Spider-Man 2’s narrative director, Ben Arfmann, has explained why Insomniac Games changed Venom’s identity in its universe and didn’t feature Eddie Brock.
As we’ve all known ever since Spider-Man 2’s first teaser trailer (yes, the one with that infamous image of Miles and Peter staring ahead at the camera), one of the big bads of the story is Venom. Interestingly, however, Insomniac Games changed things up significantly by having someone else take up the gooey mantle instead of Eddie Brock.Spoilers for Spider-Man 2’s final act follow.
Before release, Spider-Man fans had a ton of guesses for who might end up being Insomniac Games' version of Venom,with one theory even suggesting that it was going to be Peter Parker himself.
Earth-1048’s version of Venom is Harry Osborn,something that’s been made pretty obvious for some time now thanks to all of the post-credit teases and the story trailer basically spelling it out. This is a big change for Spider-Man canon as, aside from 2012’s Ultimate Spider-Man series, Harry Osborn has never been Venom before.
This caused some mixed reactions from Spider-Man fans when it was first revealed, but seems to have been more positively received now that the game is out. Even if public opinion on the switch has changed, fans are still wondering why it was done in the first place, something that Spider-Man 2’s narrative director has now explained.
Ben Arfmann recently took part in an interview with Gizmodo’s i09 to discuss all of Spider-Man 2’s late-game spoilers. One of the main points of the interview is Venom’s new identity, with i09 asking Arfmann whythe team decided to go with Harry Osborn for this version of Venom over Eddie Brock. Arfmann responded by explaining that, although the team look at other source material, they could only think about Insomniac’s version of Harry and Peter and their potential collision.
“We try and ingest all of it and then do our own thing”, Arfmann said. “You can see influences from other stories, as you say. But when we were telling it, all we were thinking about was our Harry Osborn and Peter Parker, and trying to figure out how to put them on this incredible collision course that would challenge them both emotionally. We love Eddie’s Venom, and we definitely wanted to tell our own Venom story—one that was unique and interesting, and also build on this distinct lore we set up.”
Arfmann continued by saying that the team knew that it wanted to do a Venom story “super early on”, but that it wanted the story to be personal and full of drama, which is exactly what making Harry Osborn take on the symbiote suit provides.
