Summary
After the disastrous Insomniac leaks from late last year, a Venom game spinning off fromMarvel’s Spider-Man 2is all but confirmed. Based on the leaks, the currently unannounced title seems to be taking cues from the character’s turn as an anti-hero. ThoughVenom has been a popular character in gamingsince his inception, Insomniac’s half-sequel would be the wicked webslinger’s first solo outing in the medium.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2already covered a lot of ground with its symbiote stories, introducing Venom himself and teasing the arrival of Carnage and the symbiote god Knull. In recent years, these characters have become more entwined in Venom’s own mythos rather than Spider-Man’s, so it makes sense that the studio would try and save them for a Venom-centric game. But in its eagerness to include elements from Venom’s own solo comics, Insomniac needs to be careful to avoid retreading ground it already covered in its previous game.
The Venom Game Needs to Be Careful About Featuring The Life Foundation
How Insomniac Can Incorporate the Lethal Protector Comic Into Its Game
According to leaked information, the working title for the Venom solo game isVenom: Lethal Protector,which has been the title of several of the character’s standalone comics over the years. The most famous of these comics is the 1993 six-issue miniseries written by Venom co-creator David Michelinie and illustrated by Mark Bagley and Ron Lim. This marked the character’s first solo outing as an anti-hero and served as theinspiration for the 2018 movie starring Tom Hardy. The series also introduced the sinister Life Foundation and its symbiote enforcers as major antagonists for the character.
It seems like a wonderful basis for the character’s first solo game, but there’s one huge problem: Insomniac has effectively already had theLife Foundation symbiotes inMarvel’s Spider-Man 2. Scream was a major boss fight in the game, but the various other symbiote enemies in the game take inspiration from the other four Life Foundation symbiotes; Phage, Riot, Agony, and Lasher. If Insomniac is dedicated to taking cues from Michelinie’s iconic miniseries, it has to be very careful to avoid retreading familiar ground.
The Life Foundation Doesn’t Need to Be the Only Antagonist in the Venom Game
Technically, the other four Life Foundation symbiotes have not officially appeared as named characters in Insomniac’s canon and can still be incorporated. But changing them to make them sufficiently different from their spiritual counterparts inMarvel’s Spider-Man 2will be challenging without just changing the core of the characters outright. Perhaps instead of all the symbiotes appearing, it’s justRiot and Lasher as one-off boss encounters. But maybe the Venom game doesn’t need these characters at all.
WithCarnage and Knull already being shoo-ins for the game’s story, it’s hard to argue that the narrative needs even more symbiote villains for Venom to fight. The Life Foundation operates perfectly well as a shady corporation even without alien enforcers. Venom can fight and evade human Life Foundation operatives armed with sonic and flame-based weaponry as they attempt to capture him for experimentation. They can even be led by The Jury, who also debuted in the pages ofLethal Protector. The Jury is a group of high-tech super soldiers who band together to avenge their friend after Venom kills him escaping from prison.
Despite taking its name from theLethal Protectorminiseries, there are other Venom stories the game can and should pull new, unique enemies from to avoid repetition with symbiote enemies. Venom has had multiple antagonists all to himself over the years, including Pyre, a tragically mutated journalist with fire-based powers. Even themost recent trailer forVenom: The Last Danceseems to feature a xenophage, an alien species that hunts and eats symbiotes and their hosts. Even a character like Jack O’Lantern from the Rick Remender run of the comics could be a cool addition. This glider-riding villain can even serve as an ominous foreshadowing of Norman Osborn’s inevitable Green Goblin transformation inMarvel’s Spider-Man 3.
