Many superhero games rely on the hyperrealism achieved in each era’s current-gen graphical fidelity to represent their worlds. This is particularly true of any WB-published superhero outings, such as Injustice 2 from 2017 or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League coming out early next year, and Sony’s recent Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is only the latest example of how a beautiful-looking game can still be incredibly simplistic when it comes to art direction. Now, with Marvel’s Blade suddenly announced, Arkane Lyon is turning that trend on its head by instilling its signature artistic vision into its AAA Marvel foray.

Marvel’s Blade’s announcement trailer viewed almost nothing like a typical Marvel experience, and that’s hopefully one of the greatest compliments it could hope to receive based on an announcement alone. Greatly distancing itself from what Marvel and many other superhero games have offered lately—besides Hellboy: Web of Wyrd, perhaps—Marvel’sBlade has a distinct art style that echoes the illustrative aesthetic of Arkane’s previous games and that’s already a glorious accomplishment.

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Arkane’s Dishonored and Deathloop Show Both Style and Substance

Dishonored and Deathloop are Unique Visions Crafted to Perfection

Arkane’s Dishonored and Deathloop are instantly noticeable by their artwork alone. Dishonored’s distinguished period piece aesthetic is bolstered by the fact that each environment and character looks like an oil painting, while Deathloop takes a more modern approach to that same art style, blending countless inspirations.

Arkane is now demonstrating a superior adaptability with how it is choosing to tackle Marvel’s Blade—illustrative and impressionistic yet again, this art direction is a wonderful punch of style befitting of a notoriously stylish Marvel icon. The game’s Paris setting will allow for a lot of diverse creativity as well, as seen in how Arkane has gone about the city’s architecture, graffiti, and futuristic tones to make Marvel’s Blade distinct and true to its beloved mixture of artistic influences.

Marvel’s Blade Already Looks Like a Ghoulish, Dystopian Thriller

If Marvel’s Blade was being developed by any other studio, it may have leaned into a relatively basic hyperrealism approach like other superhero games tend to. But knowing now that Arkane’s signature flavor will permeate every design choice of Marvel’s Blade makes its dystopian, vampire-ridden Paris setting far more arresting. Thankfully, along with the brief announcement trailer, Arkane has also recently shared a few pieces of Marvel’s Blade concept art that express more of the atmosphere and artwork players can expect to see in-game.

This paints a clearer picture of the state that Paris is in where there is some sort of vampire occupancy and perhaps a curfew in the city before vampires come out at night, with Marvel’s Eric Brooks being able to uniquely navigate Paris regardless of whether it’s day or night. This look also seems to lean more toward Deathloop than Dishonored, and it’s authentic enough to drastically set it apart from any other Marvel game before it in the best way possible, especially with its source material being a stylized, horror-oriented comic book.

Marvel's Blade

Marvel's Blade is in development at Arkane Lyon, which developed Deathloop and Dishonored. It is a mature single-player third-person adventure game set in Paris, where players take on the role of the titular and beloved comic book hero.

Franchise

Marvel

Developer(s)

Arkane Studios

Publisher(s)

Bethesda Softworks