For our Wii exclusive characters, we tried to select popular heroes that would bring something different and unique to our roster. Each one also had their own passionate fan-base inside the studio pushing for their inclusion in the game

Psylocke was our first addition, bringing us another female character as well as another telekinetic hero. Her balanced stats and set of powers gives her the ability to slip in and out of melee and ranged combat, giving great depth all in one character. Her Psi-Blade is a favorite around the company as a completely unique move that can really change the way the character plays.

Next, we added Blade. He brought a 'realistic action hero' to our roster, making him one of our more approachable heroes. Some players could easily relate to him due to his heavy use of guns and other real-world items, combined with his look which was inspired by comic covers done by Marko Djurdjevic.

Cyclops was an easily recognized hero and had a significant role in the Civil War as leader of the X-Men. He gave us a great leader character for our roster, adding increased experience gains to the team while having some amazing fusions. In addition, his powers make him one of the best and most versatile ranged combatants in the game.

When it comes it powers, for the Wii version we gave each hero 8 powers, a combination of both active and passive.  With the next-gen game concentrating on fewer powers, we had a lot of flexibility in what we did with the characters.  We tried to include a good mix of enhanced favorites from previous games, and exciting new additions that we hope will become fan favorites.

Coming up on Day Three, we go a little deeper into the changes we made to the Controls of the game, highlighting some of the Wii-exclusives on how you play the game and manage your heroes.

Today we’d like to talk about our approach to the story, levels, and characters of MUA2 Wii!

Characters

MUA2 for the Wii presents 26 playable Marvel heroes, which is more than any other version of the game. Our exclusives include Psylocke, Blade, and Cyclops. Even though other heroes are shared with the next-gen game, many elements of their moves, animations, effects, and sounds are unique and exclusive to our platform. Many of our heroes have completely new sets of powers and animations, giving the Wii gamers even more exclusive content.

Another goal for our level designs was to provide a variety of camera angles and view distances to better showcase the world and characters and to allow for much higher density of enemies. Like VV, we didn’t want to rely as heavily on the three-quarter overhead camera view that is associated with all “dungeon crawling” games.  We made an effort to really show off the characters and the action with closer cameras.  At other times, we pull the camera out and create huge encounters with three to four times the enemy counts that were seen in MUA1.  Since you play as super heroes with amazing powers, we wanted the player to feel more powerful by fighting a massive number of enemies at once.  This works especially well since Fusion is a primary focus for gameplay.

Levels

Our level designs were always loosely tied to the designs from the parent 360 / PS3 product.  We would typically start from an early design provided by Vicarious Visions, adapting it into an original design that was a better fit for our game.  Creating our own level designs allowed us to seamlessly plan original Wii mini-games and story moments from the start, rather than trying to retrofit them into an already completed design.  For example, we made the turret moment outside Doom’s castle an integral part of the story in that level, rather than just a mini-game thrown into the mix.

Our boss encounters were also designed to take full advantage of the unique properties of the Wii, allowing us to create some really amazing moments that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.  For example, on the Wii you can focus the nullifier ray on Absorbing Man with your pointer while your teammates beat him down in his weakened state.  Similarly, the Wii version lets you target weak spots on Goliath so that Thor can unleash on him the power of the Gods.

Due to differences between our schedules, we weren’t able share many art assets with VV, but this opened the door for us to create content specifically for the Wii version.  With over 40 levels of super-hero action, we’re very excited that Wii gamers finally get a MUA game built ground-up for this specialized console.

Another focus of our level designs was to make sure each environment felt original and was easy to navigate and explore. When researching fan opinions of MUA1, we noticed some users felt it was too easy to get lost or turned around because many areas were very similar – many rooms felt similar to the next which made gamers rely pretty heavily on the mini-map for navigation.  In MUA2 for the Wii, levels expand logically as each area looks and feels different than the last.  For example, in just the first level of the game, players will march through the streets of Latveria, through the town square, into the village proper, across the river bed, and through the forest to the exit.  We wanted each of our levels to exhibit such variance so that gamers can explore naturally, without relying on the map.  Of course, the map is still there as an additional helper for those who like to use it.

For the Wii story, we used Brian Reed, a Marvel writer exclusive to our game who wrote all of our character dialog.  This includes briefings, real-time story moments, character interactions, and character quips.  Brian has written for titles like Ms Marvel, Captain Marvel, Secret Invasion: Front Line, New Avengers Illuminati, and other Marvel video games including Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Mercenaries 2.  Brian was awesome to work with and in the end he did a great job for us on MUA2.

Story

The story in MUA2 is fairly epic, crossing the Secret War and Civil War story lines and culminating in its own climax that should thrill and excite any fan.  As we developed the Wii version here at n-Space, we worked very closely with Vicarious Visions to make sure our stories matched and complimented each other. We share story critical cinematics that shape and push the narrative, the major story points are identical, and the final boss character is the same.  What differs is the way the story is presented outside of the shared cinematics.

Our original plan was to share VV’s mission briefings and use them in our game, but because of the differences in our schedules and milestones, that became impossible.  Late in our schedule, we created the stylized pre-rendered briefings that you see in the game.  Matching the style of the menus and loading screens, these briefings are an exclusive story telling device of the Wii and PS2 and something we are very proud of.

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