T w e n t y S i d e d
Let’s back up a bit and talk about a scene that takes place at the height of the city-wide crisis, before Spider-Man defeats Electro, Vulture, Scorpion, and Rhino. We get a moment where Spider-Man shows up to a burning building to save Miles and Aunt may. One thing leads to another, and MJ and Miles end up saving Spider-Man. Then our three heroes gather on the roof to process what’s going on in the city. It’s a great scene that allows MJ and Spider-Man to reconcile and gives some character development to Miles. This is the first time we’ve had all three of our hero characters togetherTechnically they all attended the Osborn rally, but they hadn’t been introduced at that point. and now we get to see them bond and make plans.
It’s also a bit of a funny scene because Spider-Man and MJ have to pretend to be casual acquaintances instead of an ex-couple. Miles is charming, eager, and a little star-struck.
Spider-Man thanks MJ for saving his life, and she turns it around by pointing out how often he’s saved hers. It’s pretty clear that this bugs her. Yes, maybe Spider-Man is a touch overprotective, but maybe she’s a little overly defensive about it and maybe this partnership would work better if they both relaxed a little. I know I keep saying this, but I really like this new take on the characters and I find this dynamic so much more interesting than the original version of the relationship between down-on-his-luck Peter Parker and his wealthy glamorous supermodel actress wife.
Not a Damsel
I really appreciate that MJ is never a damsel in this story. Sure, she gets captured at one point as part of a group of hostages, but we never have a moment where the bad guy kidnaps her specifically for leverage over Spider-Man. Even when she is captured, it’s because she was doing something heroic and not just standing on the sidelines. She’s also proactive about getting herself out of trouble.
This is not to say that having heroes rescue their romantic partners is inherently a bad thing. Having a damselWe need a masculine / neutral form of damsel. Like, “damsor” or something. is a fine concept for a story and it’s a great way to unite two divergent plot threads so that the romance story can converge with the “stop the evil villain” story. This is particularly true in movies where time constraints are the most strict and the audience expects everything to tie into the main plot. I understand why damsels are so popular, but it’s also been really overdone. It’s also frequently done poorly, which doesn’t help matters. So I’m glad the writer did something different here.
Once Spider-Man is done with the Electro & Vulture fight and the Rhino & Scorpion fight, it’s time to see about curing this disease.
The Cure
Spider-Man correctly assumes that Oscorp must have some sort of cure. His concern is that if it exists, Martin and Doctor Octopus will probably snatch it before it can be deployed. To prevent this, Spider-Man needs to find it first.
The problem is that the Devil’s Breath lab location is off the books. MJ uses all of her reporter superpowersGiven how easy it is for fictional reporters to gather protected information via casual web surfing or happenstance, it basically qualifies as a superpower. and comes up with nothing. Spidey and MJ concluded that the best place to check is in Norman Osborn’s penthouse.
MJ sneaks in. The next section of the game feels more like a Telltale game than a Marvel-branded action adventure. MJ has to talk to a person to talk to another person to enter a thing to find a thing to open a thing to get a combination to open another thing so she can read a thing that explains a thing granting access to another thing. It’s not bad if you enjoy that sort of people-talking and thing-getting, but if you’re just here for the web-swinging and face-punching then it’ll probably really test your patience.
Halfway through this section it adds a bunch of Sable agents for you to stealth around, but they’re nearsighted and brain-dead. They slow the player down without challenging them. Like I said earlier in this series, the stealth in this game is really shallow and isn’t strong enough to justify the time we spend with it.
Also, MJ slips right by Silver Sable and enters Norman’s exclusive penthouse elevator, even though Silver Sable is on maximum-paranoid alert because everyone’s afraid Martin the Terrorist is coming for Osborn. Taken in isolation this would be fine, but like every scene she’s in it just underscores how much she sucks at everything. The only thing she succeeds at in this story is beating up Spider-Man. Like I said earlier in this series, this character is not cool enough to best Spider-Man. If she’s supposed to be an awesome badass that Spider-Man needs to take seriously, then the story needs to stop showing us she’s a failure at everything from covert operations to dressing herself in the morning.
Exposition Station
At the end of all the messing around, MJ gets into a secret room where Norman Osborn has been storing all of his top secret exposition. It’s not a big room, but four different plot threads intersect here.
1) We get some foreshadowing for the end-game reveal.
While exploring the Osborn penthouse, MJ discovers a bunch of medical equipment in Harry Osborn’s room. Harry is the same age as Peter and MJ, and in the comics he was occasionally Peter’s best friend and sometimes the Green Goblin. He was supposedly in Europe for the duration of this gameAll of the silly science station missions were supposedly Peter Parker looking after Harry’s science projects while he was “in Europe”., but here it becomes clear that he’s not on vacation, he’s sick.
In the Amazing Spider-Man movies, Norman Osborn dies of a family-specific genetic disease and Harry inherits it. Here in this story, his mother is the one who died of Plot Syndrome and Norman is doing all this crazy dangerous research to save his son. Which means that Norman Osborn created Devil’s Breath because of his love for his son, not out of a sense of greed or a desire to make weapons.
