NARRATOR: Welcome to an inside
look at Marvel's Avengers,
presented by Intel, a
multi-episode in-depth look
at how the team at Crystal
Dynamics and Marvel Games
work together to create
Marvel's Avengers.
Over the course of this series,
we explore the development
of this new vision,
the passionate people
and innovative
technology behind it,
and above all, the Marvel
fans and their impact.
But before we get
into all that, we
do need to cover one big item.
How do you build a game when
you can't be at a studio?
To that end, how do
you tell the story?
Well, given the current
state of the world,
this is a very different
style of series.
In March, the entire studio had
to put aside their controllers,
put down their pens and
closed the door behind them.
Yet, much like building
the game itself,
nothing was going to stop
us from telling their story.
We've had to improvise, change
the way we interview the team
and how we bring
our story to life.
Whether it's from their living
room or personal office,
the team will stop at
nothing to tell us the story
of how they all assembled.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Comic books are the ultimate
collaborative medium.
A writer and artist team up
to tell incredible stories.
It's only natural that Stan
Lee and Jack Kirby would use
the idea of teamwork
to bring together
Earth's mightiest heroes in
1963 with Avengers Number One.
Creating a video game
is a huge undertaking
usually involving many people,
but the same idea holds true.
Marvel games, Square
Enix, and Crystal Dynamics
needed to come together to
bring a new, original Avengers
story to life.
 So we had our first meetings
with the Marvel Games guys.
You know, Kay had just
put his group together.
We got to meet Bill Rosemann.
 We really asked them,
well, what characters
are you interested in?
What's the gameplay
that you can deliver?
What's the passion that
you and your studio have?
 And my answer
was, well, we love
taking these believable
heroes and telling
these epic stories around them.
They were like, oh my god.
That's exactly how we
describe what we do at Marvel.
BILL ROSEMANN: And when we were
talking about different story
scenarios we could
do in the game,
there's about four or
five different pitches,
and they were all
very interesting.
But this idea of them breaking
up and coming together,
everyone at Marvel Games,
we were sitting on one side,
we looked, we looked,
we looked, we're like,
what about that one?
And we all agree like,
that's interesting.
Tell us more about that one.
NARRATOR: Whether you're
a writer finding Bruce's
struggles, an artist
reinventing Iron Man's armor,
or an actor finding
Ms. Marvel's voice,
anyone who's ever worked
on an Avengers story
shares the difficult but
exciting task of reassembling
Earth's mightiest heroes.
They all share a legacy.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHAUN ESCAYG: Everything I
work on starts with story.
You know, I was really inspired
by that comic series, Marvels,
and that perspective from
sort of that Phil Sheldon,
the reporter perspective of
these dangerous powerful beings
wreaking havoc
versus superheroes.
So what if the
Avengers did this thing
that was so unforgivable that
society saw them as dangerous?
 The creative process was
thinking about how would
each of these Avengers react?
And you see them doing
different things.
So Tony Stark, you
know, he basically
goes back to his roots.
He goes back to, you know,
his equivalent of the cave.
Hulk really never
comes to terms with it,
so Bruce Banner's sort of
stuck in this in-between state.
And then you have Black
Widow who goes undercover.
She's trying to figure
it out from the inside.
She portrays her name.
And then you have Thor
who puts down his hammer.
He puts Mjolnir down at the base
of the Captain America statue.
Captain America is
missing, assumed dead.
 To me, the Avengers
are all about Cap.
What if you remove him?
The personalities that are
held together by spit and glue,
if you will, start
to fall apart.
And then you add on
top of that a sort
of charged, ongoing conflict
with the Avengers themselves,
and, you know, you
have a weakened,
a very weakened Avengers.
TIM TSANG: The way that we
went about differentiating
our designs of the heroes
in our game really started
with Crystal Dynamics coming to
us with the idea of more super,
more human.
And ultimately,
what that meant was
that they wanted to create a
world that felt real, that felt
tangible, and that each
costume that they created
has logic and reason to it.
If you look at
Thor specifically,
you will find a lot of
details such as like Norse
ruins and patterns.
Even Mjolnir's design is really
based on real world references.
BILL ROSEMANN: If you
do know the characters,
you want to deliver those looks.
Like if you're a
long-term reader,
here's 10 suits that
jump to your mind.
For Hulk, boom, here
he is in a suit.
And some people are
like, what's that?
And the readers are
like, that's Mr. Fixit.
