What would you like to see in Insomniac's next Spider-Man game?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Oh yeah, and one thing that I remembered thinking about, is that the game could have the possibility of failing.

Part of the point of Spider-Man is that he doesn't always win, sometimes he gets his ass handed to him and he has to live with the consequences in case he can't solve it later, so what I'm suggesting is that, in some stuff, the player could fail, but not get a game over from it, so later you can solve it, or not and have to deal with it, and in the second case, it could have consequences you wouldn't expect.

Of course, implementing this would be a headache, but I think it'd be interesting to implement something so important about Spidey as a mechanic, and it could even make the player understand the frustration of being Spider-Man by making the player's own competence have consequences, as long as it doesn't go too far, 'cause while a certain level of frustation could be interesting, it can't be on the obnoxious level the comics can reach, bad enough to just read it, imagine playing that lol.

The only way to do that satisfyingly is Open-World RPG a la Witcher III.

Peter thinks he's doing the right thing and has to choose between two seemingly good options and you make the choice as Spider-Man not knowing which was the right thing or not. And each choice you make leads to the conclusion which can change based on the various consequences of your seemingly insignificant choices.

[Hybrid]

One obvious homage type way to present the possibility of failing:

Spider-Man confronts the Green Goblin, who just kidnapped Mary Jane and took her to George Washington Bridge. Goblin throws Mary Jane off a bridge. Do you quickly use your webs to save her (as the game instructs) or do you take the less obvious route and jump down to get her (which isn't telegraphed).

The former snaps her neck and kills her, the latter saves her life because she wasn't killed by the sudden stop, and both continue the story in different directions. This of course is based on The Night Gwen Stacy Died, but substitute Gwen for Mary Jane due to continuity differences.

That would be a way to present the possibility to fail, and continue the story. I like the idea of different endings depending on your choices. It might make it difficult to continue after though, unless they do it Mass Effect style where save data continues your story. But it's workable. Any other examples they could do?

[Lukmendes]

The only way to do that satisfyingly is Open-World RPG a la Witcher III.

Peter thinks he's doing the right thing and has to choose between two seemingly good options and you make the choice as Spider-Man not knowing which was the right thing or not. And each choice you make leads to the conclusion which can change based on the various consequences of your seemingly insignificant choices.

I'm not talking exactly about choice, although it does follow the same basic idea.

Let's say a villain is attacking people and you go investigate, but then you fail at catching him, if that happens in PS4 Spidey, you'd just get a game over and you could try again, but what it could happen is that you fail and keep going, and maybe see the consequence of that.

If it were to get more complex, then the failure could affect his personal life too, like because you failed at doing X, then Spidey had to overwork to solve it, and that screws up his personal life, and if it were to get even more complex, then actual choices could come up, with Spidey deciding if he should solve the crime, or go fix his life, though I'm not sure how that would benefit the player if they chose to go fix his life, since it's still a video game and he still has to keep fighting, guess the best genre to really implement this last idea would be a RPG like Persona...

But yeah, the basic idea is to just let the player fail and deal with the consequences, which while basically would be like choice making, the way I imagine is that the player would just keep playing and completing missions, and that you could just fail and have that failure be there to maybe affect Spidey, of course, since it's Spider-Man, even succeeding could have bad consequences, but again, this would be a real headache to implement, choice making is already hard enough to implement, this could be even harder...

[Frontier]

The other problem with symbiotes in general is that...it tends to take over the plot. When you introduce a symbiote into a story, it tends to become the main story and everything centers around it, so everything is tied to symbiotes and so on.
-- Take the 2000 Activision game where you have a symbiote virus that makes everyone symbiotes, and in the finale you fight Carnage, and then Ock fused with Carnage.
-- The Web of Shadows game.
-- The Ultimate Spider-Man game.

That's just the 3D era but it's a sizable number of games where symbiotes and symbiote-users and infectees form the central focus of the games. The PS4 game will add to the pile I think.

It's just that it's hard to do a lot of other parts of the Spider-Man mythos with the symbiotes around. The main thing about the first PS4 Insomniac game is that it had a narrative of a lot of independent stories coalescing together, and that allowed Spider-Man to interact with different parts of his mythos. Like it starts with Spidey versus Kingpin, moves to Spidey versus Mr. Negative for most of the middle-part of the game, and then you have Doctor Octopus and the Sinister Six. The plot develops organically and it allows them to breathe. The Side missions have Tombstone and Screwball, and the DLC has Hammerhead and Wraith.

Whereas if you include Symbiotes and stuff, you are gonna have fights with say, Mr. Negative-Venom, Scorpion-Venom*, Electro-Carnage and so on.



* And yeah, I know Scorpion Venom has precedence in comics

I expect each game will have one of the Big Three as the main villains.

The first game had Doc Ock, but I think it's a toss-up whether it'll be Gobby or Venom for the second game (I'm leaning towards Venom because I don't think they've established enough for Osborn to become The Goblin yet).

I don't think they are going to have a bunch of Symbiotes or Symbiote-related bad guys. At best I see the core story involving the Venom Symbiote, it's relationship with the Osborns, and Peter coming across it, and that's it.

Miles will probably have his own storyline hunting Mr. Negative that will have nothing to do with the Symbiotes.

One obvious homage type way to present the possibility of failing:

Spider-Man confronts the Green Goblin, who just kidnapped Mary Jane and took her to George Washington Bridge. Goblin throws Mary Jane off a bridge. Do you quickly use your webs to save her (as the game instructs) or do you take the less obvious route and jump down to get her (which isn't telegraphed).

The former snaps her neck and kills her, the latter saves her life because she wasn't killed by the sudden stop, and both continue the story in different directions. This of course is based on The Night Gwen Stacy Died, but substitute Gwen for Mary Jane due to continuity differences.

That would be a way to present the possibility to fail, and continue the story. I like the idea of different endings depending on your choices. It might make it difficult to continue after though, unless they do it Mass Effect style where save data continues your story. But it's workable. Any other examples they could do?

I think when The Goblin shows up he's going to kill off a name character, but I don't think it'll be by player choice.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

One obvious homage type way to present the possibility of failing:

Spider-Man confronts the Green Goblin, who just kidnapped Mary Jane and took her to George Washington Bridge. Goblin throws Mary Jane off a bridge. Do you quickly use your webs to save her (as the game instructs) or do you take the less obvious route and jump down to get her (which isn't telegraphed).

The former snaps her neck and kills her, the latter saves her life because she wasn't killed by the sudden stop, and both continue the story in different directions. This of course is based on The Night Gwen Stacy Died, but substitute Gwen for Mary Jane due to continuity differences.

There's a moment like that in the first game where Mary Jane jumps off Osborn's penthouse when Sable is about to get her, and she jumps earnestly knowing Peter would grab her. Peter swings by at the right moment and catches her mid-air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19unEK27ikU (Around 32:20)

But anyway doing it like this in game is way too literal and on-the-nose and impossible to pull off in an interactive medium. In the PS4 game Spider-Man routinely does stuff that should have killed mooks and caused collateral damage only for the game to somehow insist that your quarry "survived". So now we are saying that sudden web-catches snap necks. Yeah, that wouldn't work.

Also, it's important to remember that the whole Gwen fall/snap thing is among the most sublime bits of bulls--t in comics history, a case of total incompetence on the part of the writer passed off as some daring statement, and you can't really pull it off with a major character like Mary Jane. Gwen being marginal in the grand scheme of things made that work even when it shouldn't.

But yeah, the basic idea is to just let the player fail and deal with the consequences, which while basically would be like choice making, the way I imagine is that the player would just keep playing and completing missions, and that you could just fail and have that failure be there to maybe affect Spidey, of course, since it's Spider-Man, even succeeding could have bad consequences, but again, this would be a real headache to implement, choice making is already hard enough to implement, this could be even harder...

As it is the PS4 game had the Taskmaster bit. Where if you fail to beat him in the first two rounds you fight him, you create a third round as a direct consequence of your failed state.

But anyway, doing that fully amounts to synching the player with the character. i.e. the player's competence/incompetence amounts to the character's competence/incompetence.

That doesn't work when the character is a superhero and is fundamentally a power fantasy. And yeah, Spider-Man is a power fantasy at heart. Remember that Spider-Man isn't an incompetent. In the best stories, when Spider-Man fails it happens because he tries his best, and still falls short, because he's in a situation where he doesn't know everything, some stuff is hidden or mysterious and so on.

There has to be an element of believable human error, of tragedy, otherwise the story and the game is just an a--hole getting hit by a truck and nobody wants that. Even Dark Souls isn't that.

[Frontier]

There's a moment like that in the first game where Mary Jane jumps off Osborn's penthouse when Sable is about to get her, and she jumps earnestly knowing Peter would grab her. Peter swings by at the right moment and catches her mid-air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19unEK27ikU (Around 32:20)

But anyway doing it like this in game is way too literal and on-the-nose and impossible to pull off in an interactive medium. In the PS4 game Spider-Man routinely does stuff that should have killed mooks and caused collateral damage only for the game to somehow insist that your quarry "survived". So now we are saying that sudden web-catches snap necks. Yeah, that wouldn't work.

Also, it's important to remember that the whole Gwen fall/snap thing is among the most sublime bits of bulls--t in comics history, a case of total incompetence on the part of the writer passed off as some daring statement, and you can't really pull it off with a major character like Mary Jane. Gwen being marginal in the grand scheme of things made that work even when it shouldn't.

It's an iconic Spider-Man moment, but not one I foresee being replicated in the game. Although you never know.

Actually, I think if they do feature Gwen they might "kill" her and they need to use the Symbiote to keep her alive, which gives her her powers. I doubt they're going to happen by another spider and it would give her a unique playstyle.

[Hybrid]

That reminds me...

Going by the "cloning" rumor, if they introduce Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker do you think they'll be playable as well? I'm guessing it'd be mainly from a story standpoint, because gameplay wise it'd be hard to differentiate the two from Spidey.