There’s a science-tank here that looks big enough for a person. At the end of the game we’ll see that Harry is floating in this tank. I’ll talk more about that reveal when we get to it.
2) We get a video showing the “origin” of Martin the Terrorist.
There’s some archival footage showing Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius doing unexplained science on a kid with an unexplained problem that causes the kid to give off an explosion of particle effects that kill his parents. Also, the game hints that the science juice that bestowed / activated Martin’s powers was an earlier version of Devil’s BreathThe footage in question comes from a file called “GR-27 Martin Li Incident”. The GR prefix is used by Oscorp for Devil’s Breath projects., which is… weird. Was Norman working on this stuff all those years ago? Wasn’t that before any of the Osborns got sick? But then what was this formula for? I know tying disparate plot threads together is Comic Book Writing 101, but I don’t see the point here. It doesn’t tell us anything or mean anything.
More importantly, none of this helps justify Martin’s wonky behavior, and it also introduces new questions about why he’s willing to work for Octavius. Why does he hate Osborn so bad but have no apparent hate for Octavius? Does he blame Octavius for what happened? Does he know Doctor Octopus is Otto Octavius? Does he care?
How are we supposed to feel about Osborn? From the footage it seems like he was just trying to help the kid. Was he doing something unethical? Was he taking needless risks in the name of personal glory? Was he careless? Did he cut corners?
After the accident Otto says to Norman, “What have you done?”
Yeah, what DID he do? I couldn’t tell in this blurry shaky cam footage.
The story never bothered to explain why Martin spends so much effort killing innocents and never tries to hurt Osborn. At the same time, it doesn’t properly frame Osborn’s supposed crime. Why spend this time showing us this origin story if you’re not going to put it into the proper context?
Every time I interact with the Martin plot I feel like I missed a major scene somewhere. Was something cut from the game? Am I supposed to have read the comic? Everything else in this story is structured properly, so why does the Martin plot feel like there are pages missing?
3) There are some science spiders in here, along with research trying to reverse engineer Spider-Man’s abilities.
I have so many questions.
How do people know Spidey got his powers from a spider bite? This is a Marvel universe. You can even see Avengers tower here in Manhattan. This means that nothing is off the table in terms of super origins. Maybe he’s a mutant? Maybe he’s got a technology suit? Maybe he got it from a super-soldier thing that has nothing to do with spiders? Maybe he’s an alien. Maybe a wizard did it? A god?
On top of that, these spiders work. At the end of the game one of our heros gets bitten and turns super. If Norman is testing these spiders, then why doesn’t he know they work? If he does know they work, why isn’t the city filled with Spider-Man knockoffs?
Worst of all, I really don’t like that the writer is leaving a door open to fill this world with spider-people. I kinda liked the idea that Peter Parker’s gift was a random, never-replicated miracle and thus he’s special.
Back in the 90s, comic writers cooked up an excuse to flood the world with more alien symbiotes. It didn’t give us any cool new villainsAlthough it did give us plenty of lame ones., but it did serve to make Venom less special and interesting. I’d hate to see that happen to Spider-Man himself.
4) We learn the location of the Devil’s Breath antiserum, which is our real goal in coming here.
Once MJ is done downloading all the exposition off the computer and solving the “ages 3 and up” puzzle to locate the facility where the antiserum is produced, she bumbles into one of the spider containers and shatters it.
The noise attracts Silver Sable, who comes in and fails to find a young reporter who has no covert training, who is just hiding behind a table in a room the size of a one-stall garage. It’s shocking how terrible Silver Sable is at everything that doesn’t involve beating up Spider-Man.
Escape
MJ has to slip through the net of fresh Sable agents. She can’t reach the elevator, so she heads for the balcony and calls Spider-Man for help. Sable agents are closing in. Out of options, she jumps off the roof and Spider-Man arrives just in time to catch her.
This moment always gets a smile out of me. It completes the relationship arc and solidifies them as a team. Spider-Man was able to allow MJ to walk into the heart of Sable security to get the info they needed, and MJ was able to ask for his help when she got in trouble. Her complete trust in Spider-Man was perfectly symbolized with a literal leap of faith and ended with the two of them escaping in each other’s arms. It’s a great moment at the end of a well-executed story thread. Each character overcomes a personal weakness, and by doing so they overcome the problem that was holding their relationship back. Beautifully done.
I want to stress how much I love this scene because it stands in sharp contrast to the next one, which is the worst part of the game.
Footnotes:
[1] Technically they all attended the Osborn rally, but they hadn’t been introduced at that point.
[2] We need a masculine / neutral form of damsel. Like, “damsor” or something.
[3] Given how easy it is for fictional reporters to gather protected information via casual web surfing or happenstance, it basically qualifies as a superpower.
[4] All of the silly science station missions were supposedly Peter Parker looking after Harry’s science projects while he was “in Europe”.
[5] The footage in question comes from a file called “GR-27 Martin Li Incident”. The GR prefix is used by Oscorp for Devil’s Breath projects.
[6] Although it did give us plenty of lame ones.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
MMO Population Problems
Computers keep getting more powerful. So why do the population caps for massively multiplayer games stay about the same?
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
“Wasn’t that before any of the Osborns got sick?”
