Marvel’s Avengers is an Uplifting Story Let Down by Gaming Conventions
There’s a really simple thing that happens in a lot of video games. As your proficiency with certain games improves, you’re able to make some number or statistic on a character increase to reflect a higher cap on that proficiency. Punch, shoot, stab, and loot enough, and over time, what was once a 1 is now a 50. A 50 with perks. A 50 that does shock damage and helps you generate your special ability faster while healing you.
In most games, there isn’t really a reason for this power scaling. Why is a visually identical piece of gear more powerful than any other? Why did fighting all of those enemies suddenly give you a new ability unrelated to any of the skills you’ve been using? Sometimes a game will throw a narrative bone and some plot point that will address why characters learned a new skill or acquired something that intrinsically makes them more powerful. But that growth is almost always utilitarian. Marvel’s Avengers manages to break away and make some of that growth personal too.
In the first scene of the single-player campaign, we are introduced to Kamala Khan. But not as Ms. Marvel — she’s a young girl with her dad, excited to meet her literal heroes, the Avengers. And she isn’t meeting them because she saved a cat; she’s been invited to Avengers Day because, like many other kids, she wrote a really good Avengers fanfiction.
As much as other games tout a cinematic perspective or camera, Avengers is one of the first where I can feel the game operating on me. The perspective in the opening is tight over Kamala’s shoulder. When Kamala steps onto a large stage to meet the Avengers, the camera works to remind you that these heroes are larger than life by sticking so low to the ground. The frame is filled with awe-inspiring vignettes. Kamala has entered a big world.
The game takes its time with the opening. Kamala has genuine conversations with the Avengers and she stands out to them. This whole opening section is wonderfully endearing and wholesome. It’s slow, yes, but it also sets the stakes. When things begin to go wrong, it feels more personal. Kamala is already in a situation well beyond her capabilities, but the brilliant promise from this point in the game is that eventually, she’ll reach her potential.
When viewed as the story of an outsider looking for acceptance and being the one to reunite “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” Marvel’s Avengers is often brilliant. Kamala’s family wants her to hide her powers and her status as an Inhuman, lest the Gestapo-like Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) take her to a mysterious black site. She herself doesn’t even have full knowledge or understanding of herself or her powers. But she leans in. She leaves her life behind and sparks a journey that brings the Avengers back together after half a decade of isolation — and that’s inspiring.
However, this reunion doesn’t go very well. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner resent each other for their actions after the events of “A-Day,” in which San Francisco was irreparably destroyed. Thor is nowhere to be found with no way to contact him. Black Widow is off doing secret spy stuff. Captain America is dead (he’s not, obviously). Kamala gives them a reason to team up again, but it’s revealed that she was operating on incomplete information. After another bombshell, the team is as splintered as ever. They are only able to put aside their differences when Kamala gains a new lead and broadcasts a speech based on faith that someone, anyone, is listening.
This uneasy reassembly adds a deep, resonant, emotional tone to the entire game. It would be easy for Kamala to effortlessly bring her heroes back together through the power of fandom. Instead, she has to teach them to be a family again, despite the mistrust in her own family.
Unfortunately, the game finds plenty of opportunities to stumble over its own feet. The narrative flow is broken up by plenty of tutorials. When things go to hell on A-Day, we’re able to play as all of the Avengers and learn their powers, strengths, and weaknesses. Then as Kamala reunites the team, we have to do that all over again. Oftentimes the game will completely stop in order to force you to activate a certain power. Sometimes it’s not even the most opportune time to do so, but the narrative demands it. In a story about discovering your own path, it feels weird to be told repeatedly to do a highly specific thing at an extremely specific moment.
That’s aside from the game’s lack of polish and shine. The subtitles are hilariously wrong at times, widely differing from spoken lines. It’s not clear when you have to push or hold a button to get one of the frequent pop-ups to go away. The campaign will introduce you to vendors, only to lock them behind gates that can only be opened after campaign progress is made, even though their waypoint is still on-screen. Maps begin to feel generic very quickly and the non-campaign missions lack the intrigue and personality of their sequentially placed cousins. And while traversing levels as Kamala is a joy because of her oddball stretchy powers, navigating them as someone like Captain America is a slog.
It’s a deeply confused affair. When things are going well, the game reminds me of the best of Mass Effect but told from the perspective of a character who is the last-ditch effort to be the great savior of humanity. Watching the Chimera helicarrier populate and be repaired can fill you with pride the same way that the Normandy itself becomes a home in Mass Effect. Seeing the interactions between the characters is more meaningful than their stats increasing — it’s their relationships that “increase” as well. However, the recycled environments and lack of meaningful interactions remind me of the worst of Mass Effect. Instead of the focused efforts of Mass Effect 2, it’s the slog of repeated environments, missions, and assets of Mass Effect Andromeda.
This lack of polish also applies to how uncomfortable some aspects of Marvel storytelling can be in the present day. There is a theme in this game of wanting to belong to a group that understands you, while they also understand that sometimes, “belonging” requires an act of performance. It’s a powerful idea that is in the heart of Marvel classics like the X-Men and The Avengers. However, it doesn’t all land so gracefully in the game. The idea of a group of people given powers against their will and being called “Inhumans” might have landed differently in the 1960s than it does in the 2020s. Furthermore, AIM’s massive prisons and internment camps are particularly concerning in the face of modern tech giants upholding a police state in America. It’s concerning not only because it’s tasteless, but also because the game has nothing to say about society’s complicity and its negative portrayal of Inhumans as dangerous and prone to anger. While the Inhumans and their plight are not new to Marvel, they present an opportunity to say something unique and powerful in 2020. And in Marvel’s Avengers, it’s an opportunity that isn’t explored.
Gear collection also feeds into this narrative tension between the action of the game and storytelling. The sources of high-powered gear are ill-defined at best, especially if you don’t want to replay the same mission over and over again. Worse than that, everything you get is functionally disposable. While pieces of gear can be upgraded a few times, it’s not clear why you’d do that considering how almost every new piece of gear you will find has more power than the one you are wearing.
And then there’s the “endgame.” Everything that happens after the main story of the game seems like it’s designed to be built on later. It’s as though there is a vision for what this game should look like in March of 2021, but not a compelling one for September of 2020. I can’t articulate a strong argument for why one should continue to play after the credits roll since the campaign missions are designed with so much more heart than the non-campaign War Table missions.
Worse, this exacerbates the issue with gear. While I understand the need to play over and over again to attain the highest power gear, it’s not clear why this is a necessary and attractive goal to attain except for power’s own sake. Whereas in the main campaign, each character is trying to regain a step they’ve lost, and by the end, they’re fully powered and fully confident. Anything needed to advance from here exists solely because the game gives you an arbitrary number to achieve.
There is an amazing delight in getting to play as the fractured Avengers team coming back together. The care placed into the story missions and the set pieces is definitely apparent. And yet, like many persistent games, the true meat of Marvel’s Avengers is meant to occur long after the credits have rolled. Sadly, that’s just not its biggest strength.
