Midnight Suns release date and leaked heroes confirmed

The release date for Marvel's Midnight Suns, the turn-based tactical RPG from XCOM developer Firaxis, was made official during today's Summer Game Fest stream: Midnight Suns will be out on October 7.

I had a confidential heads-up on that fact, because I visited 2K headquarters a couple weeks ago to play Midnight Suns for a feature appearing in PC Gamer's next magazine issue. I've published hands-on impressions of the combat (it's fun, and very different from XCOM), as well as a little detail about the game's development that I found funny. There's more in my full feature, which you'll find in the next issue of PC Gamer magazine.

Along with the October release date, a retailer leak revealed some accurate information about Midnight Suns earlier this week. Spider-Man is showing up: He appears very early in the game to help you fight Fallen Venom, who has succumbed to the corruption of the game's main villain, Lilith.

Scarlet Witch is one of the game's heroes… or is she a villain? She appears as an ally at the start of the game, but Firaxis has also revealed a Fallen version of Scarlet Witch.

Another Fallen character is Hulk, which looks like very bad news for the Midnight Suns, world, and probably multiverse. My hands-on fights with Venom helped explain how Firaxis is dealing with the power levels of all these heroes and villains: I never quite defeated Venom, just made him run away so we could move on to the next bit of story. At one point, Spidey accomplishes that with an ultra-amplified audio feedback loop. (If you are not familiar, Venom's weakness is loud noises. Comic books are silly.)

Midnight Suns was originally going to be out in March, but it was announced last year that it had been delayed. Now it'll release on October 7. 

Aside from the tactical combat, there's a big story—Solomon told me it's about a 60-hour RPG—with a lot of cutscenes and interactive dialogue sequences. The animation is fantastic during combat, but it can be a little Sims-like during some of the dialogue sequences. That's the kind of thing Firaxis said it was working on during the delay: adding "more story, cinematics, and overall polish."