Grab-bag Post #3

 

Grab-bag Post #1

Grab-bag Post #2

JRPGs vs. WRPGs. 

Growing up, I would have told you that I like playing Role Playing Game video games. Specifically, I liked games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior IV. They were a video game version of something akin to Dungeons and Dragons, but where all the dice rolling, stats sheets, and scenarios are handled by the program. But I learned that there are kind of two major divisions of video game RPGs. 

Japanese RPGs tend to have a character who goes on their journey and you as the player get pretend to be them for a while. So if you play Final Fantasy IV, you are Cecil, or if you play Octopath Traveler you are Olberic (or whoever you chose). In Western RPGs, you craft a character that you choose and, in a sense, insert yourself into the game. So in Fallout, you're you in New Vegas. Personally that doesn't appeal to me as much. I'd rather pretend to be Link or Wedge Antilles for some escapism rather than be, well, just me. I know it's a personal choice and other people prefer the WRPGs, so to each his own. 

One reason I didn't really like regular tabletop DnD is because of all the stat-keeping that's required (at least, I'm assuming it's still this way - I've never actually played it). I'd much rather leave the program to handle all of that for me for simplicity's sake. But even with the computer taking care of it, I don't like opening up a menu and seeing pages and pages of numbers for each item and character. I think it works much better when it's simplified down to one or two numbers per item.  

Future Proofing

The problem with designing games around extremely specific hardware is that it’s hard to preserve them for future generations. I’m all about future-proofing and preserving. If I could, I would make it possible to play every game (even the bad ones) perfectly from all major consoles and PC releases on modern hardware either natively or through emulation. 

The topic came up a few months ago when it was announced that the NSO would be receiving Nintendo 64 games. That’s all fine and dandy, but the N64 has a very specific problem - the controller is weird by modern standards. Hell, it was weird by contemporary standards when it came out, despite being a trailblazer for certain conventions still used today.

While the most obvious thing that stands out is the 3 lobed approach Nintendo took, the other problem is the handling of the C-buttons. They're usually assigned to the right stick of a more modern controller, which does kinda work, but also doesn't because they're not actual digital buttons, and modern right sticks are below the face buttons. While pretty much all other controllers can be mapped onto a modern Pro Controller pretty easily, the N64 remains an odd duck.

Other past features that are hard to work around currently are things like the fact that the original Famicom had a microphone built into controller 2 (which was used to kill Pol's Voices in The Legend of Zelda), which the DS and 3DS could handle, but a Switch cannot. The touchpad controls of DS games could be handled by a Wii U Gamepad, but I'm not sure how well a Switch could do with it. And speaking of the DS, a specific puzzle in Phantom Hourglass required the player to close the DS so as to transfer something from the top screen to the bottom screen. This can't be emulated on a 2DS or Wii U Gamepad, so the solution is to put the game in sleep mode and the wake it up. 

A few early NES games had things that could only be done by controller 2, which required the NES emulator of the 3DS to put in a feature to switch between virtual controllers. The GameCube's L and R buttons had pressure sensitivity that hasn't carried forward to controllers made ever since, and a half-ass work-around had to be implemented for the Switch version of Super Mario Sunshine. Motion controls are their own ball of wax. And nothing will really be able to emulate the 3-D effect of the 3DS on modern hardware. All of this is to say that it's going to take some work to make sure to keep consoles and accessories in good working order because it won't show up perfectly in future hardware. 

The new innovation also can discourage 3rd party developers from releasing ports or original games on the new system because it would entail completely re-working the controls. In the case of something like Call of Duty on the Wii, it entailed making pointer controls and other adjustments. Alternatively, first party developers are probably railroaded into finding a way to awkwardly implement the new control scheme into the game to justify its existence, like in Star Fox Zero. 

The flip side of this is that by choosing to basically keep the same control scheme for 20 years (like Microsoft and Sony), it's much easier to have modern controllers emulate older hardware, but you also don't get certain creative innovations as a result. 

Nintendo vs. Sega Advertisements in the 16-Bit Era

While it's normal for two rival companies to promote their product over the competitor's, it seemed like Sega’s commercials were more often a direct dig at Nintendo than the other way around. I didn't mind when it was just straight product promotion, or when they featured celebrity endorsement from sports figures like Tommy LaSorda or Joe Montana. Sega had the advantage in sports games and they pushed that, and I had no problem with it. But what I'm talking about is more like the following examples:

• Famously, the Genesis launch commercial's tagline was, "Genesis does what Nintendon't."
• A Game Gear ad starring Ethan Suplee implied that Game Boy users weren't very bright
• An ad showing Sonic's speed as compared to Super Mario Kart
• The salesman who can't sell a SNES when it's side-by-side with a Genesis
• There is no Nintendo CD, thank the goddess.

As I recall, only Donkey Kong Country had direct pushback (NOT on Sega), and StarFox only did if you recognized what they were alluding to (Why go to the next level when you can go lightyears behond?). Sega’s tactics felt like playing dirty to me. 

I pretty much agree with James Rolf’s assessment of the two systems. But in my mind the graphics, sound, and controls are the 3 most important things, and the SNES won all of those. The look of the system and game boxes are nice additions/features, but even if the system looked like a V-Tech toy but played Metroid 3, I wouldn’t care so much. What it shows is that with a 1½ year head start, a star-studded ad campaign promoting speed and how much cooler a new system is, it can compete with a system that is heads-and-tails better.

