Editorials
The Terror of Ogdo Bogdo in ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’
His name is Ogdo Bogdo. And he represents Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order at its most Souls-like.
In my review, I mentioned that Respawn’s newest game draws from many AAA wells. It’s got the wall-running of Titanfall, the climbing and pulled-back perspective of old God of War, the puzzle-solving of Zelda, the platforming of Mario, the cinematic presentation of Uncharted, and on and on. But, Fallen Order’s most structurally significant design choices draw on From Software’s challenging action-RPGs.
Each planet is built like a Yharnam in miniature; an interlocking world that becomes substantially easier to navigate once you open shortcuts. You lose your experience when you die and gain it back when you successfully land a hit on the enemy that killed you. You cash in those experience points at meditation circles that function exactly like Dark Souls’ bonfires: healing you and/or saving your progress, but resurrecting every enemy in the area.
Early on in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, you will likely be terrified by a gnarly amphibian. After encountering the hologram of Jedi Master Eno Cordova on Bogano for the first time, you will likely have your head held high, excited to embark on your quest to reestablish the Jedi Order. And, then you’ll fall into a pit. A pit where a massive, armor-skinned frog creature is waiting to absolutely wreck your shit.
So, yes, on a design level, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has borrowed the blueprint that From Software has been using since Demon’s Souls. But, just as importantly, Fallen Order has adopted Dark Souls’ mischievous spirit; its willingness to play pranks on the player. Sometimes Fallen Order’s attempts don’t work out all that well. There’s a moment on Dathomir when a Nightbrother, quietly waiting for you in the corner of a room, strikes from behind and will land a surprise attack if you’re not aware. The rat-like, burrowing scazz that pop out of the ground at inopportune times, sometimes resulting in Cal getting knocked off a cliff, are not interesting or fun to fight or avoid.
Neither of these bits are especially successful. On the whole, Fallen Order just doesn’t commit to the bit in quite the same way that Bloodborne does. When I watch a GIF of the swinging wood trap in the Forbidden Woods, I laugh. When you first see the spiky log swing through the air, you think you know exactly what’s happening. You’ve played video games before: you assume you just need to run underneath it. And, then just as you begin to run, the log rolls off the chain, killing you on impact and maybe knocking you into a pit for good measure. Game designers frequently anticipate what players will do; they use color and light to guide our behavior; to funnel us along narrow paths through wide worlds. Bloodborne’s designers use this understanding of player behavior, not to help us, but to play a joke on us. They anticipate our behavior, subvert our expectations and punish us. It might make you scream in the moment. But, after falling for it once, you likely won’t fall for it again.
Fallen Order’s surprises are rarely funny. I know where the scazz are now, but having to deal with them, on Zeppho’s mountain pass is a chore that still occasionally trips me up, not a joke to which I’ve learned the punchline. But, the one, glorious exception is Ogdo Bogdo.
There are a few factors that make the massive frog’s reveal work so well. Here are the pieces of the set-up:
First, Bogano is covered in tall grass. It’s not impassable. You can move through it, but it obscures your vision. You can’t see the ground in front of you at all. You may opt to mow it down with your lightsaber. But, after a few hot machete whacks, you’ll likely get bored with bushwhacking and simply risk running through it.
Second, Respawn uses a pair of “weenies” — a level design term that refers to large objects that are visible from a long distance — to guide you through the level. The Mantis, Cal and crew’s ship, on one end of the map and the skyscraping Vault on the other. After emerging from your first meeting with Cordova, you will likely be relying on the Mantis for guidance on how to make it back to the start of the map. And after fighting the Bogdo (the non-Ogdo version of our friend in the pit) that waits right outside the Vault, you will likely be looking for the easiest way back to the ship.
So, Third, you will be in a hurry. You won’t be hacking down plants as you should. You will fall into Ogdo Bogdo’s lair.
Punchline: the frog is mean.
Ogdo Bogdo is introduced at a point in the game when a regular enemy can easily wreck you if you’re not careful. If he lands one hit on you, the massive frog can keep you staggered long enough to slurp down half your health bar. The fight demands that you pay attention to his patterns, dodge when he performs an unblockable lunge and use your as-yet minimal Force abilities to slow him down.
Of course, part of the beauty of the Ogdo Bogdo fight is that, as in a Souls game, you can cheese it. Yes, the first yawning pit will swallow you if you’re not careful, making you easy prey. But, just beyond it, there’s a second pit, underneath which Ogdo Bogdo sits. If you manage to keep your wits about you, you can get the literal drop on him, executing a special move that will take out nearly half of his health.
But, if you’re like me, you may stumble into the monster’s cave, see that he’s a named enemy with a massive health bar and flee. After that first jump scare encounter, I avoided him until I had rolled credits on the campaign. I came back, with skill tree in full bloom, and destroyed him in seconds. Jokes on you, Ogdo Bogdo.
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Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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