When Choices don't actually matter

 Your actions have consequences

I actually remember my first time booting up Telltale's The Walking Dead and seeing that ominous message fade onto the screen amid a wall of black. 'Your actions will have consequences' blinked into life and hung for a time, ensuring the message really squirmed into your gut and nestled in your psyche. I'll be honest, it unnerved me. I wasn't throwing my head up and shouting "Finally, a game where things matter!", instead I was glancing to-and-fro, trying to exactly pinpoint how I typically like to play games and what sort of mess that might land me in. Could I accidentally screw up the entire story by not taking it utterly serious from day one? Would the main character instantly explode if I failed to select the perfect rhythm of choices? How serious are the 'consequences' we're talking about? I saw it as a threat directly against the laid back, see how things go, way I used to play narrative based video games, and maybe that was a jolt I needed in order to pay more attention and care about these games.

Obviously it didn't take long for a bit of experience with these types of games, all of whom started with that exact same plodding flash card, for me to realise that my 'actions' would only actually have a very limited set of 'consequences' and usually at highly specific moments where the actions are blindingly obvious. "Will you help the annoying guy or the useless woman in the middle of the zombie attack? Bare in mind, the other probably ain't gonna make it." Titles like these talk a big game about how branching the plot is, or how every single butterfly trod on will cause a cataclysm one world over, but in truth they're limited by the plot and the writers. You can't make every choice lead to some unforeseen consequence, else people will be too terrified to make any choices for fear that they'll screw everything up! (Not to mention the sheer vast range of options and story twists that would take in order to nail down to the wall perfectly.) But some fans can find this to be a bit of a betrayal in that they very much expected for their every choice to become a new plot point. So I wanted to explore some games who flounder or succeed on that very promise.

Take Cyberpunk for instance, being a game that very much sold itself on being a heavily choice-driven experience, but which famously didn't live up to that nearly as much as fans wanted. One of the most commonly quoted points of contention is the 'origin' system, wherein players would get the chance to choose who their character was before the storyline and that would influence the way they would interact with the story. Similar to how a lot of the more hardcore RPGs function. However, that origin ended up influencing only the very beginning of the story and as the plot went on, people found themselves only really being given an influencing part in the main plot at very sparring moments. Most annoying for some, being the fact that some conversations would give you a chance to offer an alternative option (even requiring a skill check to be passed in order to raise the point to begin with) only for your opinion to be overturned in favour of where the game wants you to go. Presumably the option is just there for characterisation in showing how smart or capable the player is then? It mostly just frustrated instead.

Pillars of Eternity is a game that doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of narrative hatred, even though it does actually handle it's origin choices very similarly. In that when you select where you came from, what your species is, and what you do; oftentimes that comes up very rarely in conversation, and when it does it comes as mere flavour text that is then contributes nothing tangible to the actual scene or interaction. The sequel does a much better job of this, but in the first game the only point I can recall where something tangible can be done depending on what your character is, was in the very beginning of the game where you find some braziers which can only be lit if your character is a fire god-like. But even that doesn't make any sense because you actually find torches littered all over the place, why can't they light the braziers? Of course, the rest of the game has a lot of choices and branching quests independent of your character creation choices, so this is more a 'drop in the bucket' problem for Pillars, but Obsidian did take steps to rectify it for the next game so it was definitely a recognisable problem.

On the other side of the spectrum we have games like Deus Ex, where we are presented with a world where choices do matter. Now by it's very nature, Deus Ex is a series where player choice shapes the experience, as this is a stealth-based immersive sim, and so building your character to be better at hacking defences and turning them against the enemy is going to change how you approach pretty much every area of the game. But choices effect the story too in that you're given chances to effect the progression or ending of practically every single encounter and mission in these games. A lot of these are self contained instances, wherein the matter is opened and closed within this quest alone and the wider narrative carries on unabated, but the effect still rings true in that the player feels like an active architect in their own fate.  On the otherside of the adventure, this means all these games have huge branching finales that can mean drastically different things for the future of the world and the people who live therein, encouraging replayability as these sorts of systems are designed to do.

