Gamespot Interviews MVC Infinite Devs on Preserving Depth, Picking Characters & Fixing Chun-Li's Face

POSTED: Monday, June 26th, 2016 (July 1st, 2017)

Gamespot Interviews MVC Infinite Devs on Preserving Depth, Picking Characters & Fixing Chun-Li's Face

Before MVC Infinite was shown at E3 '17, Gamespot talked to MVC: Infinite producer Michael Evans and Associate Producer Peter Rosas. The interview covers a broad range of important subjects, including character roster choices and preserving gameplay complexity. The MVCI devs were even asked about the negative response towards Chun-Li's face in the E3 trailer...

Gamespot: Okay. So just to return to Chun-Li's face.

Michael Evans: Haha. I knew you were gonna say that.

GS: Are you guys gonna look at that again, given the widespread negative response?

Michael Evans: Yes. Well when put that way, I say, I never wanted to look at it again. It's super--no, okay. It is disgusting. [Said jokingly] Of course we will look at it again. We're gonna look at it. Can't promise anything right now, but we want to make our fans happy, man. We're not an evil overlord company, despite the rumors. We do want to make our fans happy. Can't promise anything. We'll look into it. I believe Ono already said something about that.

[Michael's quote, "I never wanted to look at it again. It's super--no, okay. It is disgusting," was said in jest, which doesn't quite carry through into a written transcript.]

When Michael and Peter were asked about missing-in-action X-Men characters like Magneto and Sentinel, they gave some surprising answers...

Gamespot: There was recently a leak about the characters, and people picked up on the fact that a lot of classic characters aren't there, specifically the X-Men characters like Magneto and Sentinel. How do you guys feel about people being hung up on that?

Peter Rosas: If you were to actually think about it, these characters are just functions. They're just doing things. Magneto, case and point, is a favorite because he has eight-way dash and he's really fast, right? So our more technical players, all they want to do is triangle jump and that kind of stuff. Well guess what, Nova can do the same thing, Captain Marvel can do the same thing. Ultron can do the same thing. Go ahead and try them out.

It's just the function that people are associating with the character, and there's no shortage of that. We made sure that all proper play styles can be represented with our current roster. The design team has been looking at that very closely. We wanted to make sure that if a legacy character doesn't happen to make the roster this time, that play style would still be represented. That somebody who has associated themselves with Magneto wouldn't be lost coming into this title.

Michael Evans: The other thing is, you mentioned returning characters right? If you look at the returning characters and you play with them, you'll notice that they're quite different from their previous iterations. Iron Man, he plays completely different. He has new special moves. Obviously we wanted to keep fan-favorite characters, but since you have the new system they're gonna play differently. In addition to that, new special moves, new hypers, new level threes in some cases, these breathe new life into these characters even if they are returning. So we did definitely make an attempt to do that.

The X-Men stuff, [I] can't talk to. But I do want to talk about the character-selection process because I think it's important. There's three things we're looking at: Gameplay first and foremost of course. The Capcom R&D team and us, we get together and we talk with Marvel about what characters we want to put in. From a character-type perspective, we want our big brawler characters, our characters that can fly, our small characters or whatever. Just from a creative side, gameplay, here's the characters we want. That plays a part.

One of the first things we did was sit down to write the story. When we were thinking about the story we wanted to tell, as fans ourselves on both sides, on the Marvel side there's Mike Jones, an ex-Capcom guy. We're big Marvel fans, so we're sitting down to just like, "What crazy interactions do we want to see? What would happen if Docket, Dante, and Rocket came together? What would happen and who are these pairings that we want to see?" So from a storytelling perspective that also played into the character selection.

Then the third one is obviously the popularity of these characters. X was one we had to get in there. A lot of fans wanted to see X, so we brought him back. Then also we talked with Marvel very closely about their future roadmap, about what's gonna be happening.

Warning: The next statements from Capcom's Michael Evans may evoke feelings of eternal sadness for X-Men and Marvel Vs. Series fans.

Michael continued, "Your modern Marvel fan, maybe they don't even remember some of the X-Men characters, but they know some of the Guardians characters or Black Panther.

The third factor essentially touched upon making characters diverse in terms of what they can do. Having big characters vs. small characters, flying characters vs. ground-bound characters, etc. definitely does have that 'Marvel feel' to it."

Read full interview over at Gamespot.

[UPDATE] Maximilian recently posted a "real talk" video concerning the very things that were said by Capcom in this interview. The opinion that he shares in this video (below) is one of common sense, and is shared among many in the fighting game community. I happen to agree with him 100% on this one.

✔Webmaster Comment: I didn't know "modern Marvel fans" possibly don't know who the X-Men are. Sad times we live in... it seems.

As a big X-Men fan since the early 90's, this is a pretty disheartening response from the Capcom devs. I'm already not feelin' the MVCI roster, and this certainly isn't good news for a fan of the earlier MVC games. And did Peter "Combofiend" Rosas pretty much just confirm Ultron has "replaced" Magneto? Sad times.

As Maximilian said in his video, people don't like using Magneto because of his "function" and moveset (alone). People like using Magneto because he's Magneto. Designs matter... and engaging character rosters in fighting games also matter. Integrity to classic character designs also matter.

Ohh well, there's always hope for that "X-Men DLC rumor" to be true.

Marvel VS Capcom: Infinite releases on PS4, Xbox One and PC on September 19th, 2017. Stay tuned on FightersGeneration.com for continued coverage of MVCI.

Sources: Gamespot, , Eventhubs

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