Avengers: 8 Ways To Save The Game

1. Release The Story As A Standalone Experience

You can almost boil down the icky, money-charged portion of the game and the creative, forward-thinking portion to the multiplayer and story-focused "single player" split.

Multiplayer is full of XP boosts and skins tied to sponsorship deals, focuses on the invisible loot grind tied to re-running the same missions over and over, and it's where the game feels the most aimless.

The story side though, includes one of the best voice actor casts ever assembled, included Troy Baker, Nolan North, Laura Bailey, Sandra Saad and many more. It feels genuinely propulsive in terms of knitting together a fractured Avenger team after Captain America dies and the gang are blamed for infecting half of San Francisco with unwanted superpowers.

Saad's Ms. Marvel is - so far - the only bright spot in a sea of bland everything, and using her as a story anchor to energetically remind these dogged veterans why they matter is at least engaging from the get-go.

Point being: Avengers would benefit tenfold from admitting it's a game of two halves.

Clearly we're launching with everything in one place for now, but as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has proven with Warzone mode going separate, or Ghost of Tsushima's new "Legends" multiplayer showed by being plugged into the main game, segmented releases can serve different fanbases to great effect.

Separate the story mode, let us rank up the requisite fighters there as we check out the narrative, then plug in the all-out loot grind and number-fest that is the multiplayer on top. Conversely, let multiplayer become a free-to-play grind-fest with paid character tiers to keep it afloat, and let the connection between the two be optional.