Insomniac Games’ Jeannette Lee & Mike Fitzgerald Say the Symbiote in Spider-Man 2 Represents Temptation

Prior to the launch of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for the PlayStation 5, we had the opportunity to speak with Core Tech Director Mike Fitzgerald and Project Director Jeannette Lee from Insomniac Games regarding the game.

Mike Fitzgerald is a Core Tech Director at Insomniac Games. He previously worked with Harmonix Music Systems on the Rock Band series before joining Insomniac Games.

Meanwhile, Jeannette Lee is the Project Director of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and is an industry veteran, previously associated with other AAA studios such as Electronic Arts, Sony Santa Monica Studio, Activision, and more.

Insomniac Games’ custom game engine has already demonstrated the potential of the PS5 in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. What has been enhanced in Spider-Man 2?

Mike Fitzgerald:  I can start with that one. We’re fortunate enough that this is our fourth title that we’re releasing for the PlayStation 5. We released Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Miles Morales, at launch, and then Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

And really, what we’ve tried to do is build on this foundation that we have in each of those games. Make sure each time we’re learning more about how to use the hardware, pushing ourselves a little bit further, and leveraging everything we’ve done in one of those games in the next one. So certainly, this was a big opportunity for us to ship up PlayStation 5-only games to expand upon a lot of the fundamentals of Spider-Man.

We have this massive New York, and we have to add a ton of detail to it all across the city. We had a lot of fun leveraging the SSD and the storage in the PlayStation 5 on Ratchet & Clank. And so we got to bring that into Spider-Man in ways that directly reference Ratchet & Clank, but also in ways that are just fun for a Spider-Man game by itself.

So the list is dramatically long, and I could talk for an hour about all the fun things in there, but I guess I would say that this is a game we could have only done on the PlayStation 5. And it’s been a pleasure working on that console for these games.

Both Spider-Men played very differently from one another, with Peter having mechanical arms and Symbiote, while Miles with his new Bio-Venom. What was the creative process behind each of their playstyles?

Jeannette Lee: So we knew we wanted to tell a story with two Spider-Men, and we knew that meant, narratively, making sure that they had a really good story. It was very satisfying and sort of fulfilling for them as sort of characters, but it also meant on the gameplay side that we wanted to make sure we were giving them new toys and fun things to do that still felt really authentic to them as a character.

So the sort of Iron Arms on Peter is, of course, like, it makes a lot of sense for him. He’s so tech-heavy as a character, but seeing that in gameplay was really fun. Of course, he gets some symbiote abilities later. And that, in and of itself, was a really fun way of exploring how to differentiate Peter even more as a Spider-Man while he’s in combat.

And then Miles is really getting to sort of evolve as his own Spider-Man. So we take the sort of abilities that you were familiar with in Miles Morales, and we sort of weave into the narrative his sort of concept of growing and getting stronger as a Spider-Man.

And so those sort of really drove us as we sort of iterated and tried a lot of really cool stuff over and over to see what felt good, what felt right for each character, and how it worked in gameplay and combat spaces or still spaces. It was a lot of sort of iteration and trial and error and finding some cool stuff and then cranking that all the way to eleven.

In other games, you generally play one character from start to end in a linear fashion, but Spider-Man 2 allows players to play as both Peter and Miles. Why the duo-protagonist campaign?

Mike Fitzgerald: I think for us, we’ve had such a good time developing these characters in this world over the last couple of games, and we love them so much.

I know our writers didn’t want to make players choose, segment, or tell a story only one or the other. We really wanted to make it a story about both characters, how they react to each other, and how their lives intertwine, and we wanted the player to connect with both of those characters and not just be one side and the other.

So a big part of what we challenged ourselves to do was weave the stories together, bounce back between the two during boss fights or missions, and then in the middle, give players some chance to, with some of the side content, experience it as one or the other, but then also have side content that’s specific to one or the other.

So we thought to tell the best story about these two Spider-Men, it would be a story that involved both of them all the way through what the player was experiencing from both sides.

Both Spider-Men seem different and more mature than when we last met them. How did the team use storytelling, animation, or design to help confirm their growth?

