Marvel’s Avengers Directors Talk Process Of Choosing Post-Launch Characters

A lot of the talk surrounding Marvel’s Avengers has been somewhat on the tense side lately, largely due to the news that the popular hero, Spider-Man, will be locked to PlayStation versions of the game. It’s made some non PS-fans quite unhappy, as you can imagine, but life goes on, and today we got some new information about how DLC picks are getting chosen that don’t include the webslinger.

In an extensive roundtable interview posted at Wccftech, Creative Director Shaun Escayg and Combat Director Vince Napoli talked in length about the title. When asked about whether they would have full access to the entire Avengers roster, including those who were part of the X-Men such as Wolverine, the pair didn’t give a direct yes or not, but seem to imply they have a huge amount of options to chose from in Marvel’s long history. They say it includes a lot of brainstorming and that those on both the Marvel and Crystal Dynamics side are fans, so trying to figure out which characters fit into the story they are trying to tell with this game is a pretty well thought out one.

“Yes, it extends to all of the 80-year-history of Marvel. The process of choosing these characters is ‘Can we ground them in this world? Can we make a real argument to Marvel that this character belongs here, this character will move our story forward or take us into new stories?’ So it’s all about how we write it, how we sell it, how we situate it, and then how we then bridge that into sort of the new threat, new escalations of threats, etc,” said Escayg.

Napoli elaborated, “I know fans like to pontificate over the next heroes, kind of selecting which one would be great, and to be honest that same kind of process happens internally and happens with Marvel. They have their own personal heroes, they’re fans if that makes sense. And so a lot of that brainstorming, a lot of that sort of buying and lobbying for those heroes happens on the internal side as well. And I think it is what makes it special as you look and say ‘Hey, we could use this, it showed up in this issue. These guys are right for the picking, can we fit this into Marvel’s Avengers? Is this a story worth telling?’ As Shaun just said, there’s just a lot of choices that go into that, even from a gameplay standpoint, whether this character is going to be interesting enough and provide enough of a palette with his or her powers and abilities.”

We already know the next two heroes coming to the game. One is, as mentioned, Spider-Man coming to the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game, and the other is Hawkeye set to release on all versions post-launch. Hopefully, we get to see quite an array of different characters as time goes on. Marvel’s Avengers will see a beta, the first of which begins today for those who preordered on PS4. You can read our thoughts on that beta through here.