Avengers (Information) Assemble.
After a few teases, a handful of rumours, and not much else, Square Enix and Marvel Games announced Marvel’s Avengers at Square’s E3 conference. Seemingly going from nought to sixty pretty quickly, we were given a bunch of details and a few may have managed to sneak past you. Fear not if that’s the case because we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about Marvel’s Avengers.
When is Marvel’s Avengers out?
The reveal of Marvel’s Avengers was rounded off with the game’s May 15, 2020 release date. The game will arrive next year for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia, with early beta access for PS4 players.
Who’s making Marvel’s Avengers?
Marvel’s Avengers is being developed by Marvel Games and Crystal Dynamics, the same team behind the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy.
What will Marvel’s Avengers story be about?
This is where things are still pretty murky. The reveal from Crystal Dynamics and Marvel was careful not to go into specifics about the story surrounding Marvel’s Avenger but we do know it’ll be an original plot rather than a retelling of a film or other story from the comics.
We know from the trailer that the Avengers are blamed for an attack in San Francisco which left a fair few people dead after an Ark Reactor blew up. Crystal Dynamic’s creative director, Shaun Escayg, said that after the opening tragedy of the game, the Avengers are outlawed and the heroes go their separate ways. It’s not until a new, unknown threat, rocks up five years later that the superheroes begin being all hero-y again.
We can speculate a little bit on the plot though and this split does lend itself to the game possibly leaning on aspects of Civil War, where we might see two factions of heroes that work as part or independently from government. Of course, that’s a lot of speculation on our part, so take it with a hefty pinch of salt.
In terms of the themes of the game, Marvel games’ creative director, Bill Rosemann, said that Marvel’s Avengers is “about losing what matters to you and fighting to get it back,†while Escayg added to that, saying that another strand of the game is focused on “self-acceptance in the face of adversity.†Both these comments feel like they’ve been lashed by the corporate pitching tongue but it does lay out a bit more context for the game, suggesting a lot of it will be about the Avengers not only reforming but having to fight against a new threat in a covert capacity, to some degree at least.
What will Marvel’s Avengers gameplay be?
The headline for Marvel’s Avengers gameplay so far is that the game will be playable as a solo effort or as an online excursion, with you teaming up with three friends in a game that’s aiming to crack that games-as-service puzzle on the co-op front. We haven’t heard anything that suggests you’ll be able to swap between solo and co-op campaigns or whether co-op campaigns will allow players to join in on missions that are further in the story than they’ve progressed.
We do know that when you’re playing in co-op, you won’t be able to have a team full of Ironmans, which makes a lot of sense. Speaking with Eurogamer, Crystal Dynamics’ lead designer Philippe Therien explained that the “Avengers all have different skills and talents and we want people to have a fully-fleshed out team. It wouldn’t be the Avengers otherwise.”
In terms of the bare bones of the gameplay, snippets from the trailer seem to suggest that Marvel’s Avengers will be a fairly conventional action adventure. We didn’t see any out and combat but we saw a few abilities from the heroes, with Thor’s Hammer being as devastating as you’d think, the Hulk being able to lift and throw tanks, Black Widow looks like she’ll be pretty handy in close combat, and Ironman being able to fly around and shoot anything that moves thanks to his super-human bank account – oh and he’s pretty smart.
While we’ll recognise some of the moves and the heroes themselves, Marvel Games’ creative director, Bill Rosemann, has said that the skills attributed to each hero will stray from the original canon, saying that these characters are “unique to this game as this is Crystal Dynamic’s interpretation of these iconic heroes.”
Who’s the cast of Marvel’s Avengers?
The cast of the game’s base roster has been announced, with Troy Baker playing as Bruce Banner, Nolan North playing Tony Stark, Laura Bailey (Spider-Man, Gears of War 4, and Uncharted: Lost Legacy) playing Black Widow, Troy Willingham (Batman: The Tell-Tale Series) playing Thor, and Jeff Schine (Call of Duty: World War Two) playing Captain America.
What are the Marvel’s Avengers DLC plans?
Crystal Dynamics and Marvel Games have laid out a few early signals about what’ll happen after the game launches in May 2020. The good news is that all heroes that arrive after the base characters, as well as all the new regions for the game, will arrive as free updates so let’s hope we get a Spider-Man.
The good news continues as Meagan Marie, Crystal Dynamic’s community and social manager, said that Marvel’s Avengers would not deal in “pay to win scenarios,†meaning you won’t have to shell out money for overpowered weapons or anything else that might give you an artificial upper hand.
Marie also spoke about loot boxes, saying that there would be no “random loot boxes†in the game. As Resero Network’s Dan Webb points out though, this doesn’t necessarily rule out loot boxes being in the game, only that there would be a clear transparency about what you’re going to get. There hasn’t been any real clarification on the matter yet but it sounds as if there will be micro-transactions of some nature but we don’t know what just yet.
The other iffy news, for some players anyway, is that PS4 players will get early access to the game’s beta and will also receive exclusive content. There are no details on what this content is but the worst-case scenario is that some heroes, Spider-Man for example, might be exclusive to PlayStation players.
There you have it, everything we know about Marvel’s Avengers so far. We’ll update this guide when we have more information but let us know if you spot something we missed.
