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Card-Based Marvel's Midnight Suns - Marvel universe card-based tactical RPG from Firaxis

Mazisky

Mazisky

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Marvel Midnight Sons shares ‘zero’ mechanics with XCOM and won’t include permadeath
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https://www.polygon.com/22641096/marvels-midnight-suns-is-the-next-game-from-the-xcom-team



TLDR

-RPG

-3rd person exploration

-No permadeath

-Very different from Xcom


Say goodbye to this franchise
 
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I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/marvels-midnight-suns-reveal/

Midnight Suns is a Marvel RPG from the XCOM team that plays 'nothing like XCOM'
Build friendships with heroes such as Wolverine, Iron Man, Dr Strange, and Captain Marvel in a tactical RPG from Firaxis.

The most exciting upcoming Marvel game is now Midnight Suns, a tactical RPG from the Firaxis team behind alien invasion strategy games XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2. It was just announced at Gamescom, and it's out surprisingly soon, in March 2022. And if you're expecting "XCOM but with Marvel heroes," designer Jake Solomon says you're going to be surprised.

Marvel's Midnight Suns was revealed with a cinematic trailer (embedded above) at Geoff Keighley's Gamescom show today, but gameplay isn't being revealed until next week. Yesterday, I pelted a 2K rep with questions, some of which were forwarded to Solomon, until a picture formed of a game that's as similar to Mass Effect 2 as it is XCOM, with a few surprising Stardew Valley touches. Here's what I learned:

Midnight Suns isn't a Marvel-skinned XCOM, but it is structured like an XCOM game. There's a base that can be upgraded, called The Abbey, from which you'll select missions out in the world. Before embarking on one of the turn-based combat missions, you'll choose three heroes from a cast of 12 Marvel troublemakers to come along. So far, ten of those heroes have been announced: Dr. Strange, Magik, Iron Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider (the Robbie Reyes version), Blade, Captain America, Nico Minoru, and Captain Marvel.

Beyond that setup, though, Midnight Suns diverges from XCOM in big, fundamental ways. For one thing, you aren't an invisible sky commander. When you pick three heroes to come on a mission, they're joining your character, a customizable new Marvel hero named The Hunter. As The Hunter, you'll be at the center of a story about a team of heroes assembled to defeat Lilith, the godlike Mother of Demons. (Also, she's the mother of you. Drama!)

Midnight Suns is a singleplayer RPG that tells one story. There's no permadeath, and failed missions can be retried until you beat them. It's not a simulated war of the worlds like XCOM, but a more traditional Mass Effect-style campaign, although even that comparison doesn't hold up perfectly, because Firaxis hasn't gone for shocking story branches. Your decisions influence how Midnight Suns plays out in the Renegade Shepard vs Paragon Shepard sense, but not in the Mass Effect 2 'who lives and who dies' sense, or with Mass Effect 3's infamous color-coded endings.

And despite being turn-based, the combat in Midnight Suns is "completely different" from XCOM's, according to Solomon.

“When we were first designing combat in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, we quickly realized that the mechanics of XCOM wouldn’t work in this game," he said. "In XCOM, you take a group of soldiers and they are outmanned and outgunned by the alien threat. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, you are a superhero and you should feel like the coolest person on the battlefield. Those mechanics from XCOM that were designed for that game didn’t translate to Marvel’s Midnight Suns, and we can say that combat in this game is completely different.”

As one example, a 2K rep suggested that it doesn't make sense for heroes to miss punches, which means that hit chance percentages are probably out. Solomon also said that combat "plays much, much faster" than in the XCOM games. It's all a bit hard to explain without showing it, I'm told, so we should get some clarity when the gameplay trailer premieres next week.

The out-of-combat portion of Midnight Suns might be more exciting, especially to Marvel fans. Your base, The Abbey, isn't a cross-section you scroll around like in XCOM. It's a 3D environment you can explore in third-person as The Hunter. You can hang out with heroes and become friends with them, a process which can include giving them gifts and joining social clubs. That's right: When you're not fighting your mother, the Mother of Demons, you're concerned with getting Wolverine to like you.

I did learn who you choose to bring on missions with you will influence your friendships, and that some missions require specific heroes. There are also secrets to find by exploring The Abbey, and NPCs other than your hero friends, including your aunt, who's running the show, and a hellhound named Charlie. (Yes, I asked if you can pet the hellhound. You can pet the hellhound.)

