NetEase has officially confirmed that Psylocke’s classic ninja costume will be in Marvel Rivals.
In a tweet earlier today, the official Marvel Rivals account shared an image of Psylocke’s ‘Vengeance’ skin, with this description:
“[Vengeance]
Brainwashed and forced to turn against her teammates, Psylocke refused to break. After conquering her own mind, she began a journey possessed by loyal fury. With her unparalleled strength and speed, Psylocke is ready to unleash her vengeance in Marvel Rivals on December 6th!”
NetEase first revealed Psylocke would be a playable character last September. At the time, she was introduced as Sai, an alternate universe version of the character, based on the Demon Days: X-Men comic. However, earlier this month, NetEase revealed that they would be monetizing the game by offering skins based on popular versions of their playable characters.
At the time, we got a good look at MCU Thor, War Machine II Iron Man, and Bombastic Bag-Man Spider-Man. These choices made it clear that NetEase was looking to deliver fan favorites, regardless if you were one of those collectors who were around from since the 1980s, one of the casual MCU fans who enjoys Marvel more on Twitter than in the comics, and everyone in between.
And so we get Psylocke, and the exact version of Psylocke that fans were saying that they wanted when they saw that trailer last September. But there’s something quite interesting about this version of Psylocke.
Psylocke as we know her today comes from a storyline which made her a hot mess from the onset. The person that we identified as Psylocke was ostensibly Betsy Braddock, the twin sister of Brian Braddock, occupying the body of Kwannon, a completely different person, who happened to be a well-trained ninja with mutant powers of her own.
This version of Psylocke, with the purple leotard and body wrappings we know her for today, was first introduced in the pages of Uncanny X-Men in 1981. At the time, the comic was written by legendary scribe Chris Claremont, with the art pencilled by Marc Silvestri and inked by Dan Green.
The text description for Psylocke’s Vengeance skin pretty much matches up with Psylocke’s comic book backstory from 1981. NetEase may have had to take some artistic license, but it certainly looks like this is pretty much the same Psylocke from that time.
Now, that artistic license may mean that NetEase chose to make this Kwannon from the onset, or make some other explanation for Betsy Braddock occupying Kwannon’s body. In any case, we can now see why NetEase was confident that they did not have to make this game play-to-win. Marvel fans are definitely going to splurge to get skins like Psylocke’s ninja costume, and they definitely have plans for tons of other fan favorite costumes they know fans are going to gobble up.
And with that, we can now also start talking about what skins Marvel could be planning to make, with the roster of characters that they have announced so far. I’m taking bets on Magneto having an Onslaught skin, and Hela getting a Queen Hedrian skin, based on the Super Sentai villainess from Denshi Sentai Denziman and Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan.
