With Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 now just a little over a month away from launch, Insomniac and Sony have opened the floodgates, and a glut of new details has come rushing out. Thanks to the game’s recent State of Play showing and a bunch of hands-on previews, we’ve learned a great deal more about the highly anticipated sequel, its open world, its combat, and much more, and here, we’re going to run through some of those details.
INSTANT SWITCHING
We’ve played as both Peter Parker and Miles Morales in the two Spider-Man games so far, but Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is going to see both of them sharing the stage on equal footing- which, of course, is something that we’ve known for a while now. When it comes to the story missions, the game will decide which of the two Spideys you’re playing as at any given moment, while with side missions, there will be some that you’ll be able to tackle as either, and some that’ll be tied specifically to one or the other. Out in the open world, however, you can switch between the two at any given time, and thanks to the PS5’s SSD, switching between them will be instantaneous. Speaking of instantaneous, fast travel in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will also be near-instant, with no load screens to sit through whatsoever.
NEW LOCATIONS
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is obviously going to make plenty of improvements to Manhattan over its two predecessors in terms of things like density and fidelity, but beyond that, there will be plenty of entirely new areas to explore as well. The sequel’s open world is roughly twice as large as the first two games, and will include two new boroughs to explore in the form of Brooklyn and Queens. Some of the new areas you’ll be visiting include the festive and vibrant Coney Island, Miles’ school at Brooklyn Visions Academy, and Peter’s alma mater at Midtown High, among others.
SIDE ACTIVITIES
Plenty of familiar side activities from previous titles will be returning in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, like photo ops and crimes, but a bunch of new ones are being introduced as well. There are Talon Drones to chase through slipstreams, Underground army crates to discover, Spider-Bots to find and retrieve, and Hunters’ cloaked Blinds to find all across New York. The latter will also help you learn more information about Kraven the Hunter, while Insomniac also says that several side missions will also lead to showdowns with new villains who haven’t made any appearances in the previous two games.
VISUAL CUES
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is also making changes in how it will present its optional content to players. Where the previous titles a rather structured approach that you’d expect to see in most open world titles, in Spider-Man 2, things will seemingly be much more diegetic, and the game will draw your attention to optional activities through visual cues. That’ll take many different forms, like seeing Talon Drones circling around a building, or noticing the ping of a Spider-Bot in the distance, or even seeing a symbol being projected in the sky.
AR LENSES AND SPIDEY APP
There will, of course, also be ways to manually discover available optional activities in the open world around you. For starters, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App is making a return, which has seen some upgrades, and will also let you accept incoming requests from the citizens of New York. Meanwhile, both Peter and Miles are now also equipped with AR lenses, which you can use at any time to view overlays of side activities in the world itself, rather than being pulled into a menu.
DISTRICT PROGRESS SYSTEM
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is also making changes to how you’ll progress through each individual district of the city in its entirety. From what we’ve seen, it seems like progress will now be tiered, and will unlock new rewards at regular intervals as you make progress in a district. Specific details haven’t been shared by Insomniac yet, but we do know that unlocking fast travel to a district will be tied to how much progress you’ve made in it.
COMBAT CHANGES
Combat in Spider-Man and Miles Morales was already pretty darn good, but Insomniac is cranking things up a notch in Spider-Man 2 in this area as well. The biggest difference seems to be the fact that gadgets and abilities are now mapped to R1 and L1 respectively. Hold a shoulder button, and you can use one of four equipped abilities or gadgets using the face buttons. With four abilities and gadgets each available to you at a moment’s notice (rather than having to pull up the radial wheel), and all of them running on cooldowns, it seems like the moment-to-moment punching and dodging will be interspersed by explosive abilities and gadgets much more often than in previous games.
PARRY
Another new combat mechanic that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is introducing is parrying. Though there are some attacks that cannot be parried, at the same time, some have to be. These attacks are denoted by a small yellow circle, and require you to press the L1 button with precise timing to not only block an attack, but also stagger the enemy attacking you, leaving them temporarily vulnerable for follow-up attacks. Presumably, the parry mechanic is something we’ll be using a lot against bosses, mini-bosses, and some of the game’s bigger foes.
