Development footage of what appears to be upcoming superhero action game Marvel 1943: Rise Of Hydra has exploded upon the internet like Black Panther clawing his way into a seedy Parisian bar and flinging himself at alt-fascist soldiers in a whirlwind of kicked chairs and bursting bottles. This also being the content of said video.
Assuming the leaked goods are the Real McCoy, they suggest that the game will be a fast and furious brawler with a fair amount of environment destruction, which is probably what you’re expecting from a game with Azzuri and Steve Rogers on the poster.
The footage comes to us via MP1st, who attribute it to “a developer who worked on the game”, and say it was created between 2022 and 2023, but do not link to the portfolio that originally contained it.
They’ve also found a selection of images that show various possible Marvel 1943 environments, including a plush lamp-lit hallway, a vast cavern entrance with dangling stalactites, a bunch of building-top areas with glass conservatory roofs, and a hazy nocturnal view of searchlights over what is presumably Paris.
Assuming it’s the Genuine MacGyver, the leaked Black Panther video is very clearly WIP. The fixed camera perspective suggests that it’s an internal test, knocked together to illustrate the flow of a typical Marvel 1943 fight scene. As such, we should be careful about reading too much into it. But I have to say, I do enjoy the 5am cat energy here.
If you live with a younger feline, you’ll be familiar with that time of day when they Catch The Crazy and start zipping about, striking amateur ninjitsu poses and climbing every nearby human bodypart/piece of furniture. I’d love it if Black Panther had a Zoomies mode that caused him to spontaneously sit on Captain America’s face. I’d love it if he had a special terrain execution that consisted of hiding under the sofa and slashing people’s feet off. “D’awww,” the abbreviated sturmtruppen of Hydra would coo, clutching their bloody stumps. “What on Earth is going through his ickle head.”
Developed by Skydance New Media and published by Plaion, with former Naughty Dog scribe Amy Hennig on-board to produce and co-write, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is the story of Captain America and the Panther fighting Hydra in occupied France, though part of it is set in Wakanda. It’s inspired by the comicbook series Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers.
Announced in 2024, the game is slated to land in early 2026. Which is not that far away, and Plaion have shown us little of the game beyond a couple of ‘cinematic’ trailers. I’ll ask them if they have any comment on this footage, and when we can see more of the game.
