How Insomniac Games Produced Spider-Man for PS4 (a look at their journey)

If there’s something Insomniac Games used to truly intensify the immersive nature of Marvel’s Spider-Man, it was the voice of Yuri Lowenthal. An American actor, producer, screenwriter, having done voices for classic characters like Ben 10 and Alucard, Yuri won the role of Spider-Man after some hesitance within Insomniac Games due to him voicing one of the main playable characters from their recently released game at the time. But the game’s lead writer, Jon Paquette was able to convince the studio as he couldn’t envision anyone else but Lowenthal to play this new Spider-Man!

Lowenthal tried to make Peter Parker and