With some of the biggest and most anticipated prequels, sequels, and video games (especially those from Marvel) announced at 2022's D23, one could be forgiven for missing the relatively quiet announcement of Marvel's answer to Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite -- MARVEL World of Heroes. Developed by Niantic, the studio famous for creating Pokémon GO, the augmented reality game promises to allow some sort of integration with the license and Niantic's telltale tech. The only question from excited fans is how?
Naturally, there are plenty of indicators from Niantic's history that seem to indicate the direction the game will take, but that's not to say that they are complete guides. The preview for the game shows players using the posers of famous Marvel superheroes, with the primary three of the trailer displaying Cyclops' eye beams, Thor's hammer and thunder, and Dr. Strange's reddish magic casting circles. However, no gameplay has been shown yet. Based on what Niantic has done in the past, players can rest assured that there will be collecting, fighting, swiping, and, yes, tapping aplenty.
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Based on Niantic's most successful venture, Pokémon Go, users can assume that there will be some form of collecting involved. Naturally, this will be far less intense than the hundreds (and growing) of cute creatures available in the current Pokémon Go app, but every Niantic title, from Ingress to Pikmin, has encouraged collection on some scale. This mechanic will likely manifest to be more like Wizards Unite's fighting structure, wherein certain spells were used to impede, stop, or scare various magical creatures. The portals in the skies of the World of Heroes trailer imply an incursion, making this likely to be a fight against some interdimensional threat.
A few players in the trailer appear to be fighting against each other. Though this may simply be a fluke of the effects used, it could be an indicator of a coming fight mode of some sort. There are many colors and beam styles, which could imply a variety of power classes to choose from. However, nearly every Niantic game so far has introduced some form of team competition, so World of Heroes will likely have something similar. Whether this will be in power class (e.g. Magic, Mutant, or Tech) or some other category is anyone's guess, but a strong wager should be placed on traditional teams of Marvel, such as the Avengers and the X-Men, or the omnipresent organizations, such as SHIELD and SWORD.
Though Niantic's MARVEL World of Heroes has only just been announced, its trailer has already given fans good indications of the direction it will be going. What's more, Niantic has a particular structure that it uses for its games that has proven to be a winning strategy in the past. Though there is the possibility that Niantic will use its AR programs entirely differently, history indicates that the developers will focus on the collecting, team competition, and fighting aspects of the upcoming game.