As a side bonus, here's a couple of pages from Nintendo Power issue 49 from June of 1993 where they tried to educate the public about some of Sega's claims.

Grab-bag Post #4

Grab-bag Post #5

 

Grab-bag Post #6 

Motivation for Playing Games

Like anything in life, one has to be motivated to play games. And also like everything else, the motivations can be varied. After a debate with my son about a certain game, it got me thinking about why I gravitate to certain games, avoid others, and why I play games at all. So here's what I came up with, in no particular order. 

Solving the Puzzle / Challenge - This is what Wilson accused Dr. House of having. Unlike most doctors with a savior complex, House had a "Rubik's complex" - he had to solve the puzzle. This is my main motivation for doing things like crossword puzzles, sudoku, and doing increasingly difficult twisty-puzzles like the Gigaminx here. Games that scratch this particular itch are things like Portal, the Zelda series, Picross, the Ace Attorney series, and most point-and-click adventure games like King's Quest. 

Story Investment / Good Writing - While it could be as simple as those presented by Ninja Gaiden (avenge my father), Zelda (save the Kingdom of Hyrule), or Super Mario Bros. (rescue the Princess), as the character, I have some motivation to finish the level or get to the end of the game. Obviously there are better examples of deeper stories, like the Final Fantasy series, but more modern Zelda games also have a better story than the original game. Plot, character growth, friends in peril, and a hero's journey are all excellent features of a well-written story that makes me want to keep playing to find out how it all turns out. A game having excellent dialogue and/or humor is also a plus. Good examples of this are Octopath Traveler, Final Fantasy VI, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Day of the Tentacle, and South Park: The Stick of Truth. 

An already-proven series / genre / franchise - If a new Metroid or Zelda game were to be released I would buy it immediately because I know I already enjoy that style of game. The same is true about most point-and-click adventures or "airplane" / flight simulator games. The SNES Star Wars games were fairly generic platformers for the most part, but I played them so much mainly because I loved the franchise so much. Up until recently, I would have probably liked any Star Wars game but not so much now. More examples of this would be Secret Files, Rogue Squadron (for the franchise and genre), and the Ace Attorney games. I played The Turing Test at the recommendation of a redditor who said it was like Portal, and based off of that I bought the game and enjoyed it quite well. A bad game starring a well-liked character (like the original TMNT game on NES, some will argue) might be considered to be playable by those who are fans of the character. 

Escapism / General Entertainment - As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I like story driven games where I pretend to be the character in the game. In other words, when I play a Batman game, in my head I pretend that I'm Batman. When I'm playing Metroid Prime, I stop being myself for a couple hours and become Samus Aran temporarily. It's partially to escape the daily grind and politics of the real world and it's nice to have a vacation in Hyrule. I'm not so keen on games where the main character is a blank slate and I'm inserting myself into the game, so it's Joseph wandering through Tamriel, acting like me and making all the decisions that I would make. This pretty much applies to all games, and isn't specific to a series or genre, but unconventional games I like such as Flower Town are mainly on this list. 

Interesting Game Mechanics / Elements- There are a lot of platformer games that came out in the wake of the popularity of Super Mario Bros., and likewise a plethora of generic FPS games released after Doom. But often, there will be a game that stands out because it has an interesting take or a little twist to it that makes it better. Goldeneye007 added mission elements like hack the computer, photograph the evidence, and escort missions to make the FPS part more interesting. Fractured Soul has a unique mechanic of having the character jump between the top and bottom screens of the 3DS. The Messenger took the basic concept of Ninja Gaiden but added a Metroidvania element as well as flipping between 8-bit and 16-bit graphics/sound. Octopath's shield/weakness and boost system was a neat twist on the typical RPG turn-based battle. Other examples might be game elements like exploration (Skyrim), creativity (Minecraft), or team combat (Overwatch). Besides those examples mentioned, others include Portal, Guitar Hero, Typoman, and Untitled Goose Game. 

"Bucketlist" / Zeitgeist - Sometimes I set a goal to play every game in a series, like when I systematically went through the Metroid or Castlevania series (except for the PS and Xbox exclusives). There's also an element of being able to say that I've played/finished some of the same games that a good chunk of the gamer population have played for a communal experience. As I'm writing this, Elden Ring is the game everyone is talking about and it makes me slightly want to play it for that reason alone (though I probably won't). I got to experience that with Breath of the Wild because I bought it day one, but not with Portal since I was playing it 6 years late. 

Bragging Rights / High Score / Accomplishment - This is something that appeals to the competitive nature of me. Being able to say that I finished a difficult task or got the highest score and am therefore "the winner" is something that I think everyone can understand. It's the basic motivation behind sports and wanting to win a championship or something. It's why I'm in a little competition with my daughter as to which of us can get the most wins in PuyoPuyo Tetris, and why I play Pac-Man 99 chasing the next #1 finish. More examples of this include F-Zero and pretty much all racing games, Tetris, finishing Punch-Out!!, or being able to say that I got all 900 Korok seeds on Breath of the Wild. Being able to say that I've finished games like Ninja Gaiden or TMNT that appear on Top 10 lists of hardest NES games fills me with a small sense of pride and accomplishment.

Overall Fun / General Feel - This category is partially about just playing games to stave off boredom or to have something to do. But in addition, some games just "feel" more fun because of the culture around them. Games like Mario Kart just naturally have a air of fun around them, moreso that something like F-Zero despite being in the same general category (racing). The same could be said about comparing Mario Party to Monopoly. Something like Guitar Hero is fun because of the co-op nature of playing music, which wouldn't normally sound like a fun thing but it is. Wii Sports was built around a simple concept (learning motion controls) but was so much fun that it was enjoyed by players of literally all ages and became a minor cultural phenomenon. Sometimes a game will just have that je ne sais quoi which makes it great. 

Graphics / Controls / Sound - These are pretty typical things that don't need a lot of explanation because they're the core of what a video game actually is. There are plenty of examples of games lauded for their graphics and sound and sometimes a beautifully made game can help hide or distract players from an otherwise generic game in the same way that John Williams' score in Attack of the Clones made up for the lack of on-screen chemistry between actors. Games with difficult-to-master controls or wonky menus are the bane of good game design. A lot of what the AVGN complains about are these kinds of issues, and it can have a deterring effect on players. Good controls are like special effects in movies in that they're best when it's not even noticed. This category is a bit unique in that it's not usually the motivating factor to play, but is more of a deterrent when something isn't adequate. In other words, bad controls can detract from a game's enjoyment, while good controls don't stand out as a main reason to play something.

Ease of Entry - This is a category that follows more of the game design philosophy. In books and movies, good writers tell the audience what they need to know and how the rules of this world work. Often there's a stand-in for the audience, like the way Batman explains things to Robin, or Harry Potter needs to be informed how certain aspects of the Wizarding World function. It's also good form to introduce this stuff gradually and not in a huge lore dump at the beginning. There's a similar thing in games with tutorials. Razbuten from YouTube created a series where he introduced the lady he lives with to games she'd never played before and got her feedback. It was a fascinating look at barriers that keep new players from enjoying games they've never played before. A long and slow tutorial is bad, but one that is quick and doesn't give players time to adapt is worse in my opinion. Sometimes too much information too quickly can be like drinking from a firehose. Games that don't adequately explain what things are and how they work, as well as leave an avenue open for review and practice of necessary skills/controls make it difficult to keep wanting to play. Earlier games came with instruction manuals that usually did a good job of these things, but manuals went the way of the dodo around 2012 or so, and games that don't have a good in-game replacement give players a harder time getting into them. I can totally understand Razbuten's point that a lot of developers just expect players to have already played something in this particular genre and know stuff about games.

Despite my call for ease of entry for new players, I also think that there should be an option to skip tutorials for those who are already used to such games. Ace Attorney 2 had the main character experience amnesia as a way to facilitate teaching how the game works to players who didn't pick up the first one, but gave the option to skip it. In later games, the new mechanics unique to the game (like seances or the psych-locks) are given their own mini-tutorial later once players feel comfortable with the rest of the game.

Conclusion

So having said all that, I play different games for different reasons. I don't care about story in some games (like Pac-Man), but it is the driving factor in others. For some games, it's the gameplay and the feel that make me want to play, and I'm willing to overlook graphical shortcomings because of it. In my mind, all of these different elements add up, and once they pass a particular threshold, I can readily enjoy it and will recommend it to others as a game I liked. But I find it harder to stay invested in a game that doesn't meet the minimum requirements. On my hypothetical example chart I have above, it could be that the threshold is 30, and so Game #4 isn't going to be something I continue playing, while Game #3 might be one of my favorites.

There are some games that really only fulfill one or two of the categories, but do so enough that those are all I need. Some games have a compelling enough story and interesting gameplay, or feature characters I like to where I can overlook problems in other areas. There are also some games whose reasons I play change throughout the game. I might initially be interested in the story and graphics but then by the end I'm more interested in getting a high score or 100% completing it for bragging rights. Fractured Soul would be an example of this - I mainly was interested in the unique mechanics of how the platformer worked, but by the end I was more interested in speedrunning it for an online ranking.

But either way, there needs to be an initial hook - something that draws the player in and makes the player want to keep playing. If there aren't enough of those things near the beginning of the game, it's hard to find reasons to keep playing. When reviewers say things like, "Don't worry, it gets really good, like, 80 hours in," it usually doesn't make for a great game. In movie The Fellowship of the Ring, we got a little bit of a lore dump with the tease of a good story to come, then we got introduced to characters, then we were given a little bit of a mystery, which then turned into reason to leave the Shire suddenly. But imagine that we weren't really told most of this until the 2-hour mark and we just had to hang on to the hope that we got a little bit of plot/development, it wouldn't have the wide appeal that it currently does (there are exceptions, though, like The Usual Suspects where it's the last 10 seconds that make the whole experience worth it).

The other factor to consider is weighing the expected happiness/pleasure of out playing a particular game over other activities. In other words, I sometimes ask myself something like, "Will I be happier playing Skyrim or riding my bike?" Time is the one thing we can never get back, so we have to figure out how to optimize getting value out of an activity. Even within a game I like I have to decide if grinding for experience or some other in-game currency is worth my time. Although I don't do much carpentry, I really appreciate the time I put into making my kitchen table every time I sit down to use it, so I think I have gotten more value out of that than had I, say, used the time to play through Minish Cap for the fourteenth time or getting 900 Korok seeds.

I'm sure others might have a few other reasons I'm not listing here, and obviously everyone will rate each game differently, but this kind of framing for why people play makes sense to me.

