Crossovers happen in media all the time. The Jetsons meet the Flintstones. Supergirl shows up in The Flash. But in games, melding the characters and gameplay mechanics from divergent worlds can be a tall order. How do you remain true to the unique vision of each game while still create something more than the sum of its parts?
Current Thor writer Jason Aaron is currently in the process of wrapping up a seven-year run on the series, and now Marvel Comics has revealed what’s coming next for the god of thunder.
As part of their Next Big Thing panel at NYCC, Marvel announced a relaunch of the monthly Thor series. The new series will be spearheaded by writer Donny Cates (Venom) and artist Nic Klein (Deadpool).
Thor #1 cover by Olivier Coipel. (Image Credit: Marvel Comics)
When Alien hit theaters in 1979, it showed that audiences weren’t only interested in the family-oriented sci-fi fun of Star Wars, which had arrived two years earlier. Ridley Scott’s stunningly realized mix of horror and sci-fi was a commercial and critical success, and is now considered a classic movie in both genres. While the subsequent films in the franchise have varied in quality, the original stands as one of the most iconic movies of all time. It’s a film that has been endlessly discussed, dissected, imitated, and analyzed over the decades–most notably in the superb making-of documentary The Beast Within, which first appeared in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set in 2003.
With so much material about Alien already out there, it might seem surprising that this weekend sees the release of another feature-length documentary, titled Memory: The Origin of Alien. However, anyone who saw director Alexandre O. Philippe’s last movie, the documentary 78/52, will know that he is not interested in delivering a standard movie making-of. 78/52 spent its entire running time analyzing a single scene from one movie–the legendary shower murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Similarly, Memory avoids regurgitating widely known facts about Alien’s production and instead takes a deep dive into what inspired the film.
Ridley Scott did an incredible job directing Alien, and he was unquestionably responsible for much of its success. But it’s easy to forget that he was essentially a director-for-hire, with only one other film under his belt at that stage; he only joined the production after a variety of more experienced directors had been considered. The true origin of Alien lies with writer Dan O’Bannon, and much of Memory’s first half is focused on him. The film charts O’Bannon’s early years as a struggling writer, his association with maverick Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, and his role as the writer of John Carpenter’s debut film, Dark Star. This first section sows the seeds of all the influences and obsessions that O’Bannon would return to with Alien, such as HP Lovecraft, ’50s sci-fi comic books, and ’60s B-movies such as Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. While O’Bannon died in 2009, he appears in archive footage mixed in with interviews featuring his widow Diane, colleagues in the industry such as legendary producer Roger Corman and fellow director Gary Sherman, and a variety of critics, writers, and academics.
Once the documentary moves into the writing of the Alien script–which began with an early concept called Memory and later became a full script co-written with Ronald Shusett that had the title Star Beast–it’s inevitable that some of the better known backstory is covered. But to Philippe’s credit, he gives just enough making-of material to keep the narrative moving, before returning to the influences that Alien’s creators used to craft their vision. Unsurprisingly, there is much focus on the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who designed the Xenomorph, the Space Jockey, and the derelict ship in which the eggs are found. The abstract painter Francis Bacon also had a big impact on Giger’s work, and the movie goes into fascinating detail about how this fed through to his iconic creations in Alien.
The final section of the documentary is the one that most resembles Phillipe’s previous film. The chestburster sequence is every bit as famous as Psycho’s shower scene, and it’s impressive how many angles the director is able to approach it from. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage of the actual filming of the chestburster will be familiar to those who saw The Beast Within, but here it is recontextualized, with new commentary from some of the cast and crew that were there, including art director Roger Christian and actor Veronica Cartwright. There’s also a fascinating exploration of the way the movie deals with the social differences between the different crew members on the Nostromo, and how the performances have more in common with the naturalism of pioneering filmmakers like Robert Altman than other ’70s sci-fi movies.
