During the Marvel’s Avengers War Table presentation today, Crystal Dynamics revealed some new gameplay details about its upcoming game. The show provided more information about the story, co-op missions, skill trees, and Heroic Moves.
The main villains of Marvel’s Avengers are AIM, who are looking to get rid of the Avengers once and for all as their power increases. Kamala Khan works with the Avengers to take back Earth. The game’s story trailer ends with MODOK declaring that he’ll bring an end to the Avengers even if that results in his own demise.
In terms of gameplay, each of the Avengers has three Heroic Moves: Assault, Ultimate, and Support. They are charged by performing normal attacks. Assault Heroics charge the fastest and can be stacked. These include Black Widow’s move, Widow’s Bite, which is an electric projectile move that stuns enemies.
Support Heroics are designed to enhance co-op play. Thor’s allows him to utilize Odin-Force and grant his nearby allies temporary invincibility. Lastly, Ultimate Heroics take the longest to charge but are devastating. Thor’s allows him to tap into the power of the Bifrost Bridge to unleash huge AOE damage and break seemingly impenetrable shields.
Gear can also be found to customize the Avengers. Varying levels of equipment can provide modifiers to affect gameplay. These include different weapon damage types like Plasma and Gamma or inducing status effects such as Shrink, which lowers the defense and strength of enemies. Switching between different weapon types will also aesthetically change attacks, like Iron Man’s lasers being green if he has Gamma gear equipped.
Players can receive missions, called War Zones, from NPCs throughout the Marvel Universe, including Hank Pym and Nick Fury. War Zones can include up to four players or can be played solo with 3 AI companions. The missions have a variety of different objectives, challenges, boss fights, and rewards. Once a mission is picked, players can select which heroes will accompany them and their respective loadouts.
Marvel’s Avengers will release on Sept. 4 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. When PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X launch in holiday 2020, players who purchased the game will receive the next-generation version for free.