Jeannette Lee: Well, the fun thing about making the next game in a series with characters that you’ve already liked and spent a lot of time with is… I’m going to say it this way: Dress up a little bit with them.

So, one of the fun things we get to do is obviously have these performers, who are so awesome. We get to take newer scans of them and make sure that they’re up-to-date. For as much as we want to sort of age them up, we give them new clothes, we have new hair, we have so much new stuff that goes into making them look great, and we tie that into the narrative and the story of where they are.

Like you see Pete, in the beginning, trying really hard to be an adult with his little sweater vest. And it’s kind of fun to get to sort of dress them up and keep growing them for players. And for us, at least on a sort of narrative aspect.

Mike Fitzgerald: It’s very cool how the writing team works with the animation team to try and tell a story even through the way the characters move. Right! And what does it say about Miles—the way he swings down the street or the way he, you know, lands on a perch or jumps to the next one?

And what can be subtle about how they move that helps you remember where they’re in their life and how long they’ve been doing this and all those kinds of things? So every department is involved in telling the story in their own way.

There are now huge boss battles in large arenas now. Was this inspired by specific games, like God of War? Or was it because the PS5 made such ideas possible?

Jeannette Lee: I think we’re inspired by so much stuff, but we also have a pleasant sort of PlayStation Studio rivalry a little bit. God of War is such a great game that when they release it, we go, “Oh, that was cool. Could we do something like that but make it like our version of that?”

We see that in plenty of games, movies, TVs, and comics that we read, so we take inspiration from sort of everywhere like there are no bad ideas, and when we look at making something like that, I think, well, I’m going to let Fitz talk about how frequently we go. “We have this idea; could we do it?”

Mike Fitzgerald: I would say my team is a very technical team, and I think our instinct sometimes is to say, “That idea is crazy. We can’t do that.”

And so what we challenge ourselves to do is instead say, “The idea is crazy, but it’s very cool. Here are the 5 problems we’d have to solve if we really want to do that,” and start to chip away at that problem and understand it. And that’s part of how we, as a studio, push ourselves to be ambitious about these games—to give you something you haven’t seen before and give players some wild moments and some spectacle. So the crazy ideas are good, and then we just have to figure out how to work with them.

We can see the game engine using more ray tracing technology, expanding the map to the Brooklyn and Queens, and making the travel area much larger. Did the team think it was possible to achieve this map size on the previous generation of consoles?

Mike Fitzgerald: I think we didn’t make a map bigger just to make a map bigger. I think part of how this all evolves is that we knew we had the sense that we could have our player moving so much faster through the world, whether it’s because of the console or also because of the Web Wings as a traversal mechanic, and it makes it beneficial for there to be a bigger player playground to play around in, right?

It makes more sense that you would want to cover more ground and more space. And it just felt natural in that way. So really, I think where it comes down to the console and the tech is a lot about all those new ways of traversing that space. That’s such a much higher-detail space that it’s more challenging to move through it.

On top of that, we got to use that opportunity to think about those new spaces and say, “Do we want it to feel a bit different as an area? Can we create a more residential neighborhood and then tie that into the story? Okay, that’s where Peter is and where he’s spending time; Brooklyn is where Miles is going to school,” and that means you have the environment team getting to dig into the landmarks of those areas in New York and do the fun process of finding famous buildings that we can recreate and put there and all that stuff, so everything comes in kind of a weird order sometimes, I’d say.

How has the ray tracing effect improved compared to the previous titles, and what was the biggest challenge in the development process?

Mike Fitzgerald: So we’re able to add ray tracing reflections for Miles Morales and Spider-Man Remastered. And we knew we could expand on it further. It’s such a big component of how our New York City looks—the way those windows react to each other in the city around them. And at the same time, we had a few—not just more of it, but areas we felt we could expand.

So our building interiors, like looking through the windows of skyscrapers in the previous games, were these sort of big interior boxes. And now we’re actually ray tracing these little fake rooms that we have. So every building that you swing by has people inside going about their day, watching TV, or working at their desks. Light goes into those spaces in a realistic way, and that adds a ton there.

