Marvel’s Avengers’ enemy variety was severely lacking as far as how dynamic or varied its pool of Marvel factions and villains could’ve been, but AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) wasn’t an inherently bad choice as its bedrock. An endless horde of yellow automatons surely isn’t the most extravagant or thrilling enemy, and yet there are few factions who could viably go up against an entire Avengers squad anyhow. Even if players’ teams inMarvel’s Avengersconsisted of Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Black Panther, AIM holds up decently well whereas any random assortment of human enemies would be wholly unrealistic.
EA Motive’s single-player, standalone Iron Man game won’t be an ensemble. Still, likeMarvel’s Avengersor any other Marvel game like it, it must decide on enemy factions who could feasibly provide a challenge for the protagonist. The story will ultimately dictate who Tony Stark goes up against, and while nothing is currently known about the game it would be a little surprising if Tony was concussing and disintegrating ordinary humans with repulsor blasts. AIM automatons make for no-brainer—literally—fodder enemies that Tony can bat around liberally with the full extent of his suits’ firepower and, even if it’s been done multiple times before, Motive might want to double down onMarvel’s Avengers’ chosen enemy factionand could potentially bolster it further.
AIM is Oversaturated in a Lot of Marvel Media
AIM being a recurring enemy organization would suggest a lack of creativity if not for how convenient and nonchalant it is. Robots can be pummeled and battered while humans cannot—in a PG Marvel game, at least—and may not pose as much of a threat. Considering thatIron Man will presumably be flying solo in EA Motive’s upcoming game, AIM could then serve as a decent faction that Tony fires micro-missiles at.
Even thelicensed and loosely tied-in MCUIron Mangamesby Sega featured AIM, and thus it’d admittedly be low-hanging fruit and technically a triple dip if EA Motive was to pit Tony against AIM yet again.
That said, Sega’sIron Manhas long been out of the public eye and is hardly the most popular Marvel game to have come out in the last couple of decades, so perhaps Motive’s Iron Man game featuring AIM as well wouldn’t be too egregious of a regurgitation. Of course, as the latest game to feature AIM, it would hopefully push the envelope and reinvent AIM in an image that excels with narrative significance and a legitimate threat as opposed to simply being a weak backbone to whatever story Motive is telling. To do so, AIM may need a bit of an overhaul.
If AIM features in EA Motive’s Iron Man game, it’ll hopefully be in the form of terrifying automatons that are designed with a unique aesthetic beyond their bland yellow palette. If AIM bots were more akin toThe Callisto Protocol’s intimidating Security Bots, for example, Iron Man could feel rightfully underpowered and outmatched.
Motive’s recent work on theDead Spaceremake doesn’t have automaton enemies, but it’s well-versed inenemy variety with immaculate limb degradationand such features applied to a wide array of menacing robots could be exceptional as Iron Man’s unibeam sears their chassis. AIM isn’t typically depicted as leaning toward horror and just because Motive made aDead Spacegame doesn’t mean it’ll attempt to pivot its Iron Man game in that direction, either; nonetheless, there are countless lessons the developer likely learned onDead Spacethat it could apply to Marvel and certainly to AIM in order to give it a much-needed substantive change.
The best-case scenario would be that AIM is only one of a few enemy factions players encounter, though only having AIM and giving its enemies a ton of diversity and variations could be as excellent as thebreadth of necromorphs inDead Space. AIM is a remarkably low bar for an enemy faction and if there’s any developer to do it justice it may be EA Motive—only time will tell now if AIM makes an appearance at all or if Motive has another enemy faction in mind.
