Avengers Assemble in Disney Infinity

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Disney finally brings the Marvel heroes to Infinity.

By Steve Butts

Face front, True Believers! Disney is finally delivering on one of the integrations gamers have most been hoping for in Disney Infinity. With Disney Infinity 2.0, which is both a software upgrade for the existing game, as well as an entirely new retail line,  fans of the game will finally get the chance to get their hands on Marvel’s much-loved super hero properties. Producer John Vignocchi and the team were on hand at E3 to walk us through all the latest updates.
The full roster of characters on display at the Disney booth include the core Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye — as well as a Spider-Man crew, which includes Spidey, Nick Fury, Venom, Iron Fist, and Nova.
Right now the team has only announced two playsets – one for the Avengers and one for Spider-Man – but more are planned for the future. Since these characters are all part of the same franchise, Disney’s even allowing for Marvel characters to cross playsets. If you find, for instance, ten Iron Man tokens while playing in the Spider-Man set, you unlock a story sequence that neatly introduces Iron Man to the playset and allows him as a playable character.

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I still don’t think we’ll see the same concept extended to the other playsets in the game. Disney says it wants to preserve the fans’ expectation for each of its properties. That’s why, says Disney, you won’t see Jack Sparrow share a playset with Buzz Lightyear. The bigger obstacle, in my opinion, is the wildly divergent gameplay between, say, Lightning McQueen and Sully. In any case, all the characters from every property can still freely interact in Toy Box mode.
The 2.0 update is coming with loads of RPG-like changes that will be applied to the existing roster of characters as well. Spider-Man and his friends will now be able to choose from among 40 or so skills and abilities as they level up, making each character feel a little more personal. Those existing toys you already own will also gain access to new skills and abilities that you choose by spending points proportional to your character’s level.
There are also specific costume discs for each of the Marvel characters, so you can swap out Iron Man’s armor, or Spider-Man’s outfit. So as not to leave the current roster of characters out in the cold, these costume discs will grant a small stat boost to any non-Marvel character.

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Disney’s not revealing the story for the Avengers set yet, but we do know that the overall missions in the Spidey playset begins when Mysterio and Green Goblin kidnap Venom and create Venom clones to terrorize the city. Venom escapes and now has to work with Spider-Man, Nick Fury, Iron Fist, and Nova to stop the clones. The game’s been improved with an on-screen compass and waypoints to help lead players to the content they need to tackle.
The idea of giving players a better chance to find content they want to engage with is present in two other areas of the game. In the Toy Box, there are new procedural generation tools that help players create forests, cities, castles, and the like, without necessarily needing to lay down each individual piece. There are also game template pieces that load in with all the requisite logic required. If players want, for instance, to make a racing game, they can drop in the race parts and then just drag and drop to create the exact course they want.
Disney Infinity 2.0 also includes pre-generated Toy Box games, which are structured scenarios for players to jump into immediately. The first is a Tower Defense game set in Asgard and the second is an isometric dungeon crawl that the developers say takes its inspiration from Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
The Disney Infinity 2.0 that appears at retail this Fall will include the Avengers playset as well as the characters Thor, Iron Man, and Black Widow. It also includes a new portal. Current Disney Infinity owners won’t have to buy the new pack to get access to the new content; there will be a digital upgrade available in the console stores that, once downloaded, will unlock the new content. There’s no price yet on the digital upgrade, and players who want Marvel content will still have to buy the toys.
Now, let’s see if we can get Luke Skywalker in on this.

Originally written and published by at IGN PS3. Click here to read the original story.