Lego Marvel: From Howard the Duck to Stan Lee Hulk

We talk about the process of adding characters and building a massive roster for Lego Marvel Super Heroes with TT Games.

We caught up with game director Arthur Parsons to talk about the massive amount of characters that will be playable in Lego Marvel Super Heroes (approximately 150 different ones), and the crazy range they present players with.

"It's been a complete evolution. We didn't start with this many characters. We never planned for this many characters. But all the way along it's been some sort of juggernaut, because, you know, the guys we work with at Marvel. They're great guys and they keep in and going "can you put this character in?", and then you've got Lego coming along saying "can you put this character in?", and then we've got the consumer who been watching the footage of the game going "can we put these characters in?". We're just like "well, go on, we've still got space on the disc" and so we'll put in as many characters as we can . Obviously we've called time on it now, but we didn't intend for there to be this many."

"It's adding that peripheral edge that makes it seem more like the Marvel sort of environment, Marvel universe, so as well as the great cast we've got, the Avengers, the X-Men, and Fantastic Four and stuff, it's adding in characters that people want to play. Like Ghost Rider. Or Daredevil. Or Venom. Characters that are synonomous with the Marvel environment and universe, but they're not necessarilly in our story."

There are also some odd characters in there like Howard the Duck, and of course Stan Lee, king of cameos, is in there as well:

"When me and the guys first started putting pen to paper. The first thing we wrote down was Stan Lee. We wanted to get Stan Lee to be the civilian in peril. The guy in the level that's stranded and stuck. He's the king of cameos. He has cameos in every movie. We had to get him in the game."

Stan Lee is also playable, a character you unlock late in the game as he combines some of the best powers of the characters he has created. Including the ability to turn into Stan Lee Hulk.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes will see release on pretty much every system you can imagine this November.