Marvel Rivals

Got a trailer here for the new Marvel game - a six v six Overwatch style combat game:

With Galactus’ daughter! That’s a deep cut!

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Mar 27th 2024 at 11:15:29 AM

Polygon has provided an article with more details:

18 characters have been confirmed thus far:

• Black Panther
• Doctor Strange
• Groot
• Hulk
• Iron Man
• Loki
• Luna Snow
• Magik
• Magneto
• Mantis
• Namor
• Peni Parker
• Rocket Raccoon
• Scarlet Witch
• Spider-Man (Peter is the one in the trailer, but I could easily see Miles getting in later)
• Storm
• Star-Lord
• The Punisher

At least 12 of them will be playable in alpha, which launches in May.

The dev team is largely composed of people with previous experience with the Call of Duty and Battlefield games. It'll be published by NetEase, a massive Chinese Internet tech company, as well as the owner of several pig farms for some reason, according to The Other Wiki's page on the company.

It'll be free-to-play, which means we should absolutely expect microtransactions and battle passes and whatnot.

The game has a story based around the multiverse, with a war between alternate versions of Doctor Doom specifically mentioned.

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that, because Magik, Magneto, and Storm are in, we now know for sure that X-Men characters can appear in other Marvel games, despite Sony snagging the rights to dedicated X-games (similar to Spidey, complete with Sony). No word yet on whether Blade will also be able to appear, considering his game rights are currently held by Microsoft via Bethesda.

Edited by TrashJack on Mar 27th 2024 at 11:41:24 AM

Hey, a major story starring Doom.

Sounds fun.

Apart from my previous post, I think one thing is very clear right now:

If Marvel Rivals includes a PvE mode, I'm pretty sure that will immediately take what little wind remains out of Overwatch 2's sails, considering much of its pre-release hype (or at least, its attempt to soften the blow of the first game being shut down and its playerbase being forced to start all over without any of their cosmetics and such) was built around that game's promised PvE mode that ultimately got canned, which had led Overwatch fans to question why ActiBlizz even bothered to do a sequel at all beyond just Money, Dear Boy.

Edited by TrashJack on Mar 27th 2024 at 11:46:56 AM

So Luna Snow and Galactus’ daughter… both unexpected.

Have to admit, didn't expect that out of all characters, GALACTA, daughter of Galactus would appear in this game.

Watching it second time that I realized that Peter's costume is very similar to Andrew Garfield's Spidey suit from TASM 1 movie.

Edited by primenumber101 on Mar 27th 2024 at 9:02:21 AM

Well, at least it's not a mobile game.

Unlike the movies, this hasn't been a prominent issue for certain characters appearing in other games, despite having a solo or focus game in the pipeline.

The X-Men and Fantastic Four not appearing the games, for a while, was a self-imposed restriction by Marvel when Perlmutter was mucking things up.

I don't really think that's noteworthy, since Marvel Games has been actively commissioning games in both mobile and console fields. We just got the reveal trailer for Marvel 1943, after all.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Mar 27th 2024 at 12:53:00 PM

A lot of ppl when they first heard about this game thought it would be another moblie/card game.

2016 this game would be all Avengers and maybe GOTG no mutants or FF characters.

I gotta say, while I don't vibe with multiplayer games of this type usually, I do really dig the Joe Madureira looking artstyle/aesthetic and the use of such deep-cut characters alongside more famous ones is impressing me.

Now, I don't support Disney or Blizzard... but I will gleefully watch this dog fight with popcorn in hand.

This would have some merit if Marvel Games hadn't put out a (high quality) console game in years, or stopped planning to, and solely stuck to mobile games. We have game companies that actively do that to certain franchises, but that's clearly not the case with Marvel.

I feel like the implicit "mobile games bad" bogeyman is egregious here, because we know that regardless of format, this game is apparently free-to-play anyway (ergo, the concerns over monetization). MARVEL SNAP, their recent mobile card game, is actually fairly well-received and isn't pay-to-win by the design.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Mar 27th 2024 at 4:24:26 AM

While this is for the most part true it actually has come to light through the Insomniac leaks that Sony does in fact own an exclusive license to making X-Men games, starting with the upcoming Wolverine game. This is a completely separate beast from the "Fox ban" as you're describing.

To that point it's also clear that said license applies specifically to making X-Men franchise games and doesn't really lock down the characters, especially for more general Marvel Universe games like this and MARVEL SNAP.

Edited by Watchtower on Mar 27th 2024 at 4:38:19 AM

Yes. I was thinking of it as less an "X-Embargo Part Deux" and more a "Hulk isn't allowed into Marvel Ultimate Alliance because Sierra has his exclusive rights (until the DLC is released, because Activision bought Sierra)" situation. Glad to see it's not that sort of thing after all.

What it does still mean, though, is that rereleases of older games based on the X-Men IP like Konami's arcade X-Men game, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, X-Men Legends, etc. are all still going to end up Screwed by the Lawyers unless Sony and the respective publishers can come to some sort of agreement (almost certainly involving console exclusivity, and likely also money changing hands).

Edited by TrashJack on Mar 27th 2024 at 5:03:53 AM

Everyone: They made Galactus into a woman? Comic nerds: They actually added Galacta into this?

It says something about Doom's popularity that he still regularly appeared in stuff during this era when even the fantastic four didn't.

>No Ghost Rider

I sleep.

Pretty decent roster. I am legitimately astonished Wolverine is not here, they always put him in the starting line-up of anything.

Cool we have X-Men confirmed and the ones we are getting are all great. Magik, Storm, Magneto, lotsa cool picks.

Ngl kinda surprised captain America and wolverine aren't in this. As otherwise it would be a pretty classic starting deck of marvels greatest heroes and villains.

/

I'm assuming Wolverine isn't here for the sake of Black Panther generally having more mileage in the modern day.

Over all, I'd swap out a few characters, but the lineup for the starting roster is quite solid! Lots of interesting picks.

Well, at least there are obvious picks for when the roster gets expanded.

Wolverine not being in it is a smart move. You can throw him in later when the game needs a bit of momentum.

So far looks astonishly good NGL. Love the deep cuts with Galacta and Agents of Atlas chars.

And hopefully nobody gets saddled with a dedicated support role. The whole reason I stopped playing Overwatch was because I don't want to play support but 2/5 of your team needs to be.

As an aside, it seems that Galacta was actually created by the creator of Empowered, as per this tweet. That... explains a lot, actually.

One thing about this initial roster is you can't accuse the devs of "mcu synergy" which may have been deliberate.