Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics held the Marvel’s Avengers War Table (pre-recorded) live stream today, a nearly 30-minute look at various elements of the game launching this September. The biggest ask from the stream was more gameplay outside of the A-Day demos we’ve seen so much of, and they were happy to provide. It also offered a number of details about the ongoing story, gear and upgrades, and teased new content coming to the title completely free of cost after the initial purchase of the game.
You can watch the Marvel’s Avengers War Table stream in full below.
Marvel’s Avengers sees the superhero team broken up after the events of A-Day, which made San Francisco a bleak quarantine zone filled with powered people. Five years later, with AIM now the city’s primary protector, an Avenger’s fangirl named Kamala Khan discovers the truth about A-Day and reunites the Avengers to take down AIM’s oppressive control. So who’s the big bad in Marvel’s Avengers? M.O.D.O.K. That’s right. That big floating face chair guy with a name that stands for “Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.” He is AIM’s leader and his nefarious intentions extend well beyond the purview of protection that the organization has promised the citizens of this world. The header image above is simply a teaser of what he’ll look like in-game.
Marvel’s Avengers is divided into two different types of missions: the single-player hero-focused Hero Missions and the War Zone co-op missions, which gather four players together (or have AI fill in using your leveled characters, if you don’t want to play online). The gameplay stream showed off a Hero Mission for Thor called “Once an Avenger,” showcasing a number of different combat maneuvers and techniques that the God of Thunder has at his disposal.
The combat system centers on creating combos out of light and heavy attacks, interspersed with signature hero moves and super abilities, like Thor’s ability to open the Bifrost and annihilate everything in its energy wave. Most of it is against AIM’s endless army of robotic minions, both big and small.
Each character is offered a wide range of customization and skill trees to modify and improve all of their moves, tailoring the game to be able to play your way. Gear also changes abilities, even altering the visuals, like making Iron Man’s lasers green instead of red in certain cases. Cosmetically, characters will be able to unlock a huge variety of outfits inspired by each of their vast comic histories.
Finally, the stream ended with the reveal that new characters, missions, and locations would be added after release completely free. While it was insinuated that there will be an in-game store featuring new costumes, it seems like microtransactions will be completely relegated to cosmetics, with gameplay content being added for free.
Marvel’s Avengers releases on September 4 for PS4 and Xbox One, with free upgrades to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions once the new consoles release later this year. Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics will also show off additional content such as post-release plans, the beta, and plans for launch over the next few months.