Marvel Rivals pt. 3: Heroic Characters and Skins

The Direct Edition and Moose get into the exciting details surrounding the launch of Marvel Rivals. They discuss character reveals such as Squirrel Girl, Magneto, and Hulk, and explore their unique abilities and potential gameplay mechanics. They also examine the upcoming season zero content, character skins, game modes, and maps. They express anticipation for the seasonal updates and speculate on future character additions, emphasizing the importance of balanced gameplay and community engagement.

Chapters

• 3:36 Marvel Rivals Character Discussion
• 13:29 Skins and Customizations
• 18:46 Season Zero and Future Plans

Transcript

god, dude this It sucks, though, because, gamers are eating good, dude. And I will definitely be making the time for this. But, it's gonna be hard fought. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like, making sure that I have no obligations. Path of Exile 2 drops , a lot of games are out there getting content updates I think Diablo 2 is getting its ladder update, which is not, they're not really adding anything new but a lot of, but I'm seeing so many announcements come around that, oh yeah, new season or, or expansions or things like that, everyone's dropping everything and. 

I'm going to be hard fought to separate my time properly. Let me, this is, it's a good launch week because I'll be honest with you. November was dry for me as far [00:03:00] as releases go. There wasn't really anything that jumped out that I had to get. No, I could I totally I feel like that's been just as of late for me That is that has been a thing where I'm just like, oh, okay another dry week another dry month. 

Oh, we get a little micro updates and then everyone's just pulling out both barrels and just Here you go have shit to play. Oh, okay. Yes, please, can I have another? Absolutely. I'm stoked. I'm stoked for new things to occupy my time. Heck yeah. If you had to choose, Moose, I know it's gonna be hard. 

Who are you most looking forward to playing, and why? 110 percent Squirrel Girl. That's, that, that was, As soon I didn't know, I did not know until you had said something, what was it, yesterday or the day before, I did not know that she was in the game, cause I, to be honest, I just have not been keeping up with this, cause I've been in such a cycle of hard binging 2 [00:04:00] info. 

I was oblivious to this. to the who's in the roster now, dude. But as soon as Squirrel Girl was mentioned, I was like, Oh, all this game now has a lot of my attention. Just, ah, any iteration of Squirrel Girl that I've ever been able to find. It was mostly in Marvel heroes. It just absolutely, yeah, she's getting as much of my attention as possible. 

Plus, they gave her the Southern accent, made her thick as hell. They just, and her abilities were like Demoman slash Junkrat. The arcing shots and stuff that I'm such a sucker for. I was like, Oh, this is, everything is just like the roulette, not the roulette wheel, but the slot machine just hitting all sevens with that character reveal. 

I was so happy. I watched that shit like three times in a row like this is wonderful. But yeah, they just confirmed her. That was this in this latest trailer that she was just confirmed. It was her Black Widow, Cloak and Dagger, Iron [00:05:00] Fist, Squirrel Girl and Wolverine were the most recent five that were confirmed to be Marvel rivals. 

Very nice. Yeah, super, super stoked and Jeff the land sharks just gonna be like where I just want to be stupid and run around and just not care about my ELO or anything like that. Just shoot bubble beams and hide in walls and laugh my ass off at how stupid I am. That's that I got a character for that. 

And, hela was looking really good too, though. I think Hela's definitely gonna catch some of my attention for the obvious reasons, but also, I liked her kit. Or what I've seen of it so far. Not a big Vanguard guy, so I'm gonna be mostly duelists and strategists. Okay. What's your angle? 

What's your angle of characters du jour? First foremost, I guess I'm gonna have to run with Black Panther, give him a try. I've been eyeballing him since the beginning. True. After that like you said I'm a, probably secondary for Squirrel Girl cause I [00:06:00] like the bank shots, they had the junk rat. 

So I want to give those a try when I saw that she was able to slingshot and bounce those ricochet those her ammo. I was interested and then lastly I probably Look at Magneto cuz he looks 

Yeah, my one concern about Magneto is the range of damage. I think it's on his ultimate. They stated, how it's like that gravitational ball that he grabs stuff up into it and the damages. Determine the damage is augmented based on how much a junkie gets in the metal ball before he throws it Could you could you make it do like 10 damage by only playing people who don't fire projectiles? 

