barrage of punches and