As with many documentaries that place analysis and theory over a straightforward retelling of actual events, there are parts of Memory that don’t hang together as well as others. While much of the commentary is insightful, it’s hard to escape the sense that Phillipe is simply throwing every angle he can at us and asking us to pick our favorite. Which is fine, but there are some elements that could do with elaboration–for example, the gender mix of the cast and the fact that Ripley was originally written as a man is mentioned then quickly passed over. Ripley remains one of cinema’s great female characters, and fans expecting a detailed look into how she was shaped as the film developed will be disappointed. Conversely, the slightly silly dramatic “recreation” of the Furies from Greek legend, another influence on O’Bannon, feels at odds with the more serious, considered tone elsewhere. And there’s no getting away from the fact that neither Scott or Sigourney Weaver have been interviewed for the film, although Scott does appear via footage from earlier interviews.
But unlike many of its rivals, Memory is a proper “film,” not just a glorified DVD extra. It’s extremely well shot and edited, and avoids the perils of many talking head documentaries by constantly cutting from the interviewees to stylishly animated images and footage to keep things visually interesting. It’s perhaps not for casual fans, and those wanting to learn about the nuts-and-bolts of the movie’s production are advised to look elsewhere. But Alien is a movie that continues to inspire conversation, and this is a welcome addition to the discourse. It’s been 40 years since Alien hit theaters, but as new generations discover it, Memory shows that it can remain a vital part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Executive producer Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers) unveiled the first episode of his new HBO series, Watchmen, at New York Comic Con today, giving us our first real idea what his sequel series to the iconic comic is all about. We’ll be reviewing the episode closer to its October 20 debut date, but we do have some first impressions of the premiere episode here. (Check out what else happened at the NYCC panel here.)
In short, HBO’s Watchmen looks like it has the potential to be a faithful continuation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons classic, though it’s also clearly a Lindelof production, as elliptical and potentially challenging a viewing experience as his previous HBO show, The Leftovers.
Loot boxes continue to be a hot-button issue and, understandably, the practice of asking people to spend money for a chance to unlock in-game items that won’t have any value outside of the game, is under more scrutiny now than ever. Recently, however, the discussion has been around whether purchasing loot boxes is akin to gambling.
On this week’s episode of the GameSpot After Dark Podcast, one of the topics of discussion is buying loot boxes in games versus buying packs of Magic the Gathering cards in real life. The discussion was prompted by a question from a reader, who notes the similarity to buying booster packs in Magic, which has avoided being scrutinized as a potential form of gambling.
In the podcast we also discuss our time with Destiny 2, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Apple Arcade, Untitled Goose Game. Naturally, we also drift into off-topic territory for some fun times. Below you’ll find all the necessary links to find the GameSpot After Dark podcast on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Google Play. We’ve also included an RSS link so you can put that into your podcast application of choice. If you want to read a transcript of the conversation, you can do that too.
Where You Can Listen
Magic The (Random) Gathering
Lucy: Magic the Gathering was mentioned last episode, and I thought that this might be a good way to see where you stand on Magic the Gathering booster packs versus loot boxes in games. The argument for loot boxes being gambling is that loot box returns skins, characters or weapons of variable value.
For example, you can open a box that contains three common skins and one rare. Or, you can open a box with one common, two rares, and one legendary. In addition, you could buy those skins directly for coins using real money. Because of this direct monetary relationship of coins to skins, this means that each box has an actual dollar value that you can calculate, which is the very definition of gambling.
However, Magic the Gathering has survived this gambling situation by claiming explicitly that each card is only worth 20 cents-
Jake: Ooooooh, that’s a lie.
Lucy: Which is the cost of the booster pack, $3, divided by the total amount of cards in each pack, which is 15. This means that even if Jake pulled a $20 card-
Jake: Never going to happen. Never going to happen.
Kallie: Love using Jake as an example.
