Hello, PlayStation fans! We’ve just released our biggest expansion yet for Marvel’s Avengers – War for Wakanda. It features Black Panther, our new playable hero, a slew of new dangerous enemy types and hours of new multiplayer content, but today we want to share a bit of the story and give a glimpse of how we l ‘ve designed.
Much like our main campaign, War for Wakanda tells an original story set in our Marvel’s Avengers universe. T’Challa rules over the sovereign nation of Wakanda, a technologically advanced country with a stockpile of a rare meteoric alloy called Vibranium. When the infamous Ulysses Klaue crosses the borders of Wakanda, T’Challa will have to face his distrust of others and work alongside the Avengers to defeat his foe.
While crafting this story, our storytelling team (Narrative Director Nicole Martinez, Game Writer Hannah MacLeod, Game Writer Jessica Krause, and Narrative Designer Keano Raubun) reflected on the comic book story of Black Panther in order to differentiate the essential and non-essential elements of his character and story. The death of T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, for example, is one of those essential rhythms that always occur in one form or another in Black Panther stories – much like Peter’s Uncle Ben. Parker – and so that was an element that we knew we had to maintain. also in our traditions.
Klaue’s origins are an example of an element that we were able to play with. In the comics, he’s the son of a war criminal who enters Wakanda to steal technology. In War for Wakanda, we’ve rewritten its origins in a way that opened the door to exciting new combat scenarios for the game, including two new villains and the addition of a variety of new enemy types.
In our tale, Klaue is still a sound physicist like he is in the comics, which allows us to introduce enemies with sonic-powered weapons into the game. It also meant we could transform the human Ulysses Klaue in his sonic-monster alter ego, Klaw.
Another little wrinkle we added to the lore was the inclusion of the infamous Crossbones as Klaue’s chief lieutenant. Fighting Crossbones is one of our exciting new villain encounters players can experience, with its impenetrable shield tech and heavy assault weapons.
Like Klaue, we drew a lot of inspiration from the comics for our characterization of Shuri. We loved his youth, his presence, and his ability to lead these stories, and you’ll see those characteristics in our version as well. Shuri and T’Challa disagree in War for Wakanda on how to deal with Klaue, and we believe the conflict will make our view of these characters distinct from other incarnations. We think it’s fun getting to know our favorite characters in a new way, which is why we spend so much time making each of our cast members feel distinct from their comic book incarnations and comics. movies rather than just copying and pasting their characters to other media in our game.
Our version of T’Challa should also feel distinct. While the Black Panther of the movies is new to the throne, War for Wakanda portrays a version of T’Challa who has been ruling for years. He exudes a security and a confidence that we do not see in the film.
His relationship with each of the Avengers is also unique to our history. Internally, we place new heroes on a “family tree” to help us determine what kind of role they play in the Avengers family: Steve Rogers is the “father”; Natasha and Kamala are ‘big and little sisters’ respectively; Thor is the “older brother of the jock” and so on. We wrote our Black Panther as “your best friend’s dad” – the kind of dad you would like to be yours when you visit your best friend’s house. Fun and cool.
To bring T’Challa and our other new characters in War for Wakanda to life, we knew we would need a top voice cast. We wrote T’Challa with Christopher Judge (God of War) in mind for the role, but it is true that we did not think we would include him in the project. You don’t often have your number one choice in our business! So it was a pleasant surprise when he signed. We knew Judge could deliver the emotional weight of our script, especially in the scenes with Shuri who is voiced by another Powerhouse, Erica Luttrell (Westworld). The relationship between Shuri and T’Challa is central to the story of War for Wakanda. It was therefore essential to find actors such as Judge and Luttrell capable of playing heavier emotional scenes.
It’s hard to write a story that both honors Black Panther’s philosophy while introducing original elements, but we think we’ve struck the perfect balance between the old and the new in our set. The War for Wakanda expansion adds to an already rich gameplay, including a total of over 25 hours of single-player story content across multiple campaigns, nine playable heroes, and endless co-op multiplayer action for up to ‘with four players. Plus, new modes and events are introduced regularly, and dozens of outfits inspired by the Marvel comics and movies are available to customize players’ favorite superheroes.