So we've seen examples of both successes and failures in this field, but what of a successful failure? Mass Effect and Fallout 4 both have shades of everything we've already talked about in them, however when it comes to choices and consequence there is a shared criticism that these games illicit more than any other; the misleading dialogue option. With the very nature of how dialogue is handled in these games, a preview for the player followed by a full response from their avatar, there comes a few situations where the player will pick an option only for the response to veer in tone drastically from what they expected. This isn't necessarily an example of the writing lacking the scope to change the story, but can still feel like choice being invalidated due to the game interpreting your choices in a way that you didn't intend for. My example for this would be during Mass Effect Andromeda, where if you're too friendly with a swashbuckling smuggler side character the game will automatically assume you are pursuing a serious scandalous relationship there, which leads to some very awkward 'surprise intimacy' moments down the line. (I didn't know it was that easy to lead a guy on...)

I've touched upon a bunch of different types of promised consequence met by disappointing payoff, and what I've landed on is that mostly successful payoff (like Deus Ex) relies heavily on choice that has a distinct effect rather than choice that merely adds flavour; but does that automatically mean flavour options are bad? Whenever I was playing the Pillars games and an option would pop up to indicate that the experiences I'd had or the options I'd selected in character creation, would give me a unique option, I'd pick it. Personally, I saw these not as new paths to through the narrative that needed to branch into new questlines, but just an expansion of who I was, providing a unique perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to experience. But I think the key is balance. Don't promise your game will be a choice-important romp if the majority of your choices merely add context that the other person would have shared anyway.

There are a lot more examples of choice versus consequence in the interactive story games out there, but I found a lot of those example to be much more situational and specific than what I was talking about here. Although I bet it would be fun to pick out some of those games and really go to town on the key choices of certain episodes, maybe I'll do that sometime. My view on things is that choices and consequences shouldn't ever really be the key selling point of your game, but merely some spice thrown in there to mix up the pot, provide some replay value. Because when you put the weight of the game on it, then you open yourself up to criticism about "But what about this moment where I couldn't choose?" or "Why didn't this choice mean as much as that one?" At the end of the day the tag is performative more than anything else, no one really wants to make a story where every element of it can be pulled apart my some scrappy player who thinks they know the best solution to every problem. It's the writer's story at the end of the day and is limited by the shades that they want to explore, maybe that's a reality that game's marketers need to be more cognizant to in the future if they want to avoid unnecessary disappointment. 

Mankind Divided and the Deus Exit.

Come back to us, Eidos, I promise we won't be mad.

So now that Cyberpunk is out it's got me thinking about the other Cyberpunk-type games that walked so that this one could run. Or rather, I've found myself postulating on the one series that deep sixed itself conveniently just so that Cyberpunk could swoop an enjoy an entirely clean playing field; that series being the Deus Ex franchise. Deus Ex is often considered to be one of the best PC games ever made, and the legacy it spawned can often be just as lauded in their own unique little ways. (I'm even told that some could stand Invisible war long enough to finish the first level. Amazing what some folk are capable of!) In fact, until this 2020, Deus Ex was really the only game in which you could take a conspiratorial look at the dark future as well as address the ethical and philosophical quandaries around the role of transhumanism in evolution. Deus Ex was that higher tier game which was mature enough to ask the bigger questions and be of consequence in it's narrative. Until Mankind Divided, that is.

Something about that game just seemed to drive everything of course in a manner that no one could of foreseen. What was designed to be the springboard for a whole Deus Ex Universe backfired wildly and ended up banishing the entire franchise to a limbo realm in which it still resides to this day. Now we've got former Deus Ex devs putting together trash like Square's Avengers, and there comes a moment to lean back and ask "Where in the heck did it all go wrong?" I remember back when Human Revolution launched and it was hailed as the true successor to Deus Ex original, and I remember how I fell in love with it's bleak view of the future from day one. There was just something so tangible and believable about what we saw, something that was lacking from the unfounded optimism of Star Trek and the unabashed whimsy of Star Wars or Mass Effect. This was a harsh futuristic reality that echoed so much of the world around us, and yet was still fun enough to be a game worth devoting free time to. So why couldn't Mankind Divided capture that same spirit?