Lucy: Wizards of the Coast will refuse to acknowledge its value and claim that card is only worth 20 cents. Of course, they host tournaments that requires players to bring decks with good and expensive cards, which means that they directly influence the cost of the cards.
What do you all think of the current situation of loot boxes and microtransactions in gaming? And do you foresee this having a spillover effect into other markets? Thanks, Matt.
Kallie: Peter is raising his hand.
Jake: I want to clarify one thing quickly. The 20 cents thing actually makes sense. Because I actually pulled a $20 card not that long ago. But once again, Wizards of the Coast doesn’t decide that value, that is decided by…
Tamoor: Wizards of the Mainland.
Jake: The people who play and figure out like, “Alright, this card is good for professional play.” And then, if people see professional players buy, then everyone wants that card. Anyway, go ahead, Peter.
Peter: So, there’s a difference between virtual and physical goods and how you can create a market around those and make money off of them and trade them for intangible value in a sense. Cards can be used in a lot of different ways. Like, I do think buying a pack of cards is still gambling. But I think if we’re going to get down to like the human experience, opening a pack of cards is way more fulfilling than opening a loot crate where you get like one thing.
A deck of cards has like 13 things in it that you can consider and do things with. You can also trade with your friends and do a lot of stuff with it. I mean, a lot of what Magic the Gathering is, is that community of sharing, building decks, a lot of that. That’s something that we just don’t get from video games. But are you rolling the dice? Of course.
Jake: Yeah, totally. That’s a good point because even when I used to play, I’d go to a card shop and pull a good card that was worth a lot of money and immediately I’d just be like, “Actually, here, can I just have like $20 in store credit because I don’t really want this card.” And then I’d get more packs or maybe something else. Can’t really do that with games. Well, I guess you kind of can with Steam, right?
Peter: But not really, either. I mean, you’re not … I mean, maybe you can do it from a transactional standpoint, but there’s not that community, the relationship building that comes from that sort of thing. You’re doing it to a cold person on the other end of that thing.
Lucy: I understand that, yeah.
Peter: I can see why that comparison exists, but I don’t know, I feel like Magic is … they cannot change the value of these cards because they’re trying to get around the fact that it’s random. But at the same time, I feel like it’s way more fulfilling to play Magic than open loot crates.
Jake: Oh yeah, totally.
Peter: Or rather, open Magic packs than open loot crates.
Lucy: Have you seen … there was a YouTube channel called Open Boosters and a few years ago, I don’t know how we found this video. It came up … maybe in the algorithm or something. But there is a guy, he’s doing-
Tamoor: It was on Reddit. We found it on Reddit-
Lucy: Oh, was it on Reddit?
Tamoor: It was like wholesome videos or something like that.
Lucy: Which is like a $15,000 card. And just the … I’ve never heard just like joy in some … like, pure, unadulterated wholesome joy. And his hands started shaking-
Tamoor: Immediately started … and he was like, he went, “Holy PSSSSSHHHHH”
Jake: It’s okay, Lucy’s already cussed a couple of times. You can say it-
Lucy: No, no, no. That’s what he did-
Jake: Oh, he did? Okay.
Peter: Are we not allowed to cuss?
Jake: Well-
Kallie: We try to stay away from the F-word.
Jake: We’re not supposed to say the F-word.
Peter: Ah …
Lucy: Flip.
Tamoor: But like, he went like … you could see his hands shaking.
Lucy: Like we talk about Overwatch a lot, and I’m past the point now where I buy loot boxes in Overwatch, even for seasonal events because I’ve just got that much gold, humblebrag, because I don’t buy boxes anymore. And so, if there’s a skin that I want, I can just buy it. But even at my-
Jake: The 1%.
Lucy: Even at the height of Overwatch, when I was actually buying boxes, I’ve not had a comparable moment. Even when I unlocked that particular D.Va skin, or you know, whatever. I’ve never felt joy like that guy finding the Black Lotus and maybe that’s just because I live a sad life…-
Jake: To be fair, not many people probably have felt the joy of pulling a Black Lotus-
Lucy: Yeah, I was going to say because that’s not a $15,000 skin.
