Hulk-smashing the mould: An interview with the developers of Marvel's Avengers
We recently sat down with the fine folks at Crystal Dynamics, who were more than happy to dive into the upcoming superhero game.
Image: Square Enix
Developer Crystal Dynamics recently showcased Marvel’s Avengers in a War Table livestream, diving deep into its story, mechanics and multiplayer co-op gameplay. If you were confused by the game’s initial half-singleplayer, half-multiplayer presentation, the video probably helped clear a lot of stuff up!
We recently had the pleasure of talking with multiple developers from Crystal Dynamics, who were more than willing to shed light on their exciting new action-adventure game. Without further ado, here’s everything you need to know about Marvel’s Avengers:
Meet the Mechanised Organism Designed Only for Killing
The game’s story kicks off with A-Day - where the Avengers suffer a devastating attack that costs Captain America’s life, and unleashes a strange mist that turns ordinary people into superpowered Inhumans. The Avengers get blamed for the attack, and end up disbanding in disgrace. Fast-forward five years, and superheroes have been outlawed entirely. A new science-based organisation called Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) now rules over San Francisco with an iron fist, and the Avengers are nowhere to be seen.
This part of the story has been known for months, but the War Table revealed something brand-new: its villain - George Tarleton, also known as MODOK! Kamala Khan (AKA Ms. Marvel) has a shady encounter with Tarleton after stumbling onto a conspiracy, which spurs her to reunite the Avengers against him. The floating head of A.I.M. is intent on eliminating the Avengers at all costs, but clearly has much more nefarious plans in the works.
Creative director Shaun Escayg confirmed that although post-launch DLC will add onto the story, it will still come to a satisfying conclusion within this game alone. “The short answer is yes, there will be a satisfying conclusion. The campaign is an original Avengers story with Kamala Khan, where you will journey with her to seek answers for what happened on A-Day - as well as how she got her powers. By the end of the story, you’ll have a full roster of heroes - which is a great lead-in to the multiplayer and online aspects since you’ve already got everyone customised according to your preferences. You’ll then take on the larger narrative, of A.I.M. versus humanity.”
Image: Square Enix
When asked about whether players might get to play as MODOK himself, Escayg said, “It’s a possibility, but right at the moment we’re not going past the initial game. The stage is certainly set for opportunities like that.” Okay, but the Marvel universe is deep enough for other big villains to show up somewhere down the line, right?
Head of studio Scot Amos confirmed as much, saying, “We will add new heroes post-launch - but also, new villains! There will be new stories, new villains and other Avengers-level threats that come after the game’s launch. This is a full story, but the post-game world state will be set up in such a way that you have all these Warzones with different story threads. What else was A.I.M. doing? What else were they researching? What types of new technology were they coming up with? There are some great narrative twists that let us have some fun with how familiar villains might look or act.”
Seeing as the story draws a lot from Marvel’s Infinity storyline with the Inhumans, could we possibly see Black Bolt, Lockjaw, Medusa and the rest of the Inhuman Royal Family show up in the story? Escayg seems to hint that this might be more of a possibility later on. “This is very early in the evolution of the Inhumans. This is literally their birth! After the events of A-Day and the loss of Cap, with people injured and a portion of the population exposed to Terrigen Mist and gaining new abilities… It’s the very beginning of this story and Kamala’s journey as an Inhuman, trying to find her place in an anti-Inhuman world. We’re just setting up that world and that premise. That bigger, larger world of new heroes, villains, stories and narratives - the stage is set for anything, and anything is possible at this stage.”
“Hulk smash better than puny man?”
So, we know it’s an Avengers’ title, and that we’ve got a pretty swell roster of heroes to choose from for our squad. But like any multiplayer game, there’ll always be the issue of some heroes just being innately stronger and more relevant than the others in terms of gameplay and team composition. Naturally, we raised this question to the developers as well, and Crystal Dynamics' explanation of how they decided to go about handling this was actually pretty interesting.
According to the game’s Combat Director Vince Napoli, instead of making heroes for the game, they decided to adopt the stance of making a game for each hero. He went on to elaborate on this somewhat peculiar direction in further detail, saying, “Fundamentally, we knew that each of the playable characters has some unique element to contribute to the fight.
"For example, while Black Widow might not be able to really clear swarms of enemies as effectively as Iron Man can, for instance, she does provide a lot of tactical support such as guaranteed critical hits for the rest of the team, which can be really helpful in some scenarios. Using that approach, we went on to develop and emphasise these unique elements, effectively “balancing” the game out for each character so that when you put together a full team, it feels like you have six different games rather than just one game with six heroes.”
Image: Square Enix
In a way, this makes Marvel’s Avengers feel like a super tuned-up MMORPG, in the sense that there is a more obvious idea of what each character contributes to the team’s strategy, with each approach being tangibly different from another.
Essentially, Crystal Dynamics seeks to stray away from the conventional cut-and-paste role allocation common in many MMORPGs, such as those that say, “He’s a damage dealer, she’s a support. The end.” Judging from the gameplay sequences and what Napoli explained earlier, Marvel’s Avengers is way more dynamic in this sense, and it’s presumably going to be a lot easier for characters to impact gameplay in different ways and in different combat scenarios, instead of just having one or two 'meta picks' steal the limelight all the time.
Avengers, suit up!
Now that we’ve got a team of heroes ready to bash MODOK's head in, we picked the developers’ brains about the various types of Missions, and the environments in which these fierce battles ensue. In the War Table stream, two mission types were detailed: Hero Missions, and Warzone Missions.
Hero Missions basically refer to the single-player content, while Warzones refer to the various co-op missions players can team up to tackle. We’re shown an example of the former featuring Thor during the War Table stream, where he faces off against A.I.M. robots alongside the Hulk, Kamala Khan and Iron Man. That’s all pretty straightforward, but where it gets interesting is when we take a look at the expansive maps where the Warzone instances occur.
When quizzed about the general layout of these levels, Warzone director Phil Therien gave us a rather detailed walkthrough of the process. He said, “The way we built this game is with Regions, which are basically subsets of bigger worlds. That urban environment was one of our Regions. It’s hard to describe the Regions in actual size, but let me put it to you this way: You’ll start a mission, and several hundred meters in front of you will be the primary objective. Before you get to that, there are several city blocks to explore. We have an in-game mechanic called Tactical Awareness, so if you press up on your D-Pad, you’ll see question marks pop up.
"Assuming that your primary objective is ahead of you, then on your left there could be an event with Inhumans that need help fighting A.I.M., and to your right there could be a rare enemy. Past the objective, you could find resources or a stockpile to acquire. If you’re Iron Man, you can fly around the buildings and if you’re Hulk, you can bound all over the place.”
Image: Square Enix
Therien goes on to add how these “movement” considerations factor into future DLC additions, which are especially noteworthy considering Marvel’s diverse repertoire of characters, some of which might have unique modes of travel. As he put it, “You’re given the option to tackle your objectives however you want - with ranged attacks or in close combat, because the spaces are pretty big. They’re built to accommodate all the Avengers - not just in combat, but in movement. There are several different regions as well, set in cities, forests, deserts, the Arctic, underwater areas and places in orbit over the Earth. The game is built in a way for us to keep adding to those regions.”
Basically, his point is that size really does matter when it comes to the maps, and Crystal Dynamics opted to make them as big as they needed to be in order to accommodate the scale of various character movements. To put it into perspective, while you could have Kamala Khan scoot through a narrow alleyway and still be as badass as she needed to be, you can’t really appreciate the Hulk’s full strength and absurdly high jumps in that same environment.
What is this, a looter-smasher?
Image: Square Enix
In a Destiny-like twist, the game will also involve a lot of gear tinkering. Players will find gear drops throughout the game, which can affect their playstyle with each Avenger. Iron Man’s Repulsors are a great example of gear. Players will occasionally find other Repulsors types that look different, have a higher power level and come equipped with certain perks. You’ll have to swap out different parts of each Avenger’s gear to get more powerful as the game progresses.
But how can players earn all these different types of gear in-game? Combat director Vince Napoli explains, “We have a bunch of different ways to progress and acquire items for your characters. As you’re playing through the missions, finding all those nooks and crannies in Regions will reward you with gear, cosmetics and other items. Completing missions of a certain type, objective and difficulty also factor into a pretty dizzying array of rewards that are all over the place.
“We also have resources and specialised vendors that will sell you specific types of gear, and those vendors are behind various mission types and rewards. Rebuilding the helicarrier for example, will open access to those vendors - who will exchange certain resources for loot. There are a bunch of different ways to do it, and that was important to us when coming up with activities for players to do - making sure there was enough reason to do them. If you want to go in and collect a certain comic that is dropping at double the rate today, or if you’re looking for certain resources that unlock artifact upgrades, you could do that. Finding gear is one small facet of progression, really.”
Image: Square Enix
Gear certainly is one small facet of progression. After all, what’s the point of fighting well if your Avengers can’t look good doing it? To that end, Marvel’s Avengers features ‘dozens’ of unlockable skins for each playable character, referred to as ‘outfits’. Eagle-eyed comicbook fans will spot a plethora of easter eggs in these Outfits - from the Hulk’s Joe Fixit suit to Iron Man’s Original Sin armour.
We were concerned that the Gear system would interfere with how these Outfits look in-game, but Scot Amos put those worries to rest. “Gear and character costume customisation are different. We embody the motto of ‘look good, play good’, so your equipment won’t change how your character looks.”
Everyone working hand in hand
Of course, as the team from Crystal Dynamics notes, this enormous endeavour we call Marvel’s Avengers couldn’t have been possible without the various contributing parties helping out in their respective roles. Eidos Montreal was on top of the list, and Scot Amos weighed in once more, giving us a rough once-over of what each of the contributors put into the game.
“Well, if we were to break it down, let me first say that none of this would have been possible without everyone working hand in hand. The team at Eidos Montreal largely handled the Hero Missions, and after they passed that over to us, we took over for most of the other content, like the Warzones, co-op and the remainder of the campaign. After all, they’ve got their own projects to work on, and we didn’t want to impose. Of course, our other associates and the external vendors who worked with us also helped to make this game possible - the folks at Nixxes Software provided us with most of the tech support and expertise, while Square Enix weighed in with their own feedback from time to time. Last but not least, we also have some guys from Marvel to thank - they gave us information on what the fans like or would like to see, and it all factored nicely into this game that we’ll be presenting in September.”
A lot of work and passion is being put into the development of this game behind the scenes, and it won't be long before fans can experience what all the fuss is about. Marvel’s Avengers is shaping up to be a wonderfully unique superhero title, and that September launch can’t come any sooner.
Marvel's Avengers will launch on September 4, 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia and PC. The game will also arrive on next-gen consoles at a later date.
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