If it sounds a bit weird that Lilith's daughter and sister are working against her, your concerns will be reflected in some of the heroes who join the Midnight Suns—they're not all going to trust The Hunter's intentions, at least at the start. Another little twist is that Lilith can corrupt anyone with a touch. It doesn't sound like that'll be a game system where your own crew can be turned against you, but we are going to see "Fallen versions of iconic Marvel characters" show up as opponents.

There's no comic book writer collaboration to announce here: 2K tells me that both Solomon and the game's narrative director, Chad Rocco, are big Marvel fans. They and other members of the team created the story for Midnight Suns, which is loosely based on the comics featuring the Midnight Sons, a team of heroes set up to defend the Earth from supernatural elements. The name was tweaked to express that it's not a direct adaptation of Rise of the Midnight Sons, and that the members aren't all men in this version.

When it releases in March of next year, Midnight Suns will be available for PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store. The gameplay trailer will be revealed on September 1 at 11:30 am Pacific on midnightsuns.com. I'm curious to see what this faster, not-like-XCOM turn based combat looks like, but also pretty curious to see what it looks like to hang out with Dr. Strange in a spooky house, and how Solomon, Rocco, and crew have interpreted Marvel's characters.

"I grew up reading and loving Marvel games," Solomon says. "To be entrusted with these characters and their stories is an honor for me and the team. If you're a Marvel fan, or an RPG fan, or a fan of tactics games, Marvel's Midnight Suns will make these beloved characters come alive in a way that you've never seen before."
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ical-rpg-thats-less-xcom-than-you-might-think

Firaxis reveals Marvel's Midnight Suns, a "tactical RPG" that's less XCOM than you might think
Wolverine! Blade! Ghost Rider! The Hunter?

You might've heard the rumours of a "Marvel XCOM", coming from tactics specialist Firaxis, and turns out: they're mostly true. During Gamescom's Opening Night Live stream, the studio revealed Marvel's Midnight Suns, described as a "tactical RPG" - although from talking to creative director Jake Solomon, it's quite a bit less XCOM-y than some of those tweets and reddit threads may have led you to believe.

So, what's it all about? Midnight Suns is set in the "darker side of the Marvel Universe", based on a '90s comic book series called Rise of the Midnight Sons - although apparently it's deliberately not an exact retelling of those events. The setup for the game is this: perpetual baddies Hydra have revived someone called Lilith, who does a bit of dead-raising that threatens to overrun the Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Dr. Strange, and Wolverine can be spotted in the trailer). The Avengers call up a few extra supernatural mates to help out, called the Midnight Suns, which includes Nico Minoru, Blade, Magik, and Ghost Rider, and a few more (12 Marvel heroes in total), and together they then resurrect some help of their own: one more hero, newly created for the game, called the Hunter, who's also Lilith's child and apparently the only one able to kill her.

The Hunter, who's customisable (in "appearance" and also in terms of a choice of about 40 different abilities), is who you'll be playing as, which is where things immediately depart from the XCOM formula. You'll be controlling both the Hunter and the other heroes in combat, with battles featuring three heroes total at a time, but then the time between battles is spent in one of two ways: managing your base, a mystical safehouse called the Abbey - so far so XCOM - or actually walking around the Abbey in third-person, over-the-shoulder view, exploring its "extensive" grounds and interacting with the other heroes.

Crucially, Midnight Suns seems to feature much more of a role-playing element than past Firaxis games. Who you choose to spend your time with, and how you spend that time, affects how heroes will fight alongside you in the battles themselves.

As Solomon put it to us, "you really have to choose: I'm gonna invest in this hero, or I'm gonna invest in that hero, relationship wise, because for any of these heroes to reach their maximum potential in combat, you have to invest in them from a relationship standpoint."

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"You develop friendships with heroes of your choice, you do that by hanging out with them, and you have to choose, 'OK, specifically I'm going to hang out with Tony Stark tonight, or I'm gonna hang out with Blade tonight'. But based on who you're hanging out with, you then have to choose, well, what are we doing? And it's like: 'well, Blade may wanna lift weights, Ghost Rider may wanna play video games, Dr. Strange may want to read a book by a fire'."

The Abbey itself is upgradeable, like your typical XCOM base - including the usual choosing of research and upgrades, which Dr. Strange and Tony Stark handle - but the place exists in real time. You can even "join different clubs around the Abbey," Solomon explained, or give different heroes gifts.

"The game has very serious themes, but we really wanted to focus on these fun elements of: 'well what if I did live with these heroes, how would I interact with them, how would I form friendships?'

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"We feel like that, plus the idea of being a supernatural game, plus being a customisable hunter, there are a lot of things that we're excited about doing that we feel are different, to other games that have come before."

