Dive into a brand new, darker Marvel’s Spider-Man story with Insomniac Games’ Senior Creative Director Bryan Intihar, Senior Game Director Ryan Smith, Senior Narrative Director Jon Paquette, Senior Art Director Jacinda Chew, actors Yuri Lowenthal (Peter Parker), Nadji Jeter (Miles Morales), Laura Bailey (Mary Jane Watson), and Tony Todd (Venom), along with Marvel Games VP & Creative Director Bill Rosemann. Get a behind-the-scenes look at Insomniac Games’ take on the monstrous Venom, what’s new in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and how the symbiote plays a role in the sequel to the hit PlayStation games Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is now available for Pre-Order on the PlayStation Store. We can’t wait for you to play the game on October 20th, only on PS5.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is now available for Pre-Order on the PlayStation Store. We can’t wait for you to play the game on October 20th, only on PS5.
Category
🎮️
GamingTranscript
00:00 ♪ ♪ ♪
00:02 Hey, MJ.
00:10 I have another name for you.
00:11 Kraven.
00:12 He's here on some kind of hunt.
00:15 You know, if you need me, I'm just a call away.
00:19 What the hell is going on with Pete?
00:23 He's not himself.
00:24 This was our dream.
00:29 But I'm going to kill him.
00:31 We've got a lot to talk about.
00:38 So first, Brian, my first question for you is,
00:40 where do we find Peter, MJ, Harry, and Miles
00:44 at the beginning of Marvel's Spider-Man 2
00:45 now that we're in the third installment of the franchise?
00:47 Well, you could find us all in the back
00:49 being late to the panel
00:50 because we were watching the story trailer
00:51 as you guys were all watching it backstage.
00:52 - True, true. - That's first off.
00:53 So, yeah, I think what's really great about this game
00:57 is that we're going to pick up roughly nine to ten months
00:59 after the events of Miles Morales,
01:01 which if you haven't played it,
01:03 it's an amazing video game by the talented team.
01:05 And what's really great is we kind of have Pete and Miles,
01:08 they're a well-oiled machine.
01:10 They're a great team.
01:11 They lean on each other.
01:12 They really support each other
01:13 and are really protecting the city.
01:14 But at the same time,
01:15 there's a lot of things going on in their life
01:16 outside the mask.
01:18 Miles is applying to college
01:20 and trying to figure out how to write his college essay.
01:22 And you have Pete starting his teaching career.
01:24 And then you have MJ, who is still at the Bugle,
01:28 but under a new leadership
01:30 with the return of J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Mutant.
01:33 - Ooh. - Wow.
01:34 - Damn, damn. - That guy.
01:35 - All right.
01:36 And then, Bill, so my next question is for you.
01:38 So, can you talk about the dynamic of these characters
01:41 and how working with Insomniac,
01:43 they're keeping the authenticity of the DNA,
01:46 the core of these characters,
01:47 while still making it their own?
01:49 - Together, working all together, we're all one team.
01:52 We all love the characters.
01:54 We're all, our goal is to make something that you love,
01:57 that when you play it, you say,
01:59 "This was made by fans for fans."
02:01 - Oh, yeah.
02:02 (audience cheering)
02:04 - And, John, my next question is for you.
02:05 With the new villains that we've seen in this game,
02:08 confirmed villains with Kraven, Venom, and Lizard,
02:11 can you talk narratively why you felt those choices
02:14 for those villains were important?
02:15 - For us, it really started with Kraven.
02:18 He's our catalyst for the story, right?
02:20 Like, he, you know, before the game starts,
02:22 he's halfway around the world being Kraven,
02:25 hunting, trying to find the ultimate prey.
02:28 And he watched from afar
02:30 as the events of the first two games occurred,
02:33 and he decided, "You know what?
02:35 "There's a lot of stuff going on in New York City.
02:37 "That might be my new hunting ground."
02:39 So, like I said, Kraven's a catalyst
02:41 for everything happening.
02:42 When he comes to New York City,
02:44 you know, a lot of things start going wrong.
02:48 You know, we have Lizard coming out.
02:52 We have the symbiote coming out.
02:56 And as you saw briefly in that trailer,
03:01 Miles is forced to come face to face with Mr. Negative,
03:05 the guy who killed his dad.
03:07 So, there's a lot of drama that's happening in this game.
03:11 - Absolutely, and Jacinda, my next question for you.
03:13 So, I think one of the things fans really appreciate
03:15 about both of the games is just the environment,
03:18 just the lived-in cities,
03:19 that it feels like a character on its own.
03:21 So, can you talk about how you elevated that
03:23 with this new game, especially with the PS5 technology,
03:26 and the new locations that we'll see,
03:27 like with Coney Island and Queens and stuff like that?
03:31 - Totally, yeah.
