Marvel’s Midnight Suns Has a More Traditional Campaign, No Permadeath or Branching Paths

At Gamescom Opening Night Live, Firaxis Games finally revealed the studio’s upcoming turn-based strategy game Marvel’s Midnight Suns. But this isn’t your standard XCOM fare despite some similarities. Speaking to PC Gamer, a 2K Games representative relayed questions to designer Jake Solomon and offered up some new details.

There are 12 heroes in total to choose from with nine being revealed thus far (and yes, Ghost Rider is Robbie Reyes here). The core story involves defeating Lilith, the Mother of Demons (the Hunter is her daughter, by the way). A more traditional campaign, one where the various heroes won’t exactly trust the Hunter, takes shape and it doesn’t have permadeath or branching paths. You can also retry any missions that were failed.

There is a Renegade vs. Paragon aspect a la Mass Effect that will influence one’s decisions though in what way remains to be seen. Combat is also very different. “When we were first designing combat in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, we quickly realized that the mechanics of XCOM wouldn’t work in this game. In XCOM, you take a group of soldiers and they are outmanned and outgunned by the alien threat. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, you are a superhero and you should feel like the coolest person on the battlefield. Those mechanics from XCOM that were designed for that game didn’t translate to Marvel’s Midnight Suns, and we can say that combat in this game is completely different,” says Solomon.

So heroes won’t be missing punches and the overall pace is much faster. When you’re out of combat, you’ll be roaming The Abbey in third person. This is your base and can be upgraded in different ways. It’s also the hub for interacting with different heroes, providing gifts and so on. Some missions will even need certain heroes and depending on who you bring along, friendships might develop in different ways.

Interestingly, Lilith is capable of corrupting those she touches and it seems the certain Marvel heroes could appear as “Fallen” versions. Again, we’ll have to wait and see how this turns out. Marvel’s Midnight Suns releases for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch in March 2022.