After a long time of rumors and speculation, Square Enix finally unveiled their adaptation of Marvel’s Avengers at E3 this year. A lot of big promises are being made, and the game aims to be both multiplayer experience as well as a full single player one. In the case of the latter, it seems the team behind the game are looking for more than just explosions and action, and also want to get to the human side of things.
Speaking with GamesBeat, Director and Writer Shaun Escayg said they really wanted to get at the human side of the iconic characters. The story revolves around a tragic incident at A-Day, and our heroes must grapple with both the grief of their loss and the responsibility of their failure.
“A lot of the story is about the human element of these heroes,” said Escayg. “How do they deal with guilt? How do they deal with loss? Can they put their differences aside? Bruce Banner is one of my favorite characters because he’s always in conflict with who he is. He’s a scientist, very intelligent, and very docile in a way. Then all of a sudden he has this part of himself that’s enraged, that can destroy anything with a flick of his hand. Is he dangerous? Is he really a hero? He’s battled that his whole life.
“Then you have someone like Iron Man who’s also very smart, very dependent on technology, very much about saving and protecting the world using technology, but he’s also very arrogant. He takes chances where other Avengers won’t. There’s conflict because of that.
“It’s all about the conflict, right? What happened on A-Day? Who was at fault? Black Widow was in charge of the bridge. Did she fail? Should we have gone back and helped Cap? These are the human things that we wrestle with as well, and that’s what grounds this and makes this different from any other Avengers story. Also, it affects some of our heroes in other ways. I can’t give away details, but they’re affected by their mental state.”
It clearly is a lot of ambition for a game about superheroes, but the films have generally tried to become more grounded and emotional as time has gone on, so it’ll be interesting to see if the team pulls it off in video game form.
Marvel’s Avengers will release May 15th, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.