Spider-Man: Miles Morales and TLOU Part 2 have amazing video game museums

Most video games are built as museums for themselves – inside the menus and outside the stories are collections of articles and information. Instead of housing a world of information in large, historic buildings, these museums are based on code. Each is an abstract version of the player’s journey so far. This ‘museum’ looks different in every game; for Red Dead Redemption 2, the game’s memories and history are stored in a notebook for browsing. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Ubisoft has stored its history in menu screens that unlock new information each time the main character meets a new character. Even the achievements or trophies of a game can be considered as elements in these museums – notes about the journey through these digital spaces.

Sometimes the museum of a video game is more literal, as in Animal crossing: new horizons, which has an actual museum to house the things players collect. Information on discovery and life on a specific island is located in these individual museums; it is both goal setting and memory keeping. There are many other recent examples, as others have noted – the small museum for articles in Hades, a collection of ancient artifacts in a classical museum in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the PlayStation History Museum in Astro’s playroom. Each of these video games contains a ‘museum’ in a literal sense, but also serves as a museum on a more abstract, macro level.

An animal crossing character standing under a dinosaur bone statue

“There’s something interesting that so many games – and this also applies to The Last of Us – have a museum in the UI,” Neil Druckmann, creative director of Naughty Dog, told Polygon. ‘You can examine those artifacts, articles and character models. And this is the kind of museum. I think there is something that is just innate, that we store and collect items and are nostalgic about them – our own history and memories. ”

Video games themselves are purposeful. There’s always something to do or unlock, and players expect not only a reward, but also a record – a reflection of the virtual achievement and the time spent on it. Museums do this, but take up something much bigger: life on earth, experienced from a narrow human perspective. Walk into a museum of any kind, and you will find a collection of art or artifacts that tell a story – about the evolution of life, about the history of human civilization, about our collective intellectual and artistic achievements.

[Ed. note: This article includes spoilers for both The Last of Us Part 2 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.]

The idea of designing a video game as a museum for itself bird like a big shower thought, but it also feels very appropriate. For example, The last of us Part 2 is a museum about the player’s achievements, but also a game that contains a museum and an aquarium that the main characters visit and explore. Video game designers keep coming back to the museum as an interesting space to post integral moments of the story of a game, as these spaces reflect the core concept of video games.

“We use our experiences to go to museums, and there is often a sense of wonder – imagination and learning – but sometimes there is also a sense of whimsy where you see all these stuffed animals and cave dwellers,” said Druckmann. said. “Then there are just basic design things, like how we play with lighting and shapes, and what obscures everything around every corner.”

The design of the museum can inspire how a player progresses through it, and it can also set the mood for the developer.

Ellie from The Last Of Us Part 2 in a tank in a museum looking at planets

‘When you enter the museum [in The Last of Us Part 2]”It’s very open – you can see almost all the exhibits,” said Druckmann. ‘And when you get to the other area where you want to intensify the whimsy, we start using all the lights and the way the exhibits are located. It creates a different feeling because you can not see well. ”

Inside the museum, outside the overgrown world, Ellie and Joel are able to embrace amazement and awe as they explore space without any threat – until the moment there may be one. Ellie and Joel interact with the museum in a way that is almost aspiring, despite the downfall out there: they climb into a spaceship and pretend to actually fly away.

The Science Museum in Spider man: Miles Morales is also an echo of the game’s story and themes – the past and the future are represented by the different states in which the museum finds itself, untouched and destroyed. The player meets the museum at two different points: one, in a flashback during which Miles and his best friend Phin (who later becomes the Tinkerer) celebrate their award-winning science show project, and another, when Miles and Phin (as Spider-Man and the Tinkerer, respectively) tackle each other in their final battle.

“The museum tells us what could have been: two brilliant children admiring exhibits and daydreaming about their future, before it falls apart,” Mary Kenney, advanced author of Insomniac Games, told Polygon.

miles and phil looks at a science exhibit in a museum

This is of course representative of Miles and Phin’s scientific expertise, but the name also implies the corporate influence that Oscorp (and others!) Have on this version of New York City. During the flashback trial, Miles and Phin try to visit their science exhibit in the museum, but they are turned away because they do not have tickets. This is a moment that in its simplicity says so much about where these two middle students in this world owned by Roxxon and Oscorp fit. It says a lot that the museum as an institution will “accept” and earn the students in its world through their talents, but does not include this in the literal sense – they do not need tickets to see their own work.

As Miles, I can communicate with most exhibitors, each playing a voice-over that explains the science and technology behind the glass. The scientific achievements of the world are presented as innovation – but as the players, we also know a little more about Oscorp, and we know that research is not always as innocent as it seems. It colored my perception of the museum in an ominous way, while different scenes played out across the space.

That first flashback of the museum was a quiet moment before the action resurfaced, similar to The Last of Us Part 2‘s museum scene. None of these series reflects the nature of the collection, but touches on the past in a way that mimics the environment itself, as well as the general themes of the story. In The Last of Us Part 2 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the museum scenes touch on childhood and loss – often to a violent, catastrophic world. Again, it all works because video games is museums, and the museums in these games are a reflection of the games in which they are.

This whole idea is obviously not new. In-game museums have been a big part of the Uncharted series, and they are in many other big franchises The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim on BioShock 2. But the sheer number of museums in games last year still stood out. Maybe it was because museums around the world closed their doors to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It was then that museum managers virtually flipped the script. Video game developers use museums to evoke and display meaning, but museums use video games to create new experiences in a digital space. And so video games and museums became further intertwined as museums themselves entered virtual worlds, whether it was to create and catalog a collection of historical condoms, to build art installations, or to upload an entire dang art collection so that players it could easily add to the game.

We see how video games are reflected in museums, and museums are reflected in video games because the format just fits, which makes use of the satisfaction of collection, information and nostalgia. It makes sense that a game utilizes that feeling, which is why museum levels feel so good to play. Video games have long been drawn from museums for inspiration and design, and it’s fascinating to see how museums are now learning about games.

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