What about romance? "The official line is no," Solomon said, which sounds about right for Marvel. "There's no romance because the characters are fixed. But, you can form very, very, very, very deep friendships with the heroes of your choice. So it's not romance, but it is friendship."

As for the combat itself, we'll likely get a much better idea from the gameplay reveal in a few days' time, but Solomon was keen to stress how much it varies from what they've done before. ("Some might even think that there were leaks that painted this as a 'Marvel XCOM'", he joked).

"The thing is, it ticks the same - it is turn-based tactical combat - but I can't explain how different the combat is, in terms of, I mean, if you just start from the thematic side of things... [in early development] we very quickly saw the things we did before don't match up with what this game's about. You talk about the fantasy, if you're a soldier and you're terrified of these aliens, that's one fantasy, like: 'OK, I'm holding on for dear life'. It's not the fantasy of 'I am a godlike superhero and I'm fighting Hydra or whatever' - it's a different fantasy. Then the fantasy's like: 'I'm definitely the coolest guy in this room', right? And I think that's the one we wanted to get across. A lot of the time, the combat in this game is not like: 'will I survive?', and more like: 'how many of these guys can I take out with one ability?'"

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One element Solomon did want to highlight specifically was the pacing. "We didn't sacrifice - truly, truly - we didn't sacrifice any depth or complexity, we're not interested in doing that. Complex choices and depth are what make tactics games fun, we're not worried about that, so much as: we wanted this game to play fast. It's like, alright, how do we make you feel like the coolest person in the room? And that means, 'OK, well these bad guys should be afraid of me, so it's me pulling down a light pole, and leaping off of a car to punch this guy, and then taking two guys out with one punch which knocks them back,' and you're choosing how all these abilities interact in a really complex way.

"So, it's three heroes in combat, all of them have these different abilities that are probably more situational than other abilities [in previous games], where you've got to think about, 'well how am I gonna pull this off?' And 'how am I gonna position myself to pull this ability off?' But, at the same time, the combat's meant to move very fast."

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Likewise, he added, "the idea of positioning, and you having an ability, and a right way to use it, I think that that's probably - it's very different in this game, the abilities, they're not very general, they're very specific where it's like 'OK, there's a right way to use this ability and I should probably think about that and the ordering of when I do that with these others', but at the same time, there's a lot of ways to - I hate the phrase 'skin a cat' - let's say to achieve your goals.

"The game doesn't have things like permadeath or anything like that, which was again just a very different fantasy, this is much more of an RPG where it's: 'I'm gonna go and do these missions', you know? There's still a lot of difficulty levels where you can rise to the level of whatever challenge you want, but I think that this is a game that's meant to play a little faster, it's meant to progress this story, as opposed to an XCOM, which is a little bit different."

For his part, Solomon, an avid Marvel Comics fan, sounds extremely excited. "This is a dream project for me, it's very personal for me. I have loved Marvel for decades, I grew up reading the comics, I never pictured myself making a Marvel game." Marvel actually approached Firaxis first, to suggest the initial collaboration. "Sometimes you hear [nice things] from people and you don't know if it's true," Solomon said, "but on my very first call with the Marvel games team they had very specific feedback on the finale mission from XCOM, so it was like: they definitely knew XCOM."

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The 'hair metal' Rise of the Midnight Sons. Image credit: marvel.com

That inquiry from Marvel then led Solomon to pitch the idea of using the "very Guns 'n' Roses, hair metal" Midnight Sons comics - his "favourite ever" - as a setting. "We really wanted to retell this story, because, one: it had never been [re]told, and it's been, you know, 30 years now. The story's awesome, it had a lot of characters that players would not be familiar with. And it also allowed us to introduce popular characters, but pull them into a side of the Marvel Universe where they're never seen, which is the supernatural, dark supernatural stuff. And so, it was really important for us to tell a story that people weren't familiar with, have heroes that people weren't familiar with, have a villain that people weren't familiar with, and then, [regarding] the heroes that we all love, make sure that they go to a part of the Marvel universe where they're typically not seen."

Still, there are some challenges: "it's a 'match made in heaven', but, it's a challenge working in the Marvel Universe. They make movies; they're the most popular movies, they make TV shows; they're now the most popular TV shows. Toys, theme park attractions, cans of fucking... soup." And it would be nice if just once a couple Marvel characters might kiss.

The release window is currently set for March 2022, on just about every platform (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC on both Steam and Epic) and you can expect a first look at actual gameplay on 1st September, at 7:30pm UK time.
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