As you know, we've been following the progress of Lego Marvel Avengers since its announcement as we're big fans. This week at NYCC the development team along with Mr. Arthur Parsons of TT Games sat down with media to discuss some of the new additions to the game. Of course, one of the biggest questions we wanted to know was how many characters would be in the final roster. 

When asked, Mr. Parsons indicated that "We haven't got a final roster because people keep asking us for characters on twitter. We keep adding characters so at the minute, I'm assuming you're familiar with Lego Marvel Super Heroes. That had like a really big roster. Our job on this one is to make sure everything's better. We have over 100 characters that weren't in that game atleast and I think we're over 200 now". With Lego Marvel Avengers gaining story content not just from Avengers and Age of Ultron but also both Captain America and Thor films, one of the new character additions is Quick Silver. Mr. Parsons discussed some of his abilitiies and the work that went into his implementation.

"That was one of the things we worked really hard on because the speedster is very important. I don't know if you've seen any of the footage from previous events but Quick Silver now can target multiple and the whole world slows down and he'll run and kick and smash everything on the way. He's also got an ability where he can create multiple variations of himself. He can create four versions of himself so you'll have five Quick Silvers that basically go off and duff everyone up. He can run up buildings in the worlds which is incredibly cool that's something new and exciting and he's incredibly fast. I think he runs faster than Ironman flys". 

With this year's previous releases being Jurassic World and now returning to Marvel, we were curious on how the DLC would work as Beyond Gotham was the first to include a season pass with its four extra packs. We asked Mr. Parsons and his response was a good one for those excited about extra content. "At the minute, we're not looking any further than the main game, but we know that was really popular on that title. So, once we got the game done and dusted yeah, we'll probably look into that".

Another of the variations that exists in the Lego TT titles is the world set up. Marvel Super Heroes had an open world set up in Manhattan yet Jurassic World and Beyond Gotham utilized hub worlds. What Mr. Parsons indicated Marvel Avengers had implemented was a new hybrid setup. "We have an open world Manhattan with a few changes. Because we want the game to be better, we've actually added a ton of other open world areas. Because we've got a lot of phase two movie content, you can go to open world Asgard, open world D.C., open world Barton Farm, open world S.H.I.E.L.D. base at the start of the Avengers. I think we have about eight different areas. 

Some other points of note mentioned during the interview session was the fact that there will be 250 gold bricks with the special brick being the return of the red brick (Jurassic World used amber bricks). One of my personal favorite changes to the Lego TT games was the addtion of the character change wheel allowing a much easier transition for the likes of Batman or Ironman with multiple variations of suits and each game has added to it. This year, Mr. Parsons indicated one of the changes for Ironman brings you inside the suit to where you see the inside helmet view just as Tony Stark does in the movie. All your available suits will be on the outside of the helmet in a wheel and each Ironman suit has its own suit up animation. For example, the Ironman Mach 5 from Ironman 2 jumps onto Tony from the suitcase as it does on the race track.

Although we didn't get many images of characters themselves in panel that followed, there was a few new characters revealed to the franchise:

• Moonboy
• Iron Fist
• Luke Cage
• Jessica Jones
• Agent Carter
• Agent Sitwell
• Hulkling
• Devil Dinosaur
• Egg head

A thought that remained consistent within the briefing was that during development the character selection had to remain consistent with Avengers storyline. Now, although in the comics Spiderman entered the Avengers and has been set to eventually enter the film universe, he will not be in Lego Marvel Avengers. With story content from six different Marvel films along with the mentioned hub worlds (we forgot South Africa) Lego Avengers is the biggest game that TT Games has developed to date. Over 200 characters will pass Beyond Gotham's 195 and that's on top of the the new tag team maneuvers and special moves. When we asked Mr. Parsons about them, he indicated that with so many characters and animations needed to for their development it was an incredibly difficult task getting those in the game. All of the main characters such as Black Widow, Captain America, etc have their own unique move, other lesser known characters such as Egg Head will utilize a more generic move. Also, remember that each move is different so that if Captain America approaches Thor the move will be different than if Thor approaches Captain America. In order to activate these moves, press B (Xbox One) when your energy wheel around your character's image is filled up as you'll receive a prompt on screen. If it's done next to a teammate you'll pull off the the tag team maneuver but in front of another enemy you'll unleash an individual super move.

Lego Marvel Avengers has us incredibly excited for its release January 26th when it launches on Xbox and PlayStation platforms. Be sure to check out some of the videos below.