Marvel's Avengers E3 2019 Preview

June 24, 2019 at 3:15am
By Jason Stettner

Marvel has been absolutely dominating the movie industry as of recent, but the Marvel universe has been severely lacking when it comes to games. We were treated to the spectacle of Marvel’s Spider-Man recently, but that’s just one character in a very massive universe. That’s to be remedied as Square Enix has been tasked with handling the Marvel properties for one intense Avengers project.

The game will have the development power of the mighty Crystal Dynamics in partnership with Eidos Montreal and Nixxes Software BV behind it. Marvel’s Avengers is set to arrive on May 15, 2020 on Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC and Google Stadia platforms. It will be available everywhere essentially, at least on any modern platform and likely forward compatible.

It’s an interesting, and very hyped title that I was lucky to get a theater presentation for. This was a press only situation, and it featured live gameplay. It was essentially exactly what was shown during the regular trailer that everyone saw, but expanded upon. The general story of the game takes place several years after the event of A-Day, an event that was to hype up the team, but it instead ended in tragedy.

The experience opens up with our mighty heroes responding to a threat at the Golden Gate Bridge. Thor and Iron Man (Tony Stark) head out to take a look at what’s going on. They’ll later be joined by the Hulk and Black Widow, with Captain America staying behind on the craft to see what’s happening there. From there, we get a cut to Thor in action. The environments seem largely linear in style, and perhaps small. They were very detailed, responsive and seemed epic in response to the heroes roaming around. It looks authentic to the characters, and actually rather incredible in terms of the visuals.

Thor came in and was largely melee based, he smashed enemies and then powered on. There seems to be many combo type options, and ways to throw around the cannon fodder. We then cut to cinematics and seamlessly to Iron Man flying across the bridge for aerial combat. Once that segment wrapped up, Hulk came in and just smashed. This was really exciting, and you could feel the power of the team at play here. They really seemed to have captured the attitude, and mostly the design of the film characters we love while perhaps being more true to the comic source material. After the skirmish with Hulk was done, Black Widow comes into play with the classic dual pistols.

She has to take on Taskmaster, who appears to be the bad guy here. This merged into a small boss fight where many abilities were unleashed from Black Widow against him. That’s all for the demo, but it gave me an idea of what to expect in this. It looks very impressive, and I’m hyped to see what they do end up doing with it. I see a lot of potential with this, the action could be impressively and this could be a blast.

There will be a four player online experience, and a growing roster of heroes. The experience also doesn’t end once the story does, it will be a games as service type of setup. That’s all for Marvel's Avengers, at least for now. Check out our E3 2019 hub for additional coverage from the event.

Read our Avengers: Endgame Review
View our E3 2019 Hub