Next week, Square Enix is putting out another Marvel game, this one for the Guardians of the Galaxy. While it looks like a typical third-person action game where you control Star-Lord and command the other Guardians, there is one thing that warrants a special shoutout for how surprising it is.
Like every big superhero game, Guardians has around 40 in-game costumes that you can find throughout the game. Some are original designs, but most are pulled from the comics and films. IGN’s got a video highlighting the ones they managed to find during a recent preview, and they look pretty cool! The movie skins look good, and even costumes from the older comics seem to hold up fairly well. (Rocket in a suit and glasses from his rather excellent 2017 solo book looks awesome.) It’s pretty fun to see Drax from the movies do a combo with Groot in his skin from the 2015 “Black Vortex” comic event.
What’s interesting is that at the bottom of each description, not only do the costumes pulled from the comics highlight the comic where it first showed up, plus the writer and artist, they also highlight the lesser known folks behind the comics: the editors, cover artists, and even colorists. A small thing, sure, but it’s important at a time when creators for the Big Two aren’t being properly compensated the way they should be. And thus far, it’s the only game to be doing this: Insomniac’s two Spider-Man games don’t reference creators in any of their costumes, and ditto the Avengers game.
Does it make the game an automatic hit, obviously not. But hey, isn’t it nice of them to do that instead of just providing an in-game description and then just stopping there, as many recent superhero games tend to do?
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy releases next week on October 26 for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC.