INSiGHT | TT Games' LEGO Marvel's Avengers

The current shows and movies that make up the MCU may make up the levels and stages to play in but the designers and developers are Marvel fanboys through and through and have gone through the considerable catalogue of characters and brought many old fan favourites into play. There are cult old school ones like Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, with even Fing Fang Foom mixed in with the latest hot characters from 'All New Marvel Now!' like Jane Foster, Thor, and Kamala Khan. Cubed3 asked if we'd be getting the most recent character to explode in popularity, Spider-Gwen, and the response was: "We're big fans of Spider-Gwen but again you have to think Avengers and does she have a significant relationship to the Avengers? Not yet." It's a fair point, but in which case it's sad to see that the rest of the Spider family are missing - characters that do have legitimate and strong ties to the Avengers, like Spidey himself, along with new characters that fans have rallied behind, like Miles Morales.

Even with Spiderman's absence, there is a massive cast to play with - over 250 characters - and even the older returning characters will have new abilities to make them feel fresh. The Hulk now has his trademark leap to spring over tall brick buildings in a single bound, Iron Man can now access all his suits instead of each being a separate character and, of course, Stan Lee is returning, but this time with his own Hulk Buster-style "Stan Buster," with a typewriter that comes down for him to control with and pencil missiles to shoot, and even an iron moustache. Of these 250, over 100 are brand new. There's plenty of character choice here and, as Bill said, "The Avengers bench rolls deep." With Stan included again, some hardcore comic fans were hoping for The King Kirby to make an appearance, too, but the developer admitted it considered it but decided against it since Jack is no longer with us, and it could be seen as being in poor taste.

With LEGO Dimensions hitting, the crossover appeal of LEGO is at an all time high so, of course, the possibility of Disney properties and Marvel being added to the mix is fantastic, but is it likely to happen? Probably not: "Right now we're focused on our stories and our characters and, of course, we have Disney Infinity," said Mike Jones, "…so that's an area where we're experimenting and playing with crossover IP. We're making it a pure Marvel experience right now."

One of the best aspects of the last LEGO Marvel game was the open world, and the team was happy to be able to announce that instead of just having the Manhattan open world area, as in LEGO Marvel Superheroes, there are a number of other "Global Hubs" scattered around the world - places like South Korea from Age of Ultron, and other locations, although they were tight lipped when Wakanda was mentioned.

Following the interviews, the team joined Marvel executive, Ryan Penagos, in presenting LEGO Avengers to a packed main stage. Much of the information covered was what had been discussed in the interviews but this gave the chance to show some new footage on the big screen and have some audience participation.

After mentioning how much there is to show and how soon the game will be here - 26th January - the guys kicked off the panel with a brand new trailer, which has now been released online and can be seen below:

The Agent Carter sections mentioned in the interview were shown on the big screen; Peggy is found in the open world hub of Manhattan and reminisces about the time she went to check out a coffee shop, since it mentioned a Captain America Cappuccino. Suddenly the screen shifts, the colours altering to black and white and LEGO Manhattan becomes something from the 1940s. It's a cool feature and Arthur confirmed that everything is affected when this happens - even the cars and scenery will update when playing through these side missions. Hayley Atwell was on hand to provide the voice for Peggy, too, for an additional touch of class, as was Clark Gregg for Agent Coulson.