To be fair, Multiversus isn’t immune to that problem. For instance, there was even a recent controversy about the game’s inclusion of the Iron Giant as a playable character despite the fact that part of what made that character so memorable and lovable was his determination to remain a pacifist. The Multiversus team tried to brush aside the issue by saying this was a version of the Iron Giant from a different universe, but that initial concern remains valid. Too many IP mashups are content with ignoring the things that make the characters they feature…well, characters in the first place. They’re made (or approved) by those who are perfectly fine with jamming famous faces into whatever corners they can technically fit in. Not to mention that you’re always going to have accuracy issues when you’re talking about a fighting game built around the idea that Velma from Scooby-Doo can go toe-to-toe with Wonder Woman. Those kinds of issues come with the territory.
That’s the thing about Multiversus, though. If you’re able to brush aside the natural problems that arise when you try to put mascots into a fighting game (as well as some of the issues that plague most modern IP mashups), you’ll find that a surprising amount of care went into making this game’s characters feel distinct and relatively true to some of the things that actually define them (within the context of a fighting game, of course).
For instance, Velma is a support character who uses her deductive reasoning to buff her team and gain advantages. Batman has to rely on his tools and agility during most fights. Jake from Adventure Time morphs into various forms, while Arya Stark relies on complex movements and “face steals” to overcome most foes. Even heavy hitters like Superman have to pull out their full bag of tricks. As we previously discussed, Multiversus even features a version of Shaggy that is somewhere between the original incarnation of the character and the anime fighter that some fans have seen fit to turn him into in recent years. I found myself wanting to play as new characters just to see how they stood out from the rest of the roster. I was often surprised by the ways their moves, movements, quips, and looks exemplified the developers’ love and understanding for their source material and other famous works.
There’s a level of care that went into Multiversus that could have easily been ignored in favor of letting some famous names punch and kick each other while everyone behind the scenes hopes you care enough about Steven Universe to buy a game that he makes an appearance in. Instead, it’s clear that the game’s developers went into this project with questions about who these characters are, what makes them unique, and how they’re going to fit into this mad science mashup in the first place. While I can’t say I agree with all of the answers they’ve found so far, it’s certainly better than the world where all of these characters were just shoved into the background and we’re expected to care about them just because we recognize them. If you think that’s an exaggeration, you obviously didn’t see Space Jam: A New Legacy.
I’m not thrilled about the fact we seem to be hurtling towards a future where IP mashups become far more common and a reminder that a few major companies control the rights to nearly the entire history of notable pop culture characters, universes, and properties. However, at a time when the apparent biggest advantage of such crossovers is the fact that they help eliminate the costs of original thoughts, there is something vaguely optimistic about the idea that the Multiversus team seems to be concerned about giving their famous fighters an identity that feels true to the reasons many of us fell in love with them in the first place.
Multiversus has a very long way to go before it can become that viable Super Smash Bros. competitor many have waited for. Still, I can think of few better ways to praise the game’s potential than to say it feels like a fighting game made by a team who is genuinely interested in turning it into so much more than the marketing-fuelled meme it could have easily been.
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