Android Blues posted:

The problem is that the game never mentions Clayface at all at any point before the reveal. That's a good hint for a continuity nerd who's constantly looking for allusions to a canon they already know - it makes no sense to a player who doesn't know who Clayface is, and the game doesn't do anything later to make it make more sense, because even when you're fighting Clayface it doesn't really introduce him beyond, "of course, it was Clayface the whole time!".

I mean, I am a gigantic Batman nerd, but it's still awful storytelling because the foreshadowing only works if you have knowledge you bring in from outside the game's story proper. It's like if an episode of Scooby Doo ended with Fred pulling off the rubber mask to reveal that it was Jabberjaw who was sabotaging the miners all along, because they crossed over that one time, remember? Also in this analogy the episode of Scooby Doo is 35 hours long. Except that actually sounds amazing so never mind, not that, a more damning analogy and also someone make that Scooby Doo episode.

Android Blues posted:

The problem is that the game never mentions Clayface at all at any point before the reveal. That's a good hint for a continuity nerd who's constantly looking for allusions to a canon they already know - it makes no sense to a player who doesn't know who Clayface is, and the game doesn't do anything later to make it make more sense, because even when you're fighting Clayface it doesn't really introduce him beyond, "of course, it was Clayface the whole time!".

I mean, I am a gigantic Batman nerd, but it's still awful storytelling because the foreshadowing only works if you have knowledge you bring in from outside the game's story proper. It's like if an episode of Scooby Doo ended with Fred pulling off the rubber mask to reveal that it was Jabberjaw who was sabotaging the miners all along, because they crossed over that one time, remember? Also in this analogy the episode of Scooby Doo is 35 hours long. Except that actually sounds amazing so never mind, not that, a more damning analogy and also someone make that Scooby Doo episode.

SonicRulez posted:

Well yeah, that's how a twist works. If they have him show up before then, it would've been pretty easy to guess. I don't know which person is sitting down to City (a sequel by the way) with no prior knowledge of Batman in any capacity. He's in a part of Asylum that is mandatory to visit. The files are in the game. Idk man, of all the problems City has narratively, that is low on the totem pole.

Retro Futurist posted:

If you know who clayface is it makes sense on its own, and if you don’t he’s a big shape shifting monster. It’s not that confusing

Android Blues posted:

I'm standing firm on this one, it makes zero sense unless you already know the character behind the twist, a character the game does not introduce until you're actually fighting him. And it's not as though he's that well known - he's never been in a movie, he had a handful of appearances in the 90s animated series, and he's in the comics. Your average Batman fan probably blanks on him, and it's not as though Arkham City, which was a gigantic hit (and a great game!), was only played by Batman superfans.

His appearance in Asylum is just an Easter egg, he's not a part of the plot, and it's entirely possible for players to miss him. You have to go to the area he's in, but he's not in a cutscene or anything, he's just a background NPC.


It isn't that it's confusing, it's that it's bad storytelling to have your big twist and the resolution of your mystery hinge on knowledge that wasn't available to the player. It's like if you ended a murder mystery with, "of course, the culprit was that invisible guy I met once who can walk through laser tripwires!".

SonicRulez posted:

Those are some false equivalencies, lads. I dunno what to say. The game abandons all trust in its audience and just plays a montage of all the moments that foreshadowed the twist. Batman has a diverse cast of villains with superpowers. One that can shapeshift isn't shattering any previous world building. The guy has riddles in both games. He's got an appearance in the previous one. I mean I'm not sure what could have satisfied you outside of Joker looking into the camera and saying "Isn't it weird that Clayface isn't around?"

Archyduke posted:

I think I agree with you.

This kind of thing can be fun in a shared universe because it helps gesture to the fact that the story you're reading is part of a larger narrative-- for example, the Mr. Mind reveal in 52. I think that on its own 52 does not do a very thorough job of explaining to a new reader who and what Mr. Mind is before the climax of the story, but what it does do is give the reader a sense of scale that makes sudden developments like that seem "fair." To a longtime fan, seeing Mr. Mind evolve like that is thrilling. To a new reader, the series has established its rules enough that instead of going "huh, ok, a giant worm, this is baffling and stupid," the more likely reaction would be to look up who Mr. Mind is and have fun filling in the gaps. Ditto Ralph Dibny's adventures in the occult are really more about giving a sense of texture and depth to DC's magical stuff than it is about meticulously connecting dots.