You just do a venom iron fist You know that kind of comp or no one shoots anything at all and then he just throws wiffle balls how wide is that damage range? That's the, those are [00:07:00] the kinds of numbers that intrigue me, but also make or break a game like this. And you say he was gathering up debris in the area. 

So that's how they, yeah, that's how they explained it in the, like the ability showcase. I was watching where he basically takes to the sky, starts like a magnetic ball, basically. And the way they described it said that it collects. Like shell casings or like metal debris, things like that. So maybe parts of maybe it can also be augmented by you bust up a car, maybe like a car door will end up in there or something like that. 

But it basically, they were saying any debris, but things generated by characters can get caught in it too, to augment its damage. And I'm wondering what that. What that entails can you just totally be like, Oh, my old sup? And then you pick the absolute wrong time to throw it because there's no projectiles or anything nearby. 

And it does six damage. But if you wait for the right time, it team wipes is how wide are we [00:08:00] talking here? And I wonder that a play in with the destructible environments as well. If it does, that would be so cool. Yeah, if somebody is wrecking the environment in Magneto Oats at that time, then, what is it going to pick up? 

Like, all the debris that's laying around? And are we gonna get like a Katamari situation where it's like they bust up the car, like they blow up one of the cars or something, and then that ball just gets six times bigger because the whole Rolls Royce ended up inside of it, and now it's just a Super Ball. 

Can we do some cool shit like that with the Destructibles? If so, I'm even more invested because I'm a sucker for, I'm a sucker for physics things in games like that, that are determinative. Oh, yeah, you can just suck a whole car into it. Yes! Let's go. I know, I don't know if they had this on a wiki page, but I know with the inclusion of Wolverine, they did make mention that Hulk and Wolvie would have a team up ability, the [00:09:00] fastball special. 

Oh. As soon as you, as soon as you Hulk gets a team, or as soon as you're saying Wolvie gets a team up, I was like, okay, I had a feeling where we were going. And then you said it was Hulk. And I'm like, please God, let him finish with the best. 

Oh, I need new pants. That is the best news I've heard so far. Oh, I love it. Oh man, that makes me so happy. 

Oh, that's gonna be awesome. Okay. Yes. Yes. So you have given me even more hope for this title. Oh man, that is so cool. There's a lot of hope. There's a lot of hope going into this. I can tell you that for sure. Oh, yeah, man. I just, it's please do this correctly. Please have the balance team working overtime. 

Let's get a good cycle of new characters or the very least, a good seasonal rotation with a not too [00:10:00] predatory battle pass. Let's don't get greedy. That's all I want out of it. Don't get greedy with it. You're sitting on a gold mine. Don't mess it up. So you said Squirrel Girl and Jeff are probably going to be your main and your secondary. 

Oh yeah. Is there anyone that hasn't been named that you would like to see included? Ooh. Cause I know for me, it was twofold. For me, it was like, I want to see more X Men, cause I'm a ginormous X Men fan. Absolutely. Even with them having like Magic, Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, and Namor, as the mutants, just the five mutants that are in there, I was like, I want more. 

I want to see more. Oh yeah. Without a doubt. I would love to see like a Nightcrawler or a Gabbit. Ooh. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Crawl. You can [00:11:00] add a Colossus as a Vanguard dude. Colossus fan. Yeah. No. I can co I'll co-sign that 110%. I want a Colossus Vanguard. That, God, that would be great. I love Colossus like Colossus and Night Crawler are my favorite two characters in the, in, in the whole like X-Men world. 

So that'd be perfect. There's so many of them ambassadors to choose from. So they might as well just do like a Marvel rivals, X Men edition. Honestly, they can do an X Men season or something like that. And then just absolutely lean into it. Oh man. And then so for it. I, oh, again this leans into the fact of I'm a sucker for a gimmick. 

