Marvel Rivals Sets a New Gold Standard For Ongoing Live-Service Stories

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 9, 2024 14 Views 8 Min Read
Marvel Rivals Sets a New Gold Standard For Ongoing Live-Service Stories



The live-service model has gained a bit of a troubled reputation in recent years. Too often, the live-service model has been used for greedy purposes, with publishers delivering a game that has little content under the guise that it’ll all be added in post-launch updates. But the live-service genre isn’t inherently bad. In fact, its unique approach allows developers to implement features that otherwise can’t happen in a traditional multiplayer title. Marvel Rivals has become the latest example of the live-service model actually working how it’s intended.




One of the biggest strengths of the live-service model is that the game is always evolving. Just as fans start to get bored, a new season releases, bringing new gameplay mechanics, map changes, and new story elements. Though it’s still early days for Marvel Rivals, its use of the live-service model seems to be worthwhile, and it might be in the process of setting a new bar for ongoing live-service stories.

marvel rivals s0

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Marvel Rivals Sets a New Standard for Live-Service Narratives

Marvel Rivals’ Story Is Presented Wonderfully

When players boot up Marvel Rivals for the first time, they’re treated to a short animated cinematic that lays out the game’s core premise. Players are shown that Doctor Doom and his 2099 counterpart have created a devastating Timestream Entanglement, a time-breaking phenomenon that’s merging multiple timelines and parallel universes into one reality.


That brief cinematic forms the foundation of Marvel Rivals‘ narrative, which is set to evolve over the course of the game’s lifetime. But that cinematic is just scratching the surface of Marvel Rivals‘ story. By completing specific character challenges, players will unlock lore entries for the hero or villain, filling in their backstory and shedding more light on their role in this new Timestream Entanglement setting.

Players can unlock more general story details by heading to Marvel Rivals‘ “Season” page and completing the challenges Galacta has tasked them with. New challenges unlock throughout the season, and completing them all rewards the player with a comic panel that furthers the game’s main story. These comic panels can then be found on Marvel Rivals‘ “Gallery” page, where they’re collected inside a comic book themed around the current season.

Presenting Marvel Rivals‘ ongoing story in the form of an in-game comic book is a really fun and practical way to incentivize players to keep completing seasonal challenges, and a great way to keep all of the season’s story in one spot.


Marvel Rivals Side-Steps a Common Issue With Live-Service Stories

A relatively common criticism of some live-service titles is that it can be hard to keep up to date with their ongoing stories. This issue is exacerbated when a live-service game holds a major event that has lasting consequences on the game’s story and world. If players miss just one of these in-game events, they can very easily lose track of the entire narrative.

This has been a particular problem for Call of Duty: Warzone. Over the last few years, Warzone has often brought major series characters back from the dead. These characters have then frequently shown up during the next Call of Duty entry’s campaign, with little to no explanation of how they survived their presumed death for those who don’t play Warzone.

Marvel Rivals will seemingly avoid this criticism entirely. When players look at Marvel Rivals‘ Gallery page, they’ll notice the Season 0 “Dooms’ Rise” comic in the center of the screen, collecting all of the current season’s story content. This comic is surrounded by others, all of which have blank covers. It seems likely that these will be filled in each season, meaning that every season of Marvel Rivals will get its own in-game comic book, and that players will probably be able to easily access previous seasons’ story long after they’ve finished.


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