An initial character roster for Marvel’s Midnight Suns featured around 25 heroes, director Jake Solomon has revealed.
Firaxis’ excellent tactical role-playing game ultimately featured 12 of the biggest Avengers and Midnight Suns faces in its final version – with plans to add four more characters post-launch.
However, trimming down that final roster to something more manageable involved discussing several famous Marvel characters and whether they were suitable.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ first DLC, for Deadpool, is now available.
“I could make the case for probably 50 or 60 heroes,” Solomon told PCGamesN. “I’d be super excited to tell their stories and excited to make them bounce off of each other. My executive producer showed me our initial roster for the game. And it was like 25 heroes. And it was ridiculous. He was like, ‘we’re never going to be able to make this many heroes and all this stuff.”
While a third of Midnight Suns is based in combat, the majority of my experience has been spent hanging out with my growing band of Marvel characters back at my home base, growing friendships, delving into the game’s extensive backstory and exploring its modest open world.
Perhaps understandably, considering the game’s supernatural story and Salem setting, Firaxis ultimately leaned towards including Marvel’s more magical characters.
“[Magik] is my personal favourite character,” Solomon continued. And she made sense [because] she’s supernatural. I [also] love Punisher. But Punisher didn’t make as much sense with Blade in the game. We were like ‘okay, Blade’s a better fit, right?'”
Midnight Suns’ combat is card-based, and a character perhaps unsurprisingly given some thought was Gambit – the card-wielding member of the X-Men.
“We gave him some very serious consideration,” Solomon concluded, “because you can make a case for him in a supernatural game, but like also the card thing… he just fits right.”
Alas, it was not to be – unless Midnight Suns ends up getting a second season of character DLC?
Christian Donlan dubbed the game as “great tactical fun nestled in a sweet-natured superhero dollhouse”, recommending the game in Eurogamer’s Marvel’s Midnight Suns review.
