Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is available now, and it seems like it’s quickly become one of the surprise hits of 2021. That isn’t to say that expectations for the game were low necessarily, but that it didn’t exist in the public eye for very long between its E3 2021 announcement and its October 2021 release date. Its story and characters have been compared to the likes of Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, which is high praise since the studio has essentially set the bar for quality superhero video games.
Something that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy gets right is the way that it incorporates its MCU counterparts through the use of unlockable skins. There are plenty of references to the Marvel comics in the game, but actually allowing players to suit up with iconic looks from the MCU is a great thing for both players and the game itself. While Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t the first superhero game to do this, Eidos Montreal was smart to give players plenty of choice when it comes to what looks the Guardians are sporting from day one.
Giving Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy an Identity of its Own
When Square Enix’s previous superhero game, Marvel’s Avengers, launched, Crystal Dynamics made a point to say that it wouldn’t be featuring any unlockable skins that are based on MCU costumes for several months following its release. This move was to give the game an identity of its own separate from the highly successful film franchise, but it ended up hurting the experience in the end. There just wasn’t enough setting Marvel’s Avengers apart from the MCU to make the character designs included in the game stand out and give the game its own identity. That’s not to say that the game was completely unoriginal, but the characters looked comparable to those in the MCU and the differences were negligible.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, really stands out from the character designs of the MCU with the base outfits that each Guardian wears at the start of the game. The characters’ designs clearly take influence from plenty of different comics as well as the MCU, but end up looking like unique versions of the heroes instead of just another variant of an already iconic look. In terms of identity, Guardians of the Galaxy already has its own and, as a result, doesn’t need to worry about standing out from the MCU. While Star-lord in the game might share some design commonalities with Chris Pratt’s version, they’re clearly different and have their own unique qualities to them.
This goes for the rest of the cast as well, because they all fit into their different roles in unique ways and express their differences from other Guardians of the Galaxy interpretations through their original outfits. Obviously, they all have alternate costumes to wear that are inspired by specific comic arcs and movies, but their original designs are unique from just about everything else.
It’s all well and good for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to have unique character designs, but that’s not what will truly make the game stand out in the minds of the players: it needs to be a good game to do that. Luckily, the general consensus surrounding the game is that it’s of high quality, especially for those who are already Guardians fans - meaning that its status as “iconic” or whatever else anyone wants to call it is already being cemented. The game’s memorable characters and narrative is giving it an identity of its own that fans are able to latch onto, with the memorable character designs only helping the game stand out even more.
Acknowledging the Popularity of the MCU
It’s certainly important for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy to stand out from the MCU, but the fact that it still offers players the option to wear the costumes from the films is a great thing. The MCU is massively successful, and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are some of the franchise’s most popular films, meaning that a lot of people might be coming to the game expecting it to be an extension of the movies. While it isn’t a one-to-one recreation of the characters and stories included in the MCU, they’re still comparable because they’re based on the same comics.
The game allows players to step into the role of being a part of the Guardians, and it seems like Eidos Montreal is okay if that means players don’t want to use the designs that the studio made. It certainly gives off the impression that the studio is confident in its game to the point where it will allow players to suspend their disbelief and pretend that it’s another entry in the MCU by costuming the characters as such, and that is undoubtedly a good thing.
Acknowledging the fact that fans of the MCU are going to want to play the video games based on popular characters featured in it has done wonders for Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, as they have let players fantasize about being the different versions of Spider-man featured in the character’s long history of films. As such, it makes sense that this would be just as beneficial for Guardians of the Galaxy. While there aren’t as many films for Guardians to choose from, the inclusion is still welcome, and it opens the door for more MCU outfits to come to the game as DLC once the characters change their looks across future films.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
