Marvel Rivals was a surprise smash hit, usurping Overwatch as king of the Hero Shooter genre with its fun gameplay and unique, stylish depiction of heroes from Marvel comic books, as well as their film counterparts. While there has been a lot of praise when it comes to the looks of much of Marvel Rivals‘ cast, one of the game’s newest playable heroes, Emma Frost, was not without backlash from the community, sparking confusion from fans and highlighting a very real design problem present in three of the game’s most popular heroes.
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Emma Frost wasn’t the first character in Marvel Rivals to suffer from this strange, totally avoidable design flaw, but it was her release that finally made it obvious to the game’s fanbase. When designing an original costume for Emma Frost’s first appearance in Marvel Rivals, the developers had a wealth of previous comic book looks to draw inspiration from, with the main consistent theme being that Emma clads herself in an all-white suit, usually a leotard, and has platinum blonde hair. Instead, the developers of Marvel Rivals chose to give her a white and blue costume with more yellow blonde hair; something she shares with the heroes Sue Storm and Cloak & Dagger.
Now, the similarities between these characters are not exact; Emma, Sue, and Dagger (also known as Tandy Bowen) have some variations in color, posture, and costumes, with Emma Frost noticeably standing over the rest of the cast as a vanguard. Despite these differences, the characters share enough similarities for players to have taken notice, and raise questions as to the choices made by the Marvel Rivals team when designing each.
Players across the internet were quick to criticize these strange design choices, with some even claiming that they have trouble telling the heroes apart in-game. While this is an issue that is easily solved with Marvel Rivals’ ability to customize your costume colors, most fans were simply critical of the fact that the developers chose to give three characters such similar color palettes.
A Reddit user by the name of keyotheseasons shared their opinion on Emma Frost’s similarity to her fellow heroes in a post criticizing her design, highlighting that the Marvel Rivals team could have easily gone in another direction when designing this hero.
“I’m firmly in the camp that her design doesn’t look great,” they wrote. “It isn’t terrible but a lot of fan art and fan concepts show that they could have easily done better to make Emma look more like what she was supposed to look like.”
They went on to criticize her larger model, citing that the game already has big enough hitboxes without increasing her model size.
In case you still think this backlash is unwarranted or that the choices are completely coincidental, then the fact that the Marvel Rivals team themselves reference the similarity in-game might put it in perspective.
At the end of the day, the developers of Marvel Rivals are going to base characters on their relevant comic book designs. That being the case, however, makes this choice even stranger, as two of these unfortunately designed characters don’t have a reason to feature these matching colors.
In case you aren’t aware, Emma Frost is a prominent character in Marvel Comics, introduced in The Uncanny X-Men #129 in January 1980. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne, she is a mutant with powerful telepathic skills and the unique ability to transform her body into an organic diamond.
Despite the name, Emma Frost has nothing to do with snow, ice, or water, and is called the “White Queen” based on her leadership of an organization that uses chess pieces in their structure. While her white suit and blonde hair are certainly present in the comics, there was never a reason to include her blue accents to her suit, and avoiding this choice would have created a degree of separation from the other two heroes. Dagger has the same problem, with blue added to her traditionally all-white suit, but she was the first character added to the game, before this was a Marvel Rivals trend.
Sue Storm has the opposite issue, featuring a totally blue suit as part of her Fantastic Four ensemble. While the rest of her superhero team has white accents added to their costumes as part of their inclusion in Marvel Rivals, the design choice is odd to say the least, doing away with the blue majority on their suits as present in comics.
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Suffice to say, being true to the comics was not the highest priority to the Marvel Rivals team when adding these characters to the game.
Marvel Rivals can’t claim comic book accuracy for its odd decision to include three similar-looking characters in the game, even going out of its way to make changes to their comic book palettes to create this trend. Acknowledging the problem themselves in game, one can only wonder why the developers of Marvel Rivals wanted to create a design problem where one didn’t need to exist. This situation now leaves me wondering what White Widow might look like if she were added to the game.
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