It could open the door to an infinite number of possibilities.
To the shock of many, the reveal trailer for Marvel’s Avengers debuted at E3 2019 shows the death of Captain America and what appears to be a flash forward in time to when a monument has been built in his honor. That’s a pretty heavy reveal to include in the trailer because it essentially gives away a huge early plot point, but when IGN spoke to Crystal Dynamics lead creative director and writer Shaun Escayg at E3 2019, he said the traumatic reveal was all by design… and that it may lead to one of Marvel’s more out-there concepts.
“Well, Cap went down with the ship. The Avengers’ leader is Cap. The guy who always is logical, who always is able to bring this dysfunctional family together. Without him, how do they cope? … This is part of the set up, part of the conflict. It’s, to me, the most exciting part of the story. What do the Avengers do without their beloved Captain?” Escayg said.
Anyone who has even glanced at a superhero comic knows that superheroes never stay dead for long. And given that we know Cap is a main playable character in the game, it’s easy to be skeptical of his “death” lasting for long. It seems obvious that it’s only a matter of time before Captain America comes back from the grave, but when I posed that dilemma to Escayg, he played coy.
“You’ll understand more once you play the game,” Escayg teased. “The Marvel universe is huge. Will it resolve in this game? Who knows. Is this something else? Who knows. The things that we draw from, it’s so big. We can pull from multiverses at this point. It’s a great question. You’re going to have to play it to see it.”
The multiverse? That would be big, indeed. If the multiverse is a part of this game then that would open up an infinite number of parallel realities where alternate universe versions of Captain America (and pretty much every other Marvel character) could come into play. Some other versions of Captain America include cowboy Sheriff Steve Rogers from the year 1872, the Earth X Captain America who is a resurrected angel with blue skin, and the anthropomorphic cartoon cat named Captain Americat from the same universe as Spider-Ham. As you can see, there are numerous directions the story could go — and numerous versions who could replace the fallen Captain America.
For more on the game, check out how the Avengers game devs offered hope to Hawkeye fans and what they had to say on a possible Avengers/Spider-Man game crossover.
Also be sure to hear what the developer told us during our sitdown interview at E3 2019:
Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