Peter: The thing is, a physical card, right? Like you can really assign a lot of false but emotional value to that objects. I mean, objects have power.
Lucy: No, I mean, because yeah, people now you … I mean, Pokemon cards, you can still find the collection that I started in the 90s, whereas in 20 years time, am I going to boot up my Blizzard account and go, “Oh, I remember unlocking this skin-
Kallie: I like how in 20 years, you’re 70.
Tamoor: You’re mad old.
Lucy: To be fair, I am a 60 year old in the body of a 28-year-old.
Tamoor: That Open Boosters guy, I think he pulled the Black Lotus a second time.
Marvel Comics will relaunch its flagship Star Wars series in early 2020. Along with a brand new creative team comes a new time period, as the relaunched series sets out to fill in the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
First revealed by StarWars.com and announced at the LucasBooks publishing panel at New York Comic Con, the new volume of Star Wars will be overseen by writer Charles Soule (Star Wars: Darth Vader, Star Wars: Poe Dameron) and drawn by Jesus Saiz (Swamp Thing), with RB Silva (Powers of X) providing covers.
Star Wars #1 cover by RB Silva. (Image Credit: Marvel/Lucasfilm)
“An optimistic fangirl of the Avengers, Kamala Khan is the perfect character for the story we’re telling in Marvel’s Avengers,” Crystal Dynamics creative director and writer Shaun Escayg said in a press release. “Telling our story of Kamala’s coming-of-age brings a fresh, hopeful perspective to the gameplay experience and her unique abilities as Ms. Marvel makes her a character every person can relate to and will want to play.”
“I think Kamala is a perfect fit for a game like this, since she sees the Marvel world the same way we do as fans and players,” Ms. Marvel’s co-creator G. Willow Wilson added. “Kamala allows us to imagine what we ourselves would do if we suddenly discovered we had superpowers and got to stand alongside our heroes in their time of greatest need.”
For those unfamiliar, Kamala Khan burst onto the superhero scene in 2013, quickly growing popular for her relatable struggles, quirky humor, and heroic spirit. She’s also a comic book icon as Marvel’s first openly Muslim hero. Kamala is your everyday teenage girl who loves superheroes and idolizes Carol Danvers, the first Ms. Marvel and current Captain Marvel. After becoming an Inhuman with the ability to stretch and grow any part of her body (which she dubs “embiggening”), Kamala adopts the mantle of Ms. Marvel and becomes a costumed crimefighter. She’s teamed up with Spider-Man, the Secret Warriors, and the Avengers.
After a confusing reveal for Marvel’s Avengers, Crystal Dynamics announced it was changing pretty much “everything” about the game prior to launch and that Marvel is closely involved in the process of developing the game. Our subsequent time with the game has helped shed light on how the game plays–a superhero game that offers cinematic single- and multiplayer missions.
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Up for Preorder: Marvel Avengers The Infinity Saga 24-Disc Collector’s Edition in 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray
If you’re an MCU fan, you have got to consider this Best Buy exclusive collector’s edition that just went up for preorder today. The Infinity Saga set includes all 23 MCU movies in 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, each individually packed in their own art cases. You also get a bonus disc with never before seen content and a bunch of extra goodies that we’ve detailed out here. Not including the bonus content, you’re paying $24 per 4K movie, which is less than what you would normally pay for each movie individually. This set ships on November 15.
At New York Comic Con, Marvel Games announced a special edition for the upcoming Marvel’s Avengers game from Crystal Dynamics. Called the “Earth’s Mightiest” Edition, it comes with collectibles signifying all five major Avengers characters, noting that each item was “inspired by actual in-game events and items.”
