The Purpose of the Miles and Mary Jane Missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man

Marvel’s Spider-Man is a game I came to a little later than most people, but when I started going it didn’t take long for it to become a favourite of mine. Spider-Man has a long lineage in video games at this point, but this one proves itself to be amazing! To be spectacular! Sensational even! I could describe it with most of the Spider-Man comics adjectives.

There is a lot that I love in this game (except for the number of random crimes you need to stop to 100% each district), but I was never quite as excited when it came to playing the Mary Jane Watson or Miles Morales missions. I never hated them, but in a game that makes you feel like you have the powers of Spider-Man, it is a drastic shift to take all of those away.

I replayed the game again, specifically with the mindset of wanting to try to understand what exactly these missions bring to the game. And, shockingly enough, I’ve decided I want to talk about exactly what I discovered. I’m going to get into these missions from two different angles, first from a gameplay perspective, and then from a thematic perspective.

Gameplay

For the majority of Marvel’s Spider-Man, you are unsurprisingly playing as the titular web-head. The gameplay consists primarily of open-world adventure style traversing, mixed with fast paced beat-‘em-up fights and minor stealth sequences. But here’s the thing about Spider-Man’s stealth sequences… They don’t really care how stealthy you are.

This is in no way a complaint. You’re Spider-Man! If you decide to be stealth to take out all the bad guys, that’s fun, and the game gives you the power to do that. But if you get caught, things can go just as well by dropping the stealth entirely to just beat up all the enemies in a big brawl. In fact, many of the Base Missions start off feeling like stealth is the way to go, but eventually come down to fighting the same types of enemies in normal combat.

Comparing Marvel’s Spider-Man to the Arkham series for a moment, it shows a real difference in purpose when it comes to stealth sequences. There is a similar mix of fighting and stealth found in any Arkham game, but in those the two are kept almost entirely separate. Arkham games are punishing if you try to take on the stealth predator challenges in a gung ho, rushing in, kind of way. All the enemies are equipped with guns that can very quickly take Batman out. His fighting sequences may have a couple guns involved, but there usually aren’t many, and only come to have them later in the game to add difficulty. In Marvel’s Spider-Man, just about any enemy can pull out a gun or has superpowers. But because of Spider-Man’s speed, and even mechanics like how you can heal yourself mid-fight, an enemy with a gun isn’t the most threating thing here.

I bring up Arkham not just because it feels like the closest comparable game series, but because it the differing use of similar stealth sequences help demonstrates the lack of importance Marvel’s Spider-Man places on actually being stealth. Beginning missions in a stealth way is generally helpful in Marvel’s Spider-Man, but failing to be sneaky is never punishing like it is in Arkham, rather, it accepts whichever way the player chooses to do a mission.

Then there are the Mary Jane and Miles missions. These missions place such importance on stealth that it doesn’t just hurt the player if they are caught but has them automatically fail. This is an extremely drastic change, taking stealth from “you might not want to get caught”, to “you definitely can’t get caught”.

From a gameplay perspective, what these missions add to the game most of all is a sense of just how amazing Spider-Man really is. I would not argue that Mary Jane or Miles aren’t capable in their own right, in fact, I think merely having them as playable proves just how capable they are. Even without being superheroes or having any special training, they push through these terrifying situations that could end in them getting shot. And because we see these normal people going through these situations, it gives more context to when Spider-Man takes on similar situations.

In this respect, I want to talk specifically about Miles’s final mission. Miles has been sent to a pop-up medical relief tent to get some antibiotics to help sick people at the Feast Centre. When he arrives at the tent, the place is swarming with escaped prisoners. The first half of this mission consists of Miles getting close a prisoner, or group of prisoners, and using his hacking app to distract them so he can get passed without being seen. Repeating variations of this, eventually leads Miles to the antibiotics he is after.

The second half is where things take a big shift. The prisoners aren’t the only ones here, Rhino and Scorpion turn up (though, Scorpion is just in a quick cutscene and doesn’t affect the gameplay). This begins a game of cat and mouse, where Rhino is a deadly tank of a cat. Through this entire sequence, Rhino looks massive. It is clear on first glance that Miles is dead if he gets found out.

