Update 5/1
Q. The fusions look really cool, but what about the powers? Do they look spectacular?
A. Yes! We’ve basically taken the approach of making Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 play like a blockbuster movie—when characters use their powers, lots of stuff happens.
Powers & Fusions are visually constructed with the same tools; we have a really sophisticated system for layering together a number of “special effects” that make them up. Fusions have some extras above and beyond Powers to make them even more “cinematic,” but everything has a little something to make it stand out. We’ll be talking more about how we everything up in a dev blog that’s dropping pretty soon.
Q. When will the box art be revealed?
A. I’m not sure when we’re revealing the box art for the game. I’ll keep you guys in the loop!
Update 5/4
Q. Is there free-roaming?
A. Our game isn’t completely “free-roaming,” as we didn’t have time to model the interior of every building you pass by. That being said, we have a lot more variety in our environments than you may be used to, and the environments are extremely interactive. Windows break, fire hydrants launch up on a jet of water, tires come off of exploding cars… you get the idea.
Q. Did you use motion capture?
A. I can tell you that we did use MoCap. Not for everything, though - our animators also hand-keyed a lot. There’s also a good deal of stuff which is a “mix,” as in, elements from a mocap recording layered and altered by hand. We have a MoCap dev diary which will be going up at some point, although I don’t know when. I’ll also see if I can get some comments from our lead animator about the difference between working with MoCap data and hand-keying.
Q. I thought of some cool powers for my favorite character. Can you put them into MUA2?
A. We’re pretty late in development, so it’s unlikely that ideas from these forums will make it into Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, but if we get the opportunity to do another game, we’ll definitely be trying to put in features that fans have been asking for.
Update 5/5
Q. Will there be sub-titles?
A. We will be providing subtitles. We actually use subtitles on our kits (helps us to keep track of where we already have audio and where we need to still put it in), although it will be turned off by default when we ship. It shouldn’t be hard to turn them on, though, I think it’s just a switch in the “Options” menu.
Q. Do the enemies “level up” as you level up?
A. We do have some leveling up of enemies, but it’s important to note that enemies level in a “static” fashion. Since you’re able to customize your heroes, their leveling isn’t symmetrical to the guys they’re fighting. So if you customize your team with a bias towards heavy damage, you’ll tear through enemies much faster than you did before, or if you customize with a bias towards power use, you’ll be able to blast away for longer without taking a break.
Q. What percentage of the game has been completed?
A. EDIT: Right now we’re basically done, just fixing bugs. Old answer kept for posterity. Stating what percentage of the game is “done” is really hard to pin down, because we’re working on everything in parallel. So the sound is at a different place than the combat, which is at a different place than the graphics, etc. Speaking generally, you could probably play the game for a while before realizing that it’s not “done;” - maybe the sound drops out in one place, or if you use a particular move on a particular level things crash.
Also, there’s a lot of subtle tuning and polish that’s going to take place. Sorry to be vague, but it’s just a tough question at this point in development.