Reflections on the Evolution of Gaming (part 3)

Reflections on the Evolution of Gaming (part 1)

Reflections on the Evolution of Gaming (part 2)

While having a conversation with my son, I found another thing that he didn’t really understand and required explanation due to his being born while the Wii was still in fashion. And that is the concept of the hint guide / player’s guide / gaming magazine. For almost all of the games he’s played, they have either had a tutorial and enough built-in dialogue or hints that there is never a danger of “getting stuck” in a game, or he’s playing something that I know well and can direct him, or it’s something that can be easily looked up online with ease.


What he’s never experienced is getting stuck and having no recourse. With walkthrough websites like GameFAQS, message boards like GBAtemp, and thousands of “Let’s Play” videos on YouTube, it’s really easy to accidentally find the answers to puzzles in any game.

It’s probably a safe bet that games which feature puzzle elements are made by other people who enjoy such puzzles, and the same could be said for adventure games. Part of the challenge in creating such a game is to make the puzzles challenging but still solvable. There’s always a risk that the solution is too obscure, giving the game a bad reputation for being overly difficult. But it’s also possible to make the solutions too obvious, making the game too easy. It’s quite a conundrum when trying to make a game that is accessible to all ages when certain parts of the game might “age-lock” someone out because they’re either too old or young to understand the hints required to solve the puzzle (incidentally, I found out that the Leisure Suit Larry game I got age locks kids out on purpose by requiring them to pass a test that revolves around 80’s cultural references and history, ensuring that younger kids won’t be able to play).

After some of the first puzzle games got a reputation for being impossible, several solutions came about. The first is the gaming magazine, like Nintendo Power. Many (cynically) saw its existence as another way of making additional money by making an impossible game and then charging extra money to get the required info to finish it. The same could be said about Player’s Guides or Hint Guides. Player’s Guides became a thing during the NES-era, and probably peaked around the N64-era. They could be purchased at gaming and retail stores, as well as other places where games could be purchased. Hint books came in several forms, but one such form was a book that had specific questions (such as, “How do I open the red door?”) with hidden answers that were obscured so players didn’t accidentally spoil the answer to something important while looking up a different hint. Some needed a red piece of transparent plastic to see the answer, while others needed a special kind of highlighter (Space Quest’s hint book is one such example). TV Tropes refers to this predicament as "Guide Dang It!"

But I tend to take a more forgiving approach to magazines/guides, and see them not as a soulless cashgrab, but as a measure to meet younger and/or less puzzle oriented people halfway. This allows the developers to put in difficult puzzles, but let players who are unable/unwilling to solve them solo have an avenue to get the answer.

Before these kinds of guides became so popular, sometimes games would include some supplementary material as assistance. The Legend of Zelda famously came with an almost complete map of the overworld as well as the first two dungeons, with additional hints and suggestions on how to make your own map. Maniac Mansion came with a hint sheet that resembled an old-school college campus bulletin board with cleverly disguised clues. A Link to the Past also came with a small “Top Secret” hint guide that was sealed with a Triforce sticker as well as a map with the overworld and first three dungeons. One interview I read stated that the developers were worried that the game was too hard, which is why they included the Top Secret manual. To be fair, some of the solutions like, “lighting all the torches,” weren’t as common then, whereas games these days just include them and everyone just sort of knows to try it. Razbuten has a great video about what gaming is like for non-gamers, which mentions that there are some strategies or knowledge that developers just expect players to know, but Miyamoto wanted to make sure there was an avenue for new players who hadn’t caught on yet.

Another avenue was to write letters or phone the company directly. While playing King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne, my dad got stuck. I loved watching him play these games and helping him when I could, but when we were stumped, my dad wrote to Sierra Online (snail mail) and got a few answers. Nintendo set up a hotline that players could call to talk with “Game Counselors” to get help. Thankfully it wasn’t a 1-900 number, but just a regular phone number (which was still long distance to everyone outside of the Redmond, WA area). These are who Hailey is talking to on the phone near the end of the movie, The Wizard, while Jimmy is practicing in the arcade. 


The final source of help were peers at school. Before the internet, the only real way of getting help or trying to spread information is to physically talk to people face-to-face. Telling each other about secrets we found dominated the conversations at the lunch table during grade school and even into middle school. It's not as efficient or effective as internet message boards, but it's the best we had back then. I sometimes see posts on gaming forums stating that someone is trying to play an NES game without a walkthrough and finding it impossible. They can't fathom how kids used to do it back then, but aren't aware of how much we crowdsourced tips and secrets like that. 

Once the internet became more established, and games themselves started including more in-game tutorials and ways of obtaining help, the guides were needed less and less, and eventually became more of a collector’s item than a necessity. 

MCU Post Mortem (Part 2)

MCU Post Mortem (Part 1)


The previous post had the big 4 things I would do to make the MCU franchise better and more cohesive by focusing on big problems. This post is more of a reflection on the MCU in general, and a list of small things I would do to improve it. 


First, reflections.

I honestly didn’t think the MCU thing would work out at first. When Iron Man was first announced, I kinda thought that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. See, to understand that, you have to know a little history about Marvel Comics and their movie deals.

In the 90’s when I was reading/collecting comics, basically for every comic starring Iron Man, Thor, Cap, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, or cosmic stuff that was sold, 15 copies of something Spider-Man related were sold, and probably 20 copies of something X-Men related were sold. In fact, at one point they decided to kill off almost every major character that wasn’t X- or Spider-related and reboot them in a pocket universe with famous and well liked artists to try and garner favor with the masses. It sorta worked, but they still weren’t selling really well.


