The Ringer-Verse - 'Midnight Suns' and the State of Superhero Games

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Time to press start and make way for Ben Lindbergh, Steve Ahlman, and Jomi Adeniran to give their thoughts on the newest Marvel video game 'Midnight Suns' (03:38). They also discuss the bigger Marvel slate of games, as well as DC's game offerings to come, and what they want out of their superhero games. Hosts: Ben Lindbergh, Steve Ahlman, and Jomi Adeniran Social: Jomi Adeniran Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Productional Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. Welcome into the Ringerverse. The Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom.

I am Ben Lindberg, a senior editor for The Ringer, and with me today are two treasured colleagues who answered my superlink invitation to a friendship activity. It is time for the Midnight Boys to meet Midnight Sons, because my podcasting party today includes both the Marvel Snap Obsessed Steve Allman and the other half of the Mid-Edition duo. A man whose love for Agents of Shield is matching. only by his loathing for Marvel's Avengers. Jomi, Adon, guys, welcome. Please press start to join.

Do I have to pay to play in this game? Is there any microtransations I have to worry about? Free to play. Free to play. You can invest to upgrade if you'd like, but no, everyone is welcome. Just like us, it's all cosmetic, Jomey. Don't worry about it.

You love to see it. No pay to win here. There is no one I would rather do a dialogue tree with than you guys. We actually use Slack, not SuperLink, but we had our choice of Midnight Sun-style friendship activities. We could have gone stargazing or fishing or foraging for mushrooms. Oh, my God. We could have lounged shirtlessly but platonically by the pool.

But instead, I've selected deep conversation because we've got a lot to talk about today. Obviously, stay tuned for your regular Ringiverse programming in the week ahead with Midnight Boys on Wednesday, House of Art on Friday, and Mint Edition. That's you guys next Monday. It's year-end content time. So we've got a 2022 IP draft and episodes on the top moments of 22, 22, and things we missed in 2020 coming your way. But we also have a special treat coming your way today. We're here in part to share our impressions of Marvel's Midnight Suns, which came out on PC, PS5, and Xbox series S.X last week with Switch and last-gen console versions still to come.

but we are also spinning this out into a bigger picture conversation about the state of superhero games as a whole. So we will be discussing Marvel Snap and Marvel's Electronic Arts deal and Gotham Knights and James Gunn's recent comments about DC games and the DCU and just generally what we want or don't want out of our interactive superhero experiences. And all things fandom obviously encompasses video games, something the three of us are very passionate about. So we're using this relative lull in scripted releases right now to pilot some video game content here on the feed. And this is our maiden video game voyage, a milestone for the Ringiverse. So I'm excited to be here with you guys. And of course, it's tough to talk about what Marvel and DC are doing without touching on their plans to dominate yet another entertainment medium. And this has been a pretty busy year in that regard.

So we will get right to it. And let's start with the recent release. Midnight Suns. So a bit of background for the non-gamers and the casual gamers and everyone else who's listening along. Midnight Suns was developed by Faraxis Games. They're the ones who make civilization and X-com. It's published by Take 2. And the game's creative director, Jake Solomon, big Marvel fan, was previously the director of X-Com 2 and the lead developer of X-Com Enemy Unknown, which is the 2012 reboot or remake that revitalized the X-Com franchise, which originally originated at Frax's predecessor, Microprose, in the mid-90s.

So you could say... Amazing. Yeah, there's your little pocket history lesson of this genre and the studio. You could say that Midnight Sons is X-Con meets Marvel, and there's some truth to that, but it's really more like X-Con meets Marvel meets Slay the Spire or, for that matter, Marvel Snap, I guess, because the core mechanic is card battling. You control three heroes at a time, just like us on this podcast today. and each of them has a deck of eight cards that correspond to special attacks and abilities.

But wait, there's more. It's really like X-Con meets Marvel, meets Slay the Spire, meets something like persona or fire emblem, because there's a whole load of hanging out and relationship building that happens outside of combat and enhances your combat ability. So it's a turn-based tactical RPG slash non-romantic relationship sim that features the superhero team. Midnight Sons and is loosely based on the 1990s comic, Rise of the Midnight Sons, that is S-O-N-S, whereas the game is Sons S-U-N-S, not confusing at all. There are 12 playable characters from the comics in the game, including more familiar heroes, such as Captain Marvel, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, Iron Man.

There's also a season pass that pulls in a few more characters, including Deadpool and, yes, Morbius, so you can make it morbid time if you get the DLC. The only time that matters. You play as a new customizable character called The Hunter, a recently resuscitated centuries-old offspring of Lilith, the mother of demons, not the mother of dragons, the mother of demons, and also the mother of the hunter who has major mommy issues because Lilith is both their mother and their murderer and is not trying to take over the world with the help of Hydra. So it's kind of complicated. I think that about covers it. A little bit of therapy, get that right out. Yeah.

No problem. Yeah. So it's difficult to do a Midnight Boy's style instant reaction to a 60-hour video game because you have to play it for 60 hours or so to finish it. But we spent our weekends with it. And although there are not enough hours in one weekend for us to have finished it, even though Steve tried, I think. I did my damnedest.

We've put in enough time to give you our thoughts, which we will keep spoiler-free. So maybe you can start us off, Steve. As I just laid out, Midnight Sun's sort of a mashup of many different genres, many different gameplay types. So what works for you and what does not? This really is a melding of genres for a lot of games and a lot of games that FRAXIS seems to be pretty well known for. Right.