Part of this comes down to the simple fact that Miles has no superpowers, so of course Rhino would be more threatening. But even without that knowledge, a first glance appraisal of the situation has Miles looking like he is in far more danger than Spider-Man ever seems to be in with Rhino. And why is this is? It’s because even the camera is placed differently during these missions.

When playing as Spider-Man, the camera is often further back, giving the player a larger field of view and making everything appear smaller. Not only that, but because Spider-Man is Spider-Man, often times you end up seeing everything from a downward angle because you’re leaping in the air, or web-swinging, or climbing on walls, which is another way that makes everything below you seem smaller. Here, as Miles, you’re trapped on the ground, the camera is closer to the character, it gives everything a more claustrophobic feeling, and giving the impression that everything around Miles is much bigger.

The very next mission after Miles just barely escapes Rhino is the one where Spider-Man fights both Rhino and Scorpion at the same time. Rhino isn’t nearly as imposing a figure in this fight. Spider-Man is so fast and so capable with aerial traversal, that Rhino never feels like that big of a threat unless he manages to get a hit in while you’re busy with Scorpion.

There is one Mary Jane mission that splits the difference between the stealth that is needed for the non-Spider-Man missions, and the power of Spider-Man. In Grand Central Station, Mary Jane needs to cross passed quite a few of Mr. Negative’s demons to defuse a bomb. In other missions, this could have been a lot harder, but this time, Spider-Man is around. Mary Jane still has to avoided being spotted, but with the click of a button, if a guard is alone, Spider-Man will swing down and take them out to clear the path. It is a fun middle ground that feels like a great melding of the two styles, and really sells the partnership that Mary Jane talks about wanting (more on this later).

Speaking of Mary Jane, we can see a real progression going on in her missions. In the first one, it is mostly about exposition, with only one unarmed person she has to sneak passed before getting to a puzzle. In her next mission, there is a large room full of armed thugs and it adds distractions you can purposely activate to distract guards, as well as boxes that you might knock down and accidentally alert the guards. In her third, you get one of Spider-Man’s gadgets to distract guards. In her fourth, you have Spider-Man there as backup. And finally, in the fifth, you get a taser so you can take out the guards after you’ve made them turn their backs.

Through these escalations in abilities, we see Mary Jane becoming more and more capable on her own, while adding new ways to take her through various challenges. Each one has something new, that is unique to her, and wouldn’t make nearly as much sense if you were playing as Spider-Man (because his powers give him too much of an advantage over these things anyway).

I’ve heard other people talk about the Mary Jane and Miles missions for the way they give more diversity in the gameplay, and that’s a fact that is entirely true. But that diversity does more than just shake things up, it reveals how powerful Spider-Man really is by recontextualizing how threatening the enemies are for anyone else.

Theme

There are two primary themes being addressed in Marvel’s Spider-Man. The first is about duality and balance. This is most obviously demonstrated with Martin Li and Mr. Negative, and how he seems to be wholly good on one side, and wholly evil on the other, which again crops up with Otto Octavius and Doctor Octopus. But this same theme is shown through the relative balance that New York seemed to sustain when Fisk was there to be the darkness to Spider-Man’s light, and Fisk’s arrest being the thing that throws the city into chaos. And, hey, there’s even the whole Spider-Man and Peter Parker balance the game gets into, even without it coming down to a “good” and “evil” side.

The second major theme is one of accepting help. We can take the words of Aunt May to describe it, when she says, “Just ask for help next time. You are so much like Ben. You have to learn to swallow that Parker pride and accept that you’re human. Like the rest of us.” We see the theme of accepting help from both sides as the villains form a version of the Sinister Six to defeat Spider-Man, and Spider-Man learns to lean on both Mary Jane and Miles to save the city. And if it isn’t obvious from that last statement, this theme feels like the primary purpose of the Mary Jane and Miles missions.

For this section I’m going to primarily focus on Mary Jane’s missions, because through these we get a full picture of the arc that Spider-Man has to go on in order to accept this help. The relationship between Mary Jane and Spider-Man in this game is one of Mary Jane wanting to be seen as equal, as a partner, rather than someone who needs to be saved. These two dated for a long time, but they broke up about six months ago over exactly this issue. Within the events of this game, Mary Jane is letting them try again, not as a romantic partnership, but a crime stopping one.

Mary Jane has five missions in total, and one little detail about these missions got me curious right away. The first three of these missions play as flashbacks. This sort of flashback is kind of a weird framing device for these tense stealth sequences, because it means the result is established before the mission even begins. Sure, the player might get caught and have to start over again, but we know that in the end she makes it to the point where she is safe enough to reveal what happened to Spider-Man.

With the tension of the gameplay bumping up against the refusal of tension from the narrative, what then is the purpose of having these framed as flashbacks?

The third Mary Jane mission is the last one to use flashback. Spider-Man reaches a Sable Outpost, and sees the silhouette of Mary Jane talking to a man who is pointing a gun at her. At this point we go into a flashback of Mary Jane breaking into the outpost to find this man, Charles Standish, to get his help with finding the chief scientist involved with Devil’s Breath. Standish points a gun at Mary Jane, but when we’re in her perspective, we can see she isn’t really in danger. Standish pulls a gun because he knows a gang is after him, but when Mary Jane explains herself, he is quick to trust her. And it is here that we catch up to the present, where Spider-Man believes she is in danger. Spider-Man’s sudden appearance shocks Standish so much that he trips, falling backward, and knocking himself out before he could say anything more.

Mary Jane is pissed. She says, “We broke up because you wouldn’t stop treating me like a baby! ‘Don’t do this MJ! Don’t do that MJ! That’s too dangerous. MJ!’ I may not have super spider powers, but I’m not made out of glass!”

And it is in this moment we can see why her missions are flashbacks up until this point. Mary Jane believes that if Spider-Man gets the heads up ahead of time, she can’t do what she needs to because he’ll get in the way by thinking she needs to be saved. This mission is the first time she tells Spider-Man where she is going to be, and he proves her entirely right.  

Let’s jump back to how Mary Jane is introduced in the game. Right before her first mission is a cut scene where Spider-Man finds her camera. With Spider-Man being distracted, a demon is able to get the drop on him. Mary Jane sneaks up behind the demon and knocks them out, right before calling Spider-Man Pete. In this quick moment, Mary Jane is revealing a lot about their history just by knowing Spider-Man’s identity. Simultaneous, she is proving how capable she is by saving his life. In her introduction alone we are shown that this isn’t a version of Mary Jane that Spider-Man needs to worry about, she can handle a lot.

This concept comes to a head with her next mission, where she ends up being one of a handful of people held hostage by Mr. Negative and his gang of demons at Grand Central Station. This is arguably the first time where she is actually in over her head. She is so focused on saving everyone else, that she makes herself a target. After Spider-Man webs up the goon that is taking her away, he argues that he needs to take her to safety, but she refuses. Mary Jane can’t risk the bomb going off and civilians getting poisoned just so she could be saved herself.

Where the previous mission swaps you from Mary Jane to Spider-Man as soon as he is on the scene, this one has Spider-Man in the building for nearly the entire time, but doesn’t swap the characters until she disarms the bomb.

The point here is that Mary Jane wants to save people just as much as Spider-Man does, and even without powers there is quite a bit that she can do. Because Spider-Man can’t seem to see that, because he is so focused on saving her that he can’t think about the bigger picture of saving all of the people in Grand Central Station, she ends their partnership.

This takes place approximately three quarters of the way through the game. Spider-Man thinks he has to do things entirely on his own, and we’re seeing this through the perspective of Mary Jane. I think it is even fair to say some people might be completely siding with Spider-Man at this point. If you don’t enjoy these missions, you could be wanting Mary Jane to just stay back while Spider-Man does it all.

But then we get a little further, and escaped prisoners are causing chaos all around New York, the Sinister Six are plotting something big, and Doc Ock has released the Devil’s breath. Spider-Man has a little bit too much on his plate, and too many places he needs to be at once.

