LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 is the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2013 classic, bringing an even larger story and roster of characters to consoles. From well-known heroes like Captain America and Iron Man to obscure figures like Koi Boy and Throg, LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 revels in exploring some of the strangest characters in Marvel’s stable. Arthur Parson, Head of Design for TT Games, shared some insights about the upcoming game.
Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Player.One: Why did it take so long to make the second LEGO Marvel Superheroes game?
Arthur Parsons:We knew when we finished the first one in 2013 that we wanted to make this. Which is why we put the Guardians tease at the end of the first game. That's where we set up for the second game.
In between we did Marvel Avengers, which is very cinematic, and now we’re back to an original comic book-based story, where we can bring all sorts of characters from multiple Marvel universes, because Kang the Conqueror allows that.
And [Chronopolis] is huge, every time I see it it just gets better. Visually it's great, the amount of content in there is just immense. That, sitting alongside 20 awesome levels, and some of these bonus levels are Gwenpool-based.
The first game we had the Deadpool missions, and that’s how you unlock the red bricks. This time around, we have Gwenpool which unlocks the pink bricks. For me, Gwenpool is a better character because, yes she breaks the fourth wall, but she also knows that she’s breaking the fourth wall, she knows she’s in a video game talking about a video game to people playing the video game. It just allows for a lot of very fun humor. It’s exciting.
Can you talk more about the attention to detail to the characters and levels?
A: From the first day we started the game, we encouraged all of the team members to read comics, watch movies, immerse themselves into everything that makes Marvel great, especially those characters.
For example, the guys who work on the character animations will look through the comics for someone like Lockjaw, who isn’t mainstream, but we’ll read through the comics to see what makes Lockjaw tick and what makes him a cool character. How his teleportation works, how he will move and react. And every character gets distilled down to, like, a move board, that highlights the best things about a character. We build up from that to animate everything.
We revealed Howard the Duck is coming back, and we also revealed that Howard can become the Iron Duck, which is pretty bonkers. We revealed an all-new character, Carnom, which is Venom and Carnage fused together, which is cool. We’ve got some of the broader spectrum characters, like Cosmo, Gwenpool, a character named Greenskyn Smashtroll, which is effectively medieval England’s version of The Hulk.
Obviously, the game being about different time periods coming together, it allows us to do those sort of things, like what we did with Wild West Captain America.
Throg, the frog version of Thor, is a bit out of left field. And completely left field is a character no one knows called Forbush Man. The easiest way to describe him is that he’s a guy with a saucepan on his head, but he has a very good history in the comics. He’s not a nice guy, apparently.
There are a lot of obscure characters here, why bring them to this game?
A: People have an expectation level. They want to see Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and maybe the Inhumans. There are characters people WANT and expect, Ant-Man, Giant Man, Wasp. But they also expect us to surprise them. Surprise them with characters that they may not expect.
So we have great characters like Kamala Khan or Captain Marvel, or Gwenpool, Spider Gwen. Then we have the ones that come from leftfield that we can have some fun with. And it allows you to be what a LEGO game should be, whimsical and surprising.
Is it difficult to get the core aspects of a character while putting a LEGO spin on them?
A: No. When you have a great team like we have they relish the challenge of making, no matter what character it is, as good as it can be. So if we have Medusa from Inhumans: what's great about Medusa? What’s really cool? How can we make her hair just amazing and bring that into her moves, her combat, all her abilities? And we do that across every character. We just want to make every character that surprising.
How was interacting with Marvel creating a brand new character?
A: They were actively encouraging us. They said, “If there’s anything that hasn’t been done before, let us know.” In the first game, we had this very great level in Oscorp, where you're chasing Green Goblin and the lights go out and you hear a scuttling noise, and all of a sudden, there’s Venom full-screen in your face. It was just a great opportunity to give kids a nice scare.
This time we were like, “how can we do something similar, but push things just a bit?” So we have this thing where there’s three different Spider-verse characters, Spider Gwen, Spidey 2099 and Classic Spider-Man, and they’re chasing Green Goblin 2099 into Nueva City into Alchemex, the future version of Oscorp. So when you get to that showdown with Goblin, you'll see he’s been experimenting with the symbiotes, and you’ll see Venom and Carnage 2099 and they just then get fused together. So as you fight Goblin, Goblin gets out of there, and then these two characters fuse together into Carnom. So it’s super exciting to do a new character. It’s always giving the players something unexpected. Keep them engaged because they know there is something new around every corner.
There are a lot of Spider-Man characters revealed, was it hard to differentiate how those characters play?
A: Not really. They all really have a strong heritage whether it’s in comics, movies, television. We’re just trying to pick the fan-favorites. People want Miles, people want Miguel O’Harfa (2099), they want Peter Parker. And for us, it’s about how do we deliver on being the ultimate Marvel game? And we decide to just put them all in. And to be fair, there are still Spider characters still yet to be revealed, so people are going to be very surprised when they see them.
But this is not the Spider-Man show, it’s about all of the great characters we have here.
Marvel fans are a hardcore bunch. How do you decide who gets put in and keeping fans happy?
A: It’s a difficult job. Ultimately, there are over 8,000 Marvel characters and we’re never going to put them all in the game. We had a hit list of characters we wanted in the game, and there’s an allowance of characters we knew people wanted to see, or characters that [Bill Roseman at Marvel] will suggest. And then we’ll just get a roster that everyone’s happy with. And you know what, if there’s one guy who lives in some village in England who wanted a character that we couldn’t fit in, you can’t make everyone happy, but we will deliver the best game for the most people.
I think the roster we have in this game is exceptional. There’s a lot of characters and a lot of really surprising characters. It’s a strong roster that pays homage to the history that Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and everyone else created, but it’s also current and future characters, to an extent, characters that are going to become big in comics, movies and TV shows. We kind of ticked all the boxes.
Is there any character in particular that was announced that you liked?
A: I’m a sucker for the weird and wacky characters. Characters like Cosmo, Iron Duck and Throg. I love to see these weird characters get into the game. It’s really, really, really good.
You can imagine, a six-year-old kid who hasn’t been exposed to the Marvel universe. Yea, they may have seen the movies, they’re into Guardians or Spider-Man, maybe, and they’ll get the game, start playing and come across these weird characters and go, “There’s no way these are real characters.”
We’ve done something new in LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2, where when you unlock a character it gives you a trading card, like a baseball card. So it has a full image of the character. Flip the card over and it gives you information on the character. And it also tells you the first comic book they appeared in. So then hopefully kids will read comics and learn about those characters. I like the fact that we could be introducing a whole new generation to comics. Also, people my age -- I’m in my 40s -- I love comics, I grew up with comics, and this is the game I want to play. These are the characters I know, I love, and -- I’ll be completely honest -- there are characters in this game that I didn’t know. So it’s great to expand your knowledge of comics.
LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 releases Nov. 13.
