Why Marvel Rivals Anti-Venom Skin Will Likely Set a Sad Precedent

Marvel Rivals dabbles with simple color palette changes to some of the characters' skins, but many costumes are completely unique – that's not even considering all the MVP movies, emotes and sprays that usually come with them. Some skins drastically change how a character looks as well, with considerations that need to be made for them to still function as they normally would. Marvel Rivals'Mr. Knight skins for Moon Knight, for example, usually don't have a cape but needed to have one so players could glide since it's one of the character's main abilities.

Likewise, while MVPs for Captain America's Captain Gladiator skin or Iron Fist's Sword Master skin have them with an ax and a sword, respectively, those weapons aren't actually included in their pullsets and are just props for their winning movie about player would achieve MVP status.

In theory, color changes would be a harmless way to complement shells. In fact, the white palette change for Storm and the red palette change for Star-Lord are significant and visually striking. Unfortunately, some palette swaps have already hinted at the disappointing notion that some characters will be represented as a skin and not as their own addition. Marvel Rivals has thankfully clarified that Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy would only ever be their own characters and not skins if they were considered, and yet Venom having an Anti-Venom suit implies that some variations of a character can still be burned back no matter how different or decisive they are.

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The ball is in Marvel Rivals Court for Destructible Environments

Marvel Rival's destructible environment gimmick would be a match made in heaven for a possible X-Men related map.

Marvel Rivals Anti-Venom suit misses the potential a character could have had

Anti-Venom makes sense as a skin too Marvel Rivals' Married and if the symbiote's abilities weren't different it wouldn't be a problem at all that the white and black suit is a color variation. It would be weird to have another Eddie Brock character just for Anti-Venom, for example.

However, since Anti-Venom has curative properties rather than decidedly poisonous ones, it would have been neat to see Anti-Venom designed as a Marvel Rivals Strategist who could potentially heal or buff teammates while draining health from enemies.

Anti-Venom is actually known to sap Spider-Man's radioactivity and leave him powerless, and if Marvel Rivals designed Anti-Venom the same way, it would be fascinating to see him neutralize enemy abilities or put them on cooldown leaving them defenseless and with ruined strategies. It would be especially overpowered if a well-timed Anti-Venom Ultimate could even neutralize enemy Ultimates in a radius to secure points at the last minute, all while Anti-Venom continues to heal teammates around him.

Marvel Rivals hopefully sets its sights on other symbiote characters

As said, Marvel Rivals has endless characters waiting in line to be customized and a healer iteration of Venom that would be lacking in its own costume potential is hardly a hill to die on. Of course, anyone who adores various symbiote characters like Toxin, Scorn, Scream or even Venom 2099 will probably be disappointed as they are unlikely to join the roster at any point in the future now that Anti-Venom is a skin and not his own character with a distinct kit.

Cletus Kasady's Carnage is the only symbiote character whose roster acceptance is on the table due to the blood red fiend's popularity, with Knull only having the slightest hope of making the roster due to his relevance in Venom and Marvel Rivals' overall story. Meanwhile, it has been surprising that Klyntar was one of them Marvel Rivals' first maps and it will be interesting to see if its introduction so early is intended to tease that many more symbiotes are on the way or not.