When Marvel’s Midnight Suns was released in 2022, some were disappointed that players were unable to romance any of the superhero characters in the game. While players have wondered whether or not that was Marvel or Firaxis’ decision, Midnight Suns‘ Creative Director Jake Solomon has now affirmed to Digital Trends in an interview that he truly never considered romance for the game.
“I’ve seen people say romance was a part of this, but it never was. I never even brought it up to Marvel because I couldn’t find a way,” Solomon told Digital Trends as part of a wider discussion about his work on XCOM and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, as well as the formation of Midsummer Studios. “I think the best way for romance to work is for the characters to respond to what the main character wants, right? I think it has to be like that, so it’s hard to mess with these really defined characters. They have these defined sexualities, and it would be hard to fulfill fantasies for all players in terms of what it is they want to do.”
Solomon elaborated on this decision further in the latest episode of The MinnMax Show podcast, giving the example of a lot of players wanting to romance Magik, even though Solomon intended Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ version of Magik to be asexual. Essentially, out of respect for the pr-existing characters, the Marvel’s Midnight Suns developer didn’t want to mess with personal lives on a romantic level that much. That said, Marvel’s Midnight Suns still features a friendship system, and Solomon was OK with some of those conversations having a romantic tinge to them.
“I always joked with our team that when you reach the top level of friendship, you are very, very close with this person,” Solomon told me. “I was OK with level 5 friendship conversations leaving players going, “Is this person … Are they?” I think that’s perfectly fine, but no, we never actually had romance as an option.”
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s also part of PlayStation Plus Extra’s Game Catalog if you want to give it a shot there.
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