I think that in order to quite isolate the things that Mankind Divided did wrong, we need to highlight where Human Revolution got things right, so let's start there. Firstly, Human Revolution, despite being a prequel to the original Deus Ex, set itself far enough apart from the original for it's story to be entirely unique and yet still of consequence. This allowed for newcomers to the franchise, like me, to play without feeling that we were missing out on huge chunks of the larger narrative. Indeed, the story was pretty much entirely self contained too! The story also followed this huge globetrotting adventure as Adam Jensen followed the trail of a conspiracy across to the other side of the world and back again. I cannot understate how diverse the locations are that you travel to in Human Revolution are, it really invokes the sense of an epic and wild adventure through this corporate-ruled world. The characters were all well written, with arks that neatly fit within the story; quirky features such as the interrogation mode were used sparingly enough to be special but often enough to be justified; progression was balanced out perfectly across the game; level design allowed for unique playstyles; the artistic direction was almost always arresting; the presentation of narrative-central information felt dynamic and interesting; side quests felt fleshed out- Basically there's a list the size of my arm for all the reasons why Human Revolution is one of the best games of it's decade. But how much of that did Mankind Divided replicate?

Honestly, quite a fair bit by my reckoning. And that's what makes everything so darn infuriating when it comes to the state of the Deus Ex franchise. The gameplay in particular saw a huge glow-up for Mankind Divided, with cybernetic abilities becoming more encouraged then ever before due to a user-friendly recharge system. The Gunplay felt a lot better, side quests felt a little touched up; and, dare I say it, the level design really stepped up it's game. But in a strange twist of events, I think the improvements to the game design was where the problems started. You see, for the Human Revolution the levels were designed to be open ended, but they really had three main routes to them in most situations; sneaking, fighting or taking some sort of shortcut that was enabled through a skill check. This way the team could work on making things feel dynamic and yet still be functional. I think the same basic philosophy was applied towards Mankind Divided, but somewhere along the line there was a shift which tipped things out of balance a bit.

The levels in Mankind Divided quite frankly dwarf Human Revolution; but that increase in size and options means more development time put in each level to the point where, honestly, some locations became ungainly and overwhelming. I know, it's a strange thing to admonish in a Stealth RPG immersive sim, but it's genuinely where I landed on the matter. Rather than handle new locations like I would in Human Revolution, by observing the whole picture and then picking my path through it, I would end up just going with whatever worked and taking any route which opened up to me. Now this is both a positive, because it means that new playthroughs still surprise me, and a negative, because it made me feels constantly out of control of my surroundings. Now you may look upon all that and think I'm ranting like a mad person and how you don't agree with me at all; but even if that's the case listen up, because the issue I just described, though mostly subjective, is just the tip of the iceberg.

You see, I think that because of the added effort which went into designing each individual area it led to a severe lack of making new areas, because there just wasn't the time for that. Point in case, the Hubs. These are locations wherein the player is meant to travel to between missions and mosey around, sometimes outside of the breadth of the main narrative. You can get know the world around you, take on side quests, explore this snippet of society and start to immerse yourself in the calmer moments of the narrative. It' just, Mankind Divided only has one Hub, whilst Human Revolution had two. This may seem insignificant, as Prague is a beautifully detailed and realised environment which easily surpasses the last games' in scale and realised potential; (A lot of great key moments happen there) but oddly enough the problems come back down to the storytelling. Remember how I congratulated Human Revolution for being globe trotting? Mankind Divided does the opposite to that by setting all the locations in roughly the same part of the world and brining us back to the same city inbetween each mission, robbing a lot of the romance of adventure from the story. This is especially off putting for a Deus Ex game, because it's a franchise that bases itself on global conspiracies and worldwide corruptions, and yet you never get to actually travel worldwide; once again imparting the feeling of a insignificant snail in a bigger world. In any other Cyberpunk game I would say that this is exactly what you want, a world that's bigger than the scope of the story, but Deus Ex is a special case wherein the story is about coming to terms with that wider world and analysing it; something which Mankind Divided only ever scratches at in it's final moments.

