MUA Deserves a Civil War Sequel, But It Can’t Make the Same Mistake

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 9, 2024 34 Views 7 Min Read
MUA Deserves a Civil War Sequel, But It Can’t Make the Same Mistake



Civil War was a brilliant comic book event to adapt in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 as the franchise is a representation of Marvel’s diverse breadth of characters and affiliations. Players choosing a side and being locked out of certain characters as a result makes for fantastic replayability with a branching narrative as well as an intriguing element regarding team compositions. Unfortunately, while Civil War condemns and condones with conviction and sees characters in Marvel’s pantheon pick sides for their own individual reasons, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 compromises and is detrimentally lenient in order to not restrict players’ choices too heavily.




Marvel Ultimate Alliance has lain dormant since Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order and its multiple DLC packs. Not enough time has passed to say with absolution whether it will be shelved again for nearly a decade or altogether this time around, but if a future Marvel Ultimate Alliance game was bold enough to revisit the Civil War premise it already has a layup lying in wait with Civil War 2, let alone an original take on the Superhuman Registration Act with distinct leaders and contentious choices, and it wouldn’t at all be a tall order to eclipse Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 in its underwhelming execution.

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Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2’s Brief and Abrupt Civil War Adaptation Leaves a Lot to Be Desired


Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 only prohibits four characters (including either Iron Man or Captain America, each side’s leader) depending on which stance players elect to take: if players side with Iron Man, then Captain America, Storm, Daredevil, and Luke Cage become unplayable; if players side with Captain America, then Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Mr. Fantastic, and Thor become unplayable. Sadly, though, even this choice is half-baked because the meat and potatoes of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2’s Civil War adaptation lasts for only a fraction of an already short game.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
maintains replayability as players can pick the side they didn’t choose in their first playthrough.

Civil War is largely interesting because readers get to see which Marvel characters choose Pro-Registration or Anti-Registration in the Superhuman Registration Act and why, but Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2’s Tinkerer/nanite arc invades its personal space. Indeed, each act essentially plays out like a disjointed arc with its own influences and narrative direction, so anyone hoping that the Civil War chapter would be fleshed out across a game as long as the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance might be disappointed.


Civil War is the more engaging plot in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, but it isn’t the one that prevails. This is perhaps a way to make it so all heroes are fighting alongside one another instead of against each other by the end with players consequently having the full roster to choose from, and yet it lacks the weight that such a choice should have carried.

If Marvel Ultimate Alliance Still Lives, Civil War Shouldn’t Be Off the Table

A modern Marvel Ultimate Alliance may be able to do the source material justice, and even then a loose adaptation or brand-new interpretation of the plot would be welcome since the original comic book event is fairly divisive and not received ubiquitously well, either. It’d be a shame if Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 was the one and only opportunity for this storyline to be adapted and, having arguably failed in its attempt to do so, it’d be a low bar for any studio that could take a crack at it next.


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Marvel Ultimate Alliance
game adapting Civil War 2
would be remiss not to shelve half of the game’s roster to truly sell the idea that characters have chosen their sides with players then forced to compose four-character teams out of the remaining roster available to them.

The second Marvel Ultimate Alliance games had a decently sized roster, but a roster more grandiose and all-encompassing like the third Marvel Ultimate Alliance would bolster a Civil War narrative far more with a greater number of characters that players forfeit and doing so would make picking sides more meaningfully impactful beyond a series of missions that fly by. Either way, with no new Marvel Ultimate Alliance title on the horizon, it’ll be fascinating to see if the Civil War storyline or anything of its ilk may ever be adapted again into a future Marvel game.

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