When the movie deals were cut, Marvel was just trying to get cash to stay afloat because they had overspent and overextended on building the company based off of a misunderstanding of sales figures. They sold the rights to various well known characters to different studios - X-Men and the Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider to Sony/Columbia, Hulk to Universal, etc. And once the first X-Men and Spider-Man movies got the ball rolling, we got a slew of Marvel movies that were mediocre by today’s standards, but pretty good when compared to the horrible Captain America or Fantastic Four movies made in the 90’s. While I was glad to see some of these get made, I was sad that because of all of the properties being divided up to different studios, they could never cross over.

So when I saw rumors of Iron Man, I wasn’t particularly impressed or pumped. But the first trailer made me kinda excited. And when the movie was over, I was thoroughly impressed and couldn’t wait for more. Once Tony walked into the end of the Incredible Hulk, I got psyched up for a possible crossover, but withheld my excitement because I was pretty sure they’d screw it up somehow. After all, the memory was still fresh of how badly they had dropped the ball on X3, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Spider-Man 3, Elektra, etc. As the MCU got ramped up for Avengers, I kept waiting for the studio to screw it up, but beyond stumbling on Iron Man 3 (and later releasing Captain Marvel), they never really did. I never thought I would have been excited for Ant-Man, or Guardians of the Galaxy, but damn if those weren’t fun movies.

That’s not to say everything was perfect. There are a few little minor bumps that I would love to see them do just to make the continuity tighter, especially when actors are replaced. So here is a list of small (inconsequential) changes in addition to the big four changes from the last post that would just put the sugar on top of the cherry on top of the MCU sundae.

• Deepfake Don Cheadle onto Terrence Howard in Iron Man, as well as John Slattery onto the image of Howard Stark during the “history of Tony” part. (for continuity’s sake)
  
  
• Deepfake Mark Ruffalo onto Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk, and redo Hulk’s CGI to match the rest of the MCU.
  
  
• Fix Thor’s hair, beard, and eyebrows in both Thor and Avengers to match what they looked like starting with Thor: The Dark World.
  
  
• Take off Cap’s neck guard and give him back his chin-strap helmet in Avengers.
  
  
• Have Tony give someone a tour of all of the suits he’s built, explaining that some go on/off easily, some are waterproof, some have more defense or firepower or speed, etc.
  
  
• The sub-plot of Thor bathing in "the water of sight" needs to be re-worked a bit. 
  
  
• Take out some of the one-liners from Guardians Vol. 2 - like two from Drax and another from someone else. Some of them felt forced.
  
  
• The scene in Civil War where Ant-Man instructs Cap to throw the truck at his enlarging disc should have been done by Hawkeye - trying to hit a small object with another small object seems more like a Hawkeye thing to me. 
  
  
• I know it requires extensive planning and is a huge headache, but I really liked the first two seasons of Agents of SHIELD for their connectedness to the movies. The reason it stopped was because of one producer in particular (Ike Perlmutter) and it kinda ruined the effect. So the change would be to somehow incorporate Coulson’s team as well as the Netflix heroes (Daredevil et al.) into the movies somehow and vice versa. One example could be just having Iron Man fly over Mike Peterson's sister's house for Ace's sake (this would only require a small CGI Iron Man, not Robert Downey Jr) in Agents of SHIELD. It would then make Secretary Pierce's comments to Cap about Tony better in Winter Soldier. 
  
  
• Vibraninum needs to be downgraded from “magical bullshit material” (thanks Critical Drinker for that term) that can miraculously heal spinal cord injuries and all the other stuff it can do. Shuri needs to be taken down a couple of notches as well in terms of the fact that she's apparently smarter than Tony and Bruce combined. Her wrist blaster things were good, though.
  
  
• Someone needs to give Wanda a power boost in Infinity War to enable her to destroy the Mind Stone.
  
  
• Make Thor work out a couple of weeks while they’re building the time machine, and a little more after finding out he’s worthy. Also, Critical Drinker’s suggestions would be good too.
  
  
• Just before the "portals" scene, Thanos should have told Cap to give up, and he would grunt out a, "I can do this all day."
  
  
• Taken out the "A-Force" Scene and given the gauntlet to Mantis. Specifically take Wasp out. It makes no sense for the heroes who are trying to get the gauntlet to the van to have half of the team trying to fix the van fly all the way across the battlefield just to pose with all the other women.
  
  
• In the background of the “portals” scene of Endgame, we should see Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Deathlok, Ghost Rider, and Daisy Johnson but never have the camera focus on them so that people who haven’t seen the shows don’t feel like they’re missing out, while those who did watch them get a little easter egg. 
  
  
• Coulson should have been hiding behind a bush or post at Tony’s funeral with a nod and a wink from Fury.
  
  
• Eliminate all of the Skrulls elements from Spider-Man: Far From Home and just make them regular Fury/Hill with a couple of dialogue changes. Since I am intending this to be the last movie, take out the cliffhanger of Spidey’s identity reveal.

Finally, I would have had a little more planning on the music side of things. One advantage George Lucas had with the 6 Star Wars and 3 Indiana Jones films (yes, that's an accurate count of both franchises) is that he got the same composer to do all of the movies. Besides just being the best in the business, he got to plan out musically what happened across movies and not feel like he needed to show up the previous composer or anything. Williams developed themes for characters and used them at appropriate times in multiple movies so they all sound like they're part of the same story. Also see Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies for something similar. 