XCOM Enemy Unknown is probably one of the biggest modern revitalizations of a beloved video game series that I can recently remember. It was probably the closest thing that I could say to, sublime in a previous console generation, that it was like absolutely incredible the amount of things that you can do and conceive of in a tactical strategy game. And, you know, the best parts of that are trying to be emulated in here, while also giving it that, you know, nice Marvel sheen of shiny, cool characters that you love and the beloved, if not completely bonkers comic book storyline. But hey, it's comics, so we love it anyway. We say that it meets a lot of, you know,

romantic simulators and a lot of other things that come along. And I don't know if they really get well along with them. But the things that work for me, the utmost, is probably the things that the game tries to give you the most of. And that is it's combat. It's a very ingenious and very like, I would say, addicting kind of formula of a tactical game of chess with you having your,

you know, favorite Marvel heroes, planning out Littles attacks on the battlefield and powering up their heroism so that they could do extra attacks and team up attacks and all these great things. And the rest seems to kind of want to pat out all of those things in between

when a lot of those games that Fraxus was known for where they didn't really kind of lose focus from the meat on those bones. The combat, the things that were important, stayed the most important, whereas this seems to be trying to distract you from everything. but Jomey, what was something that, you know, seemed to frustrate you while also, you know, ended up keeping you hooked?

Well, so I've never played like one of these tactical strategy games before. It's my first time, right? And so it definitely threw me off for a little bit, but I got into the rhythm and I got into the whole thing of it. I was like, okay, cool, I'm having a good time. This is enjoying it. And then I got to the part where, you know, you're supposed to be able to talk to all the heroes and go, to the Abbey and, you know, chat with everybody. And when I found out I couldn't romance anybody, I was hurt.

I'm not going to lie. Like, let the Hunter fall in love with Dr. Strange. What's going on, man? Yeah, I have thoughts on this too. I mean, this is like the lack of romance options. It's predictable. It's also disappointing. I would like to think that after the horniness of She-Hulk, which we have discussed on this podcast.

Oh, please. That Marvel would be sex-positive enough for at least some Mass-Effect style. hookups here. But no, nothing. The game goes out of its way to keep that T for T in rating, which wouldn't be that big a deal if socializing and relationship building weren't such huge parts of the game. But imagine Jersey Shore with no smush room. Oh, man. Oh, man. The Love Island without the hideaway. Yeah. Bachelor in Paradise with no boom boom room. Like you're playing as the hunter who hasn't had sex in 300 years. You're spending all this downtime at basically the Bachelor Mansion with a bunch of

single hot heroes. I picked out of one of four political haircuts. Right. You can invite the heroes to hang out half naked at the pool, win them over with favors and flattery. And then at the end, you're just like, I value our collegial relationship. And you go to sleep alone. Like, what are we doing here? But that also gives you like, okay, what's the in-game practicality of that? It gives you bonuses or power-ups when it comes to combat, which fine. But if we want to have an actual social interaction about that, that needs to come out in a sort of story format because Mass Effect,

you know, for all of its very fine and decent combat, the meat of that game was its story and was its interaction with characters. To know what this game immediately does well, its combat, its team up effects, its roster of heroes, that being the most important part,

the fact that we're still bogged down by hours worth of gameplay by hanging out in this gothic mansion, with you, this generic character that isn't actually one of the main heroes, but you are tasked with, you know, rallying the team together. It's not really the most compelling part by a long shot. And you find yourself, like, really trying to grasp for the things that want to keep you there,

other than finding new items or finding things that would, you know, grant you bonuses in the thing that you actually want to do. You make more physical contact with your hellhound, Charlie, than with anyone else. And I am pro petting the dog in video games. I do it every day in Midnight Suns, but come on, let us ship these people. And as you were saying, so the director, Jake Solomon, he did an interview with Games Radar where he said, if I met the devil at the crossroads, he'd be like, do you want to tell the best story or do you want the most fun game? I'll take the most fun game.

And I would too. I'm with him there. Hard agree. I like the combat, but the story here interferes with the most fun version of this game. I just can't think of many games that get in their own way more often than Midnight Suns. It just seems like some feature creep happened here, where you have so many interlocking systems and skill trees and morality options that even many hours into the game,

I'm getting constant tutorial pop-ups, you know? And for every fun thing, there are two not as fun things that kind of become chores. So, you know, you wake up and you run through your daily to-do list and your busy work before and after you get to the good stuff. And I had one exchange where one character, Nico from the runaway, says, time flies when you're hanging out. And man, I wish that were the case. Man, like the immediate cuts from the team

would have been Nico as well because those in-game quips weren't that great anyway. Yeah, you could say that about a lot of characters. Time flies when I'm talking to you guys, but not so much when I'm at the Abbey. And I wish that were the case because mostly it does drag and some scenes you can't fast forward through the dialogue. So you have to listen to every full line.

Apparently there are roughly 65,000 lines of voice dialogue in this game. And it's not aggressively bad. It's just bland and becomes a bit mind-numbing after a while. So I'm not normally a cutscene skipper. But I was tempted to here, instead of sitting through hours of these plastic-looking faces droning on and on about surprise parties, right? Or explaining backstories that sound like they were pasted from the Marvel Wiki. Oh, wow. There was this one time where I did a hangout with Blade by the pool. And at the end, he says, I didn't expect to have that much fun. Which, again, like, you'd think if we had had fun.

I mean, I know I'm good company, so you're on to something played. But, like, I guess when you're a vampire hunter, you probably have pretty low standards for fun. But I didn't really share his enthusiasm there. A lot of the activities are really generic and just not really tailored to the heroes you're hanging out with because you have to be able to do them with anyone, right? And also you can do, say, daily sparring, for instance, which sounds fun, but instead of actually sparring, you just press a button. And then it says, sparring, complete. Jesus.

For me, it was, it's tough because I literally, like, just finished playing God of War, Ragnarok. Like, I had, I just, you know, no spoilers, but I just finished the thing. I did the whole thing. I'm like, man, I listened to every single bit that Mimir had, every single, you know, every single, you. you know, Lyne, Etraeus, Angrobota. Like, if anybody was talking, I was listening so intently, right? I wanted to soak up everything in this world. And I show up to men and I sons, I'm like, yeah, man, I can do the same thing for this game.

