MultiVersus, Warner Bros.’ forthcoming free-to-play video game, is one of the many attempts that companies have made at recreating the madcap perfection of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., a multiplayer fighter built on the premise of mashing up characters from different franchises as part of a wholly new, out-of-canon story. Today, we got our first official look and it sure is something.
Where other Smash clones like Brawlhalla and Brawlout only tried but so hard to really make their various characters feel all that different—one of the major things that make Smash fun to play—you can tell simply from looking at MultiVersus that Warner Bros. wants people to take it somewhat seriously. In a new MultiVersus featurette, game director Tony Huynh introduces some of the game’s core mechanics and features. As you might expect, it pulls from a deep roster of characters Warner Bros. own the intellectual property rights to, and the video gives you glimpses of playable fighters like Steven Universe’s Garnet (voiced by Estelle), Batman (voiced by Kevin Conroy), and Shaggy (voiced by Matthew Lillard) from Scooby-Doo in action. Of note, Game of Thrones’ Arya Stark... for some reason, voiced by Maisie Williams which begs the question: who else are we going to see meet kid-friendly characters on the playing field?
At no point in the video does Huynh make mention of Space Jam: A New Legacy, a movie that more or less laid out Warner Bros. plans to go all-in on being the Algorithmically-Driven Big Franchise Company. But it’s hard not to get the sense that much of the corporate thinking that went into MultiVersus, a game in which Steven Universe (the teen,) can team up with Harley Quinn to pummel Wonder Woman. Those interested in playing MultiVersus before its release on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC in 2022 can register now for upcoming playtests on the game’s website.
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