Marvel’s Avengers game demo was torn apart for its optics and felt scripted. When looking at these demos it is always hard to tell how truly they represent gameplay. Avengers game delivered perfect moves and looked like a powerful team. However, fans like us are always interested in what happens when moves aren’t perfect, what happens when they take damage, what happens when someone like Captain America stumbles?

Gameplay designer Vince Napoli says it is crucial to preserve the superhero fantasy even in hit reacts.

Even missing jumps, it needs to look like they gave it their all. So we go through and do a pass, and say, ‘Captain America is going to use his shield to grind on the ground to recover because that’s what he would do. He’s going to make use of his environment. He’s going to keep looking forward because he has his eyes on the battlefield at all times.’ That’s the best thing about combat driven character games is that

you look at the character and start designing your combat around them.

Shaun Escayg from Crystal Dynamics adds that just like films and books many of their failings come from character arcs. It’s kind of a “dysfunctional family.” And some of that translates into the gameplay, he said.

If Escayg is speaking about how canon affects the dynamic of certain character combinations in co-op play, Avengers could actually be an interesting game to play.

Source: Extracted from Edge Magazine Issue #336