As it is, each Iron Man movie had its own composer who scrapped the previous guy's work and inserted his own. Between the 3 movies and three themes, it's hard to nail down what Iron Man sounds like. There was even a fourth motif made for Spider-Man: Homecoming when Tony showed up to help Peter with the ferry problem. As such, there's no real definitive musical cue that can readily be associated with the character, and that's kinda disappointing to me. 

I felt that Brian Tyler, while composing his own Thor theme in The Dark World, did make it similar enough to Patrick Doyle's more regal theme that it was hard to distinguish upon first hearing it, and felt like an evolution of the previous theme. John Ottman did something similar for X2 where he took Michael Kamen's theme and improved it. Danny Elfman also put his own spin on the Avengers theme in Age of Ultron, but his contribution was a more divergent than Tyler or Ottman's offerings. 

Obviously, getting one guy to do the whole MCU would be unfeasible, so my proposal would be to hire one guy to do the Iron Man trilogy, someone different to do the Thor trilogy, someone different to do the Cap trilogy, etc. Finally, hiring one guy to do all 4 Avengers films and having him incorporate the themes from the other movies when applicable. 

We did get a little taste of this here and there. Alan Silvestri did the music for both Captain America: The First Avenger and Avengers, so we heard Cap's theme throughout the movie and some AC/DC when Iron Man shows up in Germany. Brian Tyler put a little bit of Cap's theme into Thor: The Dark World when Loki looked like Cap. And we got to hear the theme from the first Thor movie when Thor sits on his throne at the end of Ragnarok. 

But we could have used a lot more of that. Hearing the Hulk theme after Wanda messed with his mind in Age of Ultron, or hearing the Spider-Man theme mixed with the Avengers theme when he's trying to move the gauntlet in Endgame would have been epic. 

 

MCU Post Mortem (Part 1)

For me, the MCU kinda wrapped up with Spider-Man: Far From Home. While it is its own movie, it felt more like the resolution to a franchise where Endgame was the climax. Partly this is because they had planned on doing more series on Disney+ and didn't have movies in the pipeline coming out every three months (and the whole COVID Plandemic exacerbated this), and partly because it just feels like a natural stopping point. I agree with a lot of reviews which say that Endgame had some problems, like that time travel is kind of a cop-out for writing one's self into a corner. But it hit the right emotional notes - it felt right and had the appropriate callbacks even if it wasn't as tight of a plot as the previous movie. In particular, I felt like Hulk and Thor got treated a little poorly and didn't get the kind of character arc resolution that the other four original Avengers team members got. 

I have deeply and sincerely enjoyed this ride, and I'm really glad to have been able to see it all unfold, especially since I never thought such a thing would happen. I've said before that I just assumed all movie versions of stuff I liked would have a high likelihood of turning out terribly, and that there's no way general audiences would go for something like the Infinity Quest storyline, let alone comic book characters like the Avengers. But they did it, and did they ever make a lot of money along the way. Credit should go to Kevin Feige for pulling this off, along with all of the other directors and producers. [Edit from 2023 - I'm hearing that it was more because of James Gunn's plan and not so much because of Feige, and from how Phases 4 & 5 have turned out, I tend to believe it]

The MCU pioneered something that a lot of studios have tried to copy since then, albeit unsuccessfully. And that is the concept of the shared universe. One-off crossovers on TV shows  happen all the time, like when Jake Peralta from Brooklyn 99 was being driven around by Jessica from The New Girl, and then later she and Nick were in B99's precinct. It was a little more common in shows that did have a loose shared universe, like when detectives from SVU would show up on vanilla Law & Order, or when Buffy and Angel would crossover. But it really wasn't done in movies at all, other than for a joke or quick easter egg (such as Bruce Wayne name-dropping Metropolis in Batman Forever). 

The thing that the MCU did right was treat each movie as a separate movie capable of standing on its own, while also essentially being one episode of a much larger story involving other movies. This is exactly what Stan Lee did back when he launched the modern Marvel comics universe in the early 60's. He set all of the heroes in New York and they bumped into each other all the time. Hell, the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man had Peter trying to get a job with the Fantastic Four before he found out they don't get paid [the origin story with his powers and Uncle Ben's death was in Amazing Fantasy #15 and his own series wouldn't get the greenlight until a year or so later]. This was very different from the DC heroes keeping to themselves in their own respective fictional cities (Metropolis, Gotham, etc.) and only crossing over in the Justice Society/League comics. 

For the most part, I think Kevin Feige [and/or James Gunn] is a genius who helmed this ship into unknown territory, and he gave us fans pretty much what we had been wanting for all these years. Now having said all of that, I want to list how I would have done things differently. Granted, I have the benefit of hindsight of seeing how everything turned out (both in the movies and the real world) and all that, but most of these thoughts were the same ones I had at the time the movies premiered. 



1. Iron Man 3 should have been better. 

I felt like Shane Black was more about doing his own thing and putting his own stamp on the character of Iron Man than trying to make a movie that fit within the framework that Kevin Feige was building. Lest we forget, this was the first post-Avengers movie, and most people still didn't have a good grasp on the big, overall picture and structure of the MCU. I also think (and I have no proof of this, just suspicions) that Feige was trying to find the right balance of letting directors/writers do their own thing and mandating certain plot points as setup for future movies. In Iron Man 3, he didn't exert enough control, while in Age of Ultron he was a bit too controlling, but he found the right balance after that it seems. 

In a post-Avengers movie, the question main everyone keeps asking is why didn't any of his new superfriends show up and help other than Rhodey. Ant-Man did this perfectly, and then gave a really good reason why that wouldn't work, but Iron Man 3 just kinda avoided the topic entirely. 

