It is potentially not long now until more is shown from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, especially considering how soon it is still slated to launch. Many of fans’ questions will hopefully be answered whenever it does appear, but if Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is anything like the original game, there will likely be a lot of surprises left in store. Either way, it will be exciting to see how Insomniac can iterate upon this franchise after two games, and in that way, it might be able to fulfill a scrapped boss fight idea in Marvel’s Spider-Man due to Insomniac’s refusal to crunch its employees.
Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales both had incredible set pieces within their respective boss fights, and if Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s setting is still an open-world Manhattan, it would be conceivable that a lot more time could be spent designing elements elsewhere. Rumors suggest that Peter Parker and Miles Morales might head to their own multiverse, but if the game stays in New York City for any period of time it would be great to see a boss fight that takes players from one end of the city to the other.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Missed Out on a City-Wide Boss Fight
This scrapped concept seems fairly straightforward on paper, with the final boss fight against Marvel’s Spider-Man’s Doctor Octopus being one that could have played out across the city in a big spectacle. Instead, the idea was reportedly scrapped for two reasons. It would have caused crunch time for Insomniac due to the scale it would have needed to commit to in pulling that off, and Insomniac felt like a more intimate battle was more pertinent anyhow.
This demonstrated that Insomniac can draw from deep wells of emotion to make stakes for characters greater, and that outlandish spectacle sequences are not necessarily an effective means of representing that. Still, it would have been excellent to see Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus trading blows as they tear through the city, let alone if Spider-Man’s Sinister Six battle culminated in individual fights throughout the city in a linear path.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has no obligation to make good on this scrapped idea, but needing to crunch on such a design concept might not be necessary anymore, either. Knowing that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be exclusive to the PS5 alone, it would not be out of the realm of possibility to imagine that such a boss fight could easily occur with current-gen capabilities.
Indeed, if Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has a Spider-Verse or multiverse of its own that it ends up attempting, it will seemingly need all the technological upgrades it can muster. Insomniac’s output is mind-blowing as it is, and new hardware functionality may make any previous design ideas come to fruition in exceptional ways. It is anyone’s estimate whether Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will integrate QTEs into its cinematic moments like the last two games did, but a city-sweeping fight would determine that Insomniac has adapted fully to the PS5 and can achieve anything in development without needing to crunch or compromise narrative integrity.
That said, if Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 only features intimate and emotional boss fights, that will probably be sufficiently impactful. There is not much more a Marvel’s Spider-Man game set in Manhattan could offer players that they have not already experienced otherwise, though, and it will be exciting to see if Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 introduces Queens as a new map area now that Peter has settled down there—whether a boss fight sends players hurtling through its city streets or not.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is scheduled to release in fall 2023 for PS5.