Which brings us to our final, and most damning, point against Mankind Divided; The storyline. Human Revolution's storyline throws it's players into a world on the peripheral of a huge leap forward in technology and the way it'll influence our lives, rewriting the very way we look at human capabilities, and alongside that trails the warring opinions about how such a monumental evolution should be treated. What starts as a very personal tale to uncover the truth behind a terrorist attack that cost your protagonist dearly balloons into an epic and far-reaching mission to, eventually, save the very world itself. It's in this way that Deus Ex differentiates itself from similar games in its genre and becomes something more akin to a Science Fantasy in narrative, but that just lends to the unique feeling of what a Deus Ex game is. Mankind Divided, on the otherhand, immediately undermines the events and multiple endings of Human Revolution and, in the effort of serving as the beginning of a series of games, trucks along at a snails pace wherein the entire breadth of the game is spent trying to solve the initial presented problem. The narrative never significantly evolves, 'the world' never enters the stakes in a significant manner and the endings are left murky, with the true implications of each choice promising to be subtle changes to the world state going forward. Now again, that's not inherently bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not Deus Ex. It's not what the series was built on. As a result, by the end of Mankind Divided you feel like you've just finished the first act of a story when the credits start rolling and probably aren't looking forward to waiting another 3 years for the next entry. (That's '3 years' if the franchise hadn't frozen. Now we're sitting at 5.)

You wanna know the funny thing? Mankind Divided isn't even that much shorter than Human Revolution in terms of content. Myself I only noticed a 4-5 hour difference. (Although I was playing HR as a veteran and MD for the first time ever) It just goes to show how a misjudgement in narrative can really shake up how full a game feels, making one experience feel like a shallow pit compared to the other. And when it's all said and done, I don't even really know who to blame for all this. Is it Eidos Montreal for leaning too hard into making a universe over just the one story? Square Enix for mandating that change with monetary intentions? Both for biting off more than they could chew? Whatever the case, the result is that Mankind Divided wasn't as well received as previous entries and now everything hangs in the balance whilst Eidos is dragged through the dog house and us fans lose hope. But let me be the first to say it, even with Cyberpunk here, I haven't lost hope in you, Deus Ex, and there'll always be room at the table for another Cyber-fuelled dark-future epic, as far as I'm concerned at least.

Square's Marvel's Avengers

Avengers resemble!

To celebrate Spider Man being back in the MCU (I can hardly believe it!) I have decided to take another, more in depth, look at Square's Avengers now that we have some actual gameplay to look at. Previously I have been somewhat lukewarm to the title, perhaps parroting the general consensus, but I feel that there have been enough new developments for this title to warrant an evaluation upon my original opinion. (Whether that will change said-opinion remains to be seen.) FYI, I will be assessing footage from the almost 19 minute gameplay video that was released on the PlayStation Europe YouTube channel, so if you want to see the footage for yourself I suggest that you head there.

Just to recap, this is the project that Square Enix have been teasing for years now. Everytime people find themselves wondering why Marvel seems content on just dominating Hollywood and haven't tried their hand at the most profitable entertainment medium in the world, they've just pointed at Square and said "We're working on it, anyday now!" And Square have been throwing every resource they have at the project it seems. "What's that? 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' underperformed critically and commercially? Not to worry, Crystal Dynamics, we'll just roll you into the Avengers team! Huh? People didn't like the narratively stunted 'Deus Ex: Mankind Divided' and the way it neutered itself in order to setup a trilogy? Well, screw the 'Deus Ex' fans then, Eidos, we'll put that entire franchise on hiatus whilst we bring you on board with Avengers." (Maybe I'm projecting a little on that last one.)

With all the blood, sweat and tears that Square seemed to be pouring into this project, likely with the intention of creating something as applauded as the movies, you'd have thought that they'd be proud to show off everything at E3 this year. Instead we got a joke of a conference that was so pitiable and pointless that it ended inspiring all types of new concerns with it's vagueness. They'll be adding Antman for free after launch? What does that mean? He'll be added into what? How much are you thinking of charging for other heroes then? Is this a MOBA? Is this a live service? Will you stick heroes in Lootboxes? Where the heck is Hawkeye?

For months rumors and speculation ran abound about this game, as well as general complaints over the design of the heroes themselves. Square seemed to be going a different path from just copying the likenesses of the actors from the MCU (Despite this game piggybacking off the popularity of the MCU in every possible fashion.) and instead designed their Avengers to look like a bunch of creeps in fancy dress. (And why is Iron man's head so small!) Even to this day the public are still trying to shake the remnants of deja vu as the look at unfamiliar people and voices dressed in familiar attire and think: "I've just been in this place before!"

