Marvel’s Midnight Suns from Team XCOM Announced at Gamescom 2021

The next game from the Firaxis XCOM team takes place in a dark corner of the Marvel Comics universe. Noble Marvel Midnight Sun, the development of the turn-based role-playing game is led by Jake Solomon, designer of XCOM: unknown enemy and XCOM 2.

The big draw here is the heroes and antiheroes, many of whom have never worked together before in any previous Marvel stories. Firaxis confirmed that Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Blade, Nico Minoru, Magik, Robbie Reyes as Ghost Rider, and Wolverine will be playable. There will be a total of 13 allied heroes in total, drawn from the Avengers, X-Men, Runaways, and more.

Revealed Wednesday at Gamescom 2021, publisher 2K Games plans to bring Marvel Midnight Sun to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (via Steam and Epic Game Store), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in March 2022.

Polygon sat down with Solomon ahead of time to learn more about the ambitious new game.

The Rise of the Midnight Sons Arc started in 1992 with a Ghost Rider comic series. In it, a rogue gallery of antiheroes, including Dr. Strange, Frank Drake, Morbius, Jonny Blaze, and Blade, must band together to stop Lilith, the Mother of Demons, from taking over the world. Solomon told Polygon that it’s his favorite arc from that period in Marvel Comics history, but the game itself wasn’t really his idea.

“It was Marvel who reached out to us after we did XCOM 2Solomon said. “When I had a call with the Marvel team, there was a Marvel Executive Vice President on the call and they had very specific comments on [that game’s notorious] final mission, and a lot of people started chipping in, and I was like, well, these guys are really big fans. They immediately understood the kind of games we do. “

During the course of designing the game, Solomon said his team had to scrap almost everything that had come before.

“There are no shared mechanics between XCOM and the Midnight sunsSolomon said.

On Marvel Midnight Sun, players will take on the role of The Hunter, an entirely new character designed in partnership with Marvel Comics. The Hunter is there to replace the player and will be highly customizable in both appearance and combat ability. Solomon said that there are more than 40 different superpowers available to the player across a broad spectrum, from light (reflecting the most traditional of superheroes in the game, such as Iron Man and Captain America) to dark (reflecting more antiheroes. hidden like Ghost Rider and Blade).

Players will embark on turn-based missions with three other superheroes. They and their compatriots’ skills will level up and improve over time. The way in which those skills are advanced is perhaps the biggest departure from the XCOM franchise. Between missions, players will have free rein to explore The Abbey, an entirely new headquarters area designed in partnership with Marvel Comics, and its grounds. Solomon said that players will explore it in the third person, using their time to develop relationships with the other superheroes.

“Robbie Reyes, the new Ghost Rider, may want to play video games. Captain Marvel may want to go train with you. Tony Stark may want to play cards, ”Solomon said. “You choose how to hang out with them, you choose how you talk to them, you give them gifts. exist [also] social clubs around The Abbey that you can join, and that affects your friendships with heroes. […] Some of these are quite cheerful [since] the story is dark enough. “

As the newly resurrected Hunter, players are the only ones able to stop Lilith and her minions from destroying the world. But while the stakes are high, the game will not include permanent death, another departure from the classic XCOM formula.

“We don’t have permanent death because the fantasy is so different,” Solomon said. “The fantasy at XCOM is the fantasy of soldiers clinging tightly to a superior enemy. And in Midnight suns very, very quickly, from the very beginning, I realized that the top enemy in this game is the superheroes. So instead, the bad guys are terrified of you. “

Focusing fire to defeat a single powerful enemy was key to conquering the puzzle-like missions in XCOM and XCOM 2. This time around, players will defeat multiple enemies at once with powerful attacks that have a much greater impact and range than traditional plasma or laser weaponry. Solomon said that players will also interact more with the environment, jumping out of cars, lowering lamp posts, and kicking objects all over the map.

“You’re doing these really big moves, these epic moves, so the mechanics are completely different,” Solomon said, “which keeps you scratching the same itch, because it’s a turn-based tactics match where you’re controlling the But the fantasy is very different. And that means the mechanics are 100% different. “

Solomon said that the high-flying combat style was not initially in the game. More than two years ago, his team sat down to create something that was much closer to the original XCOM formula. But the theming of the game itself and the characters on the map demanded that they change course, ultimately developing something very different. In fact, when refactoring the game, his team spent a lot of time creating their own board game with a variety of collectibles. HeroClix figures between them.

“That was surprising and scary at first,” Solomon said, “to realize, ‘Oh man, we have to do a completely different game.’ But it’s great, because it gives you a different feel to XCOM, sure. “

Today’s announcement was accompanied by an elaborate CGI trailer. Firaxis plans to show the game for the first time on September 1.