03:32 We're super excited to finally be able
03:33 to bring Brooklyn and Queens to our fans.
03:36 Obviously, Miles is from Brooklyn.
03:39 Peter is from Queens. - Brooklyn!
03:41 (laughing)
03:42 - Not only does it increase the gameplay space,
03:44 so there's a lot more places for you to swing to,
03:48 but it also has some really cool, obviously,
03:50 Marvel landmarks, as well as New York landmarks.
03:53 For example, I know in Queens,
03:54 everybody has wanted to visit Aunt May's house,
03:56 and perhaps see where Peter lives.
03:59 I know a lot of fans had wanted to interact with that space,
04:01 so just being able to walk in
04:02 and see where he lives is incredible.
04:04 Oh, and there's a picture of Aunt May's house.
04:07 The other thing that's really cool
04:09 is it's introducing a lot of cool landmarks,
04:11 like the East River.
04:12 So, as you can see in our gameplay trailer
04:15 that we produced a while back,
04:17 you can now chase the lizards on the East River,
04:19 which is awesome.
04:20 And personally, for me, I just love seeing
04:23 the Brooklyn Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge,
04:25 and being able to just swing across the water.
04:27 It's an incredible experience.
04:29 - And Ryan, my next question for you,
04:30 just following up with the new locations,
04:32 can you talk about how the new traversal techniques
04:35 that we are implementing in this game
04:36 affected your approach to this, and how you elevated it?
04:40 - Sure, I mean, one of the interesting things
04:42 with Brooklyn and Queens is you're not always surrounded
04:44 by skyscrapers anymore, and so we thought,
04:46 what's a really great opportunity?
04:47 If something we've seen on comic book covers,
04:49 we've seen it in the movies, we can add the web wings.
04:52 And that's really changed how we look at traversal.
04:55 Swinging is always our Spider-Man core,
04:57 that's where we come from, but what we did
04:59 is design the web wings so that we could integrate them
05:01 and weave them in with swinging.
05:03 You gain height and you build speed
05:05 between swinging and the web wings,
05:07 and you go back and forth and really
05:09 kind of weave your way through the city.
05:10 It's really fun.
05:11 In Brooklyn and Queens, there are some lower spaces,
05:13 there are some new spaces, but you have to get
05:15 between Manhattan and the other boroughs
05:18 by crossing the river, so that's another opportunity
05:20 where we could really, well, we added these things
05:23 called jet streams or wind tunnels.
05:24 You really build speed there, and they just shoot you
05:27 right along when you're on the web wings.
05:29 It's really fun, and it's one of the chances for us
05:32 to really push the power of the PS5 there
05:35 and hit a level of speed that we hadn't had
05:38 in the previous game.
05:39 It's really added a new dimension
05:40 to what we can do with traversal.
05:42 - We do see, we see Mr. Negative in this trailer,
05:44 so can you just briefly talk a little bit
05:46 about how he's still coping with the effects
05:48 of his game and dealing with the loss of his father?
05:51 - Man, well, y'all seen Miles' trajectory,
05:54 you know, and just with everything that he's been through
05:56 with his family and his friends,
05:58 and just getting into this new world
06:00 that he's being introduced to,
06:02 but he's now owning this power.
06:04 But, you know, coming back to Martin Lee, man,
06:07 that was something big.
06:08 I didn't think that we would revisit that
06:11 because we had a lot of emotions on set.
06:13 - And my last question, 'cause we touched on it as well,
06:15 but his powers and his abilities,
06:16 how is he really, we see them evolving,
06:19 and we see he has a couple new abilities,
06:21 so how is he really coming into his own
06:23 with that, with his abilities?
06:25 - Oh, we got some stuff coming for y'all.
06:27 Y'all, y'all get ready.
06:28 October 20th, you're gonna be surprised,
06:31 you're gonna be shocked, you're gonna be on your feet,
06:34 you're gonna be screaming, you're gonna be crying,
06:36 you're gonna be laughing.
06:37 So y'all get ready, man.
06:38 We got some powerful stuff coming for y'all.
06:41 - I apologize to employers everywhere
06:43 because I hear a lot of people going,
06:44 I've already booked time off from work
06:46 for October 20th for like three days.
06:50 - We have MJ in the house, so can you talk about
06:54 what are her ambitions in this game
06:56 and how her storyline has evolved from when we last saw her?
06:59 - Yeah, I think she's coming to her own a lot more.
07:01 I think she's understanding who she is as a reporter
07:04 and as a writer a lot more.
07:06 You know, she spent a lot of time
07:08 away from Peter in Symcharia,
07:11 and she's, am I allowed to say this?
07:14 You know, she's writing.
07:17 - You know, there's a reason why we wanted Yuri,
07:20 Laura, and Nadja here, because they are a team.
