Avengers Assemble! …Yes, All of You
After playing the Marvel’s Avengers beta over the last few weeks, you may have thought the game felt a tad sparse at times, but it appears we have only scratched the surface of what Crystal Dynamics are offering in the game, with data miners digging up the name of 15 unannounced characters.
Via two separate posts on Reddit, users 6plus4equals52 and RoboMatter have expanded on the current crew of playable heroes, with the following names added to the roster:
- Ant Man
- The Wasp
- Vision
- Black Panther
- Dr. Strange
- Falcon
- Mar-Vell
- Mockingbird
- Quake
- Winter Soldier
- Scarlet Witch
- Captain Marvel
- Kate Bishop
- She-Hulk
- War Machine
While the scope of the list is impressive, featuring this many playable characters does bring up a few issues. Will each character have its own skill tree, and how can they all be managed at once? Crystal Dynamics has said that no two characters will have the same moves, but surely characters like Hawkeye and Kate Bishop must have some crossover?
Perhaps the similar characters and powers will be used as a workaround as the game will not allow two of the same character on the same team. So, if someone on your team is playing as Iron Man, you can play as War Machine and have similar move sets without breaking the immersion. It actually sounds like quite an elegant solution.
The data mine also mentioned some Marvel villains such as Frenzy, Ultron, Red Hulk, Deathlok, Vindicator and Monica, but their playability isn’t clear.Â
It is also interesting to note the lack of Guardians of the Galaxy characters on the roster, but that could be due to the rumoured GotG game Eidos has in the works. We may see a future crossover, with fan-favourites, such as Groot and Drax added to the roster in a similar way to how Insomniac’s Spider-Man will be added as a playable character – well, for PlayStation players at least
Marvel’s Avengers releases in a few weeks on September 4th, but if you are interested in checking out the beta, it is currently open for PlayStation 4 users and those who pre-ordered the game on Xbox and PC. The beta opens up to all platforms between August 21st and August 23rd.
If you want to hear my thoughts on the beta, be sure to check out the latest episode of Story Mode: A Video Game Podcast here!