Spider-Man, the eagerly anticipated upcoming action adventure game by Insomniac based on the most popular superhero in the world, has been getting a lot of information of late, thank to a blowout in the latest Game Informer issue. Among the new information we got from Game Informer are included new details on how traversal will work in the new game.
Traversal, of course, is a hugely important part of any Spider-Man game- the act of web slinging, going up walls, and winging lends Spider-Man a unique kind of mobility that a game based on the character has to nail. In the new game, Spider-Man has been at it for eight years- so in a sense, he is at the peak of his powers.
“He’s eight years as Spider-Man, so he’s fine-tuned his traversal methods,” said Bryan Intihar, Creative Director at Insomniac. “We didn’t want to stop the players’ momentum at all. If you slam into a building, you run along it or up it, depending on the angle. When you get to the top, you have two options: you can just keep going, which will send you into a midair jump, or you time a button press at the top of the building to catapult you forward to keep your momentum going.”
Insomiac’s Ryan Smith, director at the studio, added that the way traversal works, there is never a break, with multiple new options being added for the player for traversal. “If there’s a building down below, you can attach a downward web to keep your flow going. There’s a physical aspect to all of it. It ends up being a different swing motion to get you back in range,” he said.
There have been very few games that have actually managed to properly nail traversal- Just Cause and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are among the only ones recently, to be honest. I really hope this is one area Spider-Man shines in when it launches on September 7, exclusively on the PS4.