Fast forward to... 9 days ago? (Wow, Square really did a poor marketing this gameplay. I only found it two days ago by accident.) Finally the good folks over at Square Enix have deemed the general public worthy of looking upon the gameplay that made journalists all over the world go "Huh, this could be cool I guess." They released the footage to practically no fanfare and consequently the video I'm pulling my screens from has sub 500,000 views. (For an Avengers game? That's not a good sign.) Given all that has happened in the gaming world over the past two years, I can't be the only one wondering if this is pig-headed incompetence or plain subterfuge. Does Square have something to hide about this game? So far, I'd have to err towards caution, something about this game reeks of microtransactions and I just can't put my finger on what yet. We'll have to wait until May to see if this whole thing falls apart like I'm most certaintly sure that it will. But enough worrying about what might be, we have gameplay to look through.

This gameplay take place in the prologue section and is supposed to set the stage for the rest of the game. For those that have forgotten, and I can't blame you there, this Avengers game takers place years after a terrible tragedy that the Avengers failed to prevent. Somehow the Avengers got blamed for it, which is the kind of stupid nonsense that only happens in comics and movies, and now they must work together to weed out the real culprits and Avenge their fallen comrade; Captain America. (Who I'm sure is really definitely dead. That's why Square took time animating an entire fighting style and move set for him. So that he could die in the prologue and never be played again. Sure, I'll believe that...) This prologue should establish exactly what happened on that day so that we can see the terrible events for ourselves.

Despite that, these 18 minutes do feel a bit more like a stunt show than a story driven segment. The focus of the game appears to be around following each individual hero rather than painting the picture for the rest of the game. Therefore I will follow Square's example and go through the heroes one by one and explain what I think of how each one has been realized. Again, this is just what I can see from the provided footage, no one has played the thing yet so this is all we have to work with. Keep that ever present in your forethought.

First off we start with Thor. He appears to have been designed off a mix between Chris Hemsworth's Endgame look and a more traditional comic book interpretation; the result is a design that doesn't look entirely finished, but that seems to be running theme for this entire game so I'll just mention it now and move on. From a gameplay perspective, the combat seems to resemble something similar to traditional action adventure beat-em ups or, more specifically, Devil May Cry; with players fighting enemies in a small play space before being allowed to move forward. Square have gone out of their way to make that space feel less restrictive, however, by allowing Thor to use his flying abilities as well as having bodies fly out of the play zone. (Back in the early days of Action adventure they would just hit the invisible borders of the zone.)

Unsurprisingly, Thor fights with a combination of electricity and his Dwarf-star hammer, which he can use to knock people around the map for miles. Every strike of Mjölnir comes with a satisfying crackle of lighting that really sells the whole effect, and Thor's ability to juggle his opponents mid-air promises for some Dante-level combo streaks. I also noticed that Thor seems able to free-throw Mjölnir in whatever direction he wishes, resulting in the cool effect in the footage wherein he pins one man to the underside of an overturned truck whilst tussling with the others with his god-like tree trunk arms. (It would seem that Thor is still capable of knocking people an unrealistic distance back without his hammer.)

We really get a solid look at his powers once Iron Man joins into the fray. (Hi Nolan North. I can instantly identify your voice now.) Thor seems capable of drawing upon the heavens to fuel his lighting powers, much X-men's Storm, and use that to pull of some impressive looking moves. The highlight undoubtedly being the part in which he summons mini whirlwinds under each of his opponents (Okay now he is defiantly ripping off Storm.) and strikes them with enough electricity to light the southern hemisphere. (Yeah, those guys are dead.)

Next up perspective switches to the view of Tiny-Head, I mean Iron Man. This scene starts with the one thing that I was dreading the moment I saw that an Avengers game was being made; an on-the-rails shooting section. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against on-the-rails... in Star Fox; anywhere else and it is almost always just an excuse to be unforgivably lazy. In this instance, it doesn't look exciting or challenging in the slightest, it's the video-game equivalent of a CGI fest, a flurry of mildly impressive visuals that have no actual bearing on the player/viewer. As Iron Man, you are flying through all the impressive explosions instead of causing them. (God, I actually hate on-the-rails with a passion.) To be fair to Square here, the section doesn't appear to be long in this footage, but I worry about what we might get in later levels now that this precedent has been set.

