A deep dive into Black Panther’s debut in Marvel’s Avengers

Next week marks the release of War for Wakanda, the biggest content drop Marvel’s Avengers has received since its release in 2020. Since it was announced in the Crystal Dynamics roadmap for the 2021 game, it has been the entry that many. Players have circled on the calendar as the primary destination. We haven’t had a chance to get down to business with the new expansion yet, but we did get to see it in action and talk to the team to learn more about Black Panther’s introduction to the game.

Wandering Wakanda

As well as adding new story campaign missions in the new Wakanda biome, players can also look forward to exploring the area to find iconic Wakanda locations such as Shuri’s Laboratory and the Wakanda War Room at the Royal Palace Outpost. . New enemy types, two named villains, drop zones, and villain sectors round out the expansion to provide players with more content than any previous addition to Marvel’s Avengers.

My video tour of War for Wakanda shows the first two missions of the single-player story campaign, as well as Birnin Zana’s outpost. After a short scene chronicling the backstory of Wakanda and its Vibranium source, we hear Zawavari plead with T’Challa to reopen the borders so he can help in the ongoing fight against AIM. However, it may not be necessary for Black Panther to re-enter the world to participate in the fight, as Ulysses Klaue has brought the fight to Wakanda.

Klaue enters Wakanda in search of Vibranium, and Black Panther has to interrupt his plans to bleed the isolated nation of its most precious resource. The jungles of Wakanda are lush and beautiful, but Klaue’s forces aren’t exactly respectful of natural splendor. Their first appearance features them placing charges to explode. Fortunately, Black Panther arrives just in time and stops the explosives from detonating.

After a confrontation with the mercenaries, the player takes control of T’Challa as he wanders through the jungle. Black Panther is agile, with extensive wall jumping and wall running abilities. T’Challa may not be as chatty as his joke-ready counterparts like Tony Stark, but Christopher Judge (better known as the current voice of Kratos in God of War) delivers the lines of Black Panther with conviction.

“We were thinking about who our T’Challa was – we knew we wanted him to be older, a more seasoned king, a more seasoned Black Panther, and we had this wish list of actors that we thought, ‘We want that caliber. These people won’t say. Yeah, but that’s what we’re looking for, ‘”says writer Hannah MacLeod.“ And Chris Judge was number one. We thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to do it,’ but that’s what we were looking for. But we thought, ‘We might ask. I mean, you never know! The worst thing he can say is no, ‘and then he said yes! And I lost my damn head. “

When T’Challa arrives on the scene, we first see him in action. Turns out Black Panther is just as fast in combat as he is in transit. By pouncing and stopping, Black Panther proves that he is more than capable in battle and appears to be a lot of fun in fights. Combining ranged and melee attacks, Black Panther eliminates a group of enemies with the agility of the big cat from which it takes its name.

Throughout Wakanda, groups of corrupted Vibranium appear, as a result of Klaue’s extraction of the resource. While Black Panther doesn’t know exactly what the cause is right away, he does know one thing: Corrupted needles must be destroyed to prevent them from spreading. The following sequence has him face various enemies while trying to destroy three of these groups. After completing this combat sequence, T’Challa activates a shortcut to the heart of the city, where he hopes to meet Okoye and Shuri. Along the way, he comes across loot chests, secret tunnels, and tons of scenic views. Unfortunately, he returns to a city under attack and doesn’t exactly get the welcome party he was hoping for.

Without going into too much detail beyond this point, T’Challa continues to work with his fellow Wakandans to uncover the mystery of exactly what Klaue is up to. As you play you get not only a ton of banter between the characters, but also a lot of backstory about the nation. I left my video demo excited to see where the story goes from here. It also quickly becomes apparent that while Black Panther is undoubtedly the star of this expansion, this is still a game about the Avengers.

“It’s kind of, what are the themes of Wakanda that we wanted to explore, and then how does T’Challa fit in with the rest of the Avengers?” MacLeod says. “Every time we add new characters, our discussion is always, ‘What were they doing before Day A? Where were they on Day A? And then what was their reaction?'”

Before the events of Marvel’s Avengers main story, T’Challa was in talks with Captain America about the possibility of forming an alliance with the Avengers, but after A-Day, where Captain America was thought to have been killed. , the King of Wakanda broke away. conversations and closed the borders. “The only person I trusted, the designated adult in the group, had left, so they thought it best to protect themselves and close the borders of Wakanda,” says MacLeod.

