Marvel’s Midnight Suns preview: Superhero friendships forge an XCOM bond

Because it’s made by Firaxis Games, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, launching Dec. 2, already gets the rep that it’s XCOM Meet X-Men. It’s actually not, says Jake Solomon, the game’s creative director. Although both may be turn-based strategies games, one game was developed in close collaboration with video gamers who are the greatest storytellers: their fans.

“It is hard to beat a story that is created in the player’s head,” Solomon acknowledged to Polygon. The unique appeal inside 2012’s XCOM: The Enemy Unknown and 2016’s XCOM 2. It comes from emerging narratives fans created for their team.

“There’s some soldiers that I love in XCOM because they suck, even,” Solomon said. “You have some folks like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Ol’ Shifty over there. You can’t hit a goddamn shot!’ It’s tough to beat those stories.”

Marvel’s Midnight Suns doesn’t really have that. The game’s dozen characters, such as Ghost Rider, Deadpool and Doctor Strange, are not known in large numbers. However, they arrive with their personalities, strengths and weaknesses that have been established over 40, 50 or 60 years of comic book history. XCOM and its sequel, somewhat paradoxically, formed deeply personal attachments between players and characters because the latter were such a blank slate, which allowed Firaxis’ designers to focus almost entirely on gameplay and balance.

Garth DeAngelis, the game’s senior producer, knew that kind of purist approach would not serve such a lore-heavy game as Midnight Suns.

“We couldn’t just have these open-ended systems that didn’t have these preconceived personalities with these characters.” DeAngelis said. “So what the team said was, we have to create [a role-playing game]; it’s going to be more narrative-heavy, and we need to lean into what we love about these characters.”

For that to happen, Midnight Suns will implement a “friendship system” through which the player character — an all-new, user-generated superhero called The Hunter — forms bonds with Marvel characters as they lead them into battle and interact with them back at their secret base. Because of their fandom, some heroes might be a favourite to start the game. Midnight SunsOthers might be show-stealing surprise acts because they provide a tactical edge, whether in their basic abilities or the enhanced powers that only a well-developed friendship offers. In either instance, Midnight Suns They will have a nearly parasocial relationship between players and heroes. XCOM, if the player didn’t make up a story for a unit who otherwise had only a name and a flag on their back collar, the player was still responsible for their lives, which added enormous dramatic tension to otherwise ordinary tactical choices.

No, permadeath is not possible. Marvel’s Midnight Suns. “I couldn’t see a good way to make that work,” Solomon said. “We have a big roster, like 12 heroes, but it’s just not big enough for permadeath.” If Wolverine, Iron Man, and Captain America get wiped out on an operation, they’ll be injured and need time to recover, forcing the player to lean on others in the lineup.

Image: Firaxis Games/2K Games

Back at the heroes’ hideout, called The Abbey, players will find a strategic layer similar to the base-building in the XCOM franchise. The Abbey is located in the heart of In. Midnight SunsUpgrades will be available in the form modifier cards. These can be brought to missions and random drawn. Similar to XCOM’s choices, unlocking cards can be done by assigning cards to certain heroes. A favored soldier will get either the finest gear or the latest plasma weapon after in-game researchers have developed it.

“You’ll eventually be able to really modify the cards, but you will have resource constraints, so, who do you really want to give these very, very powerful modifications to?” DeAngelis said. “Who do you want to upgrade first? There really are gameplay mechanics under that, where you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m giving this to my boy Blade first, before Cap, even though they both have the option here, because Blade’s on my A-squad.’”

The benefits of friendship will also be similar, though players won’t have the luxury to build as many close relationships as they want. Solomon said players will be able to do that with “three, maybe four” heroes in a playthrough. It takes effort. Not only must players take a favored teammate on mission after mission, they’ll be presented with hang-out opportunities and other social, role-playing decisions back in The Abbey to strengthen the friendship.

“Your first one [comes] at least halfway through the game,” Solomon said, meaning the first fully developed relationship, with all of the combat benefits that involves.

“Jake makes fun of me because I spread the love with my friendships,” DeAngelis said.

“Oh my God, that annoys the shit out of me,” Solomon said, “Because that’s not how the system’s supposed to be used! And I’m so terrified people will do that!”

“He gets in my face, like, ‘what are you doing? Are you actually playing?’” DeAngelis laughed. “I’m like, ‘Listen man, I don’t know when I’m gonna need whoever.’ So I want to make sure I’m leveling up with everybody.”

All of these points are not meant to diminish the role or importance of The Hunter (an all-new, genderless character) Firaxis created in collaboration with Marvel. “The Hunter is the star of the show, alongside Peter Parker, alongside Steve Rogers, alongside Tony Stark,” DeAngelis said. “Jake was a big advocate for giving the player a player character.”

“I’m a very, very hardcore Marvel Comics guy,” Solomon said — which partly explains the origins of Midnight Suns’ narrative, which reaches back to a crossover story arc almost 30 years old. “But there was a little trepidation on our side, because we’ve never worked with the IP, and we’ve always been creatively independent. It was almost as if I had been testing that initial call with Marvel. [them]. ‘We want to do this, what do you think about that?’ We were almost looking for them to say, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do that,’ and then we’d say, ‘OK, cool, well, this isn’t for us then.’”

Image: Firaxis Games/2K Games

Marvel Games was able to join that conversation over five years later.

“Their reaction was, ‘That sounds awesome. We’ve never done that before,’” Solomon said. “But they said, ‘It’s going to be hard.’ If you’re saying you’re going to make […] — not just a superhero — a Marvel Superhero, and you’re going to stand them next to Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man, characters that have existed for decades, and all of these heroes are going to end up looking to this character, then they have to have a meaningful back story.”

DeAngelis stated that they also have potential backstories, based on their decisions. The first is the noble, lawful-good route Captain America chooses. Another is the more result-driven and antiheroic method that fans associate with Wolverine and Johnny Blaze.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns Launches Dec. 2, for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Windows PC), Xbox One (Xbox One) and Xbox Series X. DeAngelis, Solomon, and the game were delayed slightly from their original March launch windows. But Solomon isn’t worried the game will be overlooked, or that it will be fighting against the white-hot Marvel Snap collectible card game for the same audience’s attention.

“I’m genuinely naïve, but I just don’t think there’s anyway way Marvel Snap hurts us,” Solomon said. “If anything that’s got to help ups. I just think generally that’s going to help us even though we’re so different.”