Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Includes “The Huddle” for Dialogue Choices in Combat

One of Square Enix’s many reveals during E3 2021 – which had more lows than highs – was Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Developed by Eidos Montreal, it’s actually a single-player title where you control Peter Quill aka Star-Lord with the other Guardians serving as AI teammates. You’ll also be making decisions during the story which can influence how they behave with you but the decision-making also plays a part in combat.

Speaking to VentureBeat, senior narrative director Mary DeMarle talked about a feature called “the huddle” which is used during battles. “The huddle is this wild card that you can use in battle when the huddle gauge has reached a certain point. Now your huddle is available. You can call it and activate a huddle. What happens is, the Guardians all come forward like in a true American football huddle, and you have to listen to them, because it’s all based on how they were doing in combat.

“Maybe they were doing great and they’re super excited, so excited that they may even be yelling at each other. Or maybe they were doing terribly, and now they’re all down. ‘We can’t do this!’ You have to listen to them, and then you have to decide if you’re going to motivate them or calm them down. You have a dialogue choice, and when you choose it Peter gives a speech that’s loosely based on the lyrics of one of the songs.”

Choose correctly and all of your Guardians are powered-up, having recovered to full health with their abilities off cooldown. Of course, you can make the wrong choice and only Quill will get the bonus. “Then you dive into the fight and you’re listening to the song that he chose to make his speech. You can sit there and be playing in this final battle to one of the licensed songs.” Though this can be bad news for streamers due to DMCA concerns, a PR representative confirmed that there will be an option to turn off licensed tracks.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy releases on October 26th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 , PC and Nintendo Switch. Unlike Marvel’s Avengers, it won’t have any DLC or microtransactions. For some more extended gameplay of the combat and choices, head here.