After rumors of the same emerged just before the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase, Skydance New Media revealed its upcoming new Marvel title. Set during World War 2, it stars Captain America and Black Panther, though the latter is Azzuri, T’Challa’s grandfather. Other playable heroes include Gabriel Jones of the Howling Commandos and the Wakandan Spy Network’s leader Nanali.
Judging from the cover art, one would assume that co-op factors somehow. In a new interview with IGN, Skydance New Media’s Amy Hennig confirmed “narratively, yes” but not in terms of gameplay or mechanics.
“We experienced something partly intentionally and partly by a happy accident with Uncharted…we found out that for people playing our game, it was a shared living room experience. It was because they were invested in the story and the characters, and they felt collaboratively engaged with what was going on, even if their hand wasn’t on the controller.
“So part of the design here is to sort of tap into that experience. Is it literally a co-op game in a technical sense? No, but it is a sort of a shared experience and even sort of a collaborative experience. Part of what we’re doing is encouraging people who don’t consider themselves, you know, traditional gamers to feel just as invited and welcomed into the experience, even in a hands-on way, as the gamers in the household.
“That’s always been part of the goal. I could see looking at the key art and going, you know, ‘This must be a co-op game.’ But it is about this ensemble. You’ve got two superheroes, and two people who are not superheroes coming from these two different worlds, each with different viewpoints and facets on this experience.”
Hennig calls it an “interesting concoction of characters and experiences,” which means each character’s point of view could bring something unique to the table. Of course, even if there’s no co-op, the core cast could team up on separate occasions, with the AI controlling the other character like in the Uncharted series.
Time will ultimately tell, and the project doesn’t have an official name, release window or platforms. Stay tuned for more details in the future.