And about a couple hours in, I was like, ah, I don't know, man. We got to get through this, man. Yeah, you know, most ex-com games are in the 20 to 30-hour range and more focused on the combat. And it feels like they tacked on a lot to make this at least twice as big. And they really leaned into the scripted character stuff that Xcom has dabbled in recently and not super successfully, I think, after historically just leaning on these randomly generated characters that you would come to care about by basically just supplying their personalities yourself and getting sad when they got killed because their deaths were permanent. So there's a very good game somewhere in here that I really enjoy at times. but it's buried beneath so much other stuff that I have little desire to do. Very challenging.

It is. Yeah, so Jomey, I mean, you've lived through the lows of Avengers, but you've also 100%ed Spider-Man and Miles Morales and Guardians of the Galaxy. So you've seen the worst, you've seen the best. Where on that spectrum does Midnight Sun sit for you? So, I mean, if we're talking about like just a pure ranking, we're leaving, we're not touching Marvel's Avengers. let me just be very clear.

I don't want to go there. I know it's a sentence. I can talk about it a little bit, right? So in what, 2017, they had like the little trailer announcement. And it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And I was like, I want this game. When's this game coming out? Da-da-da-da-da-da.

They don't, they don't, they do nothing at A3 for years. Right? We spent years wondering, what was that Avengers game coming out? Da-da-da. And then, like, what, two, three years later, we finally get like, oh, Marvel's Avengers and they do the trailer like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. I can't wait. I'm locked in.

I'm day one. Da-da-da. People start playing the demo. They're like, ah, this game ain't really it. I'm like, nah, we'll give it a shot. Man, I have faith. It was, imagine like the first bit of destiny, but way, way worse. Just awful.

It's always a good sign when in the lead up to the release of a game, months of, ahead of it. You still don't really know what you do. It gave me some very like early, okay, no man sky. What do you actually do in this game rather than like, okay, but it's the Avengers. I would put that in the lower ranking of this. I couldn't finish it.

I could not finish it. I love the Avengers. Like, you know, that was my whole thing. Ultimately, it's just so repetitive. And like, I'm not trying to grind for all this gear, man. Like, I can't, I don't have time for this dog. So ultimately, I didn't finish it. I couldn't, I can't even place it on a

ranking, not so much. I hated it. Now, we're talking about, you know, Gardens of Galaxy, Miles Brown, Spider-Man, and Midnight Suns. Honestly, I had to put Midnight Suns at the, at four, right? Again, I'm not, you know, quite through with it, but oh, but so far, you know, I think, I mean, part of it is Spider-Man games are like, you know, hey, you know, we got to talk about those as like legitimately special offerings. And this game, especially Guardians of Galaxy,

has just a bit more life to it, a bit more, more, like, I mean, color is like, you know, just like a generic thing. But, like, I feel so much more alive when I'm in the Guardians of the Galaxy universe with Groot and Drax and Gamow. I'm like, yo, I love these characters. I want to spend more time with them. They're so, like, you know, they're so thoroughly built. Whereas in Midnight's Sons, you know, I get, you know,

hey, Blade is supposed to be a little bit, you know. wooden, but man, like, it's like I'm talking to, you know, an actual board sometimes. Group is less wooden than Blade in this game. That's what I'm saying, right? Like, like, I think they do Dr. Strange pretty good. So I was like, I want to get to know this, Dr. Strange. See how you're using all the big words. You know, he's always talking.

I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I kind of see what they're going for. But at the end of the day, it just doesn't seem all well, you know, fully, fully live through. Guardians has started, you know, I had so much fun playing that game. I didn't know what I was getting into again. my heart had been broken by Marvel's Avengers. So when Square Enix was like, hey, we're doing another Marvel game. I was like, I don't know, man.

I don't know. Can I trust you? You know, can, if Young Metro don't trust you, you feel me? Ultimately, my expectations were blown out of the water. I played it through twice just to finish it. It was so good. And then Miles O'Rallis is second only because, you know, it's shorter. I love the story there.

but man that first Spider-Man game let me tell you something man I get on here and I call a lot of things special I call a lot of things cinema

that game that game changed my life I'm not even I was waiting for cinema T M I mean it listen

it is cinema but that game man it's so much I mean like you talk I mean actually anybody

played the swinging the combat the story there was nothing in that game aside from maybe the Miles and MJ missions that don't want you to have fun in that game. It's just incredible.

I would encourage everybody under the sound of my voice. If you don't have a PS5 or, you know, you're like, it's on PC now. It's got a PC, go buy it. Go buy a PS5 and play it. I'm serious. It's that good. Go buy a PS4 and play it. All right.

It's that great. It's one of the best games I've played in a long, long time. Yeah, there's a little too much cinema in Midnight Suns, possibly. But if we could kind of... Certainly is a lot. Give our verdicts just based on what we've seen so far quickly here. I mean, for me, there's one exchange where someone's asking me as the hunter for help planning a get-together. And one of the dialogue options that gave me was not sure it's worth my time, which is sort of how I felt about that whole half of the game.

And really, there is a lot to like here. So the complete package may still be worth your while. I mean, if you're looking at it from a return on investment standpoint, you're getting good value for about a dollar per hour here, right? And despite my critiques, I was still finding it fairly tough to put down because I'd get through the story stuff as quickly as possible. And then I'd think, okay, maybe one more in-game day and one more mission. And then next thing, I knew another hour had gone by.