I would actually, they'd have to find a way to do this. That was fair. I would love to see a Sentinel. Oh, okay. Big ass lumbering, how they did like iron giant in that And the Nickelodeon Smash Brothers, [00:12:00] that, that, not Nickelodeon, but that IP. Multiverses. Yeah, the Warner Brothers Multiverses, thank you. 

I love the Hellout Iron Giant that, that was my main right there. Cause I love a gimmick character. He's big and bulky and slow as hell, but if Start popping off, you pop off huge. I'm like, that would be cool. Thank you. And the only other one that I was missing when they announced Iron Fist, I wanted to see a Luke Cage. 

Oh, yes. And of course, he would be another Vanguard character to go in. But I was thinking like they'd have a team up ability like heroes for hire or something as a type of bonus. But that's what I was hoping for, like more X Men and Luke Cage. We get we get Luke Cage and Jessica Jones in some capacity do them like cloak and dagger. 

Look, there you go. You know what, actually in the comics, Squirrel Girl babysat for them. She was their nanny, up there watching their daughter. A little [00:13:00] tidbit there. Yeah, okay. Oh man, God! It's just every point that's brought up here so far, because I I've been eyeballing this from a respectable distance. 

Some CS I got. Three other games I'm watching now, four or two at the same time. And now that we're like really getting into the meat and potatoes and like the deep dive of it yeah, there's so much potential here. And you've got me, you've got me freaking stoked. 

Let's see what else I get. Ah, so we mentioned that the skins to some of these characters. Yes. I took a look at the dev video and it shows that this Friday when the game launches, it's going to be season zero. It's going to be considered a season zero. The skins that's going to be with the battle pass. 

It's supposed to include like a seasonal story skins where each season gets his own skins. Some are going to be. That like specific skins or a specific, [00:14:00] yeah, specific skins that characters receive in conjunction with the lore of the game. They may not have anything to do with the comic or the Marvel cinematic universe, it's going to be in tune with the story that's happening in a game and they get skins out of that. 

If if someone is going into outer space and they need a special suit for it, that's going to be a skin that's introduced into the game. Oh, okay. All right. I'm okay. I'm liking this. I'm liking this a lot and they mentioned that some of the other scans that they're looking forward to, of course, the comic classics, which will be some of the more memorable classic hero costumes coming out of the comic books. 

There's going to be some MCU scans, ones that are based designs from the cinematic universe. Okay. You know that you capitalize on that crew too. Absolutely. Yeah. My least favorite [00:15:00] one popular theme skins. So like steam punk, Western. Oh yeah. No, I'm not a fan of that. Yeah. I can honestly do without those. 

No I 110 percent agree with you, but you got my brain turning it like classic skins. Could we get please, maybe possibly could you guys really do this? Could you give me, can we give me Psylocke in her comics, accurate skin? Like just one time, just do that for me one time. 

Give me classic Psylocke. It's possible. We haven't seen the skin that she has now is just one that they're displaying. It seemed like there's two available at launch from what I've seen. Yeah. Okay. Because. Or the only one that I've seen a difference is Hulk and his character actually is described as Bruce Banner and Hulk. 

So he has three different skins. Oh he starts off as Hulk, but when he takes too much damage, [00:16:00] he changes back to Bruce Banner. Interesting. Okay. And he's super squishy as Bruce Banner. I would assume so. If he maintains his ability as Hulk, he powers up into Warhulk or Scar. Ooh, okay. So with that, he has like the Warhulk scan, Bruce Banner has a Warhulk scan, and then Scar is like super gamma radiated. 

That's it. Okay. Yeah, you had me you had me thinking oh, okay we get red, Hulk skins, we get Red Hulk and stuff like that. Yeah but if they want to make that an actual mechanic. Oh, you maintain Hulk form long enough and get pissed off enough that you don't revert. 

You just get stronger the longer you stay Hulk. You have definitely caught my interest with a mechanic like that. 

They [00:17:00] mention festive holiday scans. Those are supposed to be free, actually. Oh, okay. Alright. They said the only thing you would have to do is complete seasonal stories or some type of major event. Ah. Okay, I'm all about that. Absolutely. You definitely do want to give, you want to give people the free to play, the 100 percent free to play crowd. 

