Square Enix has unveiled a brand-new trailer for its upcoming Marvel’s Avengers game and, well, there’d have probably been a whole lot less fuss if they’d started with this in the first place.
Rather than parading a bunch of familiar heroes with weird faces and distractingly different voices about the place, the latest Marvel’s Avengers trailer gets right down to it, talking through the key mechanics of the Crystal-Dynamics-developed third-person action romp.
As we’re helpfully informed, Marvel’s Avengers kicks off on A-Day, as the costumed crime-fighting crew celebrates the opening of the Avengers West Coast Headquarters.
Skip ahead a bit and it’s all gone pear-shaped, with San Francisco in ruins, leading to the disbanding of the team. In their absence, a new organisation – Advanced Idea Mechanics (or AIM for short) – establishes itself, vowing to protect humanity. All of this, incidentally, features in the game’s tutorial which, if you missed it, Square showed in its entirety in August.
Five years later, and with AIM’s robotic AI loose on the streets, Avengers fangirl Kamala Khan (who’s also playable in-game) enters the picture, vowing to prove her heroes’ innocence. And that’s where the whole thing kicks off in earnest, with players establishing a base of operations in a decommissioned Helicarrier, that will be upgraded as the story progresses.
Playing either solo or online with friends, characters can be fully customised with “tonnes” of outfits (some inspired by Marvel’s illustrious past) and various gear pieces that can be used to shift the experience toward a preferred play-style. Gear can be upgraded, and additional skills and abilities can be unlocked using XP.
Two different types of missions will be available via your HQ’s war table; Hero missions make up the single-player campaign experience, each showcasing specific heroes, while War Zone missions are playable either solo or online with a total of four friends. Both move the story forward, with progress shared between each.
“Reassemble the Avengers and rebuild the team to be Earth’s mightiest heroes once again”, concludes the trailer. And as you might imagine, there’s ample gameplay footage of the various playable Avengers in action – including Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America – to accompany all that.
Marvel’s Avengers launches next year, on 15th May, and is coming to PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Stadia. Please forgive the lack of additional Avengers-based analysis in this article, but I’ve only ever seen the two most recent Spider-Man movies and that funny one with Thor.