So it's entertaining in a low-stakes way. if you can get over the cognitive distance of this story where the world is in imminent danger, but you still have tons of time to just go birdwatching or watch movies or have a picnic or play cards. Work hard, play hard, baby. We've had so many games in our lifetime. The entire premise of Mass Effect 3 makes no sense

by the because the fact that, like, if the universe is about to die, why are you stuck romancing some alien lady? but it's like a lot of these other games like they're supposed to really like know what they're innovating on like Jomey mentions Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man and all of these things

like they have a direct purpose and they have a direct like sort of like line of influence that you can take and that they iterate on pretty well this is just like okay we have the team that does the great great Xcom combat and that's like they could do that really well like they don't have you know as much

verticality as we would like to see maybe not as much design elements as is, but it's got all of our great characters, this cool card-based system. Those are really good fun things. I don't really understand the types of things that would have slowed this game down if this was just a moment-to-moment set piece-to-set piece combat scenario. If we were to take it from like an original X-com perspective, this was like a base builder on the side, if this was somebody to just like, okay, you talk with Reed Richards and he's your tech department and he'll upgrade your base,

and Blade is going to work on your weapons and all these things. Those were the things that immediately come to mind when I think of that team. Outside of that, that's a pretty low ranking on the elite Marvel crop that we've had so far outside of the Avengers. And it's left a little disappointing.

Yeah, it's an ambitious but sort of overstuffed game. And if it gets a sequel, I would actually like it to be shorter and much more stripped down to focus on its strength. because there really is a compelling core there. And I do want to give that some flowers even while we're pointing out some of the problems

with everything else that surrounds it. I mean, you know, the story's ambitious and it's a lot, but I think that that's a great thing. Like for me, like I was enjoying, you know, I would love to like, you know, watch the cutscenes of everything that happens. You know what I mean? Like, it seems like it's a lot,

there's a lot of characters. But I found that interesting. The thing that got me was, I got to go back to the crib now. I got to go socialized. of my stats. When the best part of my day was being Ghost Rider and I kicked a giant crate

into a bad guy and then they landed into Captain Marvel's big super punch. That's great. We love doing that. That's like one of the best things I've ever seen. But then it's constantly bogged down by those things that are either distracting, not nearly as exciting,

or compelling. And it honestly feels like you just need it. again, like add to that playtime, add to the value proposition of making this a $60, $70 game plus a season pass. A lot of the conversation around like, you know, games are getting more expensive. This is like another big iteration on a console generation. This is a $60 game depending on what console you get it on. The time spent is maybe $60, $70 worth, but how much of that time are you enjoying it? It's tough.

Yeah. Right. All right. Well, before we get to bogged down in dialogue, let's pull back of it and we'll talk a little bit about how Midnight Suns fits into the larger superhero games landscape. So this game was originally slated for release in March, but like every game, it got delayed. And I think it kind of has unfortunate timing because a lot of people in the target market for Midnight Suns have been buried in Marvel Snap, which is another card-based superhero game that came out in mid-October and has. establish itself pretty quickly as one of the biggest and the best mobile games of the year. So I'm not normally a big card game guy, and I'm also not much of a mobile gamer, but Snap is really good. So good. It's so far. Yeah, it's less obviously predatory with its pricing than your typical gotcha game that's free to play, but monetized with my purchase. It's so good.

Yeah, I mean, they rope you in, and obviously they hope you'll spend some money, and some people will. but you can have a good time with it without doing that. And the card aspect is similar to Midnight Suns, but it's totally different in that it's not story-based and it's designed to be picked up and played in short bursts. So, Steve, you've spent the most time with Snap of us and possibly of anyone in the world. So can you sum up what makes it so sticky?

Well, I mean, this is coming from somebody who recently broke themselves out of hearthstone jail, the Blizzard Card Battler, based on World of Warcraft series. I wasn't even so much a big, magic the gathering or card battler enthusiast, but Harstam really got me into it. And when I found out that their

lead designer, Ben Brod, had since left Blizzard to go to Marvel and make this, I was like, oh, well, we'll see what happens there. And all of a sudden, Marvel Snap comes out, and I give it a whirl, and it's like you just download it on your phone. It's on PC and early access as well.

The ease of which you can play this game, is probably the most ingenuative part about why this works so well. Because you think, oh, it's this card thing. I've got locations. I've got to, like, win different locations. How complicated is Magic the Gathering? Is it anything like that?

It's nothing like that. The tutorialization that they give you can go from like about 20 minutes, not even just to make you learn the game. And the brilliance of what makes it so perfect. And the reason why I love this so much more than something like Harthstone is because matches are shorthy. short. Matches are so short and snappy. Decks only consist of 12 cards. The meta and the types of like deck builds that you get are very intuitive. If they're, if it's based on movement, if it's

based on destruction, if it's based on all these things, you pick up on those things rather easily. And matches are probably only lasting like no more than I want to say five minutes. If that, like if you get like if we, if we all take our like nice little phone bathroom break, it like a match is quicker than your actual bathroom break. And you're just sat there playing the next match. That's kind of the actual hook of that game that you keep leveling up. And the

idea of a season past, cosmetics, pay for shiny things. Very appealing when you like the game that you're stuck in. And, you know, there's not much else to it. Like, there's a lot of cards that you can unlock, but that comes with time. There's a lot of other variants

of cards and other shiny new, different types of iterations that you could have that build your level up. But again, that takes time. The game itself, you can play at any time, and it's really, really fun. That's all it is. Yeah.

