MyM magazine had an interesting chat with Arthur Parsons, TT Games’ head of design, as LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 launched this week.

We noticed that in the game there’s a LEGO version of the Hulk, dressed as a gladiator from Thor: Ragnarok – the most recent Marvel film – which suggests that TT Games gets some insight into Marvel’s projects before they are released.

In confirming this, Parsons suggested something quite exciting…

“We get to see a little bit behind the curtain so that we can put things in there that are relevant. When people have gone to see Thor: Ragnarok, we can have things in the game like Korg, for example. Or we can use stuff from Guardians. Or we can even have stuff in there that maybe might be from the future – from The Runaways TV show or Cloak & Dagger. There’s so many great things in the game and that all comes from that brilliant partnership.

“I speak to Marvel every week and probably email Bill [Rosemann] and Tim [Hernandez] in Marvel Games every day – even now, when we’ve finished. A lot of people ask if it’s hard working with IP holders, and it’s not. Marvel wants to make the best game so they are constantly adding to that creative soup: ‘What about this character, or this storyline? Why don’t we do this – it’s going to be cool in the comics in three months’ time.’ It’s so energising to work with an IP holder that really wants to push everything.”

Was there any character missing from the first game you really wanted in this game?

There were a few characters. Obviously, you’ve got to have Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, but I wanted the roster in this game to be one that people haven’t played before. So you’ll notice when you play it, there’s a very strong group of characters who form the backbone. Characters like Kamala Khan – Ms Marvel, Captain Marvel, She Hulk, Black Panther, a couple of the Guardians of the Galaxy characters – it’s a very diverse roster.

It’s also a roster you wouldn’t normally get together. You wouldn’t normally see Spider-Gwen alongside Star-Lord alongside someone from the golden age of comics. We really wanted a mixed up roster to tell a story that’s never been told.

What can comic fans expect from the storyline in this second game?

Our story is loosely based on Avengers Forever and The Kang Dynasty, which is Avengers #44-56. So two really great Kang stories. The guy who wrote those, Kurt Busiek, co-wrote the story for the game for us, just to give it that stamp of authenticity. He knows Kang better than anyone, so he makes sure we are telling the right story.

Does a new roster of heroes mean new powers?

Absolutely. There’s all sorts of new stuff. Doctor Strange can manipulate time and do rune tracing. Lockjaw – an amazing character, a kind of giant dog, who hopefully people will know now that the Inhumans are a little bit bigger – can teleport. Even characters that have been in previous LEGO Marvel games have had new powers or new mechanics added to them. We’ve tried to freshen up everything.

Whether that’s something big and powerful or whether it’s something of the simplicity of Spider-Gwen being able to take selfies so that people can take cool images when they’re playing in the game, there’s a whole host of cool, new exciting things. As you progress through the game and unlock the 200+ characters, that’s where it becomes fun, because you start to think, ‘What powers or abilities does this character have? And what’s fun and funny about them?’

How long did it take to create the second game?

That’s a bizarre question because, believe it or not, back in 2013 when we made LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, we knew where we wanted to go. So the game has been in our minds for four years but obviously it hasn’t been in development for four years. It’s probably been in full development for under two years, but we’ve had a good amount of time with a good amount of people on it.

The first game was really successful and we wanted to make sure that this sequel did that justice. It’s one of those things where the first game is the foundation and then we ask, ‘How do we make everything better?’ Whether it be the story, the customisation, the open world or the roster, we’ve had to push really hard to deliver this game.

There’s such a wealth of material to draw from in the Marvel Universe. How did you settle on those Kang storylines?

For anyone who doesn’t know Kang, he is probably the greatest villain in Marvel. He’s from the 40th century and has the most advanced technology you can possibly imagine. But rather than going back in time and vaporising Iron Man when he’s a 10-year-old kid, he’ll go back in time to when Iron Man is the best of the best and go toe to toe. It’s the nobility of Kang and the knowledge that he could just defeat you, but he chooses not to because he wants to beat them at their best to prove that he is the best. It’s that admirable quality that makes Kang a villain that had to be explored.

To be able to time travel also means that we can go cosmic and bring in past characters, future characters, characters from weird, diverse Marvel universes, and bring them all into one place to have fun with them.

What’s on your wish list for a third episode of this game?

For the time being, my future is focusing on the Season Pass for the game. We’ve only really just started getting our teeth into that. We’ve got six amazing level packs, inspired by Infinity War, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Black Panther and some other stuff. So I’m fully focused on that, as well as continuing the success of LEGO Worlds – we’ve got some big plans for that. Because of that I’m a little bit blinkered but I’m sure there’s loads of exciting things in our future. Now that people get to play LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 we’re just going to take a breath just to see how people enjoy it. I can’t wait to watch some Let’s Play videos and read the messages that people send us. Hopefully, all that hard work from the team is going to have paid off.

Do you have a favourite character in the game?

I love playing as Stan Lee because he’s completely overpowered. He has so many abilities and he makes hoovering all the gold bricks in free play really easy. But I like playing characters that do something a bit different. So I like playing as Lockjaw because the movement and animation on the character is incredible. I love playing as Star-Lord, because he can just get up and fly like Iron Man. But at the same time, when you’re in a boss fight he can put his Awesome Mix Tape on. He’ll start dancing and all the goons stop fighting you and dance, so it actually makes the bosses a little bit easier.

Even though I know the game really well, there are still things that I’m finding, which have been put in by the rest of the team. So they’re the bits I enjoy. And if I am actually choosing a character, I’ll build myself in the customiser, and then I’m there with the heroes and villains from Marvel, battling Kang. So there’s lots of fun stuff to do.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 is out now for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.