While the Marvel Universe Online game doesn’t
benefit from the years of actual play CoH/CoV has under its belt, the
game does have a whole host of people who have been following it for
decades. It’s an old property, and the developers have
realized this. When I asked them whether they felt any pressure from
dealing with an IP as big as Marvel, Shayne was quick to respond:

“Pressure? There’s no pressure.”

When we finished laughing, Victor pointed out that Marvel
still had the end-voice concerning their characters, which translates
into a form of quality control for the comic book side of things. Even
with this licensing agreement, however, the two men were confident
about the relationship between Marvel and Cryptic.

“They (Marvel) have a lot of faith in us,”
Shayne said. “They trust Cryptic because they can see what
we’ve done, and what we’re trying to do. Jack
Emmert can answer Marvel Universe questions better than a lot of Marvel
fanboys or Marvel designers. He’s extremely
knowledgeable.”

In the end, I wanted to know why a fan of the Marvel Universe
should have confidence in the MMO designers at Cryptic Studios. I
thought their answer was right on the money and shows the desire to
stay true to the source material that they’re pulling from.

“Once we show players our plans, they’ll
know that we’re going to make a true Marvel
experience,” Victor said. “When they see how much
detail and knowledge of the intellectual property has gone into this,
they’ll know that they need to have confidence in us.

“However, we also know that we should never doubt
the collected intelligence of our users. We will listen. We know to
listen. They’ve been playing the Marvel game for years
– in their minds and in other venues – so we know
that we should listen.”

Our entire talk lasted a bit longer than half-an-hour, but
while I was there I felt like I was privy to a great deal of knowledge
about Marvel and Cryptic’s upcoming “secret
project”. Both projects will be unveiled in further detail
towards the beginning of the fall, so keep your eyes peeled. If
you’re at all interested in the “secret
project”, please visit Cryptic’s main site to see
some concept artwork from the game.

Also, while you’re perusing, make sure you check out
our quick descriptor page for Cryptic’s Animation Rig
(Cryptic AR). It is the FULL version of the toolset used to animate the
characters in Marvel Universe Online. href="%3Fhttp://www.tentonhammer.com/node/7772%3F">Check it
out, and toy with it a bit. It’s
free…why shouldn’t you?

I’d like to thank Victor and Shayne for a wonderful
interview session, and I hope to bring you more information on
Cryptic’s upcoming games as soon as anything becomes
available.

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unofficial source for City of Heroes/Villains href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/140/all">news,
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