EA has officially confirmed recent rumours with the announcement that Dead Space and Star Wars: Squadrons developer Motive Studio is working on single player action-adventure Iron Man game in collaboration with Marvel Games. Though the project is in early pre-production right now, the game’s developers have provided some more insight into how they’re approaching its development in an interview with GamesIndustry.
“We both want to make great action games that are innovative. And we also love bringing to life iconic worlds,” says Marvel Games’ VP and creative director Bill Rosemann. “On top of that, we want every player to feel like the hero and to deliver on that fantasy, that wish-fulfilment.”
As you’d imagine, when it comes to gameplay, the developers are well aware of the fact that the experience of being able to fly around as Iron Man is going to be a crucial aspect of the experience. At the same time, however, the Motive Studio also wants to ensure that it tells a captivating original story and properly captures the essence of the iconic character.
“It’s about understanding the characters,” says executive producer Olivier Proulx, who was also involved in the development of Square Enix and Eidos Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. “What drives these characters? And building a great story from there. Of course, not only from a story perspective, but also a gameplay mechanics perspective, how does that translate to the nature of the characters? With Guardians of the Galaxy it was all about team play, so we built a lot of narrative systems around that. And with Iron Man, having that visceral experience of flying around as Iron Man is going to be supremely important, and of course building a great story around Tony Stark and tapping into his character. He is a creative genius, that is his superpower, so there are great narrative opportunities there. But then it’s about how that translates to the gameplay experience as well.”
Proulx goes on to say that as the game’s central concept and ideas start to solidify, Motive Studio will begin expanding its development team, with the developer focused on delivering a “super high production value AAA experience”.
“As we grow more confident in our ideas and start to prove out some of these creative endeavours, we will grow the team,” he said. “We want this to be a super high production value AAA experience. It’s single-player, it’s action adventure, so we want to go all-in on how it plays and how it comes across on screen. And we want to have the right size team and budget to make sure we deliver on that.”
Interestingly, Proulx has also spoken about the game’s single player nature, which – given EA’s tumultuous history with single player experiences in recent years – may have come as a pleasant surprise to many.
“It’s really about telling a great story,” he says. “At Motive, and within EA, we think there is a lot of space for great single-player games. The games industry is not only one thing, and single-player experiences are still a huge part of it. But this game specifically, to do a strong narrative experience tied to Tony Stark and channelling his charisma, his complexity as a character… going single-player is the way to go.”
EA has confirmed that Motive Studio’s Iron Man game is one of several Marvel games that the company has planned as part of its new collaboration with Marvel. Leaks have claimed that a single player open world Black Panther game is also in development.