But besides not including enough elements from other MCU properties, the movie is more like a popcorn / fun-and-dumb movie when compared to the rest. There were some pretty major plot holes (like why so much effort was focused on fixing the Mark42 suit when JARVIS could just fly him any of the others in a couple of hours) and the whole Trevor Slattery/Mandarin fake-out was kinda stupid. It seemed that by taking two popular stories from the comics (The Mandarin and the Extremis stories) and mixing them, they had fallen into the same trap as X3 and Spider-Man 3. Some of the plots would need to re-worked to fix these issues, but one that would be super easy to fix is just inserting some dialogue noting the difference between the various versions of the armor - some are waterproof, some can lift heavier but are slower or have fewer weapons, some go on/off easily, etc. 

I will say that I did like the PTSD elements as well as the psychological delineation between "the Mechanic" and the suit, having to think on his feet without his tech, and the little interactions with Harley. But overall it felt like Shane Black went a little off the rails and some of the ramifications would have to be fixed in future movies (like the romantic plot between Tony and Pepper, for example) while others were just ignored (blowing up all his suits but making more by the time Age of Ultron was out). 

There are other movies like Thor: The Dark World, The Incredible Hulk, or Guardians Vol. 2 that aren't as highly regarded and could have been a little better, but Iron Man 3 was the biggest and most obvious one in need of fixing. This post from ScreenRant says a lot of the same things, though I don't agree with everything in it. 



2. Captain Marvel should have been Black Widow

This was the perfect opportunity to do what Joss Whedon did in Age of Ultron, when we fully expected Hawkeye to die and then got the Quicksilver fake-out (we didn't see it coming). We could have gotten the backstory on how Natasha was trained and defected, and that would have been a good way of having Hawkeye play a supporting role. While the movie focuses on Black Widow's past so they get to release a "solo female movie," having Clint play his bit would strengthen their onscreen friendship that would have made her sacrifice in Endgame all that much more meaningful and tragic. It would have also been good timing for actress Scarlett Johansson to dip out at the same time as the rest of the actors whose contracts were up. 

For full disclosure, I DO have problems with the character Captain Marvel as presently constituted in Marvel Comics (Carol Danvers Carl Manvers), but that is irrelevant to the issues the movie dumps onto the MCU continuity. If she were (pre-Rogue) Ms. Marvel and not cosmic-level powerful, mantle-stealing Captain Marvel, I would be more enthusiastic and probably a bit more forgiving of its shortcomings. But I digress . . .

Releasing Captain Marvel just before the climax of the MCU just felt odd and out of place. Plus the problems of having a 90's flashback movie broke a lot of continuity things (I realize most of these aren't huge issues, but still). For instance, her callsign being "Avenger" makes it seem like she's sorta been a shadow influencer to Fury all along and it's an example of prequels attempting to explain things that don't need an origin story (see Solo's depiction on the origins of Han's blaster and Chewbacca's bandolier for more examples). Another thing is that we learned that Fury apparently had the ability to call her during the NY attack by Loki and chose not to do so. Additionally, the story behind his lost eye was given a really bad explanation. And having Monica look up to Carol was kinda bass-ackwards. 

I also really didn't like that the explanation of her powers were that she just got them from the Tesseract in an accident. In my mind, neither Wanda and Captain Marvel shouldn't have greater power than the Infinity Stone that granted said power to them in the first place (I felt like someone/something should have needed to give Wanda a power boost in order to destroy the Mind Stone). By the time Carl reaches her full strength (in a plot twist on par with the Ruby Slippers having always had the power to return Dorothy to Kansas if she had just known), she's way too overpowered and it makes the battle in Endgame feel like it would have been over in  seconds had she just been there sooner. A fully powered Thanos with all 6 Infinity Stone couldn't even hurt her with a headbutt, FFS. 

But besides all the generic plot and lackluster script, it seemed more like this movie was released at that particular time for political reasons outside of the MCU universe. In my opinion, they chose an actress who is politically active in Social Justice to headline the first female-led MCU movie to be released in between the two biggest Avengers movies to guarantee people would see it or suffer from FOMO. And instead of giving that honor to Scarlett (who had six MCU movies under her belt by that point) it went to someone new who hadn't "earned" her spot, so to speak. There were several subtle and not-so-subtle "woke" plot points in the movie as well, and there really hadn't been any in the previous movies, so it felt a little out of place. To be fair, most of Hollywood has been captured by the woke cult, but are less conspicuous about it.

However, if I were forced to make a Ms. Marvel movie, I would have picked Yvonne Strahovski (who knows how to smile) to play her instead of the cardboard cutout that is Brie Larson. 

In fairness, one continuity issue I see brought up often is that they were calling the organization SHIELD and not the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division in the 90's and then reverted to the longer name for Pepper's sake in the first Iron Man movie. I don't see this as a big deal, as I can easily explain in my head canon that nobody knew who SHIELD were before they started getting more involved with Stark. If I went back to the 1930's and used the letters, "FBI," I probably would have gotten stares and blank looks. It took a while before the Federal Bureau of Investigation was well known enough to where everyone just started calling it "the FBI," while people in and around the institution would have used the shortened version years before normies. Besides, Howard Stark used the name SHIELD in the Peggy Carter one-shot years beforehand. 

Anyway, point 2 leads directly into point 3, which is . . . 

