Highlights
- Playing the first game's DLC before starting Spider-Man 2 is highly recommended to fully understand the character relationships and dynamics in the sequel.
- The DLC establishes important plot points for characters like Wraith and Black Cat, making their story arcs in Spider-Man 2 more impactful for players who have experienced the DLC content.
- While the game provides some expository dialogue, it is primarily designed as a refresher rather than a detailed breakdown of the entire series, emphasizing the importance of prior knowledge for optimal enjoyment.
Insomniac's Spider-Man universe is already a pretty expansive one. Over the course of two games, Insomniac's Spider-Man series had already included a multitude of iconic villains, two whole Spider-Men, a ton of additional side characters, and well over a decade's worth of backstory for everything and everyone involved, all interwoven together. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 only continues the trend, expanding on this already rich universe in a number of major ways.
Of course, the big additions to Insomniac's universe this around are Kraven the Hunter and Venom, two iconic villains that make their Insomniac debut in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and inform the vast majority of the game's core story. And while most of Marvel's Spider-Man 2's story can be enjoyed with almost no prior knowledge, fans are definitely rewarded for experiencing and remembering past events in the series, and there are a handful of plot threads in the sequel that really encourage fans to play the first Spider-Man's DLC.
Why Fans Should Play the First Game's DLC Before Jumping into Spider-Man 2
Obviously, being a direct sequel to everything that's come before it, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is expecting fans to have played the first two games in the series before jumping in. While Marvel's Spider-Man 2 certainly gives fans plenty of expository dialogue on the series' past events, they're designed more to give fans a refresher of the series so far, as opposed to giving them a detailed breakdown of the series' entire story for the very first time. There are a ton of character relationships and dynamics that are integral to Marvel's Spider-Man 2's story, almost all of which are first established in the earlier games, and to fully understand them in the sequel, fans will have needed to experience them first hand from the beginning.
Quite a few of Marvel's Spider-Man 2's most important relationships actually trace their roots back to the first Spider-Man's City That Never Sleeps DLC, and to get the most out of these relationships in the sequel fans are encouraged to play through this DLC for themselves beforehand. One of the most important examples of this can be found during The Flame set of side missions, in which players work alongside Wraith to bring down a fire-obsessed cult.
While fans who have played Marvel's Spider-Man will likely remember the character of Yuri Watanabe, they'll probably remember her as simply the police captain who occasionally worked with Spider-Man throughout the events of the first game. So, her being revealed as a masked vigilante in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 might feel like it's come completely out of left field. However, this twist was actually set up all the way back in Marvel's Spider-Man's DLC, where Yuri decides that the justice system doesn't always work and that she needs to take matters into her own hands, hence her becoming Wraith in the sequel.
Another major Marvel's Spider-Man 2 character arc that was originally set up in Spider-Man's DLC is Black Cat's. Though her hideouts appear in a set of side missions in the original game, Black Cat herself doesn't show up until the City That Never Sleeps DLC, where her relationship with Peter is fleshed out a lot more. While players will get plenty of this detail via expository dialogue in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, knowing her character and relationship with the rest of the cast beforehand makes her desperate escape from Kraven all the more intense, with those who have played the DLC already having a pre-established relationship with the character.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is available now on PS5.