PHIL THERIEN: Early
on in the project,
we'd have these meetings called
the character fantasy meetings.
So basically, you'd make
a list of all the things
that you expect
the heroes to do,
and then we would
basically see if we
could make those into features.
 And somebody said, you
know what we should do?
We should do Hulkbuster.
We're all like, oh, I don't
know how we do Hulkbuster.
That's going to feel
like a seventh character
at this point.
And then these guys
went off and did it.
It was effectively
like saying we're
going to commit to making
like however many games it
takes to make this many heroes.
Iron Man has a lot of
a flight sim in it,
and Hulk has super
intense melee brawlers.
And they're shooting and
just so many layers in here.
Combine that with the
online, combine that
with a different mission types,
a fully fleshed out campaign,
we had a big appetite.
Because if you're going to
make a Marvel's Avengers game,
you can't just make one aspect.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHAUN ESCAYG: Once
we had the sort
of the layout of the story,
we started looking for a cast.
 Thor, what were we
dealing with here?
 They did not
introduce themselves.
 Shaun Escayg and the
team at Crystal really,
you know, like the
Avengers themselves.
They have this all-Star
list of talent.
 They're game industry
legends, right?
There is a lot of people that
have been in the games industry
and worked on some of the
biggest games of all time.
So seeing that cast interact
alongside, you know,
Sandra Saad, our lead, it was
really interesting, because she
came in more of a newcomer.
And all the core cast, she
had a different relationship
with them.
It really sort of mirrors
the story of the game.
 When you have
actors that good,
they can really take
these characters
from what we've read on
a page to suddenly, oh,
that's absolutely
what Iron Man would
sound like in our particular
version of this world.
SHAUN ESCAYG: They're fans, too.
You know, I think
the whole cast,
I think there's not a
single person on the team
that isn't like a super fan.
It's a great synergy.
It's something I personally
welcome, because I
like sort of this
philosophy, you know,
that the best idea wins.
And if someone or
an actor comes up
with a line that really
captures the moment better than
on the page, we go with it.
We're like, listen, this is
that happy mistakes, you know,
that you kind of get
from live action.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GARY SNETHEN: Generally, the
process starts with a creative
coming up with an idea.
They have some vision for
what they want to achieve,
and they come to the
engineers, and they
say, hey, how do we do this?
And the engineers
work with each other.
They work with design and
art and animation, audio,
and they take a
swing or two at it.
And often, you know, they
will need more hands to help.
You know, we partner
with Intel in order
to push their hardware
to its limits.
 So one of the things that
we've done from the get go
was to ensure that the
gaming experience, no matter
the platform or no
matter the hardware,
was, you're going to
have a great experience.
So making sure the game runs
well on tens of millions
of products that are
already out there to future
proofing the game so that
as hardware is released,
the game will scale
to take advantage
of the additional
performance and hardware
that Intel brings to market.
So ideas like sure,
you can hit a car,
and the car might
move on lower systems.
But on a higher end system,
if you hit a car, throw a car,
it's going to break apart.
GARY SNETHEN: We created a
more advanced armor destruction
system where you had
pieces of armor breaking
off of the robots in the game.
 And not just
disappeared either,
having those pieces stick
around in the environment.
 We had more
advanced heroics where
the, you know, the Avengers
themselves would exert forces
on all those physical objects,
and they would fly around
the world in order
to make, you know,
more interesting and
exciting and tangible combat.
 And so small
things like that that
makes the world come to life.
And once it's there, you're
never going to forget it.
If you go back to other
games where that's not there,
you're going to notice it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHAUN ESCAYG: Because of
the current situation,
we were all worried
about, you know,
how this would work with
everyone working remotely.
 It's amazing.
There was no manual
for how to do this when
we were all told to go home.
GARY SNETHEN: And
we scrambled to find
solutions to be able to
continue to work together.
SHAUN ESCAYG: Like I say, this
is a game by fans for fans,
and I don't think anything
could stop Crystal Dynamics
from getting this game done.
 How do you reassemble
the Avengers?
 Through inspiration.
 Being able to
trust each other.
 Working together
for the greater good.
 Heart.
 People believe it,
they can achieve it.
So for us, it's believe.
 There's no other choice but
to sort of assemble ourselves,
as our teams to the IT teams,
level design, gameplay, story,
it's all one organism.
It's our own real
world Avengers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: In episode
two, we're going
to cover a new Avenger,
some threatening villains,
and the all new
world they exist in.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
