It was Eidos Montreal’s decision to make Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy due to the team’s underdog status. Back in October, the Guardians Of The Galaxy was praised by critics for its witty writing and an emotional plot that featured Peter “Star-Lord” Quill and his motley crew of space mercenaries banding together to save the universe from the Universal Church of Truth, an evil organisation that had taken over the galaxy and was spreading its evil influence. Guardians Of The Galaxy: Rise Of The Collector depicted the titular heroes as a flawed but likeable gang who spend as much time bickering amongst themselves as they do defeat their adversaries, similar to the James Gunn-directed MCU films.
Each of them has a tragic backstory, from Peter losing his mother at a young age to Thanos’ massacre of Drax’s family, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy sees them confronting these demons and working to put aside their differences in order to prove themselves as heroes to the rest of the universe. It is certainly true that the majority of the intergalactic population considers the Guardians to be nothing more than a band of common criminals, rather than the improbable heroes of the universe they eventually become. It was this “underdog” quality that attracted Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Senior Creative Director Jean-François Dugas and his team at Eidos Montreal, according to Ted Price of Insomniac in an interview on the current episode of Game Maker’s Notebook Podcast (via MP1st).
Because of their image as outcasts in the Marvel Universe, the Guardians were the obvious choice when Eidos Montreal was initially approached about developing a game about a Marvel character or squad, according to him. It was like, ‘Nah, there’s no chance they’re going to make a good Deus Ex, and now there’s no chance that Guardians will be good,'” Dugas said, explaining that his studio felt like an “underdog” while working on games like 2011’s Deus Ex. “We felt like Guardians of the Galaxy was… a team of underdogs that was fitting our personality, fitting our studio in some ways as well,” Dugas said. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a huge hit, however, the series was placed on pause after Mankind Divided’s poor sales put it on hold from 2016 forward because of the lacklustre reception it received from fans of the original Deus Ex series.
The contentious release of Marvel’s Avengers, Square Enix’s previous superhero game, had skewed expectations for Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. In the MCU, the Guardians of the Galaxy surmounted the odds with a stunning visual presentation and a story about unexpected heroes coming together to rescue the universe, even winning Best Narrative at The Game Awards 2021 back in December. Eidos Montreal appears to have a deep understanding of what it’s like to be an underdog and used that knowledge to produce one of the year’s biggest surprise hits.