Marvel’s Avengers Uses QTEs “Sparingly”, Not A Core Part of Gameplay

Quick time events are used to train players or for "exotic moments", as per creative director Noah Hughes.

A lot of questions have been asked about Marvel’s Avengers, Square Enix’s upcoming games-as-a-service action adventure title. This is mostly due to gameplay being showcased behind closed doors at E3 2019. However, due to a subsequent leak and a recent Q&A, we’ve learned a bit more about how the game plays – like how it uses quick time events (QTEs).

QTEs were fairly common in the leaked demo but how frequent will they be throughout the game? WCCF Tech spoke to creative director Noah Hughes for clarification on the same. He confirmed that they’re more common in the mission showcased as opposed to popping up frequently throughout the game.

“They’re much more prevalent here than they are anywhere else in the game. This is an opening sequence. And we actually use in some cases what looks like a quick time event to train the player. So in the case where we see Thor smash down in the opening of the level, we’re really introducing you to those heavy attack buttons, and then onboarding you with that.

“And generally, there are a few exotic moments where you may have to express the effort of the hero or something like that. But it isn’t a core part of our gameplay, and it’s one that we don’t want to overuse, I think that we use them for both training and exotic moments. But we use them sparingly. And because I think they can be useful for us. But again, I think it’s like any of the tools in game design, which is we tried to do the best we can for our experience, we want the players to have them.”

So to sum it up, QTEs aren’t a core part of the gameplay and won’t be overused to the point of dulling their impact. Other details we learned about Marvel’s Avengers include a diverse set of locations (despite not being an open world game) and “huge spine” of single-player content in its cinematic story. There are multiplayer missions but you also have the option to play offline.

Marvel’s Avengers is out on May 15th 2020 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Google Stadia.

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