It’s pretty common these days for Marvel to offer up teases before giving a big announcement, and it looks like another one is coming. This morning, their entertainment account tweeted that a pretty big thing was going to be announced tomorrow morning, which naturally has sent everyone into a tizzy. Given that this account covers movies, TV shows, and games, most would naturally assume that we may be due for some news to come out regarding an upcoming film, maybe a first poster or trailer for Thor: Ragnarok, possibly even new footage for Spider-Man: Homecoming. However, at the same time, Square Enix tweeted that they’d have an announcement of their own tomorrow as well.
Tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/uQnFjapziv
— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) January 25, 2017
Keep an eye on our #SquareEnix social feeds tomorrow for an exciting announcement! pic.twitter.com/VN8xiGzdPH
— Square Enix (@SquareEnix) January 25, 2017
As unlikely as it may be, let’s imagine this means the two companies are making a joint announcement tomorrow. Would that mean Marvel is finally going to be integrated into Kingdom Hearts III? Square Enix has talked about the possibility of adding them and Star Wars into the series over the last few years, and the Cinematic Universe is a financial juggernaut for Disney in and of itself. It was always going to be a possibility around the time that Disney first acquired the comics publisher, because they like money, and the merchandising potential alone would be terrifyingly lucrative. Kingdom Hearts III getting some Marvel in its mix would be a natural progression for the series, as well, given that the games usually incorporate universes that have maintained popularity, such as Little Mermaid and Lion King.
There are nearly fifteen films and eight TV shows to pull from, each with their own vibe; Guardians of the Galaxy is sci-fi comedy, Captain America the spy thriller, and so on. It’s highly doubtful that Jessica Jones will be included, and the Inhumans are knocked out of possibility as well, given how grounded on Earth they currently are, thanks to Agents of SHIELD. Spider-Man, on the other hand, would be perfect Kingdom Hearts material. With both his upcoming movie in a few months and him being the most popular character the comics publisher has, high schooler Peter Parker could easily pal around with Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Ditto Iron Man, since he kicked off the whole franchise to begin with, and we wouldn’t mind an appearance from Captain Marvel and Black Panther either.
While we’re on the speculation train, why not imagine that Square Enix and Marvel are working on a wholly new game. Since Marvel is no longer beholden to Activision for games publishing, the House of Ideas is free to work on games with whoever they want, as Insomniac will show us soon with Spider-Man, and Capcom has yet again demonstrated with a new fighting game. There’s even a Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy on the way. It wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility for the giant to contract one of the biggest developers out there to work on a title for one of their properties. They do have plenty of characters to work with, and Square has covered enough genres to where the sky’s truly the limit.
In some ways, Square Enix’s games already provide a blueprint for a potential Marvel game. Deus Ex’s sci-fi detective black-and-yellow styling could easily be applied to Black Panther. The mythological and religious aesthetic of the Final Fantasy games makes it more than possible for a Thor game to exist, and Black Widow could basically just be Hitman with more acrobatic murders. That’s not to say that they should literally just make more of their own games with established MCU characters, but it isn’t like they wouldn’t have an idea for where to start for inspiration.
But of course, these companies could have totally separate announcements come tomorrow. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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