Spider-Man vs. Arkham Knight — a game design study
How to design compelling secondary gameplays
It appears the discussion of Marvel vs. DC is everywhere these days. Movies, series, everything but comic books, and yes, even games!
Insomniac Games released in 2018, its new Marvel’s Spider-Man game, taking much inspiration from another major superhero-themed game: Batman: Arkham Knight by Rocksteady Studios. Playing both those games made me understand a fundamental lesson about secondary gameplay design.
Opposition in similarities
Both games portray a comic book superhero and present a heavily scripted storyline the player experiences through an open-world city—this open-area flourishing with different activities revolving around different gameplays.
Namely: Sneaking, Navigating, Fighting, Searching, Collecting stuff, taking pictures of lovely monuments, and Solving puzzles.
However, very much like cuisine, ingredients are essential, but the recipe defines the final product.
And the recipe here couldn’t be more different, particularly when it comes to this last piece: puzzle.
Dark Knight vs. Friendly Neighbor
Let’s start by taking a look at each game approach to puzzle design.
Batman: Arkham Knight
In Batman: Arkham Knight, the city of Gotham cripples with puzzles. Installed here (very fittingly) by the Riddler to test out the reflection skills of the player.
At least, this is what appears on the surface. But most “puzzles” really consist of knowing how to use the different gadgets and moves at your disposal.
Not to say that Arkham Knight puzzles never require the player to think and find a specific pattern to overcome a problem. However, the most significant friction comes from knowing which tool to use and how to use it, learning it along the way if necessary.
In that sense, many situations are at the crossroad between puzzles and tutorials.
In the Batman: Arkham series, the puzzles play organically and seemingly in the global experience. Some may require you to press a button or enter into a building to start; still, there is no strict cut between the exploration and the puzzle sequence. In both cases, you have the same abilities and controls as in the rest of the game.
Marvel’s Spider-Man
At the other end of the spectrum, lab stations are scattered around New York City, waiting to be reprogrammed and repaired by Spider-Man.
However, in sharp opposition to the Arkham games, Spider-Man’s puzzles play very straightforward.
Puzzle sequences are entirely different gameplays: Different cameras, separate commands, specific capacities. It is the textbook definition of a “mini-game”: a completely different game, with its own set of rules and restrictions, crammed into another bigger game.
In short
Batman: Arkham Knight puzzles
- Camera: Similar to open-world exploration
- Control: Similar
- Capacities: Similar
Marvel’s Spider-Man puzzles
- Camera: 2D fixed
- Controls: Unique control set
- Capacities: Specific ability to place, remove, and rotate pieces
And form this comparison, it is undeniable that the Batman: Arkham Knight approach feels more immersive, more rewarding, and overall more like solving situations. While you indeed feel smart when addressing a situation as Batman, Spider-Man’s trials are more like a chore, like something you have to do before you can go back to the “real” game.
But why?
The secret of Batman: Skills transversality
What I refer to as skill transversality is the idea that the primary and secondary gameplays share at least some of their controls and abilities. Meaning that investing time in secondary activities will result in valuable learning to enrich your possibilities in other situations.
The skills you gain through one particular side activity can be useful outside of those specific circumstances.
That’s how Batman: Arkham Knight builds a more organic, more immersive approach to puzzle situations. In Gotham, every puzzle is an experimentation chamber, provoking you into using your abilities in a certain way.
Being required to quickly throw five shurikens using the auto-aim to press five buttons at once can seem pretty random at first. But this turns out pretty useful when you encounter five enemies running at you in a later fight. There are plenty of examples like this in the game.
But with great powers comes great complexity.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s approach is very efficient, indeed, but is not without flaws. Because in building a wide variety of situations, the game enters another type of problem: Feature creep.
The dark knight inventory adds up to twelve different devices, each requiring a specific input combination. This situation results in a mere impossibility for the player to fully exploit all capabilities at his disposal. This being almost impossible in a moment of stress.
Enter a third game that’s also an open-world with stealth, combat, exploration, collection, and of course, puzzle: The legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild.
That’s right! To the question “which one is better, DC or Marvel?” the answer is, and always was: “Zelda”!
The Hero of Puzzles
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild masterfully creates more than 100 thoughtful situations, all based on only four abilities.
You can achieve an unbelievable amount of things in Hyrule, with few capacities: create a bomb, move metal items, freeze an object in time, and create an ice pillar out of water. That’s it.
Even more impressive, many puzzles in Zelda: BOTR have more than just one solution. Not only succeeding at puzzle shrines teach you about your abilities, but exploring the rest of the game also provides you with alternative ways to overcome those puzzles.
Almost every situation in the game is open to any approach, rather than locked in combat, stealth, or puzzle sets. Once you know how to use your abilities, taking on an enemy camp by delivering precise attacks, dropping rocks in a physics-puzzle manner, or sneaking around in the shadows, is up to you!
That is fine and all, but we all know Zelda games are on another level. Is it possible to achieve this with any game? Well, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s trying!
How to achieve this?
How could we change Marvel’s Spider-Man approach to make it more like
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild?
1. Add interactions, remove features
Spider-Man puzzles often revolve around directing electricity from a power source to the desired device by rewiring an electrical panel, with limited blocs. Breath of the Wild has a puzzle with a very similar premise but which plays out very differently.
In Hyrule, just like in New York, you’re faced with an incomplete network and a limited set of pieces to fix it. Only the circuit is on the floor, and you have to move around metal items physically. Fujibayashi’s team didn’t develop a new feature, but rather a further interaction between existing ones: Metal items conduct electricity.
Now the existing functionality of moving metal items around has a lot more depth and applications to it, without any additional complexity.
Thanks to this interaction, you can even skip some steps using metal weapons from your inventory to close the circuit — one of those sweet multi-solution puzzles I mentioned earlier.
So, what if, instead of creating an entirely new game, you could achieve the same objective using the web Spider-Man shoots by making it conduct electricity?
What if the player had to build a tridimensional network of electrical web around the space, with a limited amount of links, connecting conductive objects to keep the current flowing?
2. Build the secondary loop into the main one
For side activities to be compelling, they should enrich the primary experience.
Now that Spidey’s web is conducting electricity, we could use this to build a more thoughtful approach to another gameplay: let’s say combat.
Luckily for us, there’s already an interaction between electricity and enemies in the game: Foes are stunned when hit by lightning. This effect can come from a particular gadget: the electric web or from being in contact with electrified objects.
From here, it’s not too crazy to imagine that you could connect those electric meters to floor panels or door handles. Twisting elements that the enemies are likely to enter in contact with for a shocking surprise.
TL;DR
- No matter what secondary gameplay you are designing, always remember the features that already exist in the main gameplay.
- Ask yourself how adding interactions to those might result in the gameplays and challenges you want to create.
- Think about those new interactions. How could you use them to add depth to the global experience?
Post-credit scene
With Marvel’s Spider-Man being more than likely to get a sequel sooner or later, I give you Rendez-Vous when it happens. To see if, and how, Insomniac Games builds upon the solid, yet the imperfect, structure of the first one. Hopefully, in the area of secondary gameplays as well.