I don't know if this contract between writer and audience can be expected to work 100% the same in a videogame-- the sense of interconnectivity and intertextuality is so different. It's also impossible for me to put myself in the shoes of the baffled player you're describing because, like, *I* know who Clayface is. My instinct is that for a twist like that to really work you do have to treat the videogame like it's own enclosed entity, and that if the plot is going to revolve around somebody being able to shapeshift, there should be some indication (in the same game!) that shapeshifting is a thing that exists before that narrative trigger is pulled.

This is probably especially true for a property like Batman, which can accomodate so many wildly different tones. Frank Miller's Year One doesn't have Clayface because it's essentially a pretty grounded little neo-noir story without a lot of fantasy elements. Greg Snyder's Joker would be a grotesque mismatch with Dick Sprang's pencils, and so on. Clayface in his "big mud monster and legit shapeshifter" incarnation has always kind of been on the outlier of core Batman concepts, so I think it's a big ask to throw him into a story with zero warning. Hamlet would be pretty unsatisfying if at the end a bunch of fairies fly in and carry Hamlet off to safety, even though one could theoretically point to A Midsummer Night's Dream and say, like, "well, we know Shakespeare can put magical fairies in his play, so [...]"

I guess a counter-example that stays in the realm of videogame adaptations would be the Witcher series. I like all three Witcher games, more or less, and I know that there are great reams of Witcher novels out there, so sometimes I just accepted that I was lost at sea with certain elements of world-building or characterization. I always felt like the writing played fair though-- if the game needed me to know about a concept or a character, it would lay groundwork pretty assiduously so that no twist felt arbitrary or unfair.

Android Blues posted:

That's exactly how I feel about it. I feel as though the contract between writer and audience is totally different in a video game, where the narrative is self-contained, than in comics, where the whole glorious daft procedure is explicitly a serial narrative that's been going on for decades. There may be a gulf of meaning and style and delivery between Batman in the 80s and Batman in 2018, but they're both understood as being part of the same big meta-story about the same character. The newest issue of Batman is a sequel to every previous issue of Batman.

A video game's story doesn't work like that. There isn't an expectation that the target audience for the video game will just go and read back issues of Batman if something happens that isn't satisfying within the story as presented, any more than (as you say) there's an expectation that you ought to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream before you watch Hamlet.

radlum posted:

Does Knight work on PC now? I barely remember many issues with that game back then so between that and mediocre reviews, I didn't manage to play it at the time.

Teenage Fansub posted:

I remember it being a big issue that there weren't raindrops running down the models on PC. That's what we cared about three years ago.

bessantj posted:

Has Spider-Man ever fought Juggernaut?

Skwirl posted:

Yup, trapped him in concrete, it was in the 80's I think.

Wheat Loaf posted:

There was another one later on, which I believe was when Juggernaut destroyed the World Trade Centre and made Dr Doom cry.

Rhyno posted:

I don't know where that stuff happens but Juggernaut knocks down the WTC in the last few issues of Spiderman that Todd Mcfarlane drew. Guest starred XForce.

bessantj posted:

Hulk is bound to have fought Juggernaut hasn't he?

Wheat Loaf posted:

There was another one later on, which I believe was when Juggernaut destroyed the World Trade Centre and made Dr Doom cry.

Lurdiak posted:

Several times. Hulk always wins.

bessantj posted:

Hulk is bound to have fought Juggernaut hasn't he?

bessantj posted:

Hulk is bound to have fought Juggernaut hasn't he?

Ghostlight posted:

Sinners Sandwich posted:

Whose the artist for this, it's hilarious for it's time.

Jordan7hm posted:

If it's really bad Hulk art, you know it's gotta be Trimpe.

Senior Woodchuck posted:

Untrue on two counts. 1, I wouldn't call that "really bad," and 2, Liam Sharpe exists.