X-Men Destiny detailed

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa-agk0fLxY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
It shouldn’t be a secret that I love the X-Men. X-Men Legends was one of my favorite games, and I’ve been keeping people abreast of X-Men Destiny since it was announced. Yes, this is nominally because it is being developed by Silicon Knights, who made such games as Eternal Darkness, but less than secretly because I love the X-Men.

Now we have some foundational information, from OXM (via CVG, who always seem to get magazines early), about the title which is even more convincing. Emphasis on choice being the big one, as well as the fact that there’s an RPG-like skill progression, based loosely around the whole secondary mutation thing that happened in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. More importantly, the X-Men have suffered a “devastating loss”, which probably means they’re going to set it in the underappreciated time when Magneto was headmaster of Xavier’s School.

On the mixed side, you’re only able to choose to play as one of three mutants (we can’t let people create their own builds in modern games; someone might make a mistake and sell the game back!), who are supposedly integrated into the X-Men canon. Coupled with their mention of Surge in the preview, I imagine this makes Surge a PC, or a very important NPC, which I, for one, approve of. Hopefully it means more New X-Men are in the game, because, honestly, the big boys are pretty much over-saturated, and have been since the mid-90’s. Basically, you can play around a lot more with the canon with characters like Surge and Anole (who?) and Elixir (who?) than you can with Wolverine and Cyclops. The latter characters have integrity. The former characters do, too, but it’s easier for them to be rewritten than it is for the regulars to be.

Basically, my hope is that Silicon Knights have made the perfect X-Men game. I’ve not heard anything to dissuade me so far. A game where you lead a squad of characters (ideally who you pick, but I’ll accept forced choices) into battle and have to make important decisions sounds like a fantastic time.