You said it yourself. Harry inherited the disease from his mother. Assuming Norman liked Harry’s mother it’s likely that he would have started working on a cure in order to cure her- which could be long before Harry got sick. Potentially before Harry was even born.
Plus, the description makes it sound like a pretty powerful treatment. Even if none of his family sick I can imagine Norman pursuing it. He runs a business with an interest in advanced medicine-it is literally his job. The side effects seen with Li might have put him off, especially if his motivations are professional, until he got desperate when his wife, and later his son fell ill, and it became personal.
Its a story that writes itself, and as such, really shouldn’t need to be explained, its called treating the audience with respect.
Sorry for the off-topic question (feel free to delete it, if you want), but you didn’t have an Escapist article this week or last week; will we get one next Wednesday?
An insignificant detail that I really appreciated is that you can find the building this all takes place in out in the open world (it’s easy to locate because you can see Avengers Tower is right next to it while in the MJ section), and the whole external balcony bit matches up. It doesn’t have quite as much detail as in the MJ segment (it’s missing the photo frames and a few smaller pieces of furniture, plus you can’t see the inside through the windows and glass walls), but it’s very clearly the same balcony. For whatever reason that really impressed me and made the city feel all that much realer to me.
[2] We need a masculine / neutral form of damsel. Like, “damsor” or something.
Do we really?
It’s Mansel anyway.
Nigel!
I cannot tell if not realizing that the “dam” in damsel is clearly the female part is a joke or the usual American disregard for all languages (often including their own). People who learn a second language (often English) know that you can google words.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/50048/what-is-the-male-equivalent-of-damsel
Seems “bachelor” or “lad” would be the equivalent. Well that was thoroughly underwhelming. Maybe “laddie in langour”? I cannot find a good word for “distress” that starts with an L. “Wight” and “don” are also suggested, but those seem even more far-fetched. When I read “wight”, I expect there to be some holy smiting of undead. At least there are some words that start with W, like worry or weakness.
This just reinforces how much we don’t need a new word for damsel. The original word indeed means a young unmarried woman but feel free to tell me if you’ve ever, EVER, heard it used in that context and not to refer to a helpless person in distress. That’s what it means now and I’ve seen it used equally effectively for men and women.
Ugh, it’s terrible and anti-historical usage, nails on chalkboard. Like when trashy fantasy stories crown some woman ‘King’ or call her ‘Master’ or ‘Sir’. Please don’t.
I guess Bill Clinton escaped by a hair being the First Damsel.
(Btw, I used to read the King Arthur stories, where damsels aka damosels are in good supply and give no signs of being men. And I suppose the cliche usage of ‘damsel in distress’ rose from the pulps.)
King Jadwiga of Poland would like a word with you ;-)
To be fair, I only know about her because of Civ VI. Wikipedia says that medieval Poland had no notion of Queen Regnant, but there was no explicit rule that the king had to be a man.
It’s less general than distress, but: Locked-up laddie? Bachelor in bondage?
RE: Diluting Spider-Man
Did you see Into the Spider-verse? I feel like it should be part of the conversation here, since it directly deals with some of the same ideas and plot elements of the game.
Like Shamus, I’m not a fan of any of Spideys shotoclones either, but it’s undeniable that they’re popular, to various degrees. There’s lots of Ben Reilly and Spider-Man 2099 fans out there, as well as fans of Spider-Gwen and Miles. That’s on top of all the other Spider-Men and Spider-Women he’s had, to the point that there’ve been two big Spider-Man crossover events and the Spider-Verse movie. I think it’s really sucky to have Spidey surrounded by wannabes, but what can you do. Not make any cool new heroes unrelated to him, apparently.
It will probably alleviate some things for the next game, though. If they keep the combat system basically unchanged because it works, then adding another character that plays mostly the same but has a couple unique moves and their own animations is an easy (in the sense that we’re keeping all the combat fundamentals the same) way of adding some freshness to the stale combat loop. See also the Batman Arkham Asylum sequels where you get Catwoman, Robin etc. A character like Bayonetta or Dante that are tailor made for games have it built into their character that they can wield all kinds of interesting weapons. Spidey is already stretching it with his shocker gloves. If they’re just building on what they’ve got this is probably the only way forward sans costumes affecting the whole moveset. Like how I think Web of Shadows had you shifting at will between Symbiote suit and regular suit, each with different moves and applicability.
It also means you can have a different playable character and not have boring-ass stealth bits. Except for the part where one of Miles’ unique powers is to turn invisible, I guess.
My bet for the sequel is Miles has his own side-plot with the Prowler, since that’s another father figure bad guy, and the only memorable one he had in his own run.
You get 500 Internet Points for calling the other spider-themed characters “shotoclones”. You’ll get an additional 200 points per character if you can explain which of them is Ken, Akuma, Sakura, Dan, etc. (Miles Morales is obviously Sean.)
I’d go with Spider-Ham as Dan, and Gwen is the obvious pick for Sakura. I was an X-Men guy in the 90’s, though, so I’m not sure whether Ben Reilly fits better as Ken or Akuma.
If it helps, Ken started out as literal palette swap of Ryu, though their move-sets, personalities, and appearances have diverged over the years. Akuma has always been presented as Ryu’s evil opposite and a sort of a cautionary tale about what Ryu could become. I don’t know the Clone Saga well enough to say which of those archetypes fits Ben better. Honestly, I’m lucky that I know (sort of) what the Clone Saga is.
You might be the only person who considers himself lucky to know what the Clone Saga is.
I didn’t say my luck was good. For example, I also know (sort of) what Maximum Carnage is.
There are like 50 Spiders and only a moderate 10 shotoclones or shoto-adjacent characters, but I’ll give it a shot.
Spidey in this case is both Ken and Ryu, ’cause he’s the main hero and he’s also the more American and quippy of them, complete with his own black/latino sidekick who fanboys over him but can’t quite live up to the legacy yet. So yeah, Sean is Miles. The symbiote is Evil Ryu, pulling him down into his darkest depths, giving him power as a replacement for his morality. Venom is the symbiote with a host that’s fully given in to its murderous impulses, the inner conflict made flesh. That makes it literally Kage, Evil Ryu who’s taken on a physical form, or metaphorically Akuma, another man who’s embraced the murderous impulse. As many spiders as there are,
I don’t think there are perfect analogues for the other shotos, least not off the top of my head. There won’t be a shoto-Silk until Capcom retcons Gouken into having having raised a third apprentice all along, somewhere Ryu and Ken couldn’t see. And there won’t be a shoto-Spider-Gwen until Eliza dies in our current timeline and an Eliza from another universe learns karate herself and crosses back over wearing the world’s coolest gi. The evil clone is handled by Cammy.
Spider-Man 2099 is embodied by the Ken in Street Fighter 2010, hahah.
Is that Kage’s back-story? Man, I forgot he even existed. He just seemed so totally unnecessary in a universe that already contained Akuma, Oni, Evil Ryu, and (arguably) Violent Ken.
Same here. I think they just realized “Oh crap, Ryu has to conquer the Satsui no Hadou because he’s overcome it by SF3. But people really like Evil Ryu, so let’s just say he literally manifested a body and fought other characters, like he was exorcised as a demon from Ryu.”
Or is fighting other characters in their mind, or something. It’s a bit difficult to tell. He’s a personal demon who’s left home, anyway.
(PS. Oni should probably be Carnage)
(PS.PS. actually, Carnage strikes me more as an Adon-type character. So maybe Sagat is Venom too, as a stronger version of the main character that later becomes basically good. Hmmm)
On the one hand, I agree that it’s better to have unique characters rather than mostly cashing in on the popularity of an existing hero via endless permutations.
On the other hand, Into the Spider-Verse is the best Spider-Man movie I’ve seen (disclaimer: I haven’t seen Spider-Man 2, which by all accounts is excellent), and the multiple Spider-Men didn’t get in the way of Miles’ personal arc or undermine his position as protagonist.
I just think it’s worth talking about because the core question Shamus has is whether or not expanding on the Spidey persona is inherently a weakening of the character’s appeal, and Into the Spider-Verse is all about that expansion and handles it differently than the PS4 game.
I think it’s objectively a strengthening of the character’s appeal. The audience is totally there for Evil, Girl, Kid, Old etc version of main character. It’s just wet blankets like me and Shamus that think it’s dumb. Doesn’t stop the shotos from being the most played Street Fighter characters.
I haven’t watched Spider-Verse yet on account of the wet blanket thing. Hear they changed Miles a whole lot from his usual portrayal since the MCU already gave their Peter a bunch of Miles stuff, though. That sounds promising to me, as a not-current fan of his character, if they’ve managed to give him some charisma and Insomniac could fold that naturally into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
The value of having another character with spider-themed powers is that you get a lot of narrative mileage out of the compare-and-contrast with Spider-Man. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The problem–if there is a problem–is that it has perhaps been done a little too often. Spider-Man has been going for approximately forever, and so the other spider-themed characters have really piled up over the years.
I don’t have a huge problem with characters like Gwen or Miles who are (or who got their start as) alternate universe Spider-Persons. If you’ve got half a dozen spider-themed heroes running around New York, however, and you aren’t writing a book called The Amazing Spider-Team, where having half a dozen similar characters is the whole point, then you have maybe overdone it. It’s a judgement call and a matter of taste. A lot depends on the character and quality of the story, as I think Into the Spider-Verse shows.
I think a bit part of the appeal of Miles is that he’s essentially the best ‘replacement’ for Peter Parker. Quite honestly? In the comics, Peter’s story is exhausted and wrung out. A big part of his appeal was the ‘teen/young adult’ transitional period of being a hero, contrasting with the ‘stable middle-aged man” heroes like Captain America, Iron Man, etc. The problem is… that transitional point in life from Fresh out of High School to Established Adult With a Stable Career is temporary and transitional. The stories/timeline, even stretched out by comic standards, had pretty much exhausted Peter’s arcs – He graduated high school, graduated college, dated a bunch, and eventually married and should have settled into a ‘status quo’ that doesn’t need elaboration, but can show up for cameos and big team-ups.
Miles, meanwhile, is a fresh start to that transitional period of life – Different home life, but still relatable to the age group. Different personality and interests. Different skillset. New cast of potential romantic interests, with opportunities for new stories and different directions. Some things are one-time deals per character, so telling the story again needs a new protagonist.
Exactly. It works because they’re all their universe’s Spider Person. The status quo of small person with indomnitable will going up against things that seem overwhelming.
The contrast ends up working great as a peer mentor thing. He’s going through what they’ve all been through.
Yeah, the timeline for Martin Li’s relationship to Otto and Norman is wonky. They don’t provide a lot of details, so I guess you’re not supposed to think too hard about it.
More concerning to me is the slapdash nature of the research. Blah blah blah, I know. But I’m a molecular biologist, so this is a thing for me.
First, GR-27 utilizes CRISPR to affect genomic editing. CRISPR research is less than 20 years old, and it was only first shown to be usable in human cells 5 years ago. I realize this is a stickler’s point, given imaginary scientists who are just “ahead of the curve” in a world with super science, etc.
More important, however, is the actual function of this. The CRISPR system affects specific genomic edits; Martin Li would actually have to have the exact same condition as Harry and his mother. When GR-27 reacted the way that it did, giving Martin superpowers, there are two conclusions you can reach: Either this was a specific (if unintended) effect of the gene edit that CRISPR performed in Martin, or it was the result of random off-target edits (a known risk factor in using CRISPR for gene editing.)
If it was the former, then keeping GR-27 around is absurd; it would do the exact same thing again. Unless generating more people with Martin’s powers was your goal, this is foolishness. If the latter case is true, with randomized off-target gene editing, then Norman is a terrible scientist, because there is no circumstance where it accomplishes its purpose without major changes. (This is probably why we see Harry as he is in the after credit scene.)
So in the end, Norman has a faulty product that has undergone no changes in decades but remains just as stupidly broken as the day he first tested it. I know it’s Comic Book Science, but when you’re an actual scientist and you can see the holes in the writing, it’s very frustrating.
If it was just Norman fucking around, it’d be fine. He’s a politician in this continuity, not a scientist, right? And he’s always been kind of a fuckup anyway, just a successful businessman fuckup.
But why’s Otto gotta be there
Tie it all together, give Otto a history with Norman and a reason to hate him.
See, Otto and Norman were partners. But as we learn here, Norman “crossed a line” with his work, which Otto didn’t like. So Otto struck out on his own to be a scientist. Norman enjoyed wild success while Otto was barely scraping by. And now, as we’re seeing in the, Otto finally has a stroke of luck and Norman steps in to take it away.
If you’re not staring at it too closely, you can see all the reason for Otto’s resentment. If you look at the details too long . . . it gets a little wonky.
The exposition computers are really funny.
Recasting male protectiveness of women as “lack of trust” and “controlling” is one of the worst aspects of the story and modern media in general. Realistically, “stealthing” into an armed military base is virtually impossible and ludicrously dangerous. MJ is acting like an idiot and getting in Peter’s face when he points it out is petulant and childish. Getting upset when someone you love is about to needlessly throw their life away is not a “lack of trust.”
Realistically, being a superhero is dumb. If Peter wants to fight crime, he should join the police, and share his crime-fighting inventions…
The writer of the fiction has to determine whether MJ is capable enough to do this kind of stealth-mission. If she isn’t, she’s an annoying idiot for trying. If she is capable, then any character telling her she can’t comes across as an obnoxious jerk.
Which is the problem here. She’s not only unqualified to be doing these stealth missions, it’s precisely the kind of thing Peter is good at. If they wanted to show Peter being irrationally protective, have her pressing powerful people for answers, publishing potentially damaging stories, risking her reputation and career…you know, things that she as a journalist is actually better at than her ex-boyfriend.
That’s a very simplistic way to look at things. The whole reason superheroes do their shtick is that:
a) they don’t want their identities to be public because they’re bound to be larger targets than regular policemen
b) they don’t want to be confined to the limits of the law, which would severely impair their ability to dispense justice (the morals of this deal belong to a whole different, larger discussion)
c) sure, Peter can share his drones and web-shooters, but how would he share his super-strength, spider-sense or ability to climb walls?
I thought it was because d) Nite Owl was too cheap to buy viagra
The point went right over your head, didn’t it?
For real. It’s always “You don’t want me to infiltrate the secret base of the evil military commandos. WHY DON’T YOU TRUST ME?”
And I’m always like “You have no powers of your own, no training whatsoever, you don’t own a gun, you don’t even carry around some pepper spray, and you’re going against several dozen armored soldiers with laser cannons and killing drones. This isn’t a question of trust, you dimwit, I’M TRYING TO STOP YOU FROM KILLING YOURSELF”.
“But also, you have the tendency to needlessly pick up a bunch of evil folders to read with your back turned to the open door without ever checking if anyone’s coming, you always walk backwards into precariously-located glass containers or ceramic jars and you don’t even try to see if security cameras are a thing in the place you’re trespassing. So if you want trust, then maybe, maybe show that you deserve it, you goddamn idiot!”
Seriously, I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with this if it wasn’t because no one ever points it out in-story. The damsel loves to show she can’t be trusted, but she’s still upset when they don’t trust her. And, of course, she loves to call lack of trust to what’s merely a basic, logical care for her wellbeing.
In the Ultimate universe, and I’m reasonably sure all the movies, the spider biting Pete thing takes place in an Oscorp lab. It’s been like 15 years but I think Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin transformation in that line of comics was because him and Octavius figured out someone running around with spider powers might be related to their mutated megaspiders. Then Osborn turned into an ogre and busted up the place, fusing Octavius with his arms in the process. This is that whole “tying everything together” thing everyone tries doing.
Anyway, that’s probably why Norman is looking into them. You kinda had to have this for Miles, ’cause he’s bitten by another spider made by…. ex-Oscorp employees I think? Of the mad scientist type. I can’t be assed to remember the names of Miles’ original science team villains.
In the Ultimate comics it was actually quite a bit more obvious. Peter gets bitten by one of the mutated spiders in front of everyone at Oscorp and passes out. Octavius (working at Oscorp at the time), comes to the conclussion that the spider-bite will end up killing Peter, and Osborn figures “The kid is going to die anyway, and I certainly don’t want a lawsuit in my hands, so let’s just kill him”. But when a hitman tries to run him over Peter’s powers allow him to jump over the car, at which point Osborn realizes the bite has actually given him abilities and studying the kid is a much smarter course of action.
This all happens before Peter even becomes Spider-Man.
Speaking of superheroes, for the first time in a couple of years I played through inFamous (Sucker Punch, 2009, PS3). Excellent game actually, good and original story with plenty of cynicism and darkness, nice ruined sandbox cityscape (it’s also sort of post-apocalyptic), cut scenes are … at least limited, but the best part is the gameplay. You play a superhero with escalating powers and throughout the game it feels entirely natural to learn and use more and more powers. Towards the end you have a lot of options and get to face pretty hairy situations, but it all works out without consulting a manual. Quite engrossing.
There is also a good/evil karmic system (corresponds to altruistic/selfish) which gives replay value. Next I’ll go the evil route. It also seems conceptually possible to flip-flop between the two (and gain powers from both branches, muahaha) but I’ll leave that for another time.
(3 hours, 45 minutes net playthrough this time, over a number of sessions. That was quicker than I thought.)
So you say the damsel thing is “overdone” so what? The solution is to turn MJ, a supermodel actress, into an action hero who never needs saving? Its ridiculous. Can’t some people just need saving? Should Spider-Man never need to save the women in his life anymore? Just the men?
There are other women in Spider-Man’s wheelhouse who can fullfill the strong heroic woman type if that’s what they wanted. Black Cat for example.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that at least her role isn’t just damsel in distress for once, making her more than a prop because she gets captured while trying to do something and not just for existing.
He gives his reasoning in the paragraph right after that.
Yeah I acknowledge that, he says its “overdone.”
But the problem is people are complaining any time a woman is damseled in media these days. Its like any amount of damseling now is too much because it was done so much in the past.
Yeah, Damsels are in the same category as “Indian Brave,” “Blackface Minstral,” “Greedy Jew,” and other historically used tropes that are now generally considered “use with caution”
Oh give me a break. Damsels do not fall into the same category as racist stereotypes. Damseling is a valid plot element.
But there’s no point in having a conversation with you if you seriously think like that. There’s nothing productive in having a debate with a ideological extremist.
EricF’s describing how he thinks damsels are generally considered these days, not how he personally considers them.
It’s not about gender. Male or female, if their only role in the story is to be rescued by the hero, then that’s generally considered bad writing. It’s fine for a throwaway side character/member of the public, but there should be more to a character that features in the story so much as MJ does.
Hence why Shamus seems pleased that there is.
Hey Wide And Nerdy, good to see you again. I was happy when I saw your name pop up in the queue after so many months.
I think I see where you’re going with this. There’s this whole gender-politics argument about how damsels are inherently bad because [insert arguments about stereotypes and “sending messages” and so on]. I tried pretty hard to avoid that, but here we are anyway.
“Can’t some people just need saving?”
Sure. But having the hero save their girlfriend is like having the bad guy burn down the hero’s village in the prologue, or having the bad guy explain all his evil plans to the protagonist before [not] killing him. It’s a totally understandable thing for the writer to do. These tropes exist because they’re convenient and efficient. But if you over-use them then the story feels bland and predictable.
The scene fades in on the girlfriend cooking dinner by herself, and we instantly know that she’s about to get kidnapped because otherwise there would be no reason to show her cooking dinner. This means we know exactly where the scene is going. There’s little suspense and no stakes, and the audience feels like their time is being wasted.
I’m not saying that you should never do a damsel-based plot point. I’m just saying it’s nice when the writer breaks from formula.
Hey its good to be back.
I’m sorry for making it about the gender politics thing. Its not how I wanted to kick off my return but I get a bee in my bonnet and I just don’t think sometimes.
There was one poster who seems to pretty much think that way but I swear I’m going to just let him have the last word if he posts again and disengage. I’d much rather argue about geeky stuff these days. But easier said than done. Sometimes the politics leaks in, you know?
