Marvel Rivals creative director says it's going to become 'a comprehensive Marvel "moving anime" experience' and no, I don't know what that means either

You may have thought Marvel Rivals was just a weirdly horny hero shooter with that one shark people like in it. Guangyun Chen, creative director for Marvel Rivals at NetEase, would like to prove you wrong. As he recently told FRVR, "Our goal is to shift from being 'just a shooter' to a comprehensive Marvel 'moving anime' experience."

That sure does sound like corporate word salad to me. In more concrete mouth-sound news, Chen did say Marvel Rivals was "moving beyond standard 6v6 PvP," and that this would include "expansion into new PvE modes and Path to Doomsday," a movie tie-in event that "will feature five MCU-related updates inspired by the Infinity Saga, including new game modes and themed content."

Marvel Rivals previously experimented with PvE in its Marvel Zombies mode, last year's Halloween event, which pitted a limited selection of heroes against oddly tough zombies—seeing them survive multiple strikes of Thor's hammer felt a bit off to me.

Path to Doomsday will connect to the Avengers: Doomsday movie, which is due on December 18. Chen called it "one of our primary thematic drivers for 2026," and while I could definitely see a repeat of Marvel Zombies only with Doombots happening, hopefully the end result is something more ambitious. What I really want is a kart-racing mode, but I suspect something like co-op boss fights are more likely.