Could Marvel Rivals be the Overwatch sequel the world wanted all along?
Can you ever really go back to King's Row?
My guest for this issue of Multiplier is Ash Wayling. Ash has been doing awesome work over at Well Played for ages. You can find his work there, as well as on the WellPlayed YouTube channel. You can also follow him on Bluesky.
Fergus: In the decade since it was first announced at Blizzcon, there have been no shortage of games looking to steal the spotlight from Overwatch. Like MMORPGs and MOBAs before them, the graveyard of hero shooters who swung at the king and missed is a large one. It includes everything from Battleborn to Lawbreakers and not even the relative decline of Overwatch’s own popularity following the arrival of its pseudo-sequel and the collapse of the Overwatch League could save Concord. Still, the list is long enough to make you wonder if Blizzard’s breakout FPS was more of a one-off fluke than a formula that can be replicated.
The success enjoyed by Marvel Rivals seems like strong evidence to the contrary though. After a few months in beta, the superpowered shooter managed to attract over 10 million players in just three days. Those are solid numbers, especially in a time where being attached to a big license like Marvel or DC isn’t quite a guarantee of success.
As one of those players jumping on the bandwagon, the thing that’s really stuck out to me isn’t the flashy roster of colorful heroes but the smaller gameplay and quality-of-life tweaks that NetEase Games have put on the hero shooter formula. Things like team-ups, destructible environments and a more nuanced highlights system sound small but they go a long way. If you’re someone who has played a lot of Overwatch over the years, these changes are a breath of fresh air. In some ways, they make Marvel Rivals feel like more of a true sequel to Blizzard’s hero shooter than Overwatch 2 ever did and I don’t know if I can ever go back.
Ash: I can't believe it's been ten whole years of Overwatch. I still remember when the 'ability-based shooter' genre was more of an oddball experiment, long before they started using the term hero shooter – I was a fiend for such titles. A long (long) while back, I played an obscenely obscure arena-based class shooter/brawler called Brawl Busters, because it was the only thing scratching that incredibly specific itch. It's oddly comforting that 13 years later, Marvel Rivals is somehow channeling the energy of that game with its third person hero shooter-ness.
To speak to the dominance of Overwatch, I'd probably lean more on the idea that Blizzard nailed the expectation of the formula by dropping such a rich gameplay experience in Overwatch 1, tightening the screws on the whole 'hero shooter' concept to an exceptional degree. The path to success in such a genre really is paved with bones of those that tried. But to quote another Blizzard property – "No king rules forever" – and given the far more recent response to Overwatch 2 developer decisions and scope changes, it could even be easy to pin the success of Marvel Rivals on a massively disillusioned user base.
But that doesn't change the fact that Marvel Rivals is just ...really really good. The scope of it all, on paper, sounds like a chaotic mess. But I have been playing daily since release, and even its roughest edge is more reason to laugh than get upset. Even the most cynical of us would struggle to call it a cheap copy, because many of the features on offer are actually so polished and enjoyable that you sort of want other developers to take note. Even something as pedestrian as the replay feature is wildly impressive when held up to other titles – and that's not even a flagship dealio within the game. It's just there.
People might have lowered their expectations due to A) Netease and B) Marvel with the thought this might have been a quick cash-in – I mean, even I was only intending to dip my toe in – but here I am, 20+ hours later queuing into the ranked mode for the game. There's real sauce here.
Fergus: Totally. I’d agree that the degree to which Overwatch is a “dead game” is often exaggerated. There are plenty of indie games out there that would kill to have the player base that Overwatch 2 still enjoys. At the same time though, I can’t imagine a game that’s more engineered to take advantage of the fact that Blizzard’s shooter does seem to be past its peak in terms of popularity or in a period of relative weakness than this one.
There are a lot of people out there who used to play Overwatch in the same way that there were once lots of people out there who used to play Team Fortress 2 and Marvel Rivals seems like it's been explicitly designed to tap into that segment. Rather than make a fledgling subgenre more approachable to new audiences as Overwatch did, it feels like NetEases is betting on the idea that there’s more upside in going after those who are already familiar with the basics of hero shooters and then mitigating and microtargeting the specific things that pushed them away from it.
For me, the most salient example of this is just the casual and silly fun of it all. Initially, I found the fact that the in-game roster is as big as it already to be a little daunting. After a few hours, I stopped sweating about it because this isn’t yet that kind of online game. I assume that this game has (or will eventually have) a more dedicated and competitive community out there somewhere but for now every match feels much closer to my teenage years playing Team Fortress 2 or even something like Super Smash Bros than it does the sweaty shootouts of Overwatch nowadays.
Placed alongside the breakout success of games like Space Marine 2 and Helldivers 2 (and the implosion of the esports bubble we’ve seen over the past few years), it’s just nice to see another multiplayer games that is as moreish as it is because of how much of a blast it is to play rather than because of how well it pushes you to grind your way up a competitive ladder or blast through the battle pass before it expires.
Ash: The game feels like Overwatch with less restraint. Sure, there are cool things in Overwatch, but you can often feel a careful marbling of control through some of their more involved mechanics – meanwhile Marvel Rivals just throws caution to the wind to chase the most intense character fantasies. You'd never see an ability that allows you to create a free to use portal for your team without needing to risk life and limb to place the exit – same way you'd never encounter a character that can collect the entire enemy team in their belly and then barf them into a kill pit. In my discussions with new people approaching the game, I generally try and communicate that there is a level of acceptance needed before you get too deeply involved – and that is: "When everything is bullshit, everything is balanced."
The thing that shocks me though, is that this chaos doesn't grate on you or diminish your experience. Like, the game is 6v6 AND third-person AND has destructible terrain AND has character team ups AND far more involved and off-the-wall kits to use – but it still congeals into something manageable and most importantly; fun. To your point, I definitely think a big part of that is that the tone and presentation of the game is lighthearted enough that taking it super seriously almost feels a little wrong. If you tilt and start raging out, shooting slurs in chat against the enemy Squirrel Girl – you are probably due for a long hard look in the mirror. Sure, eventually the usual crop of efficiency-goblins will decree what IS and ISN'T meta – insisting that some characters are "troll picks" or "throwing", but I feel that the amount of moving parts within the game is going to keep them busy for a long while. Even the simple act of adding a new character, and therefore new team up options, will have a rippling effect on the entire game. NetEase has a lot of stuff under the hood that they can tweak to keep interest cooking.
I do wonder how a competitive scene will approach the game, considering that there is already an in-game advertisement for teams to build in preparation of a big cash prize event – which is hilariously another corner of the Overwatch 2 experience that has wilted in recent times, so there is yet another void waiting to be filled. Considering the spectate tools are already quite robust, and the characters are all big names with films and TV shows (and Comics, I guess) behind them – presenting it to curious onlookers should be pretty simple.