XCOM Avengers? Yes please!

 When... I need it...

Let me clear something up real quick about myself. Though I may have criticked Square Enix's Avengers heavily, will continue to do so, and even shared my misgivings about the project before it was even launched, do not for a second believe that I am not a fan of Marvel or Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I mean I grew up reading and watching this stuff years before the MCU, so I've got Marvel deeply ingrained in my bones and even closer to me than DC, even if a lot of the times I prefer Detective Comic's approach to character driven storytelling. And I have, for a stupidly long time now, been wanting that perfect team-Marvel game to come out for so very long, which is why when it looked like that game would be Square's Avengers, I was super critical in ensuring it would be exactly what we needed. X-men got a stellar game in 'Legends' (and also 'Children of the Atom', but that's neither here nor there. Love that game though.) I just wanted the rest of universe to get the game they deserved. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is great, and I'm so happy that franchise came back, but I want something that can focus in on a single team and give us their strengths and weaknesses as closely to the source material as possible, without having to worry about 'larger balancing' or any of that administrative stuff.

These are the sorts of ideas I used to spend a lot of time dreaming about before the MCU started and it became clear that Marvel no longer considered pursing games of viable interest anymore. (With the few that were put out being unbelievable trash.) And yet in all the realms of my adolescent imagineering (which spawned a few ideas which, in hindsight, were just as fanciful and impossible to achieve as Dreamworld) never once did I stick together the concept of a game made both of the Marvel characters and the XCOM game type. (Probably because I hadn't played XCOM back then and didn't know what it was.) So what is my raw reaction to the concept? Why did I never consider this? This is a brilliant idea. Good lord. When does this come out? I need it in my soul, I NEED IT!

But where does this concept come from and why am I salivating over it like it's a turkey-leg in the middle of the apocalypse? Because of the age old world of video game leaks, where Dev teams go in order to beta test the reaction to their projects. (Allegedly.) Apparently some rando on Reddit rocked up with news that Firaxis, the superstar team behind the brilliant XCOM revival, were currently working on a 'Codename CODA', which unfortunately isn't a project to adapt the entirety of Battle Tendency into a rhythm action game to the tune of 'Bloody Stream' and other classics from that artist. (Maybe next time, eh?) This is said to be a turn based action game based on the world of Avengers and voiced by "famous actors", implying that the actual cast of Avengers will be involved this time around! (Unless they're using that to refer to famous voice actors again. Fool me once...)

 Now this would be just a rumor that I would pay barely any credence to, but then Jason Schreier turned around and confirmed it and that's a man who does his homework. In an industry full of folk who've never done anything more than toothless clickbait articles for their entire 'video game journalism' career, Schreier actually has a stellar record of meaningful reporting on issues of import, leaks and the occasional click-bait sprinkled in there too. What I'm trying to say is; he's a man with a reputation and the resources to justify that reputation, which instantly shot this concept up from idle backyard speculation to practically triple-confirmed fact. I'm just upset why the man himself wasn't the one initially talking about this. (I get reserving some info for the benefit of the project's anonymity, but he turned around and confirmed it in a second anyway. Maybe he had to do some digging, I dunno.)

The leaker also mentioned some other gaming tidbits in his Reddit leaking career, like some NBA news (As though those weirdos are actually capable of reading) and something about a new Spin-off Borderlands game featuring everyone's favourite joke-character grown-old Tiny Tina. So lukewarm teases basically, all around this little golden nugget of coolness that is XCOM Avengers. Is this the line-up perhaps heading for this upcoming E3, an event which will not only be online once again but is apparently going to be condensed into one concentrated show with an Award event at the end? (Yes, E3 is going to start hosting awards. For their game trailers. If I was Geoff Keighley I'd be pissed right now.) Some seem to think it's unlikely, with these games maybe just being teases for the far future, but in my heart of hearts I need a stellar Avengers game at least teased so that the Marvel gaming audience doesn't lose hope as Square Enix's game slowly chokes to death on it's own mediocrity.

So that means right now all we've got is solid word that this is happening with potentially no details until next year. That sucks. But even in such a lamentable state, we can still come together to laud what might be in rampant speculation based on what we know about both franchises. Firstly, we're probably looking at an XCOM Chimera Squad style game where each character has these distinct abilties that can be improved over the course of the game. This would allow for special team builds, of course, and throwing in a little bit of randomly generated special items would allow for the replayability to seep into the game. I'd imagine the game will be scenario based, with some sort of overarching home base like Avengers HQ or the Shield Helicarrier, from which an overview of the Earth will be monitored and several operations will launch. I hope we'll be dealing with several overarching threats at once, similar to Chimera Squad, so that tough decisions can pop up about who to deal with first and how that might effect the overall campaign. (Maybe lean a little into Crackdown 1's main story for inspiration there.) In fact, if we look at this with a discerning eye, Chimera Squad might very well have been a test run for an Avengers style game in this genre, so that'll definitely be the place to look for the curious.

I think that where Chimera Squad sort of stumbled up on was the similarity of encounters, which always followed the 'breach and clear' method that become pretty methodical once you figured out the ways to exploit it. An Avengers XCOM game might want to lean more into how XCOM 2 handled encounters, with an initial position of advantage from which the player can choose how the mission plays out. Team synergistic abilities will certainly have to be played up upon, MUA style, mistakes should be punishing with easy team knockouts, (I expect Marvel won't let us straight just kill the Avengers) and I personally would love it if a game like this could lean into a lot of the more dynamic mission elements like we saw from XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Bosses in that would just turn up mid mission and completely evolve the circumstance until they were dealt with, it made the campaign feel alive and actively competitive.

I'm simply overdosing on all the possibilities of a game like this, and could sit here spouting 'maybes' and 'what-ifs' until the world freezes over. At the end of the day Firaxis have oodles of talent behind them and a world of burgeoning potential in Marvel, that's a combo that could dream up easily the best Avengers game ever made upon release. Of course, part of this does make me mourn when I hoped that 'XCOM 3: Time for the fishies' (working title) would be their next project, but in my eyes, the more they perfect their craft inbetween major XCOM entries the better it'll be for the series in the long run. What a brilliant combination I never would have seen coming, what mad genius concocted this collaboration from their laboratory and why aren't they in charge of all Marvel digital content at this point? Dang, I haven't been this excited for an upcoming game since... oh- I'm sad now...