MARVEL’S AVENGERS

The optics of Marvel’s Avengers have so far crumbled under the weight of scrutiny, but behind the scenes things are looking quietly confident. Yes, the singleplayer demo does look overly choreographed, stuffed to the gills with quicktime events. But amid it all, there are brilliant flashes of the fastidious and creative individuals behind it all.

After watching Thor’s hammer and Captain America’s shield bounce around rooms at their beck and call, we’re not entirely surprised to find ourselves shaking hands with Vince Napoli, the designer behind Kratos’ weighty, recallable Leviathan Axe. Next, we’re introduced to Shaun Escayg, previously creative director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. These are people with a track record of meticulousness, and Marvel has been all too keen to work with them, not against them. “We wanted to tell an original story, and they were in sync with us on that.” Escayg says, “I draft; I send to my team; my team drafts; we go back and forth with Marvel – it’s been very collaborative. And Bill [Rosemann, Marvel Games vice president] is always on my shoots, he loves to see the actors bring stuff to life.”

“It’s the first licensed product I’ve worked on, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Napoli admits. But Marvel has been supportive, sending over its latest comic-book releases – even if they’re unrelated to the characters used in the game – in hopes the team will find something to spark new and different ideas. “We’ve got to do things like pitch them some gameplay stuff. ‘Hey, we think this could fit the character, and we’d like to change it like this’. And they’ll come back and say ‘That sounds awesome – have you thought about something like this?’ It feels like they have the same vested interest in just making things as good as possible.”

Usually, we’d be inclined to take such a glowing review of Disney’s involvement with a pinch of salt. But a close look at the demo seems to back it up. The variation between characters, and the detailed animations on display, speak volumes as the player bodyhops between characters. Iron Man blasts enemies out of the sky and barrel-rolls out of the way of incoming missiles. Black Widow mixes gymnastic martial arts with crunchy

pistol fire. Hulk smashes. “Like, if I don’t see Hulk smashing a guy, I’m out,” Napoli says. “It has to be that, even if it’s difficult. Can you pick up two guys and run around with them? That’s a ton of work, but we have no choice: we have to deliver what people expect.”

And things they might not. It’s always hard to tell how true-to-play these kinds of demos are when the handlers are executing moves perfectly. We’re more interested in what happens when an Avenger fails to make a jump, or gets socked in the mouth: clumsiness is part of the territory with Spider-Man, after all, but how do you preserve the superhero fantasy when Captain America stumbles? “It’s always about making it look strong, even in hit reacts,” Napoli says. “Even missing jumps, it needs to look like they gave it their all. So we go through and do a pass, and say, ‘Captain America is going to use his shield to grind on the ground to recover, because that’s what he would do. He’s going to make use of his environment. He’s going to keep looking forward because he has his eyes on the battlefield at all times.’

“That’s the best thing about combatdriven character games,” he continues, “is that you look at the character, and start designing your combat around them.”

Escayg adds: “And just like in the films and books, a lot of their failings come from character arcs. It’s kind of a dysfunctional family. And, you know, some of that also translates into the gameplay, so we’re really excited about that as well.” If he’s talking in terms of what canon does to the dynamic of certain character combinations in co-op play, the feeling is mutual. We’re all for playing a power fantasy, but so far Marvel’s Avengers seems to be resisting the glossy Hollywood veneer of superhero perfection in favour of something a little more human – and with these particular humans behind it, that can only be a good thing.

“Just like in the films and books, a lot of their failings come from character arcs”