One ofMarvel’s Spider-Man’s most impressive features is its open-world island of Manhattan, where players are able to enjoy an engaging traversal system with web-swinging, wall-crawling, and free-running. The city is always saturated with random criminal activity or other optional activities to occupy the player’s attention, and the same will surely be the case inMarvel’s Spider-Man 2when it releases sometime next year. There is already a lot of speculation about whatMarvel’s Spider-Man 2may improve or change about the game preceding it.
Havingtwo playable Spider-Men inMarvel’s Spider-Man 2will already be a significant change in gameplay, but there is one improvementMarvel’s Spider-Man 2could make that would affect the player as much as the open-world environment. If city-wide destruction that ruins streets or buildings lingered, remaining visible and traversable in the open world after a big action sequence,Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s immersion and narrative consequence would be fascinating.
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Marvel’s Spider-Man’s City Destruction is Misrepresentative in the Open World
Marvel’s Spider-Mandoes not level its Manhattan island in irreparable calamity, but it does cause enough damage to the city in order to make its lack of subsequent destruction noticeable. For example,the crane and helicopter chase sequence atop Fisk Construction is a cinematic set piecewith Spider-Man webbing the immense mechanism to nearby buildings as it topples over.
Likewise,Spider-Man pursues the Inner Demonspiloting a helicopter that dangles a truck throughout the city, smashing the truck into water towers, billboards, and other buildings. Once on top of the helicopter, Spider-Man webs it to swing it back upward into the air after it begins plummeting, where it skids along the street.
The helicopter’s tail boom severs and is tossed along the street, miraculously avoiding pedestrians before Spider-Man can web it up and onto a building. Then, with an impressive amount of webbing, Spider-Man suspends the destroyed helicopter between two buildings before it hits the ground. This is an incredibly exciting and engaging sequence, but its aftermath is less exciting. Players can return to Fisk Construction and see construction underway, but not the massive crane webbed to nearby buildings. Similarly, the helicopter is nowhere to be seen, even if players were able to once again find which specific street it was suspended in.
There is an obvious reason as to why this may be the case: Insomniac would need to then implement a considerable amount of destruction and damage to the city that was not there before. This could prove incredibly difficult as it would need to pinpoint where each point of impact or destruction was throughout the city. But without city destruction remaining in subsequent sequences of the game,Marvel’s Spider-Mandenies itself even more immersion in its environmental storytelling.
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How Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Could Implement City Destruction
It is likely a technology feat to iterate on the city and have it adapt to such damage, but it would go a long way in terms of showcasing the consequences of each action and of each narrative spectacle. If players could return to where cinematic spectacles took place and see how that area of the city has been leveled or destroyed, it would make open-world traversal even more immersive as players see how these moments of unbridled action affect the narrative and overall world.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2is sure to have its own plethora of intense action sequences with elaborate set pieces, and Insomniac has an opportunity with the current-gen-exclusive sequel to implement destruction more immersively. In doing so, traversal would not have to be hindered in the areas where destruction has taken place.
Rather, traversal could be amplified by having adaptive free-running or perch-launch points with Spider-Man pirouetting through girder beams or other debris, comparable tohow Spider-Man already stylishly traversesthrough narrow squeeze-throughs and other obstructed environments. Buildings that have newly erupted holes through them, exposing their disheveled interiors, could feature alternate paths for players to traverse instead of web-swinging or wall-crawling around or over them.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2may or may not decide to include such an overwhelming design to its city, since the city would need to effectively change each time a set piece affected it. But if it does, its immersion will make the entire experience cohesive and meaningful toMarvel’s Spider-Man 2’s narrative.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2is scheduled to release in 2023 for PS5.
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