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Just about a year ago, Marvel announced that a new Marvel MMO was in development, bringing back an idea first started with the scrapped Marvel Universe Online years prior. Few details were revealed at the time for the now-renamed Marvel Heroes outside of the fact that it would be free-to-play for PC and that it was being developed by Secret Identity Studios is teaming with Gazillion Entertainment off a story by Brian Michael Bendis.

From the get-go, Marvel stated that it would launch with more characters than any other Marvel game but Secret Identity kept true their name and refused to share any details about actual gameplay. Would it compete with traditional MMOs and offer something similar to DC Universe Online? Or would it embrace something different, perhaps gameplay similar to the beloved X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance titles?

After the first in-game assets of some of the key characters like Spider-Man, Cable, Wolverine and Deadpool released, reaction was somewhat mixed. The characters embraced exaggerated, almost cartoonish proportions so any hopes of a gritty or realistic game with a serious tone were thrown out the door. These images did not speak to gameplay however so we remained cautiously optimistic since they were keeping true the Marvel Comics source material and it is a game that lets players play as their favorite superheroes.

Today, Secret Identity has unveiled the first Marvel Heroes details and trailer, revealing the game to similar in style to that of Diablo, fitting considered that David Brevik - one of the creators of Diablo is behind it.

Drawing upon the 8,000-plus heroes and villains in the Marvel Universe, Marvel Heroes allows players to become their favorite Marvel Super Heroes — from the popular Iron Man, Thor, Storm and Black Widow to the lesser known Squirrel Girl and Cable. Fans will be able to completely customize their characters by constructing costumes taken from each hero’s rich history, choosing from a huge array of super powers for each character, and finding thousands of other items. There are countless ways for players to tailor their experience.

In the game’s social areas, including Midtown Manhattan and the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, players can meet up with other players, discover missions, and buy items from legendary Marvel characters. While pursuing missions, players will explore such famous Marvel landscapes as the Savage Land, Hell’s Kitchen and Mutant Town.

The gameplay featured in the trailer above is rather stuttered and disjointed but from the brief glimpses of action, it appears to be the successor of sorts to the Marvel Ultimate Alliance cooperative console games we loved back in the day. If the game's RPG elements and its gameplay mechanics are deep and not repetitive, we at Game Rant might find ourselves this quite a bit.

Marvel Heroes Trailer

From the sounds of it, players will be subject to and "endless" amount of loot to further customize their characters and they progress through countless randomized dungeons which hints at some of the best parts of the Diablo series so if the game is anything like that, we're excited.

We now wonder how the social areas work if players can play as Marvel heroes. Does this mean we can see a bunch of Iron Men running around? How big can player parties be and is it really an "MMO"? Recently confirmed characters include Black Widow and Ms. Marvel and we expect many, many more to show up in the coming months.

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Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.