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The Final Chapter<\/h3>\n
<\/div>The Kingpin’s men are firing assault rifles at police officers. They ram a police blockade with a fuel truck, causing a massive explosion in Times Square. At Fisk Tower, it’s an all-out siege where the bad guys are bombing their own building in an effort to slaughter the police that are trying to serve Fisk with an arrest warrant.<\/p>\n
Spidey has to work his way up the building from the inside, brawling with Fisk’s endless army of goons and saving civilians from the damage caused by the battle. At one point Spidey has to clear some rubble to free some trapped civilians and we get a reference to one of the most famous panels in Spider-Man’s history:<\/p>\n
<\/div>This is a callback to Amazing Spider-Man #33, The Final Chapter<\/a>, first published in 1966. This moment was also referenced in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming<\/i>.<\/p>\n In Homecoming it was used in a similar way. It was the ultimate test of his strength at a moment when the stakes were at their highest. Here in the game, it’s mostly just a visual nod and not really a big deal for the character.<\/p>\n In the 1966 comic, Spider-Man is trying to reach a vial of serum to cure Aunt May. That entire concept also appears at the very end of this game.<\/p>\n Spider-Man fights his way up Fisk tower, doing combat and traversal tutorials while our police buddy Yuri Watanabe fills us in on all the momentary exposition we need to make sense of the current situation. The whole thing is incredibly brisk.<\/p>\n About halfway up the tower, Yuri tells Spider-Man that Fisk’s men are in the computer room, deleting all the evidence. She seems to be worried that they won’t be able to prosecute him if that evidence is destroyed.<\/p>\n His entire workforce launched an open firefight against the police and staged multiple terrorist-style attacks around the city for the express purpose of killing police officers, and you’re worried you might no have enough evidence to put him away<\/i>?!?<\/p>\n This is totally ridiculous.<\/p>\n Shamus, you seriously can’t be objecting to this on the grounds of “realism”. Weirder shit than this happens in comic books ALL THE TIME!<\/b><\/p>\n I agree. See, I’m not complaining about the story. I’m complaining about the art style<\/i>.<\/p>\n I’m a big believer in the idea that the art style of a work is an important part of how we view that world. Directors like Wes Anderson<\/a>, Terry Gilliam<\/a>, and Tim Burton<\/a> all deliberately make their worlds look fantastical in order to signal that we’re not seeing the real world. They pull us in by showing us that their world is different and strange, so we aren’t surprised to discover it runs on different rules.<\/p>\n Dialog that works well in a cartoon will fall completely flat if delivered in a grounded clinical presentation like a David Fincher movie. If you took a dramatic scene from one of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies and shot it using the style and presentation of the campy 60s Batman television show, the intended mood would be completely lost. Likewise if you shot the campy 60s Batman show in a gritty realistic style it would lose all the charm and would come across as moronic and infantile. Tropes aimed at animated shows for kids will come off as offensively stupid<\/a> if presented to adults in a world that’s meant to be taken literally. Animated worlds can crank up their more fantastical elements without needing to explore or explain them, while grounded worlds need to take more care to avoid destroying our suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n My problem with Spider-Man is that this is a very comic book world with a very literalist presentation. You can see Peter Parker’s pores<\/i>, for crying out loud. This game is crying out for some sort of stylized presentation. This is a wild comic-book world shot with graphical fidelity more in line with something like The Last of Us<\/i>.<\/p>\n I had the same problem with Batman Arkham Knight<\/i>. The producer aimed for photorealism in a world that wasn’t really intended to be presented that way. Arkham Knight had the ridiculous gag where running into a mook at 60 miles an hour with the Batmobile would “stun” them with electricity, rather than turning them into villainous tomato paste. That’s a very cartoony way of thinking, but the visuals were demanding that we take the scene literally so the whole thing came across as patronizing and juvenile.<\/p>\n Sadly, I think this art style was chosen for business reasons rather than artistic ones. Others<\/a> have noted this tweet<\/a> from one of the developers:<\/p>\n With the green light from Marvel, Gavin and I got to work oncoming up with a design that fit what Marvel and Sony were looking for in a Spider-Suit.<\/p>\n 6\/*<\/p>\n \u2014 xavier (@XCK3D) April 12, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>This Means War<\/h3>\n
<\/div>The Presentation is Part of the Setting<\/h3>\n
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