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Sam Machkovech-September 1, 2021 at 8:30 PM UTC

After the CGI exposure that won the world premiere last week, the new Firaxis strategy game Marvel's Midnight Suns received its full game premiere on Wednesday. Sure enough, it looks exactly like the superhero promise to XCOM last week-however, the new 6-minute reveal actually makes the upcoming game look like an interesting twist in Firaxis' award-winning tactical arena.

When it's the character's turn, they can move to a certain radius on the battlefield and play up to three cards, including attacks, friendly buffs, and enemy negative conditions. Some of them emphasize positioning each hero on the battlefield, for example, hitting a group of enemies in a straight line or transferring the pain of a range of influence to a group of bad guys. A revealing attack even shattered a barrier on the edge of the cliff, and then knocked an enemy into this newly exposed gap. There is an obvious three-card limit for each round, but it is not clear whether it is three cards per hero or three cards for the entire squad in a round. Either way, players must also pay attention to the squad’s "heroism" gauge, because some super cards consume the points of this gauge, as shown by the orange number in the upper left corner of the card. "Basic" attacks and abilities do not use meters.

When you are not on the battlefield, you and your favorite superhero will return to the monastery, a center full of dialogue and training, where hunters chat with allies you recruited throughout the mission. Samples of this text whizzed past in the trailer, and upon close inspection, they appear to include excursions outside of class as well as text dialogue and choices you can make to influence how the character responds to you. Relax on the sofa with Blade, walk on the prairie with Tony Stark, and chat with Magik about 80s horror movies-but also pay attention to the icons on certain options, as they may affect the hero's card unlocking.

Outside of the conversation, Midnight Suns seemed to be flooded with-uh-a lot of game currency. In just one screen, I calculate:

In addition, the "training" facility shows how to use the game's "credit" currency to upgrade existing cards. I totally approve of a progression system that encourages players to replay more difficult tasks or complete challenges to unlock new cards or supercharge existing cards. But a large number of confusing currencies will never make RPG better, even if they are completely free. Of course, I hope that the publisher of Firaxis at 2K Games will be careful not to use these currencies as an excuse to increase the chance of paying to win. The game’s official social media presence stated that players should not expect any microtransactions beyond the “look” option, and we hope that this promise will be confirmed in the final product.

We still have many questions about the feelings of the Midnight Suns' campaign. How many activities are procedurally generated? Will the game make a creative change to XCOM's usual "permadeath" option, because its developers have confirmed that permadeath is not necessarily consistent with Marvel's character world? Will other heroes be restricted after a paid "season pass" or a free post-release patch? But apart from these issues, this reveal does confirm that Midnight Suns' real-time graphics look bold and clear, with various combat environments and gorgeous movie attacks (we hope we can disable or fast forward if we get bored of them). The card system may be just the vibration required by the genre, either allowing Firaxis to create weird attacks that cannot be repeated (due to cards), or allowing players to scramble to compete when bad cards force their strategic hands.

Firaxis / 2K Games / Marvel's listing image

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