After the E3 reveal of Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers, a bold action video game starring Marvel's premier super-team, there was speculation that the upcoming title would be in the same continuity as Marvel's Spider-Man on PlayStation 4. However, according to Crystal Dynamics studio head Scott Amos, this isn't quite the case.
While noting that Avengers is influenced by Spider-Man, perhaps most notably with both games including Taskmaster as a villain, Amos clarified that Avengers is very much a standalone title without denying outright that both games were in the same interactive universe.
"We look at any great game and ask what we can steal from them. Looking at Spider-Man, it was close to our hearts for sure, but think of all the games that have shipped in the last ten months," Amos admitted in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. "We look at it with Marvel. They're very savvy. They know what's going on in their world, from movies to shows to games. They help keep us abreast of what is going on and what's the right and wrong ways for us to reference each other. At the end of the day, this is Avengers. We're building The Avengers universe. This is our thing."
Amos revealed that unlike most licensed work, Crystal Dynamics is working closely with Marvel Games to develop a new world that feels immediately like the iconic Marvel Universe, yet very much its own autonomous adaptation.
"They're not just collaborators, they're partners. They're embedded with us as a team. We talk to them daily. We send them everything we're working on, we have builds they play and get feedback. We bring them to the studio and go through it together." Amos said. "We have this amazing collaboration with them that lets us do a little of the iconic fan service and a lot of doing an original take that makes it feel fresh and familiar."
Featuring Nolan North as Iron Man, Troy Baker as Bruce Banner, Laura Bailey as Black Widow, Jeff Schine as Captain America and Travis Willingham as Thor, Marvel's Avengers, developed by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal and published by Square, will be released May 15, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia.