As confusion abounds regarding the length, size and scope of Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PlayStation 5, one thing is certain: The game needs to address the blatant copaganda of its predecessor.

Superheroes -- especially in the Marvel Universe -- frequently work with police, which is in and of itself problematic. Police brutality, particularly against people of color, is rarely explored in mainstream comics; when it is, it's notable both for its infrequency and for the stark reminder that even in a world with superheroes, racism, classism, sexism and state-sanctioned violence are real and deeply damaging. When heroes turn bad guys over to police for "justice," it reinforces systemic oppression and the Prison-Industrial Complex, while also painting police as heroes in their own right.

Marvel's Spider-Man for PlayStation 4 is perhaps the most damning example of this troubling theme.

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Spider-Man: Yuri Watanabe

Peter Parker doesn't kill. He beats up street-level criminals and supervillains alike, then works with police to see them punished through the criminal justice system, which often includes imprisonment. In the video game, he works closely with the NYPD throughout -- even developing a running joke about "Spider-Cop" with Captain Yuri Watanabe.

Yuri is a second-generation police officer whose father was imprisoned for taking bribes from the Magia crime family. She became a cop for the sole purpose of taking the Magia down. By the end of "The City That Never Sleeps" DLC, Yuri "goes rogue," telling Peter the justice system is frequently useless and that sometimes, killing is the only way.

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Setting aside Yuri's slow descent into becoming a ruthless killer -- which boasts its own set of problems, seeing as she's a woman of color -- Peter's firm alliance with the NYPD is disturbing in its banality. As noted by several critics following Spider-Man's release in 2018, Peter handing over criminals and villains to the cops is bad, but what's worse is that one of the main missions in the game is to fix broken surveillance towers that monitor activity throughout Manhattan.

Spider-Cop may be an in-game joke, but the reality is that by fixing these towers, Peter isn't just providing the player with the ability to scan for nearby tasks -- he's helping enact the same kind of surveillance that literally exists in the real New York City. His work with the NYPD makes him complicit in monitoring the activities of citizens, not to mention state-sanctioned profiling and associated violence.

At no point does anyone question the actions of the NYPD, nor Spider-Man's close relationship with the cops. The game all but refuses to acknowledge the real-world implications of its main narrative and mechanics, which doesn't sit well, especially as Black Lives Matter protests continue all over the world.

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Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PS5 provides Insomniac Games with an opportunity to address the blatant copaganda of its predecessor. Miles reveals he has spider powers at the end of the first game, after he spends significant time volunteering at F.E.A.S.T. and working with Peter. Their relationship begins after Miles' father, Officer Jefferson Davis, is killed while protecting citizens from bombers during a demon attack.

Miles Morales is Afro-Latinx, which immediately places him in danger at the hands of police, regardless of his father's position with the NYPD. Although he'll don his own Spider-Man suit in the new game, the fact is that he is at more risk of violence than Peter Parker because of his skin color, which is something that goes mostly unspoken in the comics.

The new game, which will ostensibly be open-world like its predecessor, can and should provide Miles the space to explore this issue and force players to confront it as well. That's not to say it should feature police brutality against Miles, or even other characters of color -- it absolutely shouldn't, though dialogue would not be amiss. What it should do is dismantle the oppressive systems used in the first game and give Miles the space to be a hero without the involvement of the police.

The fact that Spider-Man for PS4 only gives names and significant roles to two cops who are people of color -- Yuri and Jefferson -- further exemplifies how the game attempts to de-problematize Peter's relationship with the NYPD. By purposefully centering a police captain who is not white and killing a Black officer in the line of duty, the game seems to actively suggest that Not All Cops are racist, because some cops aren't white -- but this doesn't eliminate the fact of or justify police brutality.

Whether Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a stand-alone game, a sequel, an expansion or a full narrative, it needs to remove the absurdly heavy police presence and present a world wherein heroes don't contribute to systemic violence or state-sanctioned slavery. It needs to do better than its predecessor, not just because it has an Afro-Latinx protagonist, but because the first Spider-Man game never should have been approved, let alone released, with so much copaganda intertwined with even its most basic gameplay.

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