You definitely want to give them something. Yeah. You don't want everyone Some type of incentive, some type of incentive to keep them coming back. Yes, 110 percent agreed. The whales are gonna whale regardless. But, people who don't want to spend a single red cent on it, they do need a reason to stay. 

And cosmetics do carry a game. Let's be real. Mechanics aside. Oh, and the original skins that I mentioned. Yeah, they say they're never before seen in comics or movies, but they still correspond with the lore [00:18:00] and integrate into the game's narrative. I'm all for it as long as the narrative is good, as long as it's 

not like lazy ass writing and stuff like that, yeah I'm all for it. Make yourself an in, in, in universe world with lore. I'm here. Oh, bro. I peeked at the dev diary. And I was mentioning earlier that I took a look at the road map and what they have planned. 

If it wasn't short out my mic, I would scream right now. It was like full on, like somebody is broken in my room and trying to stab me type screen. I was like, Oh, I was excited about some of the stuff that's going on. Cause it starts Friday launches season zero. So season zero is. It's going to, we got to jump right into the storyline called Doom's Rise. 

[00:19:00] Oh, and for the long, long, is that what I think it is? Are we getting a kickoff? And I don't I don't know. I don't know if Doom's ever going to be a playable character because right now it just seems maybe at the end of it, we can only hope. Yes. Oh man, that'd be huge. Frickin love Dr. 

Doom. That would be kinda great, though. If Doom was, what do you think he would be? Do you think he would go as Vanguard? Vanguard. 100%. Yeah. He'd just be an absolute mitigation tank, bring out the throne and then have the anti projectile field or something like that, bring out, like a wave of doom bots to be, like a move, like a mobile shield or something like that. 

There'd be so many ways to approach him in cool ways. I was going to say, I can almost see him as a strategist, similar to Loki with the doom bots. Also super valid. I can almost see him like that. [00:20:00] Super valid. Now, I know with the launch Friday, Season Zero it's gonna be like a month long kickoff. 

We're getting to 33 characters. We're getting eight maps competitive modes, like a practice range and a conquest map and what dooms rise is supposed to be is about like dooms performing these time experiments. They end up causing what they call like time stream entanglements or whatever, . Okay. 

Okay. They form like four new COR verses. Alright. Alright. What did I have? Here it is. And they have four new coronaviruses so they're calling them the four new chrono verses and that's 2099. The present timeline, the mosaic timeline, which is like unstable space and time and the collapsing timeline, which is also known as where gods can die.[00:21:00]  

Ooh, all all right. You definitely, I got no words. I'm very curious. Is that gonna go so good or so terrible? Yeah, season one hits early January 2025. The season, the natural season is supposed to last about three months. Okay, so pretty standard four seasons a year type model. That's pretty average. 

And they say season one is going to lay the framework for all upcoming seasons and we should see more new maps in January. New heroes, more team up abilities possibly some new game modes. Damn. Wow. Okay. I was about to say you said it was what, like eight maps and how many game modes on release? 

Already eight maps [00:22:00] there's a quick and competitive mode, a practice range and a conquest map. So four game modes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Honestly. That's pretty solid for that. That's plus, one of the 33. Characters it's just pretty good start. I wonder There's probably not too much to ask but I was like between season zero and one being only a month Maybe they have another hero in the pocket and they could do like one to do one to two hero releases per season Which is a perpetual balancing nightmare to do that You know some you'll some games you'll only see, especially in like hero shooters. 

You'll only see One to two new characters a year, because of how hard it is to balance, rebalance, especially in this game where they have the, the team up abilities and stuff, yeah. Make sure that they're all balanced amongst each other with team ups too. That probably is probably going to be a perpetual nightmare for the balancing team.[00:23:00]  

I was wondering how many heroes we can expect a year. Yeah, certainly don't have a shortage of available ones. Yeah. That's like we were just saying with the X Men alone is so many characters. Yeah. There's that well is not going to run dry anytime soon. Oh no. No. I'm stoked for that. Oh man. All right. I'm stoked