![]() Guardians showcased exactly how most thought the Avengers game would play, making the Live Service angle look much worse by comparison. Whether it was the writing on the wall in mid development of Avengers or Eidos Montreal sticking to their guns, the end result was far and away an improvement on the former. Considering Square Enix thought the Live Service model would somehow fit an Avengers game, it’s not too far-fetched to assume they’d copy and paste the same mechanics and systems into another one of their Marvel projects. Each character could have their own playstyle and skins to buy from the in-game shop. There’s a bevy of Marvel characters to choose from that could’ve been drip fed to the player base in a similar fashion to Avengers. One where the Guardians travel the galaxy fighting enemies, collecting loot, upgrading gear and participating in raids. ![]() One could envision a Live Service game structured similar to Destiny. Upon its reveal, many were concerned that the Guardians would suffer a similar fate to Avengers. ![]() What would have been a drop in the bucket a decade ago stood out in a sea of Live Service and open world games. Developed by Eidos Montreal of Deus Ex fame, Guardians is a narrative focused, character driven, linear, action adventure game. The Guardians of the Galaxy game was one of the surprise hits of 2021. It must sting extra badly when directly compared to another Square Enix Marvel release no less than a year later. For Square Enix, the downfall of Avengers must have been a hard pill to swallow both economically and reputation-wise. ![]() Succeed and be profitable for years, fail and be erased from existence, never to be played again. That’s the risk any game runs when being greenlit but Live Service games are especially volatile. Anthem, Crucible, Babylon’s Fall, Radical Heights, Evolve, Battleborn. More often than not, Live Service games that fail right out the gate all end the same. Fallout 76 proves that anything is possible. Sometimes they’re able to recover and bounce back from less than stellar launches. No game is guaranteed to succeed, that goes double for Live Service games. Paragon looked to ape some of DOTA or League of Legends popularity. Law Breakers tried and failed to muscle in on Overwatch’s territory. Regardless of the quality of the product or the enjoyment from its fan base, it was clear Marvel’s Avengers was at odds with its identity and the failure to embrace something unique was partially responsible for its downfall.Īvengers was not the first game to chase trends and fail and it certainly won’t be the last. Crystal Dynamics plans on ending active development and the game is to be delisted from digital storefronts on September 30th, 2023. While there’s a myriad of reasons why Avengers failed, the end result was the same. While Destiny is a great foundation to start with, it’s clear Avengers was using it more as a template with a Marvel paint job. Everything from the gear system to the hubs and vendors to the UI screams Destiny. The similarities between Destiny and Marvel’s Avengers are staggering. Instead, Marvel’s Avengers would look to capitalize on the Live Service model. A typical single player release could have resulted in said home run but that was not the direction that Square Enix and/or Crystal Dynamics decided to take. On paper, a big budget Avengers title helmed by Tomb Raider vets Crystal Dynamics should be a home run. One of those titles is the subject of this piece, Square Enix’s ill fated Avengers game.Ĥ) The Good, The Bad and Square Enix Avengers: Some Assembly Required Games like Warframe, Fallout 76, Anthem, Genshin Impact, The Division, Overwatch, Apex Legends, Star Wars Battlefront, Outriders and more were constantly trying to capture that lightning in a bottle. Regardless of if the title needed to be or not, Live Service games were coming out of the woodwork towards the end of the 2010s. So profitable in fact, it started a trend. This model wasn’t just an innovative new frontier for games but also a profitable one. Games such as Destiny, Rainbow Six Siege or Fortnite have been going strong for years, constantly receiving new content, updates, events and expansions that keep these games fresh and exciting. While MMOs like World of Warcraft popularized this concept back in the mid to late 2000s, the 8th generation of consoles allowed for this model to be a more achievable feat for developers. Also known as Games as a Service, this model did away with the traditional singular release of a game, instead moving towards a more organic lifespan over the course of years. The most exciting yet divisive of these ideas was the Live Service model. The dawn of the 8th generation of consoles brought with it new and innovative ideas and games.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |