Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order is so far shaping up to have one of the most comprehensive rosters of any Marvel superhero game to date, including not only iconic heroes from the beloved Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but also ones that have been left out of the spotlight for a long time.

One group of characters falling into the latter category is the X-Men. Although still receiving modest attention through the comics and Fox movies, the team had been notoriously excluded from appearing in a lot of Marvel related games, most infamously Marvel VS Capcom Infinite. As such, the reveal of their inclusion in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order generated a lot of excitement from fans.

Among these excited fans was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 writer Marc Sumerak. In fact, during an interview with IGN, Sumerak revealed that it was the return of X-Men characters to Marvel’s videogames that had him the most excited about writing for the project.

“Bringing the X-Men back in the loop…when we got the go-ahead that the X-Men were in this game and we were going to combine them with the Avengers and the Defenders and the Guardians of the Galaxy, knowing that those characters were going to be interacting on-screen in a game with the rest of the Marvel Universe for the first time in a long time on a console game was just such a joy, and to get those characters to interact with the rest of the Marvel universe was a real special opportunity.”

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order launches for Switch on July 19, with an Expansion Pass featuring more X-Men content coming sometime in Fall 2019.