Irrational's Freedom Force games celebrated the Silver Age of comics in all its goofy glory, with a cast of characters including a time-traveling robot called Microwave and a witch named Alchemiss. Capes evokes a later, more serious era: the Bronze Age of the 1970s and '80s, after Stan Lee ditched the Comics Code Authority's seal of approval to publish a Spider-Man story about drugs. It was a time when superhero stories became grittier, more political, and often dystopian.
Different as they are, Freedom Force and Capes share the influence of Morgan Jaffit. A writer on Capes, Jaffit was part of Ken Levine's Irrational Games during the Freedom Force era, and it's no coincidence that Capes references the period in comics history immediately following the one Freedom Force does.
