- Joined
- Aug 20, 2022
Sorry to be autistic, but I think it's more accurately the David Michelinie arc (McFarlane was the artist).
More importantly, that's the point, they don't want her to be pursuing anything traditionally feminine. She has to be "strong powerful woman" and because they can't actually write a proper "strong woman" they instead write a very masculine woman and show how strong and powerful she is by emasculating the man.
This is even more true than I realized, now that I've heard about the "Sweet Baby Inc" thing.
This isn't exactly true, in the original arc, the symbiote worked differently to how it does in later appearances. It didn't enhance Peter's strength or aggression or anything like that, it just provided a bunch of conveniences like organic webbing, pocket universe storage, camouflage, and the whole mental link that allowed it to respond to him as needed. The reason he got rid of it originally was that it was controlling him (physically) and making him do things like go out at night without his knowledge, and then was trying to bond with him permanently.
Later appearances of the symbiote dropped some of the symbiote's abilities (mainly the pocket universe storage) and added the power enhancements and such. A lot of Venom's abilities actually just came from the symbiote copying Spider-Man himself.
All that said, you are right that the symbiote didn't outright mind-control anyone so much as it would influence them subtly, sort of bringing out their "inner demons." The symbiote is such an interesting concept in a lot of ways, and it sounds like the game really doesn't take advantage of it at all, unlike Spider-Man 3, which adapted it pretty decently (even if the studio fucked up the movie overall), and Web of Shadows, where the symbiote is the focus of the whole game.
In Asylum, she looks a little off in my opinion, but in City and Knight, she is sexy as fuck. I mean in those games she is exactly the 10/10 on the hot/crazy matrix that you would expect Harley Quinn to be. This new game gives her the worst bitch face and just uglies her up to all hell. Not to mention the black Floyd Lawton Deadshot, even though this supposedly takes place in the Arkham games' universe, where he was already white in City, Origins, and the Assault on Arkham movie.
It's just another nail in this game's coffin for me. This didn't need to take place in the Arkhamverse. That world's story was done, they left the future up to your imagination with the demonic Batman at the end. The gameplay already looked like crap for this too.
I remember when this was announced with that Will Arnett event, Sefton Hill, who was Rocksteady's studio head (and one of the cofounders of the studio) looked like he was absolutely dead inside. And it's worth noting that he and the other cofounder left the studio quite a while ago, so their vision is definitely not being implemented in any way.
But the most heartbreaking part of all this is that this game was Kevin Conroy's final performance as Batman before he passed. And they wasted it with this. RIP Kevin.
