Marvel’s Spider-Man 2is a story of healing. Themes of recovering from grief, trying to save close friends, and figuring out where you belong in a world you’re responsible for protecting are all woven into Insomniac’s sequel. Much of its narrative has been kept secret, but I had a chance to sit down with narrative lead Jon Paquette to delve into exactly what we can expect from Peter Parker and Miles Morales’ newest adventure.
“The symbiote warps Peter’s sense of responsibility,” Paquette tells me. “If you played the first game, you might remember that one of the themes that we really tried to bring out was that Peter can’t do it all. He needed Miles, he needed MJ as part of his Spider team in that first game. So what happens in this story is that he starts to push them away, because he’s got this power and believes he can do it all by himself, and he gets out of balance.”
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For many, this will be tried and true ground for Spider-Man stories involving Venom. The symbiote is renowned for turning Peter Parker from a timid nerd into a more unpredictable and violent version of who he used to be with little care for those in his life or doing things by the book. He’ll wear black clothes, have a gruffer voice, and probably be a bit of dick for shits and giggles. Except this time, he’s older, wiser, and wants to cure his friend Harry Osborne.
Harry already knows Peter is Spider-Man a mere two hours into the sequel (and may know from the start, as my preview began two hours in). That’s a fresher narrative dynamic that will change their coming conflict in major ways.
“There are things that happened before the missions you played that we didn’t show you on purpose,” Paquette explains. “We wanted people not only to fall in love with Harry, but fall in love with the fact that Harry and Peter are best friends. There’s a history of friendship there, and it’s pure. We’d like to explore how they became friends and that kind of stuff. It’s really important that we understand the relationship between Harry and Peter, because it’s a big part of the story. There are a lot of different stories about Harry, and that’s how we want to try and differentiate our is to show that really pure friendship between them.”
Before Harry takes on the symbiote and becomes Venom though, we’ll spend much of the game stomping about New York as Peter Parker in his symbiote suit. Yuri Lowenthal’s take on the character is darker and more sinister, willing to put innocents in danger if it means accomplishing his goals. Once again, Insomniac wants to stand out with its new take on a very familiar story.
“When you play the game you’ll notice his voice change,” Paquette says of Spider-Man in the symbiote suit. “There’s something there, [Yuri] has some deep emotional stuff that he’s bringing out that makes Peter feel a little bit off, and it’s scary. Especially if we love Peter the way that we do. We don’t like to see him throwing a civilian on the ground, we don’t like to see him being mean to Miles, but we had to go there for our story to really make sense.
His relationships suffer. MJ and Harry and Miles can see what this is doing to him when he can’t, but he thinks he’s better because he’s got this power. He’s better, and can’t recognise what they recognise.”
Paquette is coy when I ask about the symbiote suit itself - fans weren’t exactly fond of it when it was first revealed earlier this year. It was overcomplicated with armour plating, lacking the defining lines of other suits in the game that were so popular. In the three hours I played, it seemed to have been updated with more definitive features and bolder characteristics. But when I asked if it had been changed or updated since the reveal, a PR rep butted in and said it’d been “iterated upon” throughout development but no major changes had been made.
Insomniac also opts against touching on thepossibility of a SAG-AFTRA strike action linked to its studio and a number of others across the industryin regard to fair working conditions and use of AI when I bring it up, but is quick to give praise to its many actors and recent appearances at Comic-Con.
“Unfortunately we’re not talking about the strike,” Paquette tells me. “I wish I could. I wish I could. Yuri is amazing. We just did Comic-Con with Yuri, Nadji [Jeter, Miles Morales], and Laura [Bailey, MJ] there and the three of them together, they have some kind of magic and play off each other so well. We’re really lucky to have them as part of this brand.”
Just like Peter’s first outing, Spider-Man 2 has a lot of characters. Venom aside, there’s Kraven The Hunter, Mister Negative, Mysterio, Black Cat, Wraith, Taskmaster, and The Lizard, while this will no doubt grow in the full game. I asked Paquette if there was ever a fear of Insomniac finding itself in a ‘Spider-Man 3’ situation, where there are too many characters and not nearly enough time to do them justice.
“I remember saying to [game director] Bryan [Intihar] after we finished the first game that we can never have that many characters again, because that was really hard,” Paquette says. “But I think we’ve got about the same number of characters. I think it’s just how we like to tell a story. When you’ve got all these great characters Marvel has, it’s hard not to say ‘we could use that character for just part of the script’. But yes, it is hard when you have a lot of characters because you don’t want to tell too much story.”
There’s also characters like Gwen Stacy, a major Spider-Man character whose standing has been boosted further by her hugely popular presence in Into and Across The Spider-Verse. Fans are curious if she’ll be breaking into Insomniac’s world anytime soon, but it looks unlikely.
“We’re always getting ideas, but we also need to stay focused on the story that we’re trying to tell, and she isn’t part of the story we’re trying to tell, unfortunately for those Gwen Stacy fans out there. But who knows?”
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