Agh they made MJ a reporter in this game? That drastically lowers my opinion of the character. If they were trying to make her more likable that backfired, at least with me.
For me, it’s merely unoriginal. I like the benefits of giving her a more active role in the plot. It’s a good tool for that, which is why it’s so common.
Why not make her a police detective who’s former military recon? More respectable, more original for a superhero’s girlfriend and makes it more believable that she’s got some actual skills.
How many action reporters are there in real life anyway? There are a few pretend ones that go outside during a storm or get embedded in military units where they have a whole squad protecting them. But none doing the stuff that your Lois Lane types do.
Make her a diehard Pokemon Go player. She can stealth her way through these places because she’s been breaking into highly secure locations to capture Legendary Rattata for years.
Nah, she’d be the world’s foremost collector of Spinarak.
I don’t think they particularly cared about your personal dislike for reporters when they designed the character.
They care about their audience. I am part of their audience. And I’m not the only member of the audience that doesn’t like reporters.
Are you really part of their audience, though? If you’re only just now learning that MJ is a reporter it seems unlikely that you’ve bought the game or were ever planning to do so.
If I ever buy a Playstation it will likely be because of Spiderman. No Playstation exclusive before Spiderman has made me want to buy the console. And its in my means. I just had to upgrade my computer and buy some furniture first. I’ll probably buy the game and the console before too long.
“I’m not the only person with these preferences” is always going to be true unless you have some incredibly specific tastes. Being trivially true, that is therefore not an argument for catering to the preferences of anyone in particular.
While I have no dislike of reporters, I do agree here. Comics are rife with them. Superman is a reporter. Spider-Man is a reporter in many iterations. Supergirl is a reporter. The list goes on and on. Yes, it’s an easy way to give a character a reason to go talk to people and uncover plots etc, but it’s lazy. Cop, P.I., white-hat hacker,…there really are other jobs out there. Heck, almost any job can be a jumping-off point if you have them ad as whistle-blower, then progress into general conspiracy investigations.
Are there any superheroes (main characters, rather than supporting ones) who are cops or detectives in their normal lives? You’d think the tensions inherent in being both a cop and a vigilante would make for some interesting stories, but I can’t think of any.
The Flash?
The Punisher.
The Punisher was a cop? I thought he was an ex-soldier. The Flash… I guess being a forensic scientist would technically count, but it’s not really what I was thinking of.
There’s a non trivial amount of people who don’t like reporters. Reporters have been working hard to squander their goodwill.
I understand that you have a thing about reporters, which is nobody’s business but yours and into which I absolutely do not want to get, but there are also a non-trivial number of people who like reporters (and probably a greater number of people with no particular opinion). Please remember that they’re in the audience for Spider-Man too.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/235796/americans-misinformation-bias-inaccuracy-news.aspx
Just saying the mistrust of reporters is widespread. According to polls, the public on average says that 62% of news is biased, 44% is inaccurate and 39% is misinformation. And that’s traditional media. The numbers are much higher on news reported on social media. If you read further, half the country strongly mistrusts reporters, the other half has some mistrust.
So no, this isn’t a case of a small number of people disliking reporters and most people not caring. About half the country doesn’t like them. The other half ranges from hate to like.
I do not think you are interpreting the results of the study correctly. The questions in the study are all about how often the respondents perceive bias in the news and how they feel when they perceive bias. The questions are not about how people feel about reporters. In an age of overtly partisan news organizations and publications, it’s no surprise that people perceive a lot of bias in the news and just as unsurprising that people would be upset about the bias they perceive. It does not logically follow that most people dislike most reporters.
Look at it this way. The study identifies seven news outlets (mostly large newspapers and broadcast network news divisions) that a majority of respondents considered unbiased and ten outlets that a majority of respondents considered biased (with the most overtly partisan being considered the most biased). I might be persuaded that people dislike the reporters at the biased outlets but why should that carry over to the reporters at the non-biased outlets?
But that’s on average. As the summary points out, Republicans are much more distrustful of media than Democrats. So this isn’t really a case of the general population finding 60 percent unlikable and 40 percent likable, This is more a case that half the population finds most reporters unlikable and the other half finds a few reporters unlikable and this is how it averages out.
This is too far into politics.
Regardless of how anyone feels about reporters, having a reporter character is an extremely well-worn trope with a great deal of narrative utility. Like damsels, dead parents, or villainous monologues, it’s overused and often done poorly. In any case, I think the use of this trope was driven by utility and not politics.
On the “more super spiders” part, I always enjoyed how the good Spiderman movie changed it from a radioactive spider to a genetically altered spider, recognizing the shift in time by changing the buzzword for “dangerous-sounding science-y word in the public consciousness”.
I have, however, been disappointed by the lack of a recent Spiderman bitten by a quantum spider, or a retro Spiderman bitten by an electric spider. I guess there’s still space in the new Marvel timeline for Iron Spiderman to have been bitten by an Infinity Spider.
Bitten by an AI machine-learning neural-network spider. A blockchain spider!
…Bitten by a web-spider?
