The Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to dominate leisure with its interconnected sequence of movies and TV reveals that each one tie collectively to type a long-running, cohesive narrative. Marvel video video games, nevertheless, don’t exist in the identical universe, telling tales solely separate and unrelated to one another. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man video games, for instance, don’t have anything to do with Eidos-Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Equally, upcoming Marvel video games equivalent to Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Marvel’s Blade, haven’t any connective tissue.
But there was as soon as an concept at Disney to create a Marvel Gaming Universe that will do for Marvel video video games what the MCU went on to do for Marvel films and TV reveals. So what occurred?
Talking on The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and visitor Alex Irvine recalled this MGU concept, which each labored on, and revealed why it fell by the wayside.
Seropian, maybe finest often called considered one of the founders of Halo and Future developer Bungie, went on to run Disney’s online game enterprise earlier than leaving in 2012. Irvine was the long-running author of Marvel video games, most just lately engaged on the world-building, dialogue, and character backstories for smash hit Marvel Rivals.
Discussing his prior work on Marvel video games, Irvine mentioned the scrapped MGU.
“Once I first began engaged on Marvel video games, there was this concept that they have been going to create a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the identical means that the MCU did,” Irvine stated. “It by no means actually occurred.”
Seropian then defined that the MGU was his “initiative,” but it by no means bought funded by the higher-ups at Disney.
“Once I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these video games collectively.’ It was pre-MCU,” Seropian stated. “However it didn’t get funded.”
Irvine, who had labored on the iconic Halo alternate actuality sport (ARG) I Love Bees whereas at Bungie, went into some element on how this MGU would have labored.
“That was so irritating as a result of we got here up with all these nice concepts about the right way to do it,” he stated.
“And I used to be popping out of ARGs at that time and considering, ‘Wouldn’t or not it’s cool if we had some ARG elements?’ There can be a place the place gamers may go that each one the video games touched, and we may transfer them forwards and backwards from sport to sport. We may hyperlink in comics, we may loop in something, we may do authentic stuff. After which, as Alex stated, it didn’t get funded. So we made a bunch of video games.”
But why did the MGU fail to get the inner buy-in to maneuver ahead? Irvine prompt the concept turned so advanced it ended up placing some individuals at Disney off.
“Even again then, we have been making an attempt to determine, ‘If there’s going to be this MGU, how is it totally different from the comics? How is it totally different from the films? How are we going to resolve if it stays constant?’ And I feel a few of these questions bought advanced sufficient that there have been individuals at Disney who didn’t actually wish to cope with them,” Irvine defined.
It’s enjoyable to think about what might need been had the MGU concept bought the funding it wanted to develop into a actuality. Maybe if it had, Insomniac’s Spider-Man video games would have existed in the identical universe as Sq. Enix’s ill-fated Marvel’s Avengers and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, with characters from every sport making cameo appearances throughout the titles or the tales all constructing in direction of some epic Endgame-style occasion.
Wanting forward, there are questions over Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine sport. Will or not it’s set inside the identical universe as Marvel’s Spider-Man? May Spider-Man or some other character from these video games find yourself making a cameo in Wolverine indirectly?
Alas, the MGU goes down as yet one more scrapped online game concept. Though, maybe in one other universe someplace, it’s a actuality…
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.