No, I'm with you. I started playing it just in the car. I was not driving, to be clear. That would be dangerous, but I was in the passenger seat, and I just downloaded the app, and then I was playing it for hours. And hours just went by as quickly

as Nico said that socializing would go by in the night suns, but it did not actually. So, you know, as you said, like, you just quick get in, get out, tutorial, you get all the mechanics, as opposed to Midnight Suns where I'm many, many hours in, and I'm still trying to figure out how all of this works. So here's another way in which these games are similar, I think. Disney has tried to develop its own games, but it turns out that making games is really hard. So the current philosophy with Marvel and with Star Wars and with Indiana Jones and other IP is that essentially you outsource it to, trusted experience studios

and you let them do their thing. Oh, boy. In theory, yes. Yes. So you draft for Axis for Midnight Suns and you have, as you said, the studio started by the director of Harstone, create a card game. And to different degrees, you just have them do

what they do well, but make it Marvel. So Marvel Snap is sort of a Marvel skin on top of a card game that could feature any IP or new IP. You know, the fact that it's Marvel makes it more enjoyable for fans like us, but it could be original characters. It could be some other universe.

It's kind of the core mechanics of the game would work well with anything. So those are two examples. Then you have Insomniac, right? One of the most acclaimed developers in video games make Spider-Man and Miles Morales and the upcoming Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine. You have Idos Montreal,

make Guardians of the Galaxy. You have Niantic, the makers of Pokemon Go, building Marvel World of Heroes, which is supposed to be coming out next year, and they hope will be. more successful than the Harry Potter and Pickman Pokemon Go clones, but it seems like it's kind of built for that who wouldn't want Pokemon Go but make it Marvel. Then you have Uncharted director Amy Henig's Skydance Media making a game that takes place during World War II and stars

Black Panther and Captain America. And then you have an electronic arts deal, which unlike the old EA Star Wars deal is not an exclusive arrangement, but will involve at least three action-adventure games, including an Ironman game from EA Motiv and a producer of the Guardians of the Galaxy game and a rumored Black Panther Open World game. So it seems like on the surface, the strategy is similar to the MCU strategy. You create more and more content, but in theory, you put it in the hands of qualified creators. So just as you get Taika Watiti and Ryan Cougler and Chloe Zhao and Sam Ramey to make your Marvel movies, you get get Insomniac and Skydance and EA, et cetera, to make your Marvel games.

Now, this strategy is not foolproof in movies or in games. And if you ask these directors and studios to step outside their comfort zones and do something that they haven't done before, then the results are still unpredictable. So on the game side, Fraxis goes all in on the narrative elements in Midnight Suns with very uneven results. And Crystal Dynamics tries to make its first live service game and ends up. with Marvel's Avengers. So, Jomey, you've seen the highs of this strategy. You've seen the lowest of this strategy.

What do you think of the basic blueprint of let's just turn out a ton of games, but let's put them in the hands of these people with proven track records and let them do their thing? First off, you said games of a life service and it triggered me. Like my brain short-circuited. Like, I was like, it just brought me back to the low point of the pandemic. And I'm like, man, I got to get Thor that belt, man. If I don't get Thor that belt, I'm not going to advance to the next level.

In terms of like this blueprint, I mean, we've seen good results, right? We've seen Spider-Man, we've seen Gar-Hat's the Galaxy. And everybody's excited for the new games like Wolverine coming out and the Black Panther Captain America, right? Ultimately, what really what really is about is are people having fun playing these games? Are people resonating with the characters? are people leaving their consoles, leaving their PCs going, oh, man. Remember that scene? Or did we have fun?

Da-da-da. And so far, so far, I would honestly say so far so good, right? We've had three Ws with both Spider-Man games and Gardens of Galaxy. And, you know, one definite loss, Marvel's Avengers. And one still up in the air, right, with Midnight Suns. And Snap is a win too. And snap is a one too, right? Snap is a big one too.

So I think this is a pathway to definite success in the video game world. But you never know. Sometimes you miss. Sometimes you hit. I think so far so good for Marvel because like you said earlier, Disney, it's not really a video game company. That's not what they do well, right? It's better to hand off the ranks of people who have, you know, actual experience making these things and, you know, have the pipeline, have the technology. have the technology, have the tools,

and create something that we were somewhat familiar with. You know, like, Diantic, they, like, this is what they do. The guy who created, was Heartstone, right? Just does this, right?

Makes the card games. He knows what he's doing, right? And so the people, skydance, you know, uncharted director, right? I love uncharted for it. Deep Sand, a man, the Nathan, the Nathan Drake ending,

we don't have time to get into. to it how much I love that game, right? I would love to see Captain America third person shooting solving puzzles, like basic fourth grade puzzles with his friends, you know what I mean? So I think, yeah, like I said, there's so much success to be had, ultimately just comes down to them executing it well. So let's talk about DC for a minute, because you could argue that the best superhero movies ever are the Dark Night trilogy.

You could also argue that the best superhero games ever are the Arkham trilogy. Talk to them, bitch. Talk to them. Rocksteady Studios. But as is the case with movies and TV, DC these days seems to have fewer

titles in the pipeline compared to Marvel and maybe less of a cohesive strategy than Marvel would be one charitable way to put it. So what we've seen

this year, multiversis came out in July, and it's not a straight-up superhero game. It is the Warner Brothers

slash Super Smash Brothers mashup. We didn't know we needed. So finally, we could pit Bugs Bunny against Batman and have them both lose to Velma. Oria Stark?

Yeah, sure. Wild game. Very much so. It's fun. It's fun. It's not bad. It's not bad. Ultra instinct shaggy, come on.

