Square Enix finally gave the world its first proper look at the Crystal Dynamics-developed Marvel’s Avengers today, and it looks like Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are in for one hell of a fight. It sure would be helpful if a certain wallcrawler were around to lend a hand, right?
As it turns out, that could just happen one day in the future, as a line of dialogue in Insomniac’s PS4 exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man seems to strongly hint that Peter Parker shares a universe with this new, digital version of The Avengers.
AVENGERS AND SPIDER-MAN PS4 IN THE SAME UNIVERSE CONFIRMED pic.twitter.com/jylgFWtDJL
— Oluwajomiloju (@JomiAdeniran) June 11, 2019
Anyone who’s played the excellent Marvel’s Spider-Man will be aware that Avengers Tower is a dominant presence in the skyline of Insomniac’s open world New York, but Twitter user Oluwajomiloju pointed to a specific moment that could tie this alluded to but unseen version of the team to Square Enix’s new game.
The first time Peter sees Avengers Tower while exploring Manhattan, he’ll remark that it’s “so cool, but they’re never around to use it” before saying that the team is “somewhere on the West Coast right now.”
Why is this interesting? Because Marvel’s Avengers opens up with the team (consisting of Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Black Widow) on a mission in none other than San Francisco, which geography fans will know is on the West Coast.
This could just be nothing more than a silly reference by Insomniac to the much more obscure West Coast Avengers team from the comic books (look it up, it’s a thing), but I can’t help but feel it’s something more than a mere coincidence. It’s just a little too specific.
Square EnixThe idea of Insomniac’s version of Spider-Man showing up in Marvel’s Avengers might seem fairly implausible, given that Marvel’s Spider-Man is a PS4 exclusive while Marvel’s Avengers is multiplatform, but ultimately Marvel owns these characters and can (I imagine) do what they want with them.
Marvel Games had also previously said that Marvel’s Avengers will “introduce a universe gamers can play in for years to come”, which certainly suggests to me that there’s going to be some cross-pollination between titles.
That could also allude to Marvel’s Avengers adopting certain live service elements of course, but you never know; Marvel Studios managed to build a mega brand with its interconnected universe of movies, so who’s to say it isn’t trying to find the same kind of success with its video games?
Square EnixInterestingly, there are also references to Dardevil, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange in Marvel’s Spider-Man, so if Peter does end up lending a hand to The Avengers in the Square Enix title, then this video game universe could be about to get a lot bigger.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.