Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 developer interview with Lead Artist Brent Gibson and Lead Animator Adam Olshan from Vicarious Visions.

CGSociety :: Game Production Focus
29 September 2009, by Peter Rizkalla

What once began years ago as a small, hopeful title called 'X-Men Legends' has now been shaped into a mainstay in the game industry. The Marvel Ultimate Alliance series is now considered an anticipated, ongoing series. The production of 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2' brings a typical question to artists and animators working on a recognizable series. How do you take a recognizable universe with iconic characters and reshape them into a new title? Lead Artist, Brent Gibson and Lead Animator, Adam Olshan talk to us about the painstaking challenge that faced the Vicarious Visions crew when creating 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2'.

Dealing with any Marvel piece means that you have to stay true to the source material. Unlike previous titles such as 'X-Men Legends 2' where many artistic liberties could be taken, MUA2 has a much more serious, 'real world' feel to the story so the visual feel also has to be taken seriously. In MUA 2 we find that a law has been passed that requires anyone with special abilities such as mutants and superheroes to be registered under the Mutant Registration Act.
 

This causes a civil war between mutants who see security in the act and are in favor of it and mutants who see the act as a way of steeling their freedom and are opposed to the act. “The source material is absolutely incredible regardless if it’s characters or Marvel universe locations,” says Brent Gibson. “It made sense to head in a more realistic direction with the Civil War story line which has themes and subject matter that is very relevant to our times. We then decided to ground the Marvel universe in a more modern reality to make it visually resonate with a wide audience and be more cohesive and consistent. This is tougher than it sounds with such a wide variety of visuals that need to be tied together For example; Latveria vs. Wakanda, or how do you get Songbird or Thor to hold their visual feel in a manner that explores more realism?”

Dealing with realism in a superhero game almost seems like a paradox, especially when dealing with superheroes in a video game. “We wanted to see and feel the effects of our superhuman powers touch more of the environment to make for a more visceral experience. The idea was not to just have awesome visual FX. As a player you want to impact your surroundings, not just have them always be cosmetic.”
 
The Ultimate Alliance series is known to be absolutely packed with a variety of different heroes and mutants from the Marvel Universe which instantly means that an outstanding amount of content would need to be designed. Faced with such a huge task at hand, the Vicarious team gets help from many other teams as well as a single freelance artist. “The character modeling was a collaborative effort between our internal talent, Activision central art, Eric Deschamps (freelance concept artist), and Xpec. Our concept artists, with the help of Eric, worked tirelessly to crank out hundreds of concept pieces to cover the massive number of Marvel heroes and villains needed for the game. Those were passed off to Activision central art to be modeled in ZBrush. After passing through us again for quality checks, the ZBrush models where sent over to Xpec to be made into game assets. Once they passed our quality benchmarks they would be handed back to us for final touch-ups and preparation to go in game. From there our army of animators, engineers, effects artist, and audio folks would bring them to life. Each character went through a lot to become playable, and it still blows my mind that we have so many that are playable.”
 
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