At Gamescom Opening Night Live, publisher 2K and developer Firaxis Games announced Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a long-rumored-and-reported game once described as a “Marvel XCOM,” but which actually has no gameplay elements in common with that franchise. Marvel’s Midnight Suns will come to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store in March 2022. Jake Solomon, designer of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, is leading the development of the game, and a world gameplay premiere will occur on September 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET / 11:30 a.m. PT.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns on Switch is not XCOM with Marvel painted on it
Per Polygon, Wolverine, Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes), Magik, Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Blade, and Mico Minoru will all be playable, and apparently 13 characters in total will be playable from across Marvel canon. There will also be a new character, the Hunter, serving as the player’s customizable avatar. There will be more than 40 superpowers to use across a spectrum of “light” and “dark” abilities, and if you were wondering, yes, Marvel’s Midnight Suns will emphasize some of Marvel’s more occult elements. The game takes influence from a 1992 Ghost Rider story arc.
Gameplay involves turn-based missions where skills level up over time, but in-between missions, you can develop relationships with various other heroes, and unlike in XCOM, there is no perma-death. (You don’t just kill Wolverine.) Also, you will be doing “epic moves” that kill a lot of enemies at once, a far cry from the precision firing to take down single enemies in XCOM.
It honestly feels like something of a surprise that Marvel’s Midnight Suns is coming to Nintendo Switch, but it’s a fantastic surprise and not unprecedented, since XCOM 2: The Collection made its way to Switch eventually. Let us know what you think of this big reveal.
