When a video game comes out in a way that not only “breaks the mold” but creates a fresh kind of experience, other developers and publishers will inevitably want to create that kind of title so that they can cash in on the craze that’s happening. That trend has been happening since pretty much the beginning of gaming, and it continues to happen today. When Blizzard released Overwatch, it redefined what a team shooter was, and to this day, more 5v5 team-based shooters are coming out of the woodwork, including ones like Marvel Rivals. But if you think the dev team hates the comparisons to the Blizzard game, you’d be wrong.
VGC got a hands-on preview of Marvel Rivals and was able to chat with game director Thaddeus Sasser about the project while they played. In his own words, he’s totally fine with the comparison:
“No, we welcome them! Overwatch really helped establish the genre, I think they have a great game. It’s an honour to be compared to a great game. For someone to say, this is like this, but it’s also different and I like it.”
Another element that can’t be ignored is that the team worked hard to make the title stick out from the rest in key gameplay ways. One of the biggest ones is the destruction that players can cause:
“We brought in epic destruction in the maps, you can destroy so much of our maps and it genuinely affects gameplay.”
Just as important is that the team is looking at the game not only in the short term but also in the long term. They apparently have a Discord channel that has over 200,000 members, and they want to listen to those members so that they can fix anything within the title.
What might be the biggest separator for this game compared to its Blizzard originator is that this isn’t a set of new characters. Instead, Marvel is bringing their best and most powerful comic characters to this kind of video game and letting people have a blast. There’s value in name recognition, and when you see characters like Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon & Groot, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, Storm, and more come together and being able to unleash their powers on others, you REALLY want to try that.
With a diverse roster, unique combo mechanics, destructible environments, and more, the only real question is not just how many will play this game, but how big can it get?