Once we actually get control of Iron Man, things start to open up a lot more from a gameplay perspective. Firstly, flying. I think everyone is excited to fly around and shoot lasers to our heart's content. Secondly, the environment appears to be destructible. We got a hint of this when Thor was knocking enemies into trucks, but we actually get to see Iron Man blow up a truck with his chest-mounted Uni-beam. (Although, surely that counts as wanton destruction of public property. Just throwing that out there.) 

Iron Man's gameplay seems to feel more like a third person shooter than Thor's beat-em up style. We see Tony trading Repulsor blasts with gun toting badguys and turrets, and I can't help by conjure up memories of the Iron Man tie-in game from the last generation. (Let's hope this game is leagues better than that abomination upon mankind.) I will say that my initial reaction is that this gameplay does look more exciting then that-game-which-must-not-be-named, but I still think that Iron Man looks to be the least versatile hero out of the offering in this footage.

Now we have the chance to play as everyone's favourite wrecking ball; Hulk, as he rampages his way across Golden Gate Bridge in a manner that appears more harmful than helpful. (But I guess that's the Avenger's whole MO in this game.) I will admit, this is the character who aggrieves me the most aesthetically. (And I'm not just talking about the way that he dons Mark Ruffalo's purple shirt for some reason, or the way that his Hulk incarnation appears to be identical to the movies just with a slightly lower nose. Oh, and no facial stubble.) My issue is with the conflict of styles we see as Hulk fights. From the outside, this incarnation is built to be realistic; he moves with his bulk, carries weight in steps and is even coloured a more muted hue of green than in the comics (more akin to his depiction in the movies.) and yet, when he punches the enemy there is this inexplicably cartoony green flash every time. It seems like Square have no idea what direction they wanted to take this character and it ended up being a bit of an onscreen mess. (Wait, I said I wouldn't focus on this. Back to the gameplay.)

Unstoppable power is the name of the game when it comes to Troy Baker's Hulk, (Yup, heard you too.) and it is very evident in his playstyle. A lot of Hulks powers seem to revolve around sending enemies flying or picking them up and using them to batter someone else. The whole scene reminds me of a more dynamic version of 'Hulk: Ultimate Destruction', only that game had more environmental interaction whilst we have yet to see how that aspect is handled in Avengers. That being said, it's still pretty cool to watch Hulk slam two enemies into each other with inhuman strength or use his powerful clap shockwave from the comics. (It may have been in a movie at some point, I can't remember.)

What follows is a... on-the-rails running section, are you kidding me? Okay, in this instance it is more of a run-as-things-fall-apart-around-you section, which is more akin to the gameplay found in the modern Tomb Raider games. (I found Crystal Dynamics's contribution!) We see a whole lot of jumping and wall running, as well as launching off of curiously red ramps that tickle the edge of my immersion sphere. It looks a little fun, however this running bit does drag on if I'm being honest. Scenes like this, if we compare it to Tomb Raider or that Namakli level from 'Mass Effect 3: Leviathan', are usually only 30 to 40 seconds long, because the developers know that this kind of gameplay can get old fast. Here it lasts for almost two minutes, and you start to feel every second of it towards the end. Perhaps I'm being a little nit picky here, but I did find this section to be boarding on becoming boring.

The gameplay then puts us in the shoes of the man who looks like he spent the least amount of time in the character design lab, Captain America. (At least his gameplay looks pretty cool.) Square Enix seemed to know exactly what fans wanted out of playing as Steve Rogers, the ability to throw that shield around like a pin ball. We see Cap free throw his shield and watch is bounce of of people like a boomerang, and one moment wherein he charges his throw to have it clear the room before coming back to him. I will say that it appears that his shield is magnetized to Cap, rather than the natural trajectory of his throws working the shield around to him, but I understand that the change helps things remain somewhat believable, so I won't complain about this too much.