The moment that finally changes things for Spider-Man happens when he is called to the Harlem Feast Centre, where May, Miles, and Mary Jane are all trying to help save the people there. The building has caught fire with May and Miles trapped inside. Though Spider-Man makes it on time, he ends up trapped in a position where he has to hold up the collapsing floor that May and Miles are standing on, keeping him from being able to actually help them move from it. Mary Jane comes in and pushes over a plank to give them a bridge. When the ceiling above Spider-Man collapses and causes Spider-Man to fall toward the burning lower floors, it is Miles that saves him.

This all plays out in a cutscene, which feels like a way to keep any one character from feeling like they’re the most important. If this played out with one of them as the playable character, they would feel like the hero of this scene, but the choice to make it a cut scene lets them all carry something closer to equal weight.

After this scene Spider-Man agrees to let others help. He even gives Mary Jane the task of finding the antiserum and Miles the task of watching over Feast, all so his focus can be on the Sinister Six.

There is one more mission for each of them after this cutscene. Mary Jane’s has her sneaking past Sable’s guards to get into Osborn’s penthouse to get answers. Like four of the five other Mary Jane missions, this one ends with Spider-Man’s involvement. But where the first one was because of random chance, and the next two were about him thinking he needed to save her, this one has her calling the shots. She runs this mission entirely on her own. When Spider-Man comes in, it is only after she tells him to, and she basically uses him as a parachute. After she has all the information she can gather; she tells him to come to one side of the building. The only way for her to get away from Sable and her guards is to jump, and she trusts Spider-Man to catch her. He isn’t forcing himself into the situation because he is worried she can’t handle it, he is coming because she completed her mission and requested an extraction.

It’s worth at least touching on Miles and why I didn’t want to spend much time on him in this section. Basically, while his missions are relatively similar to Mary Jane’s in gameplay, they do not have nearly the thematic depth to them. Mary Jane’s story with Spider-Man is one built on their implied history, and it is using this history that the theme really presents itself. Whereas Miles is not really a part of Spider-Man’s life at all. In fact, all of his missions take place without Spider-Man even really being aware of them. His first is when Spider-Man is unconscious, and the next two are when Spider-Man is just at Feast (though Miles does tell Spider-Man about the final one with Rhino afterward).

For the most part, Miles’s mission are piggybacking on the meaning that Mary Jane’s missions set up. The inclusion of Miles in the Harlem Feast Centre fire scene dovetails it him into the story, but at no point do his missions create this feeling on their own. Basically, he’s worked into this theme of Spider-Man needing to ask for help, but his use in the game as a playable character feels more like it is to set him up as a character and give his origin story before Spider-Man: Miles Morales. 

While this is a theme that could have been built out through the use of cut scenes and dialogue rather than having Mary Jane and Miles as playable characters, those means could never give the characters the same feeling of agency. We know these characters are good enough at what they do, because, well, we are them. Not only that, but we don’t lose out on playing through moments because Spider-Man is choosing to give them tasks.

Conclusion

The Mary Jane and Miles missions in Marvel’s Spider-Man are pretty divisive amongst the fans. The biggest complaint I have heard is that they feel like something tacked on, like they exist only to pad the runtime. While I did not work on the game myself, and so can’t exactly speak with authority about any kind of intent, I do think this pessimistic view ignores a lot of what these missions are actually doing for the game.

If you hated these missions, if they were too abrupt of changes from the game you wanted because you came to a Spider-Man game to be Spider-Man, that’s more than fair! Nothing is for everyone, and I don’t think I could talk anyone into loving these if they just don’t have fun with them.

Love them or hate them, my intention here was to just talk about what these missions add to the game. Their success or failure is subjective, and I do think there was ways these could be improved in the sequel.  But in diving into what these missions add to the game – the way they recontextualize the Spider-Man gameplay and how half of the game’s theme is entirely built off these missions – I’m of the mind that the game is stronger as a whole with these missions than if they didn’t exist.