then what point are they starting from?
We've stated publicly before but Chapter 2 will focus on the Phoenix saga.
Null joins the academy a month or so after Giant-Size X-Men.
Just a general reminder, Chapter 1 exists to establish the setting. It's not adapting any specific point in the comics.
unless you want to bring in Beast and Iceman's human girlfriends)
We specifically are not letting the player steal people's girlfriends/wives. An exception is Gambit but he has a wife and we meet Rogue long before he does. Cyclops has other love interests he can be paired off with instead of Jean.
Plus, the game has already verged pretty heavily from classic Silver/Bronze Age X-Men by making the school aspect the main focal point, like in Evolution.
I'd dispute this. Oni went in the Evolution direction by making the mansion a standard college situation. We're more leaning toward the Fox Movies and a good chunk of the comics of the mansion being a boarding school.
We do plan on tackling the Silver/Bronze Age but through a modern writing perspective.
Like originally, Jean was just "the girl." Reading over a lot of her early comics, a lot of her behavior is being passive or acting irrationally because she was "the girl."
Rather than be cringe like AAA games and make her a girl boss. We explained Jean's irrationality as college stress as well as concern about her powers during this time in the comics. Even then we let her keep her dignity. We even kept the part of her personality of looking out for "the boys" by acting as a dorm sibling instead of just having her act as the team's den mother.
We're approaching all the characters with this mindset.