The image shown on-screen includes a statue of Captain America, Black Widow insignia, Hulk bobblehead, Thor’s hammer Mjolnir keychain, and Iron Man blueprints, representing the five main playable characters. It also includes an Avengers emblem, and a photo of the five assembled Avengers with a young Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel.
The inclusion of Kamala is an important touch, because she’s a big part of the story. The photo is taken from her visit to A-Day, where the game kicks off with some tragic events. But the incident also results in giving her powers, and as we also learned at the panel, she’s a playable character. Given that the A-Day incident appears to disillusion some of the Avengers, Ms. Marvel may just be the perfect person to revive their heroism again. Plus, in the comics, Kamala is herself a big fan of superheroes.
More details on the Earth’s Mightiest Edition, including a price, were not disclosed during the panel. Marvel’s Avengers is coming on May 15, 2020. The panel also revealed a release date for the PS VR game Iron Man VR.
Marvel’s Avengers was officially unveiled at E3 2019, with a cinematic trailer depicting the fall of the Avengers after they fail to stop villains from attacking San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The game features both solo and multiplayer missions, allowing you to choose from a roster of heroes and battle the forces of evil with friends online.
Avengers comes to PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia on May 15, 2020, but we were able to get our hands on the game’s pre-alpha build at NYCC 2019. Our two-part demo consisted of the opening Golden Gate Bridge mission and a wave-based training session featuring Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel. We also learned that Kamala is actually the star of the game; she’s the one who gets the Avengers back on their feet after the Golden Gate incident.
Following our demo, we spoke with Scot Amos, studio head at developer Crystal Dynamics. Scot talked to us about how the game stacks up against the Marvel Cinematic Universe, post-launch content, microtransactions, and more.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
GameSpot: One thing that’s on my mind with this game is that you can’t get around the existence of the MCU.
Scott Amos: Never heard of it! [Laughs]
What is it like having to work around presuppositions people may have about Marvel now because of the MCU?
I think the best thing I can say is we’ve done this before at Crystal, right? Tomb Raider in 2013. Crystal has been around for 26, going on 27 years, and have been the caretakers of Tomb Raider, only to then rebuild it and reimagine it in 2013. We had this exact kind of storm then. People asked, “Where’s my Lara Croft? Where’s my ponytails, and my sunglasses, my dual pistols?” And there was some heat to take.
It’s just like, “No, no. Trust us. Come with us on this journey.” It’s the idea that we know what you love, we actually know why that works, we have a vision. That actually is what drew us together with Marvel, when we talked to them about how we do epic storytelling with the human spirit. It’s like, well, that’s what we do with Lara Croft. That’s what they want to do with their heroes.
So for us, it’s less about any one version of Marvel’s heroes via TV shows or magazines or comic books or movies. Instead, there’s a benefit to having access to 80 years of their history. Saying we can go and cherry-pick the cool moments, ideas, and elements of things that haven’t been done yet because we’re not going to be a one-and-done. We’re going to launch this game, and we’re going to have regions and new heroes showing up post-launch. That 80 years will become 81 years, and then 82 years, and so on. And so, we keep drawing all that stuff as it gets added to it. So we don’t see it as anything other than a boon for us because millions of people who didn’t know what a Hulk was 10 years ago are now wearing T-shirts that say Hulk on them.
For us, it’s become a lifestyle. So, in the sense of one version over the other, people will have their favorites. They always will. Our job is to interpret them in a way that it feels fresh but still familiar.
Are there plans to reflect happenings in the MCU in additional content down the road? We’ve got the Black Panther sequel, Dr. Strange, and Shang Chi coming up.
I will put it this way: Marvel’s great at thinking of all of their pieces of the world holistically, whether it’s other games, movies, TV shows, or comics. Bill Rosemann, who’s their VP of creative at Marvel Games, he’s a master editor. He’s been at Marvel for 25 or 26 years, so he knows everything that’s going on across the board for all the mediums. We don’t own that world, that’s their world, but we have Bill. He will help steer us in the right direction and say, “In view of the entire world, here’s what would make sense. Here’s what may or may not play well together.”