Showing her Klaue

Wakanda is impressively detailed and unlike any other biome in the game, But for gamers who are tired of battling endless AIM employees and robots, the highlight is the opportunity to take on new types of enemies. “The benefit of being a game as a service and something that we can continually update is that we can look at new mission designs, new objectives, and add ways to vary that gaming experience for people,” says senior game designer Scott Walters. . “With enemies, we can introduce new combat requirements that change the way the fight unfolds. […] We wanted to add new enemy archetypes to the Wakanda mission. It made sense because there was a new villain who has his own faction, his own recruits under him. “

The main characters that T’Challa faces in War for Wakanda are the Klaue Company, a band of mercenaries with abilities that players have not seen before. These enemies don suits of corrupted Vibranium, which can become unstable if they land a successful chain of strikes. When this happens, they take less damage and shock reactions degrade. The Bruiser wields a massive ax, while the Strategist is a support enemy who deploys small drones around the battlefield to upgrade other mercenaries in the area. Meanwhile, some sonic-themed mercenaries have an ability called Sonic Aura, which protects the shielded mercenary from projectiles and melee attacks. Standard mercenaries with weapons also help fill out the list of enemies you face.

In addition to those enemies, players can expect to face two new named villains. While everyone knew that Klaue was going to appear from the first trailer, another villain that players will recognize from both the comics and the MCU appears. Crossbones, a brutal adversary who has a history with various Avengers, joins the fight alongside Klaue.

“I think what’s really fun about the sheer number of Marvel villains on our list is that we can delve into what would be the most interesting twist we’ve done before,” says MacLeod. “Crossbones has some of the most iconic comedic dialogue ever because he’s having so much fun, but he also has some cool tricks up his sleeve. There’s always a lot of discussion about who we think our villains should be. Klaue doesn’t really get his hands dirty with it. way like other villains, so we needed him to have a character who wouldn’t have a problem with that. “

Fit for a king

Black Panther is one of the most dynamic characters in the Avengers. Not only is he fast and powerful, but his skill tree allows him to perform acrobatic skills to take out enemies. “When we started to look at the design of what his movement and combat was going to be like, we knew we really wanted to capture that agile, acrobatic nature of his combat, and still celebrate the strength and power that he has.” says senior game designer Scott Walters. “We looked at reference images from the movies, we looked at reference comics. We had Gui Dasilva, who was the stunt double for Black Panther in the movies, come and did the motion capture for us.”

Whether you’re spamming the light attack button to perform a series of spinning strikes and somersaults, or launching the enemy into the air and slicing through them, King T’Challa’s moveset allows him to take on all challengers with ease. It can even pounce on human-sized enemies and hold them down while hitting them.

On the ranged side of your skill tree, dagger spears, which can be upgraded to be heat seeking, piercing, or rapid fire. However, real powers come into play with Black Panther’s intrinsic abilities, which involve the kinetic energy capabilities of his suit. By blocking incoming attacks, the intrinsic meter increases. Using the energy in that meter, he can perform powerful finishing moves, unleash a blast of energy that knocks down enemies and increases damage for 10 seconds, or use devastating heavy attacks.

Once you delve into Black Panther’s heroic abilities, it begins to shine. With beads that allow you to heal allies and stun enemies, your Heroic Support is versatile. His heroic assault builds an upgradeable Vibranium spear that can pierce and nail targets. Finally, his heroic ultimate summons summons Bast, the protector of the panther, to attack enemies on behalf of the team.

The road ahead

Crystal Dynamics’ foray into the Marvel Universe received praise for its single-player story content. However, the multiplayer part, where the studio hoped it would keep the game for gamers long-term, has come under fire over the course of its first year. To the team’s credit, he has continued to add new content and various improvements to the title during its first 12 months, with only the story content now exceeding the 25 hour mark. But it remains to be seen what the tipping point or content release will be that could bring a large community of regular gamers back into the fold.

Up to this point, players have received several free content releases, including Kate Bishop’s Operation: Taking AIM, Hawkeye’s Operation: Future Imperfect, and the Supreme Scientist Cosmic Cube event. The most anticipated content that players have yet to look forward to after this release is the PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man, which does not yet have a release window beyond “2021.” On top of that, players will still get the new Patrol mode and a new Omega-level threat, but Crystal Dynamics isn’t ready to talk about anything except what’s already announced.

War for Wakanda is available on August 17 at no additional cost to all Marvel’s Avengers players. If you haven’t been up to speed on the game, you can check out our 2021 content roadmap breakdown here to see what’s been added recently, or see the full list of all playable characters in Marvel’s Avengers here.