We added ray tracing reflections on the bodies of water. You spend so much time going over the East River to Brooklyn, Queens, with your wingsuit that traditional techniques like screen space reflections aren’t going to work anymore since you’re over the water a lot. So we were able to bring ray traced reflections to those surfaces, and it gives a really beautiful, realistic look to the river and the areas behind it.

One of the most challenging things I would say is that if you move through the city so fast and do it with the Web Wings, you can do it in such a continuous, stable gliding way that you can transition through that space so fast. We have to transition all the objects, details, buildings, and props in ways that don’t just pop in and out for your eyes as you move around.

If things were popping from low detail to high detail or disappearing or streaming in and out in obvious ways, it would break the whole illusion of the game. So we spent a lot of time, towards the end, developing a number of interlocking systems that try to transition between different types of assets at different times where you won’t notice it on the screen. And that was like a problem we hadn’t really had to tackle before.

In addition to the vastly increased size of the world, what are the improvements in details compared to the previous titles? Have the behaviors of NPCs and enemies been enhanced as well?

Mike Fitzgerald: A lot of work went into having a wider variety of enemies and more complex encounters, but a lot of fun stuff did go into just the street-level city and the way New York feels.

So off the top of my head, there are more pedestrians and more cars; there’s a much wider variety of heights and body sizes for people you have walking down the street with mixed-and-matched outfits. They can walk in and out of buildings and shops. They can have conversations with each other that you can kind of listen to that are all sort of modular, dynamic, and put together.

The cars themselves are more detailed. They have a sort of working suspension. So as they go along bumpy roads or around tight corners, you’ll see them shift in ways that feel more real and realistic. Again, a huge list of things like that is fun to sort of find an experience as you play.

With a bigger map, the game also added many side activities. Were there any concept ideas that you wanted to add but couldn’t make into the game?

Jeannette Lee: We have so many ideas that we sort of get to pick the best and most enjoyable stuff, and then, as Mike has said previously in an interview, we’ll never tell you because we’ll save the things that we didn’t get to for the next one or something else shortly on the horizon.

Mike Fitzgerald: We’ll keep working on them, and we’ll find the right place for them to come back later.

Web Wing, the element that made Spider-Man fly was a surprise to players. So how did you come up with the idea of introducing it into the game?

Mike Fitzgerald: I think that was in the back of a lot of people’s minds. Someone just had to try it out and hit that moment where, “Oh, this is good.” And then begins the process of, “Okay, well, what does that mean for our space? What does it mean for speed? Can you do it forever? Can you only glide down? What are all these different ways that mechanics tie into the world, the way it behaves and sounds, and the way your characters animate it as they do it?”

I’ll contribute tremendously to the success of that feature. It’s just one of those things where you try it out; some things don’t work, some things really do, and then begins the hard burn.

Web Wings feels like a faster method of travel yet it never overshadows traditional web swinging. How did the team find the balance between these two traversal methods?

Jeannette Lee: Web Wing started as a really cool idea like most crazy ideas do that we get at the studio, and then when we try it, it sort of instantly goes, “That was fun”, and then we spend a long time sort of fine-tuning that balance that you’re talking about and where it makes sense to use and why you would want to use it versus why you would still want to swing, and how we’re making sure that swinging is still really satisfying.

So we have a team who’s really focused on making sure that the traversal, just moving around in the game, is really fun and satisfying, and if you think about it like combat, like adding a new combo, it’s got to fit into the whole combat, right? It’s the same sort of thing, just while you’re moving around.

And so the team really spends a lot of time play-tuning. “When you pull up on the stick, how far do you go? Or, when you go down, how fast do you go?” And it’s a lot of sort of iterative playing and tuning to make it just right.

Mike Fitzgerald: That definitely had a really good balance with the swing. That was always the goal from the start – it shouldn’t supplant; it shouldn’t replace it for players. We want them to be different aspects of a fun traversal experience through the world.

The game seems to utilize more DualSense features now, like the Prowler Stash puzzle requiring balancing objects with the L2 and R2 buttons. What are the challenges of implementing these mechanics?

