Monday 26 May 2014

Mutants, time travel, and more

X-Men: Days Of Future Past was great fun. Got me thinking about a game, always a good sign.

Lots of inventive use of characters, their powers and their motivations. Some massively over-the-top, but that’s to be expected really. It has a classic “showing what just one power can do in the hands of someone smart” scene for Quicksilver, as well as more for Magneto who always gets these. Like First Class it again makes me want to see a Michael Fassbender As Magneto As James Bond movie, and now also a Mystique solo. I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned at least one of those.

One of the most accurate adaptations of a specific story in the modern superhero movie era (on the level of Captain America: The Winter Soldier) apart from trading Kitty out for Wolverine.

(One thing it didn’t seem to have is a direct reference to the original comic’s famous wanted posters cover. Considering how many homages to that I've seen, these are just a few, that really surprised me. The scene shown in the second part’s cover more or less makes it in...)

(Also: ooga chaka ooga ooga. And another trailer ahead of it, Edge Of Tomorrow, also suggests that it covers a little of the same ground.)

Driving back, we discussed the possibility of a mutant-only or otherwise restricted-origin supers game and how someone usually makes an exception because the genre normally encourages special snowflake PCs (see also “can I play a werewolf?”) and games with classes and the like offer structure to avoid that....

And we talked about how time travel can affect settings, as this example demonstrates nicely. It features an active in-universe retcon of specific events which are even shown in flashbacks - is this a first for superhero adaptations? And it also shows at least three of the ways to stop a potential setting-changer becoming a recurring issue, like this Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode so helpfully summarised recently.

Oh, and there’s a teaser for the next one at the end of the credits.

No comments:

Post a Comment