One of the biggest surprises from Gamescom Opening Night Live 2021 was Marvel's Midnight Suns. The newly revealed title is a turn-based strategy game in the style of the popular XCOM franchise, with a fresh Marvel spin on the formula. It's being developed by the team behind XCOM at Firaxis studios, so it should be a treat for fans of comic books and turn-based strategy games alike.
Marvel's Midnight Suns lets players take control of numerous Marvel heroes, with characters like Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine all being featured in the game's reveal trailer. The game also has a brand-new hero developed by Firaxis and Marvel who is completely customizable by the player. Not much was shown of the game's story, but there were hints toward the game's antagonist, showing them being awoken from a deep slumber within a sarcophagus. However, it still is not clear what Marvel characters will all be included, or whether or not super popular characters like Spider-Man will appear in Marvel's Midnight Suns. Even so, there's a lot of potential in this mix of game genre and subject matter.
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Marvel's Midnight Suns Can Improve on XCOM's Characters
One of the biggest pillars of the XCOM experience is that when characters die, they're gone for good. This adds a lot of tension to missions and can lead to emotional moments, but it also means a player's units are little more than a name with associated abilities. This is an aspect of the series that Marvel's Midnight Suns can easily improve thanks to its cast being made of familiar heroes. Even if the game still has a perma-death feature included, it will be able to give each character more personality to engage with during and outside of combat because of its pre-defined characters, which is one of the biggest features of games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.
Having pre-defined characters could also help Marvel's Midnight Suns have a more central narrative than other XCOM games. This could allow the game to feature great cutscenes with fan-favorite heroes interacting to bring some levity between missions. The superhero genre will also allow the game to feature a more personable villain. Marvel has some fantastic villains that could appear in Marvel's Midnight Suns, and having a particular villain to fight in Marvel's Midnight Suns will help the game's story improve.
Marvel's Midnight Suns Can Improve on XCOM's Customization
The XCOM series gives players an incredible amount of customization when it comes to fine-tuning soldiers and their loadouts. However, Marvel's Midnight Suns can improve on these systems further thanks to its cast of Marvel superheroes. It would be great for players to be able to unlock different skins inspired by some of their most popular comic book runs. Skins have been a big part of Marvel's Avengers, and they would be a great addition to Marvel's Midnight Suns as well. The skins could even impact how the characters play or what abilities they have access to, which would be a fantastic way for players to customize their playstyle and squads.
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Being able to customize individual heroes' abilities and skills would also be a great way for Midnight Suns to improve on XCOM. XCOM games feature a number of classes for players to build their squads with, each having their own focus, gear, and abilities to take advantage of. With how diverse Marvel's Midnight Suns' cast appears to be, there will likely be a lot more options for players to choose from, which will only be helped if players can customize each hero to their liking. The customizability would bring a lot more diversity to the game while also making it a great title for fans of XCOM.
Marvel's Midnight Suns Can Improve on XCOM's Variety
With Marvel's massive catalog of characters, factions, and units at its disposal, Marvel's Midnight Suns could introduce an incredible amount of variety in its missions and story mode. This will help keep missions fresh while also pushing players to adopt different playstyles in response to the enemies they have to fight. This would also help push players to use all of the characters in the game, especially on harder difficulties. This would especially stand out if Marvel's Midnight Suns takes advantage of some great comic storylines.
The large stable of characters shouldd also help the game have more variety in the playstyles. Being able to play with a team of slower, more powerful heroes like Hulk would offer a very different experience to a team comprised of faster heroes like Blade. This will help more fans enjoy the game because they can play it how they want to, and could also add replayability through experimentation. It may even include Marvel's lesser-known heroes like Moon Knight who have not been seen in video games as much as other mainstays.
It will be interesting to see what form Marvel's Midnight Suns takes when fully released. There are still more questions that fans have about the game, and luckily for them Firaxis is planning to host a gameplay reveal next week. The game has a strong team behind it and a very exciting license to use, which could bring something new and exciting to the Marvel pantheon of video games. Hopefully, the game will be as successful as XCOM Chimera Squad, which was one of the highest-rated strategy games in 2020.
Marvel's Midnight Suns releases March 2022 on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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