What If...? proved the versatility and popularity of the Marvel multiverse while also opening up a whole new world of possibilities to the MCU franchise. Video game adaptations have always been difficult for the MCU, but a What If...?/Ultimate Alliance fusion could be the perfect way to go.
Though the Ultimate Alliance franchise has always been wildly popular and done firmly well in terms of its sales, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order came as something of a disappointment to fans who found it to be more of the same. Despite the MCU's unprecedented popularity in both movies and television, that success never quite translates to the world of video games. Though early MCU tie-in games for films like Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger had their charms, keeping the interconnected canon that served as the backbone to the film franchise's popularity at an arm's distance always limited their impact.
By fusing Ultimate Alliance with What If...?, Marvel may well have the perfect solution to dropping a bombshell hit into the world of gaming. What If...? exploded open the continuity of the MCU by exploring an alternate universe where minor deviations in the familiar timeline created a domino effect of cataclysmic proportions. By the end of the show's first season, a cross-universe team-up of its characters created the Guardians of the Multiverse as heroes who would otherwise never meet had the opportunity to team up and defeat an Infinity Stone-studded Ultron. Such a climactically unique blend of Marvel heroes should be familiar to video game fans -- after all, that's the exact appeal that Ultimate Alliance had when the franchise first debuted in 2006.
From its basic setup to its animation style, everything about What If...? would be perfect for a team-up game. Not only could the game take place somewhere in the MCU's multiverse, allowing players to make massively impactful decisions to shape the world in their own individual ways, but there would be no ideas off-limits that creators could explore. Whether they included preexisting fan-favorite characters like Party Thor or Captain Carter, or concepts yet unseen in the series like a monstrously mutated Spider-Man or a magically-infused War Machine, there is an infinite world of imaginative possibilities.
What players enjoy already in the Ultimate Alliance franchise is the unique blend of teams they can create as they explore a fantastical Marvel world leveling up and making decisions that individualize the world to what they want. What If...? is all about the ripple effects such decisions can make, offering fans the perfect opportunity to raise the stakes higher and more creatively than ever. Uatu already broke his vow to never interfere in mortal affairs. Perhaps by the end of the series, he sees the importance that creating new teams could have in the multiverse, putting players in Uatu's position as they become not just passive observers to the events of the MCU but active participants within them.
What If...? is only the latest installment in the growing MCU empire that first began with movies and now dominates the small screen as well. Video games are the natural progression to that expansion. Rather than building up their own game from the ground up, following the Ultimate Alliance template would be the perfect recipe for success that could make such an endeavor a surefire bet.