Marvel's video game ventures continue with Guardians of the Galaxy

Continuing off from Microsoft's E3 showing, Square Enix began their own conference with a first look at Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, the bunch of a-holes are starring in an action game of their own after having previously been the star of a narrative game from Telltale in 2017. 

Headed up by Eidos Montreal, the studio behind the recent Deus Ex games and the co-developer of Marvel's Avengers, players will take on the role of Peter Quill as he leads the titular Guardians through third-person action across the cosmos, and the other Guardians can be used in combat. With an original story by the Eidos crew, the Guardians will stumble into a series of screwups that lead to conflict throughout the stars. Don't expect the recent films to be the primary influence; like with Avengers and Insomniac's Spider-Man games, Guardians pulls from a little bit of everything throughout the team's history. The footage, in addition to showing off the real-time combat, goes out of its way to show how chatty and dysfunctional the Guardians are. That ends up working against their favor when they cross paths with Lady Hellbender, who greets them by promising to kill them where they stand. 

As the sole playable character, Peter will make decisions throughout the game that reverberate across the campaign and affect his crewmates, who he's only been allied with for about a year. Relationships are at the heart of the game; Peter can initiate a team huddle to bring everyone for a pep talk, and even use music to motivate them. On their ship the Milano, Peter can even play chill music to help the team bond. 

Unlike Marvel's Avengers, which was a live service co-op game that added free heroes post-launch, Guardians is strictly a single player affair, with no DLC or microtransactions. However, it's not clear if this game shares any connection with Avengers, given the shared developer and publisher. 

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy hits PlayStation, PC, and Xbox on Oct. 26. Stay tuned to SyFy Wire for more E3 2021 coverage.