Square Enix's Avengers was never going to have the MCU cast...

Many on the internet are having an unexpected reaction to Square Enix’s E32019 finisher where they ended by revealing fully their long anticipated “Avengers Project” to be a full fledged Avenger’s action adventure game.

The massive box office success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe should be contributing to a massive anticipation and success for Avengers the game. However for some reason a portion of the internet is letting the MCU drastically and negatively affect their own expectations.

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I sat through over an hour of Final Fantasy news after Final Fantasy news to get to Avengers. The trailer looked amazing, and we got to finally see all the incredible heroes and what it going to be like to play them. I was amped to see this game and was one of my most favorite moments from E3 2019. Imagine my surprise when I went on the internet afterwards.

Apparently much of the internet or at least a vocal minority expected the characters to be played by their original MCU actors. So much so that it has prompted an official statement saying the character models wont be changed. An epectation that I will submit is completely and utterly ridiculous.

I don’t understand the expectation. Last year’s Spider-man on PS4 was hit with critical acclaim and massive success. Many gave it high 9’s and even 10’s. Three major actors have played Spider-man on film, including the much beloved Tom Holland in the very same MCU. No one cared or expected to see Tom Holland to show up for the spiderman video game. So why again do we expect the ENTIRE CAST OF THE MCU to show up?

More importantly Robert Downey JR, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlet Johansen are not just some of the biggest names in Hollywood today; they are also some of the highest paid. It is estimated RDJr was paid a whopping 75 Million dollars for Infinity War alone!

Now, acting in video games isnt too far different than acting in modern day big budget block busters like Avengers. I'm not sure if just more gamers think game developers just paint the models on computerized statues from a picture? No, actors get in mocap suits, act out scenes, and it is incredible amount of work. It also requires a massive amount of audio recording. The fact is the amount of work ends up correlating to the big star movie budgets.

Recall how amazing it was this same E3 when Keanu Reeves showed up revealing he was going to be in Cyberpunk 2077. Now Imagine how much CD Project must be paying him alone. Even if Keanu is doing this for "cheap", multiply that by 5 for an entire Avengers ensemble, plus a huge premium for RDJR.

If the five actors were paid what we think they were paid for just ONE of their most recent movies, we’d be talking about a cast budget between $150-200 million alone! To put that in perspective, out of the current most expensive video games ever made only two have broken 200 million dollars budgets, GTA V and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. A-list hollywood actors are just an order of magnitude out of the league when it comes to most game budgets. True, major games like Call of Duty or even Cyberpunk can and have hired a major actor, but 5?

Imagine topping the charts in costs for this Avengers game with just casting alone! Crystal Dynamic’s (the actual developers behind this Avengers game) last game was the last years amazing Shadow of the Tomb Raider which comes in at #6 all time most expensive at $125 Million! I predict a game with the scope and size of Avengers, paired with a promise of continued updates and free character expansions, will have to outpace SOTTR to at least 150 million dollar budget if not more.

The insane budget this game would have with the MCU cast could put it in the uppwards of 350 to 400 Million dollar budget! At $400 Million dollars, that is more than the budget of Endgame itself (the current second largest global box office), and that is also twice the budget of Grand Theft Auto V (a game with more sales revenue than any game or movie ever at $6 Billion)

Avengers would need to be the most successful video game ever made for the next several years in order to recoup those kinds of budgets. Maybe GTA and COD can produce those kinds of sales, but it just would be insane to pull off just to have different actors.

If this doesn’t shock your expectations back to reality I don’t know what will. The developer’s at Crystal Dynamics are building us what looks to be an amazing game for the heroes we all love. Just because it not the big screen actors doesnt mean it isn’t the Avengers. If Spider-man can be great without Tom Holland, then Avengers can be great with Robert Downey Jr.