3. Captain Marvel's role in Endgame could have been easily distributed among other characters.

If you think about it, Carl Manvers had 3 major roles in Endgame - A) Rescue Nebula/Tony from space, B) Break Thanos' ship, and C) attempt to fly the gauntlet to the ugly brown van and stop Thanos from snapping again. Let me 'splain. 

A) Rocket was on Earth and could have cobbled together a space-worthy quinjet out of stuff lying around Avengers Headquarters and retrofitted it to be able to "jump" in order to give Tony and Nebula a lift. Alternatively, he could have got some help from Wong in making a portal or Thor using Stormbreaker's Bifrost emulating abilities. The explanation for how Rocket would know where to find them could be that he put a tracker in Nebula's head/body during the events of Guardians Vol. 2 because he didn't trust her to not escape again. 

B) Instead of Captain Marvel coming out of nowhere just in time to stop Thanos' ship from "raining fire," it could have been a combination of Ant-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Hulk. See, Bruce gets the brilliant idea of having Wanda do the same mind-magic she pulled on him in Age of Ultron, so he'll become the savage, rampaging Hulk of yore (I fully admit I'm borrowing this idea from the conclusion of the X-Men Onslaught crossover event from the late 90's). Then Giant-Man throws Hulk (the fastball special usually performed by Colossus/Wolverine) and he tears the ship apart, and that keeps him occupied until the end of the movie when he calms back down to Professor Hulk.

This serves to not only eliminate the need for rescue from Carl, but it would expand the roles that Scott, Wanda, and Bruce play in the final battle, plus it would give Hulk some proper revenge for the beatdown he received in the opening scene of Infinity War. 

C) Near the end of the battle, as they're trying to get the gauntlet to Luis' van, Spider-Man ends up with it and gives it to Captain Marvel. Then she apparently needs help from all the other women, even though she could have flown above all of the enemies in her way (other than the leviathans). This is stupid and contrived and total cringe.

It would have made a lot more sense to have the gauntlet get knocked out of Spider-Man's hands and have Mantis catch it somewhat by chance. She's by far the weakest of all the heroes there, and so it would make the plot point of everyone else (note: not just the women) needing to clear the way for her more impactful (also, Mantis can't fly and would need the road to be plowed, so to speak). As it is, the one person who is the, "bestest evar" can apparently take on Thanos solo (Capt. Marvel) shouldn't need the help.. 

Once the van is destroyed and the gauntlet is out in the open, Iron Man, Thor, and Cap (in that order) attempt to prevent Thanos from getting the gauntlet and fail. Rather than having Carl fight solo after the big 3, it could have been 7 or 8 others who didn't get the chance in Infinity War to do so (like a combo of Valkyrie, Pepper, Rhodey, Rocket, Groot, Black Panther, Okoye, Ant-Man, Hawkeye, etc.) in a scene similar to the one on Titan from Infinity War. This group is still unable to stop him from doing the Power Stone Punch thing, and then Iron Man swoops in to have his nanotech suit steal the stones. Simple. No Carl necessary.

The only other smaller thing she did was scout Thanos' planet before the remaining Avengers, and that could have been handled by someone else (Rhodey or even a lifeform scan from the ship Rocket was piloting).

4. There should have been a 5-year hiatus. 

I remember people bringing up "superhero fatigue" as a reason to why Batman vs. Superman and Justice League didn't succeed, but I really don't think that's the reason - it's because they were too long/convoluted and just weren't good movies. 

However, by the time Endgame came around, I think most people (and I include myself in this category) were ready to move on. We've seen various forms of movie fatigue in the past (westerns, 80's action films, Epics, etc.) but because the plot of the overall MCU was ramping up to a big conclusion, I think most people's interest in the franchise stayed unusually high. 

Had I been the one in charge, I would have stopped Marvel Studios for a while, so as to not visit the well once too often. I realize that would have gone against the wishes of greedy CEOs and shareholders at Disney, but it's what would have kept the fans happy, counterintuitively. Basically what I'm wishing to avoid is what happened with Star Wars. When the prequels (and later Indiana Jones 4) were announced, I was worried that Lucas' streak of 6 really good movies would be tarnished with lesser quality sequels. I can say that the 3 prequels were iffy, but the Disney Star Wars movies and Indiana Jones 4 were terrible and made me not want to watch the earlier movies as much. I would hate for the same thing to happen to the MCU, but history has shown that producers will usually run something into the ground with sequels and spinoffs until they've extracted every cent they can from a franchise. One of the few exceptions is the Back to the Future trilogy, where the director (Zemeckis) has control over whether any more can be made and has stated that there will be none as long he is alive. 

So, my plan would have been to end after Spider-Man: Far From Home and shut everything down for at least 5 years. The COVID plandemic occurring where it did would have made this plan seem like the person in charge was almost clairvoyant. After some time has passed and the superhero fatigue was wearing off, I would try jumpstarting it with a couple of the later additions to the MCU (like Spider-Man and the Asguardians of the Galaxy), introducing a whole new group of characters (Ms. Marvel, Shang Chi, Eternals, etc.), and maybe the Disney+ series for some of the older characters (Loki, Falcon/WS, etc.) to cash in on some nostalgia. The only problem with this plan is that almost all of the good characters have been used already, so restarting with C-tier doesn't sound super promising. However, Disney recently re-took control over the Fantastic Four and X-Men, so those could be the big tentpole movies while some of the other lesser known/liked characters can ride on the coattails.

MCU Post Mortem (Part 2)