A Speedrunner's Thoughts on Miles Morales

	I love Miles. It's a fantastic video game and Insomniac did an incredible job with it. For the past few weeks it's all I've wanted to play in spite of its shortcomings as a speedgame just because of how fun it is. The swinging is faster than 2018, the combat is more responsive, the potential for combos in this game are enormous. But after patch 1.04 I felt like a wall was raised between myself and the game. It was a great, necessary patch. It fixed a major memory leaking problem, improved performance across the board, and overall has made a great game better. The cost was adding three more minutes of added unskippable cutscenes.
	When I learned about the 43 minutes of unskippable cutscenes in Miles at launch I was obvious disappointed. As a speedrunner its not what you want to hear, but I know Insomniac uses it as a way to hide loads and I know people worked their butts off on those cutscenes and eventually I felt like they weren't that big of a deal. But adding three more minutes of the broke me. I can't explain it because its not like three more minutes is that much of a difference in the course of a 2.5 hour speedrun, but just the fact that my one problem with this game was made worse, it sapped all my motivation from me. And I hate that, I really do. But because of that weird emotional response I just can't get myself to play Miles right now. The game is too much fun so I know I will come back to it, but right now I just cannot. So until then I'm planning to focus on the fantastic remaster of the 2018 game and bringing that as low as it can get.
	To any developers who may come across this here's what I got: you guys clearly worked your butts off and it paid off. Incredible work. The game looks beautiful, it's a great Miles story, and it plays fantastically. But, if it were possible, I would love the quality of life option in this game or future games to be able to skip cutscenes when they are done loading- at least on the PS5 where that seems potentially plausible to a passerby like me. Maybe stick a small loading spider in the corner of NG+ mode that goes away when loaded? Maybe don't make the option available until loaded? I am a untalented small twitch streamer so I do not have these ideas. However, it is the smallest of details and quality of life options like this that can determine if people will want to come back and play a NG+ campaign or start speedrunning your games and can as a result make a load of difference for some consumers. And that's honestly the only real critique I got, my fellow speedrunner PrinceVortex had a good, more focused review here if you'd like to read it: https://pastebin.com/HJ2z1Sca I agree with almost everything he has to say there.
	Regardless of personal sentiment I am looking forward to more updates for this game, the upcoming Ratchet & Clank, and of course the inevitable Spider-Man 2. I only bring this up because I love this game and I would love to play more of it.
	Best,
	Pessilist