A Marvel Ultimate Alliance 4 must unearth the franchise's best feature

Although anyone can have their personal thoughts on which is best Marvel Ultimate Alliance games are all quite different for at least a couple of reasons between each round. The original Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a bonafide classic for many and has a wealth of witty, endearing charm, including trivia consoles in each act. The sequel thankfully reprized the trivia, though Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is a completely different game in many ways. If Marvel Ultimate Alliance find some way to bounce back after a couple of boring lapses and want to capture the original's lightning in a bottle, trivia should be a high priority.

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The future of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance has a franchise-defining decision to make

If the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series is dug up again, one monumental aspect of its RPG sensibility needs to be carefully re-examined.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance's Lore-infused trivia was a wonderful staple

Marvel Ultimate Alliances trivia is as far-reaching and inclusive as its many settings, dipping into general Marvel trivia at Stark Tower, Doctor Strange-themed trivia at the Sanctum Sanctorum, Thor-themed trivia in Asgard, and Inhuman-themed trivia in Attilan. Trivia in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is odd, especially if the first and second games are played back to back, as it is largely generic.

The sequel's trivia asks players confusingly simple questions like what the true identities of characters as ubiquitous and popular as Spider-Man or Captain America are, and the argument can be made that anyone playing the sequel probably played the first game or at least has a basic level of Marvel knowledge. Plus some of the questions Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2s trivia questions are literally lifted from the first game and therefore not nearly as creative as they should have been, especially for players who were hoping to have their knowledge understanding further tested.

if anything, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 needed to follow the in-depth exam Marvel Ultimate Alliances training wheels, and instead it copied its predecessor's homework and didn't care enough to rewrite all its questions so that it at least looked like its own pen. It's therefore doubly strange that Act 4's trivia is surprisingly a deep trove where Penance – both a playable character and an enemy mini-boss – is given some much-needed love. Yet Act 4's challenging questions come too little too late with such elementary trivia before it.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order left the controversial hub and their trivia in the past

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order has no trivia whatsoever, and its lack of hub worlds between acts keeps the game's pace at a breakneck speed at the cost of immersion or rich character dialogue. In fact, the threequel's design as an ensemble beat-'em-up game seems under no obligation to honor its franchise heritage, abandoning much of what gave the previous two games their charm and identity as top-down dungeon crawlers.

It's a sacrifice that's certainly felt when trivia consoles play such a big role in immersing players in the history of the Marvel universe they live in and providing fun information about characters, settings, or events they may see or hear about in-game. It is interesting because Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order draws unmistakable parallels to the MCU's own overall plot and popularity, at least in its base game campaign.

The Guardians of the Galaxy takes center stage with players battling Ronan and Nebula in the introductory stage and the plot follows Thanos, the Black Order and the Infinity Stones – all monumental characters and iconography that were very much part of the MCU endeavor at the time. With Avengers: Endgame released the same year, it was something of a convenient title to launch.

Anyway, if Team Ninja and Nintendo had doubled down and featured MCU-related trivia, it could have been a neat way to bridge Marvel Ultimate Alliance the franchise's comic book roots with how influential and dominant the MCU's depiction of the Marvel Universe had become since then.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a tribute to comic book and should not forget that

To ignore how deeply the MCU has influenced Marvel, even in its theatrical continuity, would be grossly ignorant, and the trivia of dissecting its most obscure corners could have been a good way to reflect on it more than a decade later. The only problem is that such knowledge would have clashed with the teaching presented in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order and then Marvel Ultimate Alliance isn't literally an MCU tie-in game, it could have gotten terribly confusing if it tried to be one or not.

Rather, Black Order is the best of both worlds with no trivia to cement it in either, and not having trivia altogether makes its obvious MCU parallels any more seamless or forgivable — let alone funnier. Now, all the trivia that follows Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3s total lack of trivia would be a sight for sore eyes. The series may have stumbled and lost its way, but Black Order is less of a warped iteration of beloved RPG mechanics and more of its own new path forward in a contemporary era.

Therefore, there would undoubtedly be players who are disappointed with a new one Marvel Ultimate Alliance the game was to adopt the sentimentality or design of the original game. Still, lore-rich trivia should undoubtedly have a place in the future of the franchise — actual hubs, in-depth NPC conversations, and narrative-shaking side quests could simply be the cherry on top of a possible sundae in hopes of restoring and preserving what made Marvel Ultimate Alliance one of the best Marvel games in the first place.