Marvel Rivals Already Has One Major Advantage Over Overwatch 2

The recently announced Marvel Rivals has not even been released yet, but it already has a major advantage over what may be its largest competitor: Overwatch 2. The new title developed by NetEase is a competitive 6v6 PvP (player versus player) team shooter in which each player controls a different hero. The exact objectives of each match have not yet been disclosed, but are likely going to vary depending on the game mode. Nevertheless, the goal seems to be to use different strategies and characters from Marvel Rivals to beat the opposing team and ensure victory.

The playable units in the game will be iconic characters from the legendary comic book franchise. Superheroes like the Hulk, Black Panther, Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and even Spider-Man will be some of the characters that players can pick when engaging in a match. Each playable hero will have a unique set of skills, reflective of their powers in the comics and other forms of media. Spider-Man, for instance, will have a lot of agility and will be able to temporarily restrict opponents with his web. This variety should allow for different approaches to combat in Marvel Rivals.

As of the game’s announcement, there are nearly 20 different playable characters confirmed. This should be a great number to start off with, even if there is a chance more will be announced in the period leading up to the title’s release, but it is not enough. Marvel Rivals is expected to be a competitive live-service shooter and, much like Overwatch 2, it will need a constant influx of new characters for players to control, thus opening up more avenues for strategy ideation and gameplay possibilities. Marvel Rivals, however, already has a major advantage over its main competitor.

New Marvel Rivals Characters Don’t Need To Be Built From Scratch

The upper hand is that the new game does not need to work on character concepts from scratch. Instead, developer NetEase can simply pull from Marvel’s gigantic roster of heroes and villains and start working on new characters from that point on. This means that the whole ideation process to figure out what a character is and how they look will be skipped, cutting down time and, possibly, converting that into a more constant influx of playable characters over time. Overwatch 2 gets one new character every few seasons, meaning it takes months to get new things to play with.

Of course, this does not dispense the work that developers will have to bring characters to life in Marvel Rivals. It will still be a long process to understand how a classic character from the comics can be translated into a 6v6 competitive shooter game. How they use their abilities will determine their role in team compositions and much more. In fact, despite the sheer power of some heroes and villains from Marvel, not all of them will be damage dealers – some are expected to be support units, while others will likely embrace the job of a tank.

This is the core of games in the genre and, as such, there is still a lot of work for characters to come to fruition. Meanwhile, however, Blizzard has to come up with the design, skill set, animations, and much more when creating a new character. Surely, developers will always draw from various sources of inspiration, but there is an entire concept phase for Overwatch 2 characters that will likely not exist at all within NetEase’s development team for Marvel Rivals. The pre-existing roster from the comics may also influence another aspect, which is much less important, gameplay-wise.

Hero Skins In Marvel Rivals Can Reference Visuals From The Comics

Aside from allowing developers to draw references from the comics when choosing the characters and picking the abilities they want to bring into the 6v6 competitive game, the roster of pre-existing heroes and villains from the Marvel comics and other derived media (such as movies, TV shows, and other games) also permits NetEase to have a smoother time when bringing character skins into the new title. Skins are an important part of competitive team games like Marvel Rivals, even if they do not influence the mechanical gameplay aspect itself.

When it comes to Spider-Man, for example, NetEase will have a huge list of possible skins for the character. It could draw from Peter Parker’s memorable variations like the traditional red and blue suit and his beloved Symbiote suit, to less common ones, like the Iron Spider Armor or the Future Foundation Suit. If the game does not intend on adding other Spider-Men, like Miles Morales or Miguel O’Hara, they could even show up in the game as skins and alternative personas for the Spider-Man playable character in Marvel Rivals.

This could allow the skin to come with unique visual characteristics, that could even be applied to skills, for instance. If an in-game Spider-Man character with a Miles Morales suit uses their web abilities, for instance, they could be shown enveloped with electricity – or perhaps they could become partially translucent while executing a certain skill, reflecting Miles’ own unique abilities without altering the hero’s gameplay kit. This type of skin application can be applied to several of the heroes already confirmed for Marvel Rivals and any of the ones that are announced later on or added post-launch.

Of course, the game does not yet have a release date, and limited information about it has been provided. Its similarity with other games in the genre, be that Overwatch 2 or Paladins, however, offers a better insight on what to expect when it comes to new characters being added and the cosmetics that they will have. Contrary to these other games, however, Marvel Rivals has a very rich source of pre-existing heroes and villains to pull from, reducing a lot of the work involved in creating new content and, hopefully, even speeding up the pace for new releases.

Source: YouTube/Marvel Entertainment