On a rainy day way back in January 2017, both Marvel and Square Enix both tweeted messages teasing an upcoming announcement. Was the timing a coincidence, or were the two companies going to work together on an upcoming project?
24 hours later, the veil was lifted and Square Enix announced that the two companies would be working together on a multi-game partnership, starting with The Avengers Project, which is already one of our most anticipated games.
When is The Avengers Project release date?
So, when will the Avengers Project be released in the UK? While Marvel fans had hoped for some kind of release in 2017 or 2018, Square Enix kept quiet about the project.
That was until a few weeks ago, when the company tweeted a teaser image for its’ upcoming E3 2019 presentation. So far, so standard. A second tweet was published weeks later with the same image, but with one key difference; different colours. The more eagle-eyed amongst fans were quick to notice that the colours from both posters (Green, Blue, Purple and Orange) represent the Time, Space, Power and Soul stones from the hugely successful Marvel series.
While we’re yet to see the Yellow of the Mind Stone and Red of the Reality Stone, we suspect it’ll be tweeted out in the days before the event. So, after years of work behind closed doors, it looks like we’ll be getting our first proper look at The Avengers Project in June.
What will the gameplay be like?
So, what can we expect from The Avengers Project? Sadly, there’s not a lot to go on apart from the video embedded within the announcement tweet, which can be seen below.
Big News: @SquareEnix and @Marvel announce a multi-game partnership leading with The Avengers project. #Reassemble pic.twitter.com/DS87Iuzk7G
— Square Enix (@SquareEnix)
January 26, 2017
While the trailer included in the above tweet doesn’t give much away about what to expect from the upcoming project, it’s obvious that it’ll be based on the Avengers. Some theorise that it’ll take place after an *ahem* event that split the group up, with the game focussing on bringing the Avengers back together.
What we do know is that it won’t tie directly into the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Marvel Games is run separately from Marvel Studios, which handles the films, and has already announced that its games, including Spider-Man on the PS4 and Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy series, don’t exist in the same shared universe.
What’s more interesting is the developers working on the project. The partnership, so far, consists of Rise of the Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided developer Eidos Montreal. The two developers have created impressive games of late, in terms of both graphics and gameplay, so it seems like the pairing should lead to an impressive roster of Marvel-themed games.
Of course, the list of bad superhero games is much longer than the list of good ones *cough* Green Lantern *cough* but Marvel has, lately, stayed relatively quiet on the game front (apart from a few LEGO games and some free-to-play smartphone games).
The pairing could be the signal of great things to come, and it’s an ideal time for Marvel to showcase its heroes. Why? If games like the Batman: Arkham series are popular, superhero games are still in demand – we just need it to be done right.
We also know that industry veterans including Naughty Dog’s Shaun Escayg and EA/Visceral Games’ Stephen Barry are now working on the project, along with fifteen other developers that have worked on titles including Batman: Arkham Origins, Deep Space, Star Wars: Battlefront and more.
Discussing the recent hires, Ron Rosenberg, co-head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics, said that “Their AAA experience adds to an already deep roster, making us well-positioned to deliver on the ambitious goals we’ve set for ourselves with The Avengers project. It’s a stellar addition of many people who fit incredibly well into our wheelhouse of building game experiences we all love.”
