‘Marvel Rivals’ Writer Says “A Marvel Gaming Universe” Was In The Works Pre-MCU, But Disney “Did Not Want To Deal With It”
According to Marvel Rivals writer Alex Irvine, prior to the take-off of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney once sought to bring their catalog of costumed heroes together via “a Marvel Gaming Universe” – That was, until they realized that the effort necessary to make it a reality was more than they had bargained for.
Irvine, a seasoned writer whose work for Marvel includes not just NetEase’s latest hero shooter but also Daredevil: Noir Vol. 1, the novelizations of Iron Man 2, and various entries in Brown Books’ ‘Junior’ MCU book adaptations, provided this glimpse into ‘what could have been’ during a recent appearance on The Fourth Curtain podcast, as hosted by Bungie co-founder and former Disney Interactive Studios VP Alexander Seropian alongside veteran industry artist and Aliens: Colonial Marines lead animator Aaron Marroquin.
Amidst a conversation regarding his approach to writing Marvel Rivals‘ narrative and dialogue, Irvine noted that since the game was multiplayer and thus had no ‘proper cutscenes’ that he could use to communicate its lore, he took great care to intentionally place “little story bits everywhere”, such as in lore entries or environmental details, in order to better inform players of each character’s role in the larger Marvel Universe.
Given the sticky subject of continuity, Marroquin then pressed Irvine as to what it was like attempting to craft such a multiversal story out of Marvel’s 90-year publication history, Marvel, especially in light of the publisher’s tendency to view their media productions as “one piece to a bigger puzzle”.
In turn, the writer revealed, “That’s always an interesting working with Marvel, because, when I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create, like, a ‘Marvel Gaming Universe’ that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU does. [But] It never really happened, as you also know.”
Playfully interjecting “That sounds familiar,” Seropian then confirmed Irvine’s anecdote, recalling, “When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these games together’.
“It was pre-MCU,” he added, before laughing, “but it never got funded.”
“It was so frustrating because we had come up with all these great ideas about how to do it,” said Irvine. “I was coming out of ARGs [Alternate Reality Games] at that point and thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some ARG aspects, a place where players could go that all of the games touched and we could move them back and forth from game to game, we could link in comics, we could loop in anything. We could do original stuff. And then, as Alex said, it didn’t get funded. So we made a bunch of games.”
Returning to Marroquin’s original question, the Marvel Writers scribe connected the dots and detailed how the primary ‘roadblock’ this crossover video plan encountered was that, “Even back then, we were trying to figure out, if there is going to be this MGU, how is going to be different from the comics, how is it different from the movies, how are we going to decide if it stays consistent?”
“And I think some of those questions got complex enough that there were people at Disney that did not want to deal with it,” he concluded. “So, all the other Marvel games I worked on, you know, it’s a similar thing. You have to decide like, what relationship does this particular universe have to the MCU, or to the comics.”
“Is it trying to incorporate elements of both?” he offered as an example of the questions any and all Marvel media creators had to ask themselves. “If so, what do you do when they’re contradictory? Which do you chooose? And what if that breaks something else somewhere else in your story? And it’s a real tap dance in some of these games, especially as they get big, kind of sprawly stories like when I was working on Avengers Alliance.”
Unfortunately, neither Irvine nor Seropian provided any specific details as to which projects, either cancelled or actually released, were intended to be a part of the ‘MGU’.
However, given that Seropian’s tenure at Disney Interactive lasted from 2009-2012, speculation suggests that potential candidates for this digital multiverse included Deadpool, the cancelled The Punisher: No Mercy, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, Ultimate/Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Wolverine: Origins (which began life as a wholly original game before the powers that be decided to make it a tie-in) and X-Men Destiny.
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