After Marvel and Square Enix announced their multi-games partnership in 2017 and Avengers being the first project in the works, both parties remained tight-lipped for months until E3 2019. Instead of boasting multiple trailers with no release window in sight, studio Crystal Dynamics simply locked itself in its room until something tangible was ready to show for the game we now know is Marvel’s Avengers. In a way, Square and Crystal Dynamics have a bigger challenge following Insomniac’s Spider-Man game. The game’s first public showing needed to be done right. Admittedly, Square Enix may not have put its best foot forward during the unveil. However, when you examine all the details that came out in support of the game during E3, there’s a reason to be highly optimistic about the Avengers game we’re going to get.
CRYSTAL IS CREATING THE DEFINITIVE AVENGERS EXPERIENCE
While Nintendo’s Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 game takes place in its own pocket universe with a larger cast, Avengers developer Crystal Dynamics is focused on telling a story on par with the best of comics and film that’s aware of its place in this Marvel Universe. Marvel Games creative director Bill Rosemann talked about seeing many fan-favorite characters in Square Enix’s game but would remain focused on a core group of the team. During the Square Enix E3 press event, the trailer revealed the game taking a big swing by killing off Captain America in this universe. While it isn’t the most original idea, it is a bold move for a studio’s first time out with Marvel. Crystal Dynamics is taking big swings yet staying familiar for the core audience.
One point which should have scored with diehard fans was trailer’s tone gets the chaos/family dichotomy that underlines the best Avengers stories.
DON’T WORRY MARVEL”S AVENGERS IS A SINGLE PLAYER GAME AT ITS CORE
The video game landscape is unbalanced, to say the least. Most Tripe-A game publishers have pivoted towards the “games as a service” longevity model. Entire divisions of studios outsource work to incorporate multiplayer elements and post-launch content. In 2018, Sony fought back against the dying of the light with God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man. Games which told a finite single-player story received with critical and commercial success. Not every publisher is ready to walk away from the money generated by online games. Yet that doesn’t mean both can’t live in harmony. In the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, a majority of those revered games had both story and replay value utilizing online multiplayer. The Last of Us, Splinter Cell, Uncharted 2, Halo; all franchises that looked at online components as an added value on top of their memorable stories.
Yes, we absolutely want Marvel’s Avengers to have a blockbuster story that intimately only allows one person at a time to interact with it. Its trailer reveal left some murkiness about whether that would be the case. Much of the language revolved around words such as “team” and “co-op”. Those aren’t inherently dirty words. They’re just not what people expected after Marvel’s Spider-Man. Square Enix aimed to differentiate itself from that Marvel property by focusing on a more inclusive broad aspect of its game, multiplayer. In doing so, it forgot to simply reassure those that held on to loving single player stories. IGN would later clarify, after an interview with Crystal Dynamics, that the game’s main story would be played by a single player controlling different characters. In later parts of the game, players would unlock paths that could be played with a friend utilizing online co-op play.
Square Enix strength is in single player experience. Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider, Just Cause are just a few of the examples in the company’s portfolio. They’ve also got the best storytelling support for Avengers. Marvel Games aren’t just gatekeepers to a brand, they actively infuse the studios they work alongside with the core philosophies of the 80 Years of comic book stories. At no point in my mind was there ever cause for concern that Marvel’s Avengers would be the next Anthem or Destiny.
DON’T JUDGE A LOOK BY ITS COVER
Perhaps the biggest criticism coming out of E3 was the character design choices made by Square Enix. A simple rebuttal would be to say the game is about a year away so why does it bother you? A group of people didn’t like the white Spider look of Spider-Man when it was first revealed and that turned out to be one the best looks that character has. Most of this was due to how incredible that game’s story was and how it incorporated such a drastic change. Will Marvel’s Avengers take a similar path? Likely not but it doesn’t have to. As fans, we should want something different that takes risks which comics and film simply can’t. While the face models could use some more establishment in their features, my only real nitpick is Captain America’s uniform looks like he was dressed by WWE superstar Roman Reigns. Is it enough for me to write it off? Not even close. Black Widow, Iron Man, Hank Pym, even Taskmaster all look sleek and well done. I’ve read hundreds of Avengers comics, watched the MCU and various animated Marvel titles; none of which were exact xerox copies of one another.
Later on, fans learned the five-year time jump in game will play out in the looks of the Avengers as well. Iron Man, for example, will not have the same armor throughout the game. Evolving looks has become a staple of modern superhero video games. Every Rocksteady Arkham game showed slight evolution in Batman’s suit. Spider-Man began in his classic red-and-blues. It’s only fitting a group of heroes backed by Tony Stark’s tech should show visual growth meaning the look we’ve seen won’t be the final version.
The reaction to Marvel’s Avengers was knee jerk to say the least and that’s simply a casualty of the connected “first” comment age we’re in. We’ve been more wrong than right when it comes to reaction. Freaking out about these looks feels like the least of our concerns.
SQUARE NOT PUTTING ITS BEST FOOT FORWARD
A behind closed doors demo of Marvel’s Avengers on the E3 show floor gave us a much clearer picture of the game. As we watched one single developer play, it became clear just how ambitious this game is. The jumping between characters gameplay needed to catch up to its fast-paced story. Making it not fee jarring is a humongous feat, one which can’t be demonstrated in a five-minute trailer. Once you do see actual gameplay, the result is a testament to Crystal Dynamics balancing soo many moving parts. But this demo also highlighted just how much Square Enix buried the lead when it came to the messaging of the game.
Had we been given a clear roadmap of the single player to branching co-op gameplay, the story trailer would have been examined in a different lens. The biggest thing it could have done to help itself would have been to take an extra 15 min during the E3 presentation to show real gameplay. Bill Rosemann and his team have earned trust when it comes to how these characters will be used in a story, but fans still want to see how they’ll be shaped to fit the various genres of video games. We didn’t see that in the initial trailer at E3 2019.
The road to May 2020 has many stops for Square Enix and Marvel. San Diego Comic Con, D23, Tokyo Games Show, and a possible return of PlayStation Experience all present opportunities for the publisher to correct the marketing narrative of Marvel’s Avengers. Mixed reaction received during E3 means the audience will need to be handheld more so than it would have had it simply clearly outlined the game before. Before the end of the year, we need to see how one person will play the game and how groups of people will be able to via online co-op distinguishing the methods and reassuring its core audience who want a single player experience. We’re still in the infancy of the Marvel Gamerverse and while Insomniac made one of the greatest games of the generation with Spider-Man, the fan in me hopes it’s not the watermark. If we get shorter tides from every game after, then Marvel will be in the same spot it was before the commitment to blockbuster gaming. That’s not something any of us should want.
Marvel’s Avengers will be on Google Stadia, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One when the game launches in the Spring of 2020.
