Insomniac has shared some new information regarding Marvel Spider-Man 2’s take on Venom, including a first image of the monstrous villain in his full freighting glory. Venom’s eventual emergence was teased as far back as 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, where the terminally ill Harry Osborn was seen floating in a tank with what appeared to be the Venom symbiote in the Marvel's Spider-Man post-credits scene. A similar stinger was shown at the end of the 2020 spin-off Spider-Man: Miles Morales, in which Harry’s father Norman demands that Dr. Curt Connors release Harry from said stasis tank, for better or worse.
Fast-forward to September 2021, when the first teaser trailer for Spider-Man 2 was finally revealed as part of a PlayStation Showcase livestream. During this brief teaser, fans finally caught their first glimpse at Marvel's Spider-Man 2's version of Venom as he emerged from the shadows, growling in response to Kraven the Hunter’s request for a true challenge in the chilling voice of horror icon Tony Todd. Since then, more details about Venom have started to emerge, with Insomniac promising a completely new take on the classic Marvel Comics anti-hero.
As part of this week’s Comic-Con 2023 celebrations, several key members of Spider-Man 2’s development staff recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to shed some more light on the game’s incarnation of Venom. Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar revealed that the first challenge in creating Venom was finding the right voice for the symbiote-empowered fiend, which came in the form of Tony Todd’s signature growl. "Everything we talked about [with] Venom - that sense of strength, that sense of fear, that sense of overwhelming, so different from Peter - Tony embraces that completely in the performance," Intihar says.
Intihar also noted that Insomniac chose Venom as a primary villain of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as a contrast to the original game’s Doc Ock. "It's about power, it's about strength, it's about being slighted, it's about Peter being involved much more in the creation of Venom,” he went on. Previous Spider-Man 2 trailers show Peter being infected with the Venom symbiote as well, and senior narrative director Jon Paquette explained how this ties into the way the symbiote reflects the darker nature of its host – as well as the effect this darkness has on the people they love and the sacrifices that Spider-Man often has to make.
Finally, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 senior art director Jacinda Chew discussed how her team came up with Venom’s in-game design, which can be seen in the official screenshot above. She said that several aspects of this design are tied to specific story details, including the more jagged spider emblem on Venom’s chest. "One of the challenges we had throughout production was, how much does [Venom] talk?" Chew elaborated. "I remember we did some concepts early on [of] does Venom have lips? Does he laugh? Does he smile? Does he frown? It's a fine line between making this creature scary and intimidating, but then also, I guess, relatable."
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 promises to be a much darker tale than the two Insomniac-developed games before it, and a great deal of that darkness seems to come from Venom and its monstrous symbiote. Fans will likely get to know more about Spider-Man’s newest foe during Comic-Con later this week, before going face-to-face with Venom for themselves when Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 swings onto the PlayStation 5 this fall.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 launches on October 20 for PlayStation 5.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
