Designed to appeal to the North American audience

It's no secret that one of the largest complaints about Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is its visuals. While fans have been welcoming of the game mechanics, including the new active switch system, the game's overall looks tend to garner negative feedback.

A comparison to Marvel vs. Capcom 3's graphical style is often made, with fans noticing a glaring difference between the series' comic book-influenced, cell-shaded style and Marvel Infinite's darker, more realistic approach.

In Capcom's latest development report, we learned a bit more about the mindset behind MvCI's visual design. Apparently, the game's art and visuals set out to appeal to the North American audience.

"During development, we held video conferences nearly every other day with Marvel to exchange ideas," the report notes. "These discussions focused on not only core story and game elements, but also involved tailoring the game to each market through meticulously fine-tuning the game’s art, animations and other elements to better reflect North American trends that differ from those in Japan."

While it's hard to say what trends are being cited here, one could surmise that this is a reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Back in June, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite producer Mike Evans noted that the game has a "cinematic" look to it. Characters seem to resemble their movie counterparts more than the comics, especially a hero like Hawkeye who looks as though he was ripped straight from The Avengers films.

Capcom has also pushed to implement a cinematic story experience that the report explains is aimed at entertaining Marvel fans and newcomers.

Though we've heard that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's roster selection isn't directly tied to the MCU, there are several choices that were definitely inspired by current and upcoming films. Fans also believe that the lack of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters in the game is a result of the cinematic rights battle.

At the end of the day, it appears that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's art style was largely influenced by the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Capcom has already shown that they are open to making changes to the visuals. After the game's E3 2017 trailer, fans were extremely vocal about Chun-Li's face, which resulted in her receiving a makeover before launch.

Though the improvements made were nice, I still feel that a graphics overhaul could greatly improve the game's reception.