Fans have learned several things about Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics‘ much anticipated Marvel’s Avengers, including how the game opens up and what happens to the Avengers themselves after A-Day. Recently ComicBook.com had the chance to speak to Crystal Dynamics’ Head of Studio Scot Amos and Crystal Dynamics Narrative Designer Hannah McLeod all about the game, including the Avengers’ chief antagonists AIM, otherwise known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, and they broke down why they chose AIM to be the team’s main villains
“I think the technocratic utopia, that idea of science over superheroes, that idea of reason over religion. These crazy people with powers and gifts and these people fighting. ‘No, that’s unchecked, that’ll be dangerous, that can be destructive,’” Amos said. “Again, it’s not about, ‘I’m taking over the world’. It’s actually much more like, ‘The world needs order. The world can’t have these people running around who could do whatever they want to’.”
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“So it creates this incredibly diametrically opposed point of view of, “Nope. People with powers that are benevolent, that are great, they want to help the world. This is awesome. We can be the Avengers and be superheroes’. AIM just has this philosophical tentpole across their history, and has always been about science and about order. So being able to have that creates this really interesting world where even living on our planet today, how many of us have these things and we’re all connected.”
AIM’s wishes to be so interconnected is also something anyone who embraces technology these days will thoroughly understand, as well as the push and pull of privacy and how connected you truly want to be.
“We’re approaching that,” Amos said. “What do we give up to make sure that everybody can track us 24/7? Everybody has a connection to us. They can call you at any time, anywhere. This is kind of that extrapolation into AIM’s way of thinking. ‘Yeah, the entire world should be connected and then we know where everybody is and we can keep control of all of that’.
“So they’re going to maybe be a somewhat extreme version of that logic, but from their perspective, that’s the way the world should be,” Amos said. “Ordered and organized and controlled and nobody stands above the others. Whereas superheroes, as a right of existence, as back to what Kamala would say, ‘I have a place in this world, I have a place as me in this world. There’s a reason I exist and have the things I can do’. So being able to have that very diametrically opposed perspective makes a natural villain for these heroes.”
While AIM is taking things too far, McLeod also wants players to have an understanding of how this group arrived at their conclusions, despite not agreeing with their methods.
“It also feels really grounded,” McLeod said. “You can see how AIM gets to the point of believing in those things. The A-Day disaster that starts our game is very clear evidence that if heroes get to do exactly what they want to do, bad things can happen. And you can see why some people, especially if science and tech is their thing, jumped to, ‘Okay, what can I do to solve this? What can I do to fix this?’ So it’s not this like mustache twirly ‘We’re going to take over the world’. It’s literally, ‘We’re seeing a devastating problem and this is our solution’. And people like Kamala are like, ‘But what about us?’”
“What about us? What about free will? What about freedom? What about our ability to do and live,” asked Amos, with McLeod adding “What about hope?”
We’ve got plenty more from our interview with the Marvel’s Avengers team coming up, so stay tuned to ComicBook.com for more!
You can find the official description for Marvel’s Avengers below.
“Marvel’s Avengers combines an original story with single-player and co-operative gameplay in the definitive Avengers gaming experience. Assemble into teams of up to four players online, master extraordinary abilities, customize a growing roster of Heroes, and defend the Earth from escalating threats. Featuring regular content updates, Marvel’s Avengers will take players on an epic journey delivered over multiple years. This game is what’s next for the Avengers.”
Marvel’s Avengers hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia on May 15th, 2020.
Are you excited about Marvel’s Avengers? Let us know what you think in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things gaming!