In those two shots of MJ and Sable, I can kinda see where Shamus is coming from, desing-wise. I’m sure that coat is supposed to be a badass mercenary duster, but really it just looks like a lab coat. Look out! She’s gonna be the 47th scientist in this setting that semi-deliberately transforms themselves into something stupid!
I know she’s literally named after a color, but she really needs something to break up that monochrome outfit, especially since that color is “gray.” Can’t give this lady some pauldrons? Crossed bandoliers? Make the coat stand out more and give her a loose-hanging gunbelt, for a gunslinger feel? Ostentatiously-worn, overdesigned signature weapon? Give her a punk hairdo; can’t tell the big boss it’s against uniform standards! Maybe she has cool boots, since I can’t see her feet in these two shots, but if not, hear me out on this: cool boots. Gimme something! Put a couple cute or dorky button pins on her lapel. “What? I like ’em. You got something to say?” BLAAAND. Break up this boring ashen smear on our screen.
Also it sounds like the character also isn’t very interesting, but let’s start with the big stuff and work our way down.
I’d say that’s being generous. To me it looks like a woman who doesn’t care enough to close her bathrobe anymore. It’s very The Dude.
What a wonderful direction this could have been for the character.
I don’t think it’s the monochrome, I think it’s the fact that they mostly just look like boring civilian clothes with a slightly severe minimalist style. I get what they were going for academically, but I feel like they went too far, and ended up with something very basic and bland in every way.
I’m not familiar with the Silver Sable comic character, but from the artwork people linked in a previous entry in this article series, I’d nominate “The Boss” from Metal Gear Solid 3 as an example of what a cool “realistic”-ish version of her could look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXyT4HVwkFw
The Boss is definitely the closest I can think of to what they were going for.
Silver Sable looks cool when she’s Black Widow, but White. Not so much in this design.
“At the end of the game one of our heros gets bitten and turns super.”
Who could that possibly be? Could it be MJ? Possible! Miles? Maybe! Or, could it possibly be…Spider-Man!
That has to be it! At the end of the game, Spider-Man gets bitten by a genetically-engineered spider, and becomes Spider-Spider-Man.
Actually, the rules of grammar dictate it works out differently. We hear the correct version in his famous theme song: “Spider-Man-Spider-Man does whatever a spider can”
No, that’s what happens when Spider-Man is bitten by a Spider-Man.
A radioactive Spider Man.
Wait, are you saying that not every Spider-Man has radioactive blood? I didn’t know!
“does whatever a spider can”
Bounce surprisingly long distances; build webs near where enemies live and lurk; lurk and dangle glob of web at enemies to capture them; make underground lair and lay out strands outside then run out and fight when someone touches them; disguise self as innocuous object and sneak up on enemy when enemy looks away. Probably stay away from mating as long as possible cuz then it’s over. Break off penis inside MJ once mating does occur, and possibly offer self as tasty meal afterwards.
Don’t forget constantly hang out in my bathroom in the corner of my shower.
I think I have it figured out…
The spider gets bitten by a genetically-engineered man, and becomes: Man-Spider!
“Does whatever Peter can!”
Does whatever upper management tells him.
I was hoping the spider somehow gets man-powers, so we can play as Man-Spider after the credits roll.
EDIT: That’s what I get for not refreshing the page.
I think MJ in this game is fine as a character, but she’s so little MJ. It’s like they talked about which traits of MJ they wanted to keep and ended up deciding on “red hair, loves Peter Parker”. This is very different from their Peter, who’s like the best non-comic Peter Parker since the Spectacular cartoon, because he really captures everything about that character and portrays it well. Insomniac have talked about this specifically being about not damseling her, which doesn’t make sense to me as an argument. I’m pretty sure you could have classic MJ in this game, just doing her thing, without getting kidnapped by anybody. Until the end where she’s just as endangered as anybody by the Devil’s Breath, I suppose. And then none of us would have to play the stealth sections anymore. Meanwhile, if you wanted a more active partner, Black Cat is right there, and she’d actually be fun to play as. Slott consulted on the game, but never suggested Carlie Cooper, the cop Spidey dates for a good long while? Which he wrote about in the same stories as Mr. Negative and Yuri Watanabe? They could have the exact same arc as the relationship has in this game and it’d only have made more sense.
It’s just frustrating, ’cause I like Game MJ quite a bit, but she’s barely anything resembling the original character that I like.
I think this might actually just be another Ultimate comics wannabe deal, since MJ apparently became a reporter there as well. Maybe Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man would be a more apt title.
Hey red hair and loves Peter Parker is twice as many legit MJ traits as the Cinematic Movie Version. It’s like they feel the need to use the character name because people are invested in the name, not the character.
BTW I enjoy the MJ character in the films, she just does not reflect the character in the comics, which makes her odd as MJ. I mean the actress could believably transition the character into being an actual model and take on one more aspect of her namesake, but I don’t think that is the plan….
Oh… Oh, Shamus… Oh… Thank God you haven’t been keeping up with the comics. I assure you, sometimes it feels like half the Marvel universe has spider powers. And this isn’t even taking into account parallel Earths and the like.
“Norman Osborn dies of a family-specific genetic disease and Harry inherits it.”
WORST WILL EVER.
Yeah, I’d have contested that one.