But it’s never ever a direct, “This has to tie into that.” That’s not ever the intention. MCU is an amazing thing, they have their world. You look at our game, and our world, and what our universe is, and our versions of the Avengers, and I think there’s room for both because we have different ways of accessing them. People are going to sit in a theater and watch something, that’s one thing. We’re going to watch at home on TV or streaming, that’s another thing. You going to read a comic, that’s another thing. Nobody’s sitting there saying, “That doesn’t look like Hulk in this comic.” That’s not the intent. It’s always, “Here’s the right shape and size for the medium that you’re consuming.”
There has been some backlash with Crystal’s character design. How do you respond to that?
Come with us on this journey. We’ll make you proud.
Do you have a timeline of when additional heroes will be added to the game?
We’re not discussing specifics on dates or cadence or anything like that yet. But we keep saying, “On an ongoing basis.” We don’t want people to ever get bored or to run out of stuff to do.
We’ve learned from a lot of very, very good products out there of what does or doesn’t work, and how quickly these amazing players who are particular fanatics can consume content. So how do we do this in a way that’s smart, and keeps them engaged, and rewards them for their time? That’s actually the biggest thing for us. If you want to play more, we want to give you more stuff to do.
Speaking of things that work and don’t work, what is Crystal Dynamics’ approach as far as microtransactions or season passes?
Simplest version is quite literally you have the core game. We’re going to keep adding heroes, new regions, and new stories at no additional costs on an ongoing basis. We have cosmetics. We’ve been very transparent about there being outfits you can only earn in-game and outfits you can only buy from the marketplace. That’s okay, if you want to invest into that particular lifestyle in a deep way. People buy Hulk T-shirts right now. You can buy outfits on our marketplace, but there’s tons of them you can earn simply by doing missions in the game. So that’s our path of looking at it, saying there’s no paywalls for gameplay. There’s never going to be an, “I can’t actually get this hero because I have to go do some other transactions.” We want the heroes to be like the Avengers. They keep growing and evolving.
Is there a costume that you’re particularly proud of?
I love Joe Fixit. It’s one of those things of reaching back into the archives and looking at it, then doing our version. We have Hulk in this beautiful, purple pinstriped suit with a fedora and the silk tie, it’s all unexpected. People who know, they’re like, “Oh my God, you have Joe Fixit. What?!”
That becomes something we get to take, and own, and do more. So people will start seeing that as, “Wow, I have so much agency over these characters. I can invest myself and make them mine, as opposed to some other version or vision that’s being directed towards me. This is mine to direct in the way I want to play it.” I think it will quickly change the story the more they get to see.
Is there a particular story arc, superhero, or villain you would really love to see brought into this game?
I think we’re doing it. That’s why we have A.I.M., a group who’s not a mustache-twirling villain. They’re sitting here saying, “No, science is the way. Logic is the way. Reason is the way.” Unchecked, uncontrolled powers are dangerous. We need to be able to think of this almost as an evolution of these kinds of companies right there. Look around at four or five tech companies you can think of today. “We’ll all be better if we’re connected, and all very similar, and all have our ways to talk to each other.” If you take that to maybe an illogical extreme, you get to see a sense that A.I.M.’s not vile.
They’re actually doing this because they think this is the better way for this planet to evolve. [Then you have] heroes who are saying, “No, the natural order of things is that people with the right power used in the right ways can actually benefit society.” So that immediately creates that kind of conflict for us. That’s a perfect story that we get to dive into that nobody else has in this way.
Any particular, maybe B-tier hero that you’re hoping to sneak in there?
Always. [Laughs]
I guess he’s not B-tier presently, but I have to ask because I’m very much a Star-Lord fan.
