You might've heard the rumours of a "Marvel XCOM", coming from tactics specialist Firaxis, and turns out: they're mostly true. During Gamescom's Opening Night Live stream, the studio revealed Marvel's Midnight Suns, described as a "tactical RPG" – although from talking to creative director Jake Solomon, it's quite a bit less XCOM-y than some of those tweets and reddit threads may have led you to believe.
So, what's it all about? Midnight Suns is set in the "darker side of the Marvel Universe", based on a '90s comic book series called Rise of the Midnight Sons – although apparently it's deliberately not an exact retelling of those events. The setup for the game is this: perpetual baddies Hydra have revived someone called Lilith, who does a bit of dead-raising that threatens to overrun the Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Dr. Strange, and Wolverine can be spotted in the trailer). The Avengers call up a few extra supernatural mates to help out, called the Midnight Suns, which includes Nico Minoru, Blade, Magik, and Ghost Rider, and a few more (12 Marvel heroes in total), and together they then resurrect some help of their own: one more hero, newly created for the game, called the Hunter, who's also Lilith's child and apparently the only one able to kill her.
The Hunter, who's customisable (in "appearance" and also in terms of a choice of about 40 different abilities), is who you'll be playing as, which is where things immediately depart from the XCOM formula. You'll be controlling both the Hunter and the other heroes in combat, with battles featuring three heroes total at a time, but then the time between battles is spent in one of two ways: managing your base, a mystical safehouse called the Abbey – so far so XCOM – or actually walking around the Abbey in third-person, over-the-shoulder view, exploring its "extensive" grounds and interacting with the other heroes.