07:22 They are, you know, they complement each other really well.
07:24 Not just what's going on in the superhero world,
07:27 but what's happening in their lives.
07:28 And I think that's why, you know,
07:30 I mean, even when we're shooting our scenes,
07:32 we're all kind of working together as a team
07:35 figuring out how do we put this game together.
07:36 And I know we couldn't be working with better people.
07:40 Like, I love these people.
07:42 They're awesome.
07:42 - Love you too, man.
07:43 - Love you more, bro.
07:44 (audience applauding)
07:46 - They're the best.
07:47 - My man.
07:48 - There's somebody else that we can't forget about
07:49 on this panel.
07:50 - Uh-oh.
07:51 - The venom of the minimum.
07:52 - He's in here.
07:54 (audience applauding)
07:55 - Tony Todd, it is truly an honor to have you
07:58 on this panel right now.
07:59 Let's go.
08:00 - Yeah, let's go.
08:00 (audience applauding)
08:01 - And all of a sudden I get a call from Insomniac
08:04 to test drive Venom.
08:07 And I gotta say, it's been the most exciting
08:10 voiceover journey that I've had to date.
08:13 - Wow.
08:14 (audience applauding)
08:16 - Brian, can you just talk about the casting of this?
08:20 I know there's a story or something along the how
08:22 this happened.
08:23 - Oh yeah.
08:24 So I remember we cast a lot of the characters pretty quickly.
08:27 Like obviously we had, you know, Miles, Peter, MJ.
08:32 And then really early, we actually like right before COVID
08:35 I think we cast Craven and I knew I was putting off Venom.
08:38 I was just putting it off.
08:39 I was like, I know there's already, you know,
08:42 there's gonna be so many opinions what people,
08:44 and I know I was scared to death.
08:45 And I remember Patrick, our dialogue lead was asking me,
08:49 like, what are you looking for?
08:50 And I said, I don't know.
08:52 And then I remember, just happened to be on the internet
08:55 one day and I was listening to one of the,
08:59 I think it was the Candyman, the new Candyman trailer.
09:03 And I heard Tony and I was like,
09:07 if you could get like a Tony Todd, that would be the one.
09:09 And then a couple of weeks go by,
09:10 I don't think anything about it.
09:12 And Patrick messages me and goes,
09:14 you're not gonna believe this.
09:16 Tony Todd's interested.
09:19 And I remember he sent it real quick tape in
09:21 and it was like, sorry, Tony,
09:22 it was really bad like audio quality,
09:25 but it took like three lines and I was like, that's it.
09:28 Please, please hire him.
09:30 Please, whatever he wants, give it to him.
09:32 And I think you all know based on what you heard,
09:36 it's, he's incredible.
09:38 We have a wonderful,
09:39 there's four of us here from Insomniac,
09:41 but we have so many Insomniacs
09:43 who are putting so much work into this game.
09:45 And I, again, I just wanna say,
09:46 if they're somehow listening to this somehow,
09:48 thank you for all the work
09:49 that you guys are putting into it right now.
09:50 It's incredible.
09:51 The work they're doing to finish this up is just,
09:56 I call Insomniac my second family
09:58 because we just put so much into this.
10:00 And you can imagine when you're in your family,
10:02 everybody has opinions, right?
10:03 And I think it's probably the only decision
10:05 I've ever made being a creative director in 10 years
10:07 where I just said, Tony Todd is gonna be Venom
10:10 and everybody said yes.
10:11 So. (audience laughing)
10:13 - Can you just talk a little bit about Venom's motivations
10:15 and his personality in this
10:17 and why is he so important to the narrative of this game?
10:20 - Well, yeah, I mean, Venom is a symbiote, right?
10:25 And I think the thing that a lot of symbiote stories
10:30 have in common and the reason why I think we connect
10:33 with them really well is that it's a simple human story.
10:37 We all have a darkness inside of us.
10:39 And then you put the symbiote on top of that.
10:42 It really brings out the dark parts
10:45 of what Spider-Man is about, power and responsibility.
10:48 You heard Yuri talk about it a couple minutes ago.
10:52 And what happens in the story is that
10:54 that sense of responsibility starts to go away.
10:57 It's really interesting when you bring the symbiote
10:59 into these relationships,
11:01 how it really challenges them,
11:03 not just externally 'cause there's cool powers.
11:05 You know, Ryan was talking about having
11:07 that control in your hand.
11:08 Oh my God, it's amazing.
11:09 But the people you love around you.
11:13 - Tony, I'm coming back to you.
11:14 Can you talk about your approach to bringing the voice
11:16 of it to life and how you approached it?
11:18 - For me, Venom was fun to do.
11:20 And I wanted to make sure that there was a joyous quality
11:23 in his destruction.
