Netease Games’ Marvel Rivals borrows characters from the Marvel Universe – ranging from its comics to its movies. As such, the game features a vast and often diverse cast of characters – each with different abilities and niches of their own.
This often results in surprising discoveries, such as the fact that Iron Man is unable to walk across the map like most characters – only flying from one spot to the other. This curious observation may seem like a glaring omission at first, but in truth is just clever resource management and game design.
Players logging into Marvel Rivals might want to play as one of its most popular heroes – Tony Stark aka Iron Man, popularized into the mainstream thanks to an excellent portrayal by Robert Downey Jr. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
One might find a curious discovery – the character defaults to flying when deployed – and cannot be forced to land on the ground. Stark always hovers a foot or so above the ground, no matter how hard you push the Down button/stick.
In all, Iron Man simply cannot run or walk compared to most other characters which can be quite jarring at first. This same behavior can be observed with one of the most beloved antagonists of Marvel and mutant extraordinaire, Magneto.
While it seems downright silly that the character lacks a walking animation, it could all boil down to proper resource management and a way to avoid unnecessary code. As mentioned in a Reddit post on the r/marvelrivals subreddit, this move is quite typical in most video games as a means to manage system resources and time spent on designing the character.
Has a single soul every wonder why Iron Man just cannot walk in this game?
byu/CreatedToBeCursed inmarvelrivals
After all, it is a lot more cost-effective to make a character that has only one set of animations instead of multiple and helps the team direct its attention to more important matters – such as designing other characters (and hopefully game balance!). It also looks a lot cooler, having them fly around.
Marvel Rivals is a PvP-based game that focuses on multiple characters, and unlike most single-player games, it does not require a very keen eye for detail in more ‘grounded’ or realistic scenarios. In the case of single-player games, this would be inexcusable, but for Rivals it’s definitely passable.
Game design is all about figuring out obstacles and working your way around them in creative ways. If a problem presents itself, try using the obvious solution. If that fails, look for workarounds.
Iron Man’s lack of a walking animation is quite the same in this regard. It could be speculated that in addition to saving team resources, walking and running Iron Man could be way more dangerous. After all, game balance is important, and having a character behave in an unexpected way could have a very negative outcome.
Games have done this all the time, making use of clever tricks (such as denying the player access to an out-of-bounds area for ‘lore’ reasons such as in Genshin Impact). This used to be more prevalent back in the early 1990s-2000s, with games such as Silent Hill making a limitation (very poor render distance) into a feature (the fog-filled ambiance, which also serves as a horror element restricting your vision).
Similarly, Iron Man compensates for this in Rivals by being able to fly around rather freely. The added vertical movement can be quite advantageous, even if it takes a bit of time to get used to.
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