When I first saw Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 nine months ago, it had that ridiculous "Fusion" subtitle attached to the name, and I was taking a shot in the dark that the plot would be revolving around the Marvel's Civil War storyline from 2006. Count a few points for the home team. "Fusion" has been dropped, and the game is most definitely taking cues from the Civil War storyline (more on that later). Now that the game is on its second round of press junkets, we had a chance to see how it's shaping up last week during GDC. And while we haven't seen a new level (the demo took place at Dr. Doom's domain in Latveria, again) we do have some more details on how the game will play.
For starters, players are going to have access to 24 superheroes out of the gate. This will help get people acclimated to the Fusion ability -- when two heroes are allowed to combine their powers for a special attack on the enemy (or a special buff for a friend). Any two heroes can perform a Fusion, and each Fusion combination is different; for example, Human Torch and Thor can create a fiery tornado. Then again, Thor can instead perform a Fusion with Captain America where he bounces his lightning bolts off of Cap's shield. If you're keeping count, that means there could be over 250 possible fusion attacks that you (or your friends, as the game still supports four-player co-op both locally and online) can perform during your play through of the game. But since we haven't had a lot of ample time to actually play the game yet, we haven't seen for ourselves just how varied the Fusions are in actual practice.
And don't worry if you're not playing every hero all the time. One of the drawbacks to Marvel Ultimate Alliance was that once you start upgrading one hero, those traits are not passed on to the others, thus not encouraging players to, er, play as other heroes. This time around there will be background leveling for all of the heroes, so you are encourage to rotate heroes around (which you can do at any time now) without worrying about them being underpowered from lack of action. Also, any bonus items you pick up in a level (now known as Boosts) can be applied to the entire active team, not just the single hero that picked it up. For example, one such Boost enhances lightning resistance (that was conveniently placed before a miniboss battle with Electro at the end of the demo). The character upgrading system still works the same: you collect orbs by defeating enemies and smashing objects, and then apply these orbs to your characters to increase their traits and abilities.
While MUA 2's story will be based off of the events of Civil War, it doesn't necessarily follow that storyline note-by-note; MUA2's version of Civil War can play out, and even conclude, differently -- whether you're on Cap's or Iron Man's side. Perhaps the writers are taking cues from the What If comics? We'll see. Ultimately, what this sets up is that players will have to make a choice early on in the game, and whose side they want to fight on: Captain America (liberty) or Iron Man (security). The rest of the character roster will follow your decision as well. Hopefully this will add a great deal replay for players (different levels/bosses) who want to experience both sides of a story.
And really, that looks to be MUA 2's biggest improvement -- the treatment of the characters to help push the game's narrative along. As the game progresses, we're told that there will be narrative moments when the characters will debate the moral and social implications of their actions. Also, there will be audio journals (think audio diaries from BioShock) that will bring additional story details and depth that was severely lacking in the previous title. In the next several months, as MUA 2 gets closer to release, we'll have more to talk about, along with our eventual hands-on impressions of this promising superhero video game.