11:25 - I'm glad it was fun for you
11:26 'cause it scared the hell out of us.
11:28 (audience laughing)
11:29 - It's always fun for me.
11:30 - Yeah, it'd be funny when we were in the recording booth
11:33 'cause we would record separately
11:34 when we were doing gameplay dialogue.
11:35 And every once in a while, Tony,
11:37 you would come and play in our headphones before a line.
11:40 And it was like, oh God.
11:41 (audience laughing)
11:43 Wouldn't expect it and it was terrifying.
11:44 - And Brian, I'll come back to you real quick.
11:46 What was that like when you heard Tony voice his lines
11:49 for the first time officially?
11:50 And what was your initial reaction?
11:53 - Well, first relief 'cause I was like,
11:55 okay, we made the right choice for sure.
11:57 And I think then just general excitement.
11:59 And I think Tony is so talented that sometimes depending on,
12:04 we have so many different characters
12:06 or so many different actors.
12:08 Sometimes we're, depending on what the role calls for,
12:11 are we gonna adjust the way that they do the line?
12:14 And you just let Tony be Tony and you get magic.
12:19 - It was like a gift come true to be able to submit myself
12:24 and the whole voiceover family and world
12:26 and meet new friends and conquest.
12:29 And I'm still pinching myself because I'm a gamer
12:33 and I'm telling you,
12:34 I can't wait for this monumental masterpiece to drop.
12:38 - That's right.
12:40 - Sizzle.
12:41 - I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you,
12:43 can you do the iconic, we are Venom line
12:46 for everybody in the crowd?
12:47 - Bring us all out.
12:49 - Which one do you want?
12:50 No, okay.
12:52 - We are Venom.
12:55 (audience cheering)
12:58 - All right, well, I think we got some special surprises
13:07 coming up for you guys.
13:08 I think the next thing we wanna talk about
13:10 is the collector's edition statue
13:13 that we have here on this table right here.
13:15 - I think it really represents what this game is about.
13:18 I've said in previous interviews, I've talked about,
13:23 it's called Spider-Man 2 for a reason
13:25 because we have two iconic characters
13:28 in this great piece of art,
13:30 but also it's gonna take two Spider-Men
13:33 to take on something so powerful,
13:34 something that they've never been able,
13:36 did nothing come their way.
13:37 I mean, if you look at whether it's Doc Ock
13:41 in the first game and then Tinker and Miles Morales,
13:44 like Venom is literally a whole different beast.
13:47 - Brian, why are you putting on gloves right now?
13:50 - Of these?
13:51 - Yeah, what is that for?
13:52 - Well, Dorian, before we, I think we should play the video.
13:56 - I think we should play the video.
13:57 Let's go and play that video real quick.
13:59 - Uh-oh. - What?
14:00 - Uh-oh.
14:01 (dramatic music)
14:04 - Miles, I need your help!
14:07 - What is this stuff?
14:08 Wait, Pete, I got an idea.
14:13 (grunting)
14:16 - Nice, one more time.
14:18 On three.
14:19 One, two, three.
14:21 (explosion)
14:24 - What?
14:37 - You guys didn't tell me about that part.
14:39 - Yeah.
14:40 (crowd cheering)
14:42 - The beautiful Spider-Man 2 PlayStation 5.
14:47 - Oh my God.
14:47 - Oh wow.
14:48 - Oh wow.
14:49 (laughing)
14:51 - I didn't know about that.
14:53 I didn't know, they didn't show me that
14:55 before we came out here.
14:57 - No, they didn't tell us that.
14:57 - No, no, that was-- - They did not.
14:59 - They, yeah.
15:00 - Now I have to get a new piece.
15:01 - Secret, secret, you guys.
15:03 - I knew what they were doing.
15:05 - Wow.
15:05 - All right, well, here we go.
15:08 Like Marvel, they keep everything so tight-lipped.
15:10 I found out about this five minutes before we came out here.
15:12 That's how serious they are.
15:13 So Brian, can you speak to this epic,
15:16 amazing, beautifulness right here?
15:17 - This has been one of the biggest secrets
15:19 throughout the entire development of the game,
15:21 that we were gonna have the console and the DualShock.
15:25 So I know we're pretty pumped.
15:27 I mean, I think, you know,
15:28 we talked about the Symbiote playing a big role.
15:30 Obviously it plays a big role here
15:32 in the design of the console.
15:33 And we thank PlayStation for going above and beyond
15:37 with the design of it.
15:37 I know, I just worked really closely with everybody
15:40 on the design of it, and I'm pretty pumped, man.
15:44 - All in all, that being said,
15:46 I wanna say thank you again to this incredible panel.
15:48 Thank you guys so much for all your hard work.
15:50 (audience cheering)
15:53 [CHEERING]
15:55 COMPUTER VOICE: PlayStation.