[Lukmendes]

As it is the PS4 game had the Taskmaster bit. Where if you fail to beat him in the first two rounds you fight him, you create a third round as a direct consequence of your failed state.

There's also at least one radio where JJ talks **** about Spidey failing to stop some random crime.

I'm not exactly sure what triggered that, think it was car related, and I think I just ignored it, but yeah, game at least may comment on it, even if inconsistently ('Cause I ignored some other crimes and there were no comments).

But anyway, doing that fully amounts to synching the player with the character. i.e. the player's competence/incompetence amounts to the character's competence/incompetence.

That doesn't work when the character is a superhero and is fundamentally a power fantasy. And yeah, Spider-Man is a power fantasy at heart. Remember that Spider-Man isn't an incompetent. In the best stories, when Spider-Man fails it happens because he tries his best, and still falls short, because he's in a situation where he doesn't know everything, some stuff is hidden or mysterious and so on.

There has to be an element of believable human error, of tragedy, otherwise the story and the game is just an a--hole getting hit by a truck and nobody wants that. Even Dark Souls isn't that.

I'm not saying that it should only have failures, just that the failure could be there for you to have as a consequence, assuming a player isn't failing just to dick around, they would still be trying to do the best, and yes, Spidey is still a power fantasy, and the possibility of failing could actually enhance it, if the player manages to keep succeeding.

That reminds me...

Going by the "cloning" rumor, if they introduce Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker do you think they'll be playable as well? I'm guessing it'd be mainly from a story standpoint, because gameplay wise it'd be hard to differentiate the two from Spidey.

Yeah, the best thing that Ben has going on for him is that he seemed to be doing something different with his webs with Impact Web, which Spidey already has, so there isn't much going on for him, Kaine on the other hand at least could have something like The Other's powers, and excuse that it was some random mutation, but I don't really see PS4 Spidey doing that... Plus, if Kaine or a clone were to become playable, better leave it for later, I really think Miles should get the focus as the other Spider-Man.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That reminds me...

Going by the "cloning" rumor, if they introduce Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker do you think they'll be playable as well? I'm guessing it'd be mainly from a story standpoint, because gameplay wise it'd be hard to differentiate the two from Spidey.

The only elements of the clone stuff they could do is Spider-Island, i.e. give every NPC in the open world spider-powers and so on. Making every NPC into a spider can be done, what with Watch Dogs Legion making every NPC playable and so on. But it would be highly difficult I imagine and hard to co-ordinate with all that webswing-traffic and clutter across the city skyline.

As it is Osborn is interested in replicating Peter's powers and he is using designer spiders and clones to do it.

[Nyssane]

More female villains. White Rabbit. Calypso. Beetle. Stunner. Lady Octopus. Any of 'em.

[Frontier]

More female villains. White Rabbit. Calypso. Beetle. Stunner. Lady Octopus. Any of 'em.

I'm down for it .

I think Beetle is probably the most likely if we're getting Beetle as a villain. Calypso might appear if we get Kraven.

White Rabbit...I can only see her if they do something like Screwball again, but I think the developers probably realized how annoyed players got with that.

Wraith will definitely be someone we fight in the sequel, I'm betting.

[Lukmendes]

More female villains. White Rabbit. Calypso. Beetle. Stunner. Lady Octopus. Any of 'em.

I think someone like Lady Octopus would have to wait, having her in the very next game Otto was the main villain would be weird.

I'm down for it .

I think Beetle is probably the most likely if we're getting Beetle as a villain. Calypso might appear if we get Kraven.

White Rabbit...I can only see her if they do something like Screwball again, but I think the developers probably realized how annoyed players got with that.

Wraith will definitely be someone we fight in the sequel, I'm betting.

I wouldn't bet against a wacky villain just because Screwball failed, specially because of the reasons Screwball is disliked.

'Cause really, copy and paste Taskmaster's missions, and give them an annoying gimmick? And have a loud annoying character keep commenting? Come on lol.

Although, the stealth missions were an improvement at least, but the rest of the missions were still a step down, but either way, I don't see White Rabbit not being used because of Screwball, if anything Screwball can be used as an example of what not to do.

[Frontier]

I do wonder if they'll find a way to make multiple villains relevant to or appear in the main plot without using the Sinister Six.

[Cornbread11]

I would like to see them use more obscure villains like the spot, big wheel, the thousand, Shathra, moltenman, man mountain marko and possibly Spidercide if that whole clones rumor is true.
I would also like to see the inclusion of a younger earth 65 inspired Gwen along with captain Stacy, Roderick Kingsley, Robbie Robertson and Patrick Mulligan.

Wishful thinking on my part but it could be possible for the sequel or later installments

[Hybrid]

Going with the idea of "hinting at a larger universe" from the rumor, which non-Spidey characters would you not mind seeing?

Personally, as a throwback to Ultimate Spider-Man, I wouldn't mind having races against the Human Torch as a minigame. Plus, it'd be nice to show his closeness to the Fantastic Four, as opposed to the Avengers, as the FF was the team he was more closely associated with for his history.