Marvel’s Blade was announced by Deathloop developer Arkane Studios late last year, but since then, we’ve seen barely anything about the Marvel game with not even a release window to hold us over. Fast-forward to this week, however, and we’ve finally gotten another snippet of Blade thanks to some artwork shared by Arkane in celebration of the studio’s 25th anniversary. It’s a small piece of what’s to come, but it’s at least something after all this time.
Aside from Deathloop, other games like Dishonored and Prey are titles Arkane is best known for, so you’ll see them showcased in the art below shared by Sébastien Mitton, the art/co-creative director at Arkane. All the characters that have already been featured in published games are shown in the foreground, but there in the back-left part of the image, we see a new look at Blade.
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This is the first time we’ve seen Blade this way with only other views of the character shown in the original trailer and in concept artwork released afterwards. The trailer notably showed a shot of him sitting in a chair while being shaved which gave us a close-up look at his teeth that serve as an instant giveaway for the Marvel hero. This concept art is the first time we’ve seen his full vampiric teeth like this while wearing his usual outfit complete with a sword and his glasses.
If we want to get really technical about what’s shown in the artwork, it also seems that this gives us a better idea of how Arkane’s version of Blade will have subtle differences to set it apart from other interpretations. In the comics and in the movies where he’s portrayed by Wesley Snipes, Blade’s glasses are always much more sleek and angular like a pair of Oakleys. The ones shown in the trailer were much more rounded, and these in the celebratory art confirm that they’re going with a different look since these are move like aviators. A small detail, but again, since we’ve gone so long without Blade news, we’ll take what we can get.
The post containing this artwork was unfortunately quite limited in its talks about Marvel’s Blade beyond showing off the new look at the protagonist. It was mostly about looking back on Arkane’s history and the community and reputation formed over the course of 25 years with a very broad sense of excitement towards working on the Marvel game next.
Aside from questions about when Marvel’s Blade will release, there’s also the big question about whether or not it’ll be an Xbox exclusive. Arkane is part of Bethesda which is owned by Xbox, though as we’ve seen with games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Marvel’s Blade will stay only on Xbox consoles even if PlayStation is keeping Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Wolverine to itself.