PETER AND MILES’ ABILITIES
With Peter having the Symbiote Suit at his disposal and Miles continuing to hone his bioelectricity (or his Venom powers, as he calls them), both Spideys have plenty to differentiate them from each other. Peter’s Symbiote Strike lets you propel a swirling, black mass of tentacles and spikes at enemies, while the Symbiote Punch ability powerfully launches enemies into the air. Then there’s the Black Suit’s special move, Symbiote Surge, which lets you manually grab enemies and slam them into the ground. On Miles’ side, meanwhile, he has access to moves like Chain Lightning and Venom Smash Jolt, both of which are looking like flashy upgrades over the moveset he had access to in his own game.
ENEMY VARIETY
It looks like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will also encourage you to make full use of your varied arsenal of abilities, moves, and gadgets by throwing a variety of different enemy types at you. Hunters (followers of Kraven, as their name suggests) will be able to throw out explosive mines and poison grenades, while some will even throw electrified nets at you. Others will shoot at you with guns, come at you with shields, or try to slash at you with blades and knives. Meanwhile, Talon Drones will bring their own suite of abilities, like sniping at you from a distance, or emitting fields that will temporarily block you from using your abilities.
PUZZLES
Outside of combat, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will, like its predecessors, break things up with a variety of different puzzles, with several new varieties being introduced, like taking control of a Spider-Bot as it crawls through vents and sneaks past and distracts enemies, or fixing DNA strands in a new type of minigame. Another minigame has you resetting magnets in a particle accelerator, which you do by making use of the DualSense’s adaptive triggers, pulling them just the right amount so they align properly with the proper pressure points.
UPGRADES
Progression and upgrades are also seeing improvements in Spider-Man 2. There are now three skill trees in the game- one for Peter, one for Miles, and one that’s common for both of them. In addition to powering up their innate combat, stealth, and traversal abilities through their skill trees, you will, of course, also be able to upgrade their gadgets, as well as their suits. Where the latter are concerned, upgrades will include perks for traversal (like increasing the speed of Web Wings movement), how much damage you’re dealing, how much health you have, and more.
Oh, and speaking of suits…
SUITS
Marvel’s Spider-Man and Miles Morales both boasted a vast offering of suits for players to equip, and Spider-Man 2 will, of course, continue to deliver on that front. Insomniac has said that there are over 65 suits in the game, many of which will be inspired by Spidey comics and movies. That in and of itself is an eye-watering number as it is, but on top of that, thanks to the new Suit Styles feature, each suit will also have multiple variants sporting alternate colour shaders. In total, there are over 200 suit variants in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
And yes, the Black Suit from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 is also included, for all you Bully Maguire fans out there.
DELUXE EDITION SUITS
Of the 65 suits available in the game, 10 will sadly be exclusive to the Digital Deluxe Edition. These are the Apunkalyptic Suit for Peter; the Stone Monkey Suit, which is inspired by Chinese folklore; the Japanese media inspired Tactical Suit; the stealthy Aurantia Suit for Peter; the 25th Century Suit, sporting an ultramodern design style; the cyberpunk-style EnC0ded Suit for Miles; the Biomechanical Suit, inspired by popular anime creature design; the stylish Red Spectre Suit for Miles; the Tokusatsu Suit, inspired by Japanese media known as Tokusatsu; and the Agimat Suit, inspired by the indigenous tribes of the Philippines.
GRAPHICS MODES
In the early years of the PS5’s life, Insomniac has done some really impressive work with all of its games on a technical level, especially when it comes to the graphics modes that are available to players, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will seemingly continue that tradition. The game will have three graphics modes on offer, with all of them rendering at a dynamic resolution either at 30 FPS, 40 FPS, or 60 FPS. To top it all of, ray tracing will be enabled in all three modes as a baseline.