The rest of the melee fighting really did appeal to be in this scene, It seemed to be the same sort of 'action/response' fighting that was popularized in the Arkham games. Whilst we don't actually see Cap pull off any slick counters, each enemy does have a helpful marker above their head when they're about to swing so I think it's safe to assume that we'll be countering up a storm in the final product. Overall, I think that Steve has my favourite fighting style out of all the Avengers in this footage, as he is the only one who I feel like I could play for hours on end without getting bored, my close second favourite just happens to be up next.

After plowing through hundreds of nameless bad guys their leader steps out of a van, and it's... some dude in a mask. Am I supposed to know who that is? Oh, Taskmaster! (Thanks, Laura Bailey! I get it, 'All star cast' or whatever.) Black Widow's section consists of a multi-tiered boss battle with all the grandiose and pomp that one would expect from an Avengers property and I have to say, it's looked good. Yes, there was a little section of gliding around all the carnage, but it was short and sweet and just a cool; interim rather than the whole fight. We get to see Natasha use her iconic twin pistols (Does she even use those in the films? I honestly don't remember.) as well as her action-movie luck to battle all across the Golden Gate Bridge in spectacular fashion.

The action reminds me of the Firefly fight from Arkham Origins, which was my second favourite boss battle in that game. (Nothing beats the Deathstroke fight.) There is an impressive amount of changing things up in terms of fighting grounds before you even start the main fight, and even then things don't get too samey. We get to see a lot of Widow maker's agility as she switches between using her guns and batons, as well as some diversity in Taskmaster's fighting style as he mimicks the abilities of the other heroes. If you can get around the teeth-grindingly awful dialogue, this actually looks like a decent boss fight.

After we finally got a chance to look at Gameplay, I can understand the general feeling of "It's 'aight", from the gaming media. Avengers doesn't look like anything revolutionary that will knock your socks off, but that isn't what anyone was asking for. We just wanted a fun Marvel adventure that invoked the same one-to-one feeling between the player and the hero as the Arkham games did. (So it's good to see that Square seem to be borrowing some ideas from Rocksteady, there.) I will say that the dialogue didn't particularly seem snappy, despite the considerable voice talent behind the game, but I can overlook that as long as the game itself is fun and responsive.

The problem is, yet again, not what we've seen about the game but more what we haven't seen. Everything from this prologue has been a highly curated and linear gameplay chunk that is designed to highlight the strengths of each heroes design, however, we have reason to believe that some later levels will be interchangeable between heroes, so is this footage even remotely representative of the wider game? Even with this info blowout, and the plethora of interviews that the team has been conducting, there is still a crazy amount of mystery surrounding the core structure of this game and it doesn't leave people intrigued, it leaves them worried.

From face value, most of what I have seen from this footage alone looks promising. Captain America and Black Widow seem to be the most fun to play as, but the rest appearing to have some admirable quirks. I find myself worried as to how much lasting power this game might have, as well as to the strength of the storytelling. (If you can't even manage witty back and forth in the opening, how am I supposed to trust you to tell a compelling narrative?) There is a lot of time between now and release so maybe there is still time to clean up some of the rough edges, (get rid of the green tinge to Hulk's punches, for the love of god.) but I've seen enough demos to know that what you see is usually what you get with games like these.

As you can likely deduce, I'm of two minds when it comes to this game. There are parts that intrigue and others that bore me, the key is figuring out which way the majority of the experience will lean. I suppose for the most part I'm just eager for this game to be over and done with so that Eidos can get back to working on Deus Ex. Which is certainly not what I should be feeling in regards to the very first Avengers game. The biggest issue, for me at least, is the fact that Square seems to have taken considerable steps to ensure that this game is not linked with the movies. Why? It's a multi billion dollar franchise with world wide recognition who's success is propping up your entire venture, why try to distance yourself from that? It makes it hard for me to care about the game and I think that translates to the audience too. Why do you think that Sony and Marvel got back together with Spider Man? Because people don't care about solo adventures anymore and they want their superheroes to be part of a wider universe. I realize that I'm comparing a video game to a movie here, and the situation isn't exactly one-to-one, but I still feel there are lessons to be learned from that scenario that Square don't want to see. We likely won't hear anything more on this game until next E3, so we'll discover how things will play out between now and then.That's when we'll see if Square have something up their sleeves that'll really sell this game to the masses. (I won't hold my breath.)