With Crystal Dynamics having worked on multiple big titles over the years, them working on the new Avengers game seems like a natural fir. However, it turns out that Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers is an even bigger project than any of its previous titles.
While talking to GamesIndustry, studio head Scott Amos discussed how the scale of the project means that they have five studios working on Marvel’s Avengers. It even opened one new studio just to work on the game.
“We now have five studios working together to pull this off,” stated Amos. “Crystal Dynamics at Redwood Shores, we opened a new studio in Bellevue called Crystal North West. We have our partners in the Netherlands, Nixxes, which has a big team of people who we’ve worked with for 20 years. Eidos Montreal was our sister studio for all of Tomb Raider, so they’re working on this. And even Square Enix Japan has folks from the tech group working with us.”
Of course, being an Avengers game, Marvel is also very involved with the project.
“They’re not just collaborators, they’re partners,” said Amos of Marvel. “They’re embedded with us as a team.” As part of this, the teams at Crystal Dynamics work closely with Marvel Games’ Vice President and Creative Director, Bill Rosemann, who makes sure that the game focuses on story.
“Everything that we do — any of the characters, the gear, anything we put in there — has to have a story behind it,” said Amos. “That’s something that Bill taught us from the very beginning: put anything in the game, but focus on the story.”
Story is important because the challenge for them is to introduce the Avengers or, more precisely, their version of the Avengers. While most fans already know the characters from either the comics of the films, this will be the first time they’ll be meeting this incarnation of the team. This includes having to do multiple branching paths in the game’s story to explore each member of the team.
With all this work that their doing then, it seems that Crystal Dynamics is building more than just a game.
“We’re building The Avengers universe,” said Amos. “This is our thing.”