There are so many characters, I think Marvel has over 9,000 characters in their 80 years of history, which is insane, right? Because even when we first talked about this, it wasn’t, “You have to use this list.” It was, “What do you guys think? Do you want to make a new hero?”
And there’s so much to draw from. It’s very difficult to think we can be smarter than these guys. These guys have owned it and mastered it. So I think we have this incredible mantle of responsibility to both pay true loyalty to the fiction and the fan, but also add a little spice of something they haven’t seen yet. Something new that they get to play with.
I’m salivating about all the things that we can do and the amount of heroes that we want to add. I just hope when the players get their hands on it, they say, “Yes, we want more.” That’s the benefit of Crystal. We have a great community management team. We have a great world that we can reach into and listen to those folks and react.
There was a possibility early on of the game starring a custom character?
It is not off the table. I’ll put it that way.
Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, is your central figure. Why specifically choose her as the protagonist?
The best thing for her is that she’s fresh-faced, right? She’s new. She hasn’t been a part of other mediums. She’s been in comics, but [only since] 2013. It’s new enough that particularly the gaming fans will be like, “Who’s this character? Maybe I’ve seen her in other games or maybe comics or maybe an animated series.” It just gave us a new hook. This is kind of a cool character that has some great relatable problems that I can actually tap into, that’s on the cutting edge of becoming this major star that aligns well with anybody.
“Oh, you have power that you don’t know how to control yet. Oh, you are a fan of the Avengers, kind of like me.” So she actually has a very good viewpoint that very much synchronizes with the heroes and the players. Then you look around that, and you have the old guard, core heroes like [Tony] Stark and Thor. Now you have this point of view of, “I know these characters, and I love those characters just Kamala does.” I think it’s the magic mix that we’ve always wanted to do.
When Ms. Marvel first came onto the scene there was a lot of praise for the comic for featuring someone of a background you don’t often get to see in comics. Do you see this game as a chance to elevate more diverse characters like that?
Absolutely. If you look at Tomb Raider and look at all the stuff we’ve done at Crystal’s history, we’re huge proponents of breaking new ground and putting people out there, new heroes and heroines that people haven’t really experienced. We’re so damn proud of our studio and how much we care about every one of these heroes that we’ve worked with, be it our own, Tomb Raider, and now our own Avengers. It’s a big deal for us that we want these characters not just be relatable, but people you want to hang out with. You start blurring that line really quickly.
And we have a great story from Tomb Raider 2013 where we actually had a fan who was literally at the end of her rope, kind of in a mental breakdown kind of state. But then she actually played our game, and it changed her life. It literally pulled her back from committing suicide to saying, “What would Lara do?” We wrote a character and a story that connected with her so much fictionally that it actually physically changed her life. So if we can save a life with a video game, that’s freakin’ worth it. The idea that we have that kind of impact just makes my heart flutter.
That is pretty incredible. Since you mentioned Tomb Raider, would you say any of the DNA from those games is translated into Avengers?
It is, for sure. We have folks like Noah Hughes, our studio creative director. He’s been at Crystal 26 out of 27 years. So he knows everything. Scott Crows is our tech director of 21 years. These guys helped us reshape how we build games, the way we build our technology, and the way we actually build the versions of our gameplay. [We have] new blood like Shauna Sky, who comes from the Naughty Dog, who’s a creative director for this project. You have this nice blend of people who’ve done things a certain way and have worked and lived through the tomb Raider series, and said, “No, this is how we should really do this story-telling moment.” And then we added other folks like Dave Fifield, who comes off of the Halo and Call Of Duty franchises, and we talked about co-op, and bigger worlds, and what it means to play together.
I think we have this huge laundry list of people at Crystal blended with a lot of new blood that we had to add, including our new studio in Bellevue and our partners working out of Eidos Montreal. Oh my God, they’re so good at what they do. Blending all these groups together has let us assemble these heroes in a way that we didn’t even know was possible when we started this project. But I think it has helped transform us into a better company because of stuff we can do with it now.