It doesn't get better than that. Made for our IP-heavy franchise-centric times. And then Gotham Knights came out in October and was widely panned, I would say. I think mid might be the adjective most used to describe. Got them nice. Mid is nice. Yeah. Yeah. You should see my group chats. Mid is nice. So there's a suicide squad game coming from Rocksteady that's due out next year, which seems promising, even though Rocksteady recently lost some key personnel. Then you have Monolith, the makers of Shadows of Mortar, are working on a Wonder Woman game. And I think the most interesting development on the DC side is

that James Gunn, who is recently hired as co-head of DC Studios, recent Ring of Reindeer, first guest, he tweeted late last month that there are plans for future video games made by Warner Brothers to be connected to the DCU, which is quite a contrast from Marvel, where Bill Roseman, who's the creative director of Marvel Games, he said in September that Marvel Games seemingly would not be connected to the MCU or to each other. So here's his quote, we want to give everyone the freedom to tell their story. We don't want to say you can't blow up the moon because this game is over here by another studio that needs the moon. We want to give everyone the freedom and the clear lane to tell their story. So ultimately, the appeal of these games is going to come down

to gameplay. But which storytelling approach do you guys prefer in the abstract? Steve, would you want Marvel games to tie into the MCU or to form their own Marvel interactive universe or are you fine with them being out on their own? Each game does its own thing on its own island. I actually like the former a lot better because having not having these things connected to a sort of like cohesive narrative or something like that, that would ultimately be a bit more of a hindrance because we see the MCU like, we see the like, you know, fractures of that methodology kind of coming apart a little bit because we get to see everything that has to be connected,

have to be the same thing. So if you get a games that are all relatively in the same, either universe or canon or all these things, you're going to have to start expecting those games to be relatively the same. And that's not what we want. We want things that are different. We want things that we want to be able to see Wolverine Blade, Dr. Strange, and all of these people in one game like Midnight's Suns, while also you could have Spider-Man doing his own solo adventure. And then, oh, maybe Black Cat or Scorpion comes in later. And then, and neither the two shall meet. And it's fine. Knowing that the isolation of those stories and those types of gameplay mechanics as well is valuable because that it also

encourages a lot of diverse games to come out from you. While I do very much miss the sort of like, you know, blockbuster movie video game tie in from some of my favorite games of your. Thank you so much, Lord of the Rings. I definitely would like to see something come more from my superhero video games. That isn't just, oh, we can expect Rock the Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam in the new video game coming to you very soon. And it will be similar. to that. I don't really like that. Yeah, I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, it's a little jarring to play Guardians of the Galaxy or Midnight Suns and have the faces and voices all be different from the ones that

we're used to seeing on screen. On the other hand, it obviously keeps cost down, not to have to have the Chris's record all their dialogue for these games, right? And it's also nice that you can play as Deadpool and Morbius and Wolverine and the Hulk in the same game and do whatever you want without breaking canon. So part of me thinks if we can have movies and TV shows and holiday specials be part of the MCU, then why not video games? Another part of me knows that not everyone has the time or the money or the inclination or the coordination to play video games.

So anything that happens in a video game is just inherently going to be a little less accessible, which means you might end up with a situation where a game story that's connected to the MCU would feel very constrained. because Marvel wouldn't want to do anything crucial in the game that everyone else would need to know in order to watch the next big blockbuster, right? So I think you could still do something like, say, Star Wars Battlefront 2 or Jedi Fall in Order or squadrons, which are canonical but not necessarily essential. You know, they're sort of telling stories between the big stories that you see on the screen usually. You just, you wouldn't want to end up with a matrix style transmedia storytelling situation where you're telling a story. across all these different formats and Morpheus canonically dies in the Matrix Online and nobody knows

about it. It's incredible what the Matrix Online did for the Matrix Canada. Right. So as gamers, I feel like, okay, I'd be into that. Like, we will be served by that. We will know what's going on. But everyone else will not necessarily. And they'll be like, where is that character that I knew and loved?

Oh, they died in this video game I never played. So I guess I'd like a little bit of both. I wouldn't mind seeing some games be part of the MCU. So I'm interested to see what DC does. Jomey, where do you stand on this? I, so here's my thing. I was just first and foremost, it's tough, I think, to integrate video games into the MCU.

I think, I mean, if y'all listen to the Midnight Boys, you know, my take on like the TV shows is that, you know, of course, they're not, I'm not saying they're not canon or anything like that. But, you know, if you don't watch them, you'll be eye. you know and so if you also have to add video games to that i think me interesting to be like oh man where did that information come from people like well you had to play uh marvel superheroes 19 to see where so that was an hour 58 of midnight suns yeah not too much a multiple hour time investment rather than a two and a half hour movie investment exactly right but i think there's room

and fellas let me put you on to something let me uh see what you guys think a Marvel video game universe, right, where all the games connected. It's interesting because the guy who plays Spider-Man in the original Spider-Man game from 2018, Yuri Laurental, he also voices, you know, him in Midnight Suns, right? Like, I mean, I'm sure just like, hey, Brad,

come down to the booth, we need you for a couple, another 300 hours of dialogue. And he was like, I'll take the check, no problem. But these things happen all the time. It'd be interesting to see, like, cool, oh, yeah, he was in this game, he was in this game, you know, tracked their progress through multiple, multiple releases. And, like, he's already in, like, the Spider-Man from the game in 2018 was in Spider-Get, the comic series, right? Like, these things happen, these characters already exist outside of their own games. Like, why not continue to make games and, like, oh, throw a little, you know, Wolverine in there.

Oh, throw a little Dr. Changes in their woo, and have them just like come around, mix around. That would be fun. I think we'd all be interested in that, no? I would. It sounds like they're not going to do that. And I guess they might stick with this franchise, might have continuity with itself, but not with other franchises. And it's just the idea that they don't want to have to coordinate this, right? And they don't want to have to limit what this one game can do because of what this other game is doing.

They want everyone to have free reign, essentially. Just use the whole universe, go in whatever direction you want. it won't have any consequences or long-term ramifications. But I'm with you. I mean, if they did that well, I would be into it. So if that's what DC does or if DC blends it with what they're doing on TV or in the movies, I mean, there's a lot of work to be done in DC just in general. But that is one aspect that they could use to sort of separate themselves from Marvel in maybe an intriguing way.

So they don't always have their house in order, but I like the game plan, at least in theory. Hey, we're trying. I mean, the thing with DC is DC's, they've always been very like, hey, man, we've got 30 different dimensions. There are nine different Superman, 1600 different Batman, right? Like, the whole thing is open. So it lends itself way more easily to be like, oh, that's World One Flash and World Two Flash is on the CW. And World Three Flash is the one in the film, right? Like, we'd be like, oh, cool, we got you, D.C.

Because we've been, you know, not I want to say like indoctrine, but this is something that's, been in their lexicon, been in their content for such a long time, whereas Marvel is just now opening up the multiverse, right? And it's not an exact one-to-one likeness comparison. And we don't know how the rules of the multiverse, like we know the rules of DC and their multiple universes. So I don't think, like you said, I don't think Marvel will tap in like that,

but we know what DC is about. So DC has a lot more leeway to, you know, play around in this sandbox than I think Marvel does. Yeah, and in the multiverse era, I mean, almost anything goes, narratively speaking, so maybe we're focusing too much on whether this is canonical or not, because in the long run, does it actually make a difference? I think it's nice in the short term that all these characters who've been siloed off because of various contractual arrangements, and so we all wonder, when is this guy or when is this character going to be in the MCU,

and we want these characters to be on the screen together. You can get that in Midnight Suns, for instance, and then you might decide it's actually more than you wanted. But still, at least you can see them. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming.

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What makes a good one? What haven't we seen that we would want to? We've talked about Snap. We've talked about Midnight Sun. Some of the things we liked about those, didn't like about those. We've talked about the big Marvel successes and rock steady successes of the past. if we could have sort of a unified theory of the superhero game here,

what do you think works well in this medium? I mean, the easy answer is we just want good games, but I think the broader answer there is when I think about what best superhero games exist, I kind of think about what they tried to do or what they iterated on or what they tried to make better

from the gaming landscape that came before it. And if we take the Arkham Asylum example, like arguably one of the best video games based on a superhero of all time, what did that do the best? We could also say that it was its action combat, but it was an iteration on a combat model that we had seen in the Prince of Persia franchise. It's a reactive, multi-enemy sort of like puzzle dance of who to attack when and stuff like that with the incorporation of gadgets, environment. puzzle and then a couple of environmental things like a

Metroidvania iterating on all of those things that make those things good, some of the best video games with superheroes

in them really start to iterate and follow trends rather than try to want to set them to not get too big for their

britches and think, well, we can be a dialogue sim with heavy story implications while also being this like big environmental

tactical based team fighter. That's maybe one too many things. If we made a simple great use of combat, if we made a fun amount of gadgets with environmental puzzles that you can also incorporate into combat and just make those

things really fun along with an amazing story just so, you know, no big deal. The best parts of those things are the little things in between those because you have all the trophies from Arkham Asylum. You have all those things that give it personality and time and all of those great elements that you never expected from a Batman game. Because we hadn't had any good Batman games or we hadn't had any good Spider-Man games up until the PlayStation 1 or something

like that. It's been a crazy time to see what the best parts of a Spider-Man game can be. Turns out it's just swinging. All you need to do. If anything else is good, guess what? If you nail swinging, you've got a good Spider-Man game. Like, I'd like to say that if you get one thing right, you might nail the character. But, like, other than that, if you follow the templates for a lot of these other great games and then try to make something

that's unique to make that hero or that property or that story or that IP itself and unique, then you got something special. Because all those superhero games did that. Man, for me, it's about getting the story.

Right. You can get the feel right. That adds a layer of sheen and a layer of concrete that lets you know, like, okay, I'm in this world. Like, I live here. But the story, I think, is what brings everybody together. Like, think about it. Think about the great games, you know, superhero games. You have the Arkham trilogy. We talked about that. Think about injustice, right? That's an original Nether Realm joint that blew our minds the first time we saw it. And now always he's bad Superman. everywhere, right? Spider-Man, again, Miles Morales. Those are games where, like, yeah, you can see, all right, yeah, they've got, like, roots in comics, but ultimately, you know, what, Peter at 26 years old, you know, he's still broke, he's still, you know, trying to get with Mary Jane, you know what I'm saying, still, like living like you would imagine Spider-Man would, you know, Miles Morales, you're a guy literally learning how to use his powers, right? And in Guardian the Galaxy, you're surrounded by a whole bunch of misfits, all these people who, you know, sure, like, they work together. They get along, but ultimately, like, are still trying to find themselves as a family, you know?

And that's the stuff that works here. Not when you're just throwing in cameos and like, oh, look, there's 800 characters here in this game that you can play with or look at that. it's how the story goes, how it flows, and how it goes over 40, 60 hours. You know, when you're spending so much time playing, you want to feel like, hey, I'm with him. When I play God of War, I'm like, yeah, I'm with Cratos, man. I'm swinging this axe, baby.

These blades of chaos, I'm, you know? And like you said, Steve, when you're playing Spider-Man and you're swinging, you're like, yeah, I'm Spider-Man. right here, bro. Let me go to the craziest thing about that Spider-Man game is that there's a fast travel system. There's a fast travel system. Hold on. Hold on. It's nuts.

Because, like, I've never used it. Did you ever use it? Listen, I had things to do. I had plans. You got to get from uptown to downtown quickly. I'm Spider-Man. Bro, not when there's, you have like 2K miles, like 200 and some, 2,000 meters to swing. I'm good. Let me just, I got to get from, I got to get from

Chinatown to Harlem, my boy. Like Spider-Man is like what it felt like when you play Tony Hawks pro skater. Like movement is everything. That's the best part. Listen, listen, if it's not, if I don't got to, you know, if I got things to do, my brother, I'm going to take the fast trouble.

I'm going to use the cut scene when he's in there and he's got the guy with the Tim's on. And you're looking at it same to me. It's cool. It's got a cool, man. The shadow of Spider-Man and the subway is pretty great. It's fun. And so when you're, when you're, when you feel like,

okay, yeah, I'm this guy. I'm, you know, these characters, it just brings a level of immersion. Again, I mean, immersion, I was going to say cinema, but Is that just your your thesaurus use for cinema?

I just, I just, I just got to give them one or two, you know, gotta give one or two. You get paid by the word there. I do get paid by the word. Bob Iger pays for every, you know, every cinema. No, but again, just if there's, when the. story is told right and you're like hour 30 and the character has like lost somebody and you're like

oh man i feel that lost too you sit there and you're like i'm gonna get i'm gonna get back for you right oh man spoilers for spider man 2018 they kill aunt may rest in peace and you're like bet doc ock come get this work my boy you know and you're like yeah bruh let's go and again when when you get the story right, when you feel immersed in the character, it just makes everything better. I think that's where it starts. That's what I want out of video games. Also, no more multiplayer. That's a personal thing.

I don't want to play my friends. I want to play by myself. Wow. I don't know if I can go with you there. I don't need friends. No tacked on multiplayer. How about that? No tacked on multiplayer.

I'm a co-op at least. Can we go there? Anyway, no. No second screen. Bring back couch co-op. Jesus. I'm selfish. Bring back split screen.

I need 60 hours just for me. Just for me. Just for me. I think the track record is uneven, but I'm excited to see what comes next because there's a lot of potential here. And you had really video games sort of setting the tone. I mean, before you had endgame, you had games like Marvel Ultimate Alliance or Marvel Heroes, right, that were bringing together everyone. And you could have a range of tones, at least in theory, right? Part of the story about Midnight Suns was, oh, this will be a darker Marvel narrative, which it isn't really so much.

There's kind of, you know, occult aspects, but no, not at all. But maybe Wolverine, for instance, will be more mature in tone. So because, as you said, the traditional movie tie-in game, Steve, has fallen out of favor, the Marvel universe is your oyster. We haven't even talked about the rest of the expansive Marvel Mobile slate, Marvel Contests of Champions and Marvel Strike Force and the MMO, Marvel Future Revolution, which was pretty well received. I mean, Marvel's plan here is, we will make so much Marvel content that you can just read

Marvel Comics and you can watch Marvel movies and Marvel TV shows, and when you're not doing that, you can play Marvel games. It may be Marvel Overload for some people. But there is an opportunity to drill down on some of these characters who haven't gotten the spotlight in movies. There's also an opportunity to use games to promote movies, even if they're not directly tied in. You can feature characters who are of interest because they're in upcoming MCU projects. I think there's a lot of opportunity in the variety here. And I mean, here's my parting take, I guess. In a way, I think superhero games have a high bar to clear because most video game protagonists are superheroes, right? I mean, Cretos is a superhero.

Bayonetta is a superhero. Master Chief is a superhero. Whether they're gods or witches or super soldiers, they're all superpowered in some way. Mario and Sonic are superheroes. Honestly, like, any character who can do a double jump is a superhero. I have tried to do that in real life, and I have not succeeded so far. So in that sense, I think it's harder for superheroes to stand out. On the other hand, this medium is made for superheroes because in a video game, the physics and the movesets are whatever you want them to be.

You don't have to worry about CGI and VFX and whether a human actor can perform a certain movement. So I think what I want most out of video game is really just the chance to live the power fantasy that we've been talking about. And the people from Fraxas have talked about how at first they tried to make Midnight Suns just like X-Con. but it didn't work because there was no reason for, say, Captain Marvel to have to take cover or have her abilities not work sometimes. Or wait, her turn. Well, that's the thing. So they came up with the card system as a solution.

But even so, sometimes I'm on the battlefield in Midnight Suns and I'm like, why can't Captain Marvel just take out all of these hydra headsmen with one move? She needs heroism. Yeah. So I feel like I have my hands tied because I'm conditioned by Spider-Man or the classic Batman games to just beat down a dozen dudes single-handedly, right? But I've never felt more like a superhero than, as you said, when I'm web-slinging in Spider-Man or Spider-Man to or Insomniac Spider-Man or just jumping between buildings and the crackdown games even to name a non-licensed example.

So here's what I would like to see. I'd like to see a licensed superhero game that really nails flying. It's just, it's so hard to do flying well, both because of hardware limitations and because it's just difficult to design a game where protagonists can go anywhere and the levels are basically limitless. But I think we have the technology to do it now. Ben, I want to tell you a little game called Anthem. Yes. Oh, my God. We don't need the N64 Superman with the super foggy levels because there was no draw distance.

Like, we can do this now. Maybe it would work with VR if you have a strong stomach. I'm into it. So that's what I would like to see. But really, I think the recent track record is fairly strong. I'm excited by a lot of what is coming down the pike here. And I hope that we'll have chances to talk about it here on the Ringiverse, because this was our trial run. I think it was a successful first effort.

Thanks, guys. I think so, too. Hopefully they buy the season pass. Yes, please buy the season pass to Ringiverse. It's free. It's free, I promise. As Midnight Suns would say, hangout complete. Our team friendship has leveled up.

We have unlocked some combo cards. Now it is time for us to go back to our separate beds in separate rooms to rest and restore our stats. So thanks very much for the team up today. Always happy to have you guys in my party and I will see you on the super link. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Jomey. Thanks also to Steve for doing double duty and producing this episode. Thanks to senior podcast manager Arjuna Ramcapal for putting us together today.

And thanks to our listeners for supporting gaming coverage in the ringerverse. Check your feeds for Midnight Boys, Hassebar, and Mith Edition in the days to come. And also some more video game podcast content. We've got a Games of the Year pod headed your way late next week. So this is not game over. Just hit continue, put us in sleep mode. We will be back with more DLC soon. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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