Marvel has shown a trailer for the first time of 1943: Rise of Hydra. While it looks tremendously bold, it can also go tremendously wrong.
Besides Wolverine, there is another big Marvel game in development with Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, another big Marvel game is in development. The latter is due in 2025 and is being made by relatively unknown game studio Skydance New Media.
While the trailer looks tremendously bold, we have seen superhero games of late that have not always been a success. Can this game impress?
This is Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra
Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is an action adventure game set in World War II Paris. The creator describes the game as follows: “In the chaos of war, worlds collide. Four heroes must overcome their differences and forge an uneasy alliance to confront their common enemy.
Yes, you read correctly: there are four Marvel heroes in the game. You probably recognized Captain America and Black Panther from the trailer, but so there are two more. This appears to be an American commando and a spy from Wakanda.
It’s an unusual plot and you don’t immediately expect Captain America and Black Panther together in a story set in World War II. Yet this did happen once in the comics. Hydra also played a role in it.
Superhero games: a hit or a miss
There have been quite a few superhero games released in recent years, and not all of them were equally successful. Especially games involving multiple heroes failed to live up to expectations. For example, Square Enix’s Avengers game and Rocksteady Studios’ recent Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League scored meager satisfactions.
With Avengers, the problem was that that game had too many of the same kind of missions and the campaign wasn’t fun enough. Still, it did manage to add an Avengers atmosphere with quite a bit of humor and good dialogue.
The battles of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League were not all that positive either. Especially the fights were called boring. So it is important that fights remain interesting. So despite different characters, that seems to be more difficult than with just one specific hero.
(Image: Skydance)
Plenty of positive (Marvel) examples
Fortunately, there are also very good examples in the superhero genre. The last Batman games managed to provide a lot of entertainment, and the Spider-Man franchise on the PlayStation managed to receive high praise.
Two other Marvel games also did well. Guardians of the Galaxy managed to impress with well-written dialogues that put a smile on everyone’s face while Midnight Suns was also fantastically put together. Games with multiple heroes that did go well, in other words.
The special thing about Marvel games is that they are all made by other publishers. Spider-Man and Sony’s Insomniac are a golden combination, while 2K managed to make Midnight Suns a hit. So it seems to be mostly up to the creator whether it can therefore actually be a success.
What is Skydance New Media?
Skydance Media is a film studio that exists since 2010 and since 2019 it also has a game department. In terms of films, it mostly collaborates on action and sci-fi such as Top Gun Maverick and Star Trek Beyond.
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In that regard, there is still little to tell about Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, as Skydance New Media has not released any games. Skydance Interactive, another subdivision, did, but these were games for VR systems such as the Meta Quest and PlayStation VR. In addition to the Marvel title, SkyDdance New Media is also currently working on a Star Wars game.
So now it’s time for bigger games, and for that Skydance has attracted a big name. The studio is led by Amy Henning who previously worked as a writer and director at Naughty Dog. Almost everything from the studio has been a success. She herself worked mostly on Jak and Daxter and the Uncharted games.
Since the new Marvel game falls into the same genre, this could be a success. In addition to Henning, Marc Bernardin is also co-writing the game. He has written several Marvel comics and also collaborated on television series scripts. Much more information about the game is unfortunately not yet known.
