A lot of thought has gone into the new designs for the Guardians.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is offering a fresh take on a group of characters that fans around the world are now intimately familiar with as revealed in a dev insight video.
It’s fair to say that Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal are facing a major uphill battle when it comes to getting fans on their side and restoring some faith in their handling of the Marvel license following the troubled launch of Marvel’s Avengers.
PlayStation fans around the world rejoiced following the reveal of Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2016 with a lot of excitement about the character going in a fresh direction without the obligation of a movie tie-in. Marvel’s Avengers didn’t exactly get the same treatment from fans with some disappointment that this iteration of the team didn’t more closely resemble their on-screen counterparts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Understandable when a whole generation of fans has grown up with characters widely considered to be perfectly cast in literally one of the highest-grossing franchises of all time. Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal are standing on the shoulder of giants, but it seems that the very nature of Guardians of The Galaxy has afforded them some more creative freedom this time around with art director Bruno Gauthier-Leblanc offering some insight into the design of the rag-tag group of heroes.
Peter Quill, commonly known as Star-Lord, has a very 80s inspired design with pins decorating his jacket and a patch of his favourite band, also named Star-Lord. Leblanc sums up the design for Star-Lord as “Space-Metal”, which sounds about as far away as you can get from Chris Pratt.
The backstory for Drax The Destroyer is told through his circular tattoos with every new tattoo added signifying a battle won. These tattoos also pay homage to his home planet Katath and the circular architectures and designs found there. Gamora is given a comic-accurate design with some modifications to match her reputation as the deadliest woman in the galaxy.
The character designs for Groot and Rocket Raccoon complement each other and represent their close friendship. Rocket is seen wearing a bead of Groot in his goatee, with Groot having a harness on his back that Rocket can use to operate as a turret.
According to Leblanc, “We combined inspiration from Marvel comics lore with our own character backstories to craft new visuals for this fun and dysfunctional family, infusing each Guardian with specific design aspects that also tie into gameplay.”
