Lego Marvel's Avengers

While Marvel's had a tremendous amount of success at the box office over the last decade, the comic publisher has been relatively quiet on the video game front comparatively. There have been a few exceptions to the rule, but Marvel has been almost singularly focused on the mobile game arena. Over the last three years however, TT Games has managed to release two Marvel games under the Lego banner to sate fans hungry for Marvel action on a console. Though TT Games has been delivering licensed Lego video game adventures for over a decade, Lego Marvel's Avengers feels as fun and fresh as it has in years. It also gives Marvel fans a new spin on stories and characters they've spent a great deal of time with since The Avengers hit theaters in 2012.

We already knew Lego Marvel's Avengers would have the biggest roster of any Lego game developed by TT Games to date, but we still don't know the exact character list. During Gamescom this week, TT revealed a few of these new cast members with in-game models for the first time, giving us a better idea of who and what to expect. While your standard Avengers have all but been confirmed (at least as far as the movie roster is concerned), there's a whole lot of Marvel heroes and villains that have yet to have their shot at Lego fame and glory. During San Diego Comic-Con, TT actually teased a few of these characters, including Kamala "Ms. Marvel" Khan and the Jane Foster Thor, but this is the first time we've seen Squirrel Girl and the Young Avengers' Speed. Most importantly, Ms. Marvel's Lego-fied version actually looks like Kamala Khan. After the America Chavez incident, it's good to see TT Games is actually on point with its representation of the character, and fans won't have to cry out in hopes of having Ms. Khan recolored.

This year, TT Games continues its brief tradition of rotating comic book Lego game releases from Marvel and DC with Lego Marvel's Avengers. Based on the two Avengers films, Lego Avengers will allow you to play through both movies with the actual cast doing the voice overs. No new audio will be recorded of course; like Lego The Hobbit, this game will reuse the dialogue from the films in place of having actors like Robert Downey, Jr or Chris Hemsworth reprising their roles. TT Games held a small interview session before the panel at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, and we spoke with producer Matt Ellison about the upcoming action game. As the third Lego game TT will be releasing this year (Lego Jurassic World is available now, and Lego Dimensions arrives this fall), we discussed what makes Lego Marvel's Avengers different and what new elements would be incorporated, from characters to mechanics, to keep the Lego experience fresh.

Since launching in 2005, the Lego [Insert Video Game License Here] series has stayed true to its roots, while offering incremental improvements with every iteration. The earliest games relied heavily on sight gags, while later additions were able to incorporate full voice over tracks to great effect. While we've seen Lego Marvel Super Heroes in action before, Lego Marvel's Avengers is the first superhero license to be based on a film. We've gotten a handful of Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings games, as well as other comic-based titles, but even the previous Marvel Lego game was an original tale. With this retelling of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, Lego will let us relive the movies as they happened, including voice tracks taken straight from the cinematic cuts of the two blockbusters. That means, yes, Scarlett Johansson will voice Black Widow and Samuel L. Jackson will be Nick Fury, but you shouldn't count on hearing them say anything you haven't already heard from the dozens of times you've watched the films themselves. That doesn't mean there won't be some new tricks up TT Games' sleeve. In fact, in our short time with the demo, there were some nice new touches already in place.