Marvel Rivals developers NetEase have confirmed that they are able to choose almost any hero to add to the game.
Marvel is going all-in on gaming, it seems, with Marvel Rivals and digital TCG Marvel Snap proving to be major successes. There’s a lot of excitement over the upcoming fighter, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls too.
The beauty of these games is that a wider audience gets introduced to lesser-known characters and these characters appear in a new light. Marvel Rivals is the perfect opportunity to reintroduce more obscure characters as gamers directly play as heroes, and new characters are added every month.
Marvel is one of the biggest pop-culture franchises in the world and there is a rich history for NetEase to explore with 85 years of comic history at their disposal.
In an interview with VideoGamer, Marvel Rivals game director Guangyun ‘Guangyun’ Chen confirmed that the developers have been allowed to “explore the full Marvel universe.”
He added that the team are keen on including more niche characters too and plans on continuing to “shine a light on some lesser-known yet equally fascinating characters” in addition to “heavy-hitters” like Iron Man and Captain America.
Chen also stated that they are proud of including “unique heroes like Jeff the Land Shark and Squirrel Girl.”
Marvel has over 7,000 characters in its comics, and those numbers skyrocket to somewhere between 50,000-80,000 if you include one-off and secondary characters.
There are so many weird and wonderful heroes that could be really fun in the game, like Hit-Monkey the monkey assassin who appeared in Marvel Snap.
And sometimes it’s the weirdest heroes or villains with the strangest powers who can make for some of the most interesting characters when they’re reimagined.
Just look at The Spot in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, his ridiculous power of being made out of interdimensional spots made for some incredible sequences in the animated movie.
Marvel Rivals is about to get a huge update with Season 3: The Abyss Awakens releasing soon, along with the news that Blade and Phoenix will be added to the game as playable characters.
Chen wouldn’t confirm or give hints to any other upcoming characters for the game in his interview, but did share his delight at Rivals’ fanbase enjoying the more obscure picks like Jeff:
“The feedback [from players and fans] has been overwhelmingly positive,” Chen said of the game’s current roster. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see players connect with our choices [so far].”
