Last month at E3, Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers was finally revealed to mixed reactions due in large part to not giving the material the proper time and messaging. Marvel Games panel at SDCC on Thursday kept the mystery while leaving no stone unturned from what the public has already seen.
Before the headliner took the stage, Marvel had some other partnerships to serve during SDCC.
The panel itself gave some time to imminent releases and updates to mobile which included Kabam’s Marvel Contest of Champions getting a big stage tournament. For nine weeks starting on the week of July 29, Kabam’s Summoner Showdown Tournament will invite some of the most passionate Marvel Contest of Champions players to Marvel Headquarters in New York City. Each week, fans can tune in to marvel.com/mcocshowdown and see three players compete in a series of specially created challenges to determine who moves on as a finalist. One such challenge, War Machine’s Durability Test, will involve players going up against an enhanced version of War Machine with enhanced armor and HP stats to determine who can survive the longest, or how much health participants have after three minutes per match.
One of the lesser talked about upcoming Marvel games is PlayStation VR’s Marvel’s Iron Man developed by Camoflaj games. Studio founder, Ryan Payton talked about the developer not being seen as big enough for the property and how they managed to, within a two week, period come up with a pitch which blew away expectations. While there’s no firm release date, a video shown to the audience gave glimpses into how Camoflaj is making impossible movements utilizing PlayStation Move controllers a free flying virtual reality.
Headlining the panel was Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers. Using more than half of the allotted time in Hall H, developer Crystal Dynamics, showed off an extended and more detailed version of the E3 behind closed doors footage. If it wasn’t apparent Marvel’s Avengers was at its core a single player driven story, the 6,000 in attendance definitively got the message. The same bridge sequence bouncing between Avengers in different slices was played through with visible HUD and quick time event prompts not edited out. There was more sense of danger in watching Black Widow battle Taskmaster this time around. Seeing the player’s vitality bar and bullets left in her clip showed how for real this gameplay is.
A few big things coming out of that presentation would answer some fan complaints. The footage shown during SDCC will be made available the week after Gamescom in Germany. A sizzle reel showed off just how the characters play in co-op. A pair of avengers battling the Destroyer was from a part of the game where you can team up with a friend. It was stressed this part was not a slice of the game’s main story but from a side mission unlocked later in the game or can be revisited after you finish the campaign.
The other big reveal gives more context to some parts of the story trailer. During the Hall H version of the footage, a young girl in a Captain Marvel shirt was knocked over during the Avengers Day celebration chaos. Her face meets a ventilation grate when the word “Terrigen” is mentioned as a glow emerges from underneath the helicarrier to meet her. Fans of the comics can come to the math that the girl is current Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. Not only that but the young sounding narrator in the story trailer could be Kamala telling the story of the Avengers through her lens.
While no one in attendance shows up to boo anything because that’s just a waste of life force, Marvel and Square got the right message to the right audience. Marvel’s Avengers ambitious definitive campaign story with support for a multiplayer experience is not something that should be elevator pitched to the audience, it needs time with fans. Keeping a separate story presentation and co-op multiplayer showings when more announcements come will be vital to continuing to deliver a clear message about the game.
