And it's coming next year.
The rumours were true — XCOM‘s Firaxis is indeed working on a Marvel game, and it’s called Midnight Suns. Today, the studio detailed that the tactical, turn-based RPG is based on the 1990s Rise of the Midnight Sons comic book event and will revolve around 12 supernatural Marvel heroes alongside a newly-created one named The Hunter.
Stevivor sat with Firaxis’ Creative Director Jacob Solomon to get the inside word on the title, one that’s currently slated for a March 2022 release.
“Midnight Suns is the game that the team and I have been working on for the last however many years. It’s a tactics RPG set in the Marvel Universe,” Solomon began. “We are pulling our Marvel characters from all over. As you saw in the trailer we got Avengers, we got X-Men — a lot of the characters come from the supernatural side of the Marvel Universe, so obviously you see Blade and Robbie Reyes [as] Ghost Rider.”
Solomon added that “there’s a good reason” as to why the Reyes version of Ghost Rider (shown above) was selected for the title, but wouldn’t elaborate further. Instead, he detailed the new character that’s been spawned from the partnership of Firaxis and Marvel.
“The character at the centre of… this trailer is an entirely new superhero in the Marvel Universe that we designed along with Marvel [named] The Hunter,” he continued. “The key to that character is that even though we’ve given her a look here, The Hunter is completely customisable… in appearance [and] in how they play.”
According to Solomon — a self-confessed “big time Marvel Comics guy” — Marvel approached Firaxis to make a turn-based, tactical RPG and not the other way around.
“Marvel reached out to us after we made XCOM 2,” he said. “They were interested in collaborating because they were fans of XCOM, or so they said.”
As it turns out, Marvel wasn’t simply delivering lip service.
“My first call there was [with] an executive vice president of all of Marvel, and they had very, very specific feedback for the finale mission of XCOM 2,” Solomon said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘you guys actually do know the games we make.’
“The truth is, we both saw the potential of ‘if we make the games we make — we continue to make the kind of games that we make — and then we combine that with the characters and the narrative that people around the world love and that we ourselves are passionate about’ it seems like a match made in heaven.”
Solomon said Firaxis seized the opportunity to find its “own little corner” of the Marvel Universe, settling on Rise of the Midnight Sons and its supernatural nature. Solomon called the storyline his “favourite… of all time”.
“Looking at the art, you can probably tell this is early 90s hair,” he told Stevivor, pointing at one of the comics’ covers. “Metal was at its peak — there was flames and skulls and hair blowing in the wind — and it was awesome. Like, they all walked off the set of a Cinderella video and they’re just amazing, right?”
Solomon conceded that Marvel was a little taken aback by the choice.
“They hand you a chest of toys and we went to the dirty ones in the back,” Solomon said with a laugh. “‘This one. We want this one!’ And they’re like, ‘really?’ and I’m like, ‘yes, we want this one!'”
Firaxis will retell the Ghost Rider event — swapping Johnny Blaze out for Reyes — also reshaping it to put The Hunter at its core. Your in-game avatar is the child of the arc’s antagonist, a demon named Lilith, and you’re the only hero who can stop her because of your unique situation.
“You’re warring with these forces,” Solomon said. “You can control light energy, you can control dark energy. The player is making choices that either lead them to the light [or] to the darkness.”
There are over 40 Hunter abilities, and those each come with multiple upgrade paths and modifications.
While Firaxis’ choice of story focuses on the more supernatural aspects of Marvel Comics, it doesn’t limit the developer from using iconic Marvel heroes like Captain Marvel, Captain America, Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Wolverine.
“Our Midnight Suns — Magik, Robbie, Nico, Blade — they’re younger in our story,” Solomon said, “and so we have this conflict [when] the Avengers come in. You get your Captain Marvel and Captain America and Iron Man. They drop in and they’re like, ‘ah, it’s an apocalypse. No problem, we do this all the time, kids. Just stand back.’
“So we have this conflict that The Hunter is at the center of, [between] these more established Marvel characters that aren’t familiar with the supernatural, and then the younger, supernatural characters.”
The in-game roster is comprised of 13 heroes including Hunter, and your colleagues can be upgraded and customised at a social hub called The Abbey. The heroes’ home away from home, the locale provides the opportunity for The Hunter to hang out with their teammates, forging stronger bonds and unlocking things like combo attacks in the process. You can read a book by the fire with Doctor Strange, play video games with Ghost Rider or lift weights with Blade. A maxed bond also unlocks a character’s ultimate Midnight Suns costume, a legendary cosmetic item. While at The Abbey, players will take advantage of a third-person, over-the-shoulder camera to get up close and personal with Marvel greats.
While we’ve not seen any gameplay at this point — that’ll happen on 2 September here in Australia — Solomon told Stevivor that Midnight Suns is decidedly its own beast.
“Combat is turn-based tactics where you’re leading three heroes against a bunch of enemies — it could be Hydra, it could be demons, it could be famous Marvel villains,” Solomon said. “But actually, we retain zero mechanics from XCOM; there was not one single mechanic from XCOM that made it into Midnight Suns.
“Not because we wanted to — it made the job a lot harder — but because the fantasy is so different,” he continued. “Part of that is like the camera is lower in our combat because the mechanics are so different. It scratches the same itch, obviously — it’s still a turn-based tactics game — but but it is very, very different in terms of how it plays.”
We’ll have more on Midnight Suns — and yeah, that’s “Suns” with a U and not an O like in the comics — as it’s made available. The title is expected in March 2022 on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Switch.
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Marvel Midnight Suns2 December 2022PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X
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