Jeannette Lee: I mean, the DualSense and the adaptive triggers are a really cool, fun sort of tool for us as developers. And so it almost became more like, “What are all the cool things that we could possibly do with this that would make sense in our world? And how do we sort of present that to players so that it’s sort of fun and engaging to do?”

My favorite is like the accelerator puzzle where you’re trying to get the magnets and the sweet spot because it’s way harder than you think it would be based on. And then when you get into it, you’re like, this is challenging, and it kind of really immerses you into what’s happening at that moment for Peter, and so that was really like kind of the fun thing about that DualSense and the haptics, and our audio team is so good, and they love the idea of getting in and getting to add all that haptic sort of feedback to different areas of the game to bring you even more immersed into the experience, so I think we looked at it as like new toys.

Mike Fitzgerald: My favorite one is when you’re in the Spider Bot and he goes on just any different surface and you can feel the click click click of the legs, but it’s different if you’re in a vent or on a carpet, all those things. That’s my favorite one.

[Spoilers Will Be Discussed Below]

How did the team come up with the overall gameplay and feel of Peter in the Black Suit, and how can people distinguish between him and the actual Venom?

Jeannette Lee: I think one thing that we talked about a lot when we talked about bringing Venom and the Symbiote into the story is this idea of temptation and kind of being a little addicted to the idea that you could suddenly be way better at something that you were maybe struggling with.

And so in some ways, when we approached how to bring the suit, those abilities, and getting to experience Venom in the game, we looked at what was the ultimate sort of fantasy for them in the moment.

“Like, how does Peter sort of suddenly become kind of unstoppable in that Black Suit? Like what seemed really hard for him before, maybe it doesn’t seem so hard now.”

And the performance that we get out of our actors, Yuri, is so good. I started to feel really bad at how mean I felt like he was being to his friends in the game. I think the beauty of the fact that it’s a game is that you get to be in Peter’s shoes, and you get to experience the power of the Symbiote and how it’s affecting you and what you’re doing.

“And you get to kind of think about that, like, what would I do? Do I feel good about him sort of talking to Miles right now? Or do I feel kind of bad about it? Or do I feel good that I can sort of take out all these bad guys at once? Or is that kind of brutal?”

And that’s sort of the magic that we get from this sort of interactive storytelling that we get to do. And I think that’s where we really look to leverage that experience for players.

Besides Venom, Kraven is another standout in the game. What was the experience like to finally got the chance to bring this character to life? 

Jeannette Lee: We love getting to take a character from the sort of rogues gallery and go, “What’s our version of this sort of beloved take on characters?”

And I think, gosh, the team had so much fun with Kraven. I’m a Kraven fan on the team. He’s my favorite. I would probably join his gang if he asked.

Like he’s so charismatic, he’s so mysterious, and so like the team really just kind of goes all out on taking those characters, finding the cool Insomniac version, and then just like really maybe going a little crazy sometimes, but enjoying that fun sort of exploration with the actors, with the writers, with the designers, with the animators, with the character artists, like adding all of the extra hair to Kraven—an excellent choice. Those are fun things that we get to do.

Mike Fitzgerald: I think with Kraven in particular, I think the team got a lot from the actor himself, and you write some and then you cast someone, and I remember them being so excited about the energy he was bringing to the role. And then it’s like, “Oh, we’re doing this. Okay, well, let’s go back and we’ll write some more,” and it’s a great process in that way.

Here concludes the interview, and we would like to thank Mike Fitzgerald and Jeannette Lee of Insomniac Games for taking the time to answer our questions regarding Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is set to launch on the PS5 on the 20th of October 2023 and we have a review for the game which you can read here.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games

Release Date TBC

PlayStation 5

Spider-Men, Peter Parker, and Miles Morales return for an exciting new adventure in the critically acclaimed Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise for PS5.

Swing, jump, and utilize the new Web Wings to travel across Marvel’s New York, quickly switching between Peter Parker and Miles Morales to experience different stories and epic new powers, as the iconic villain Venom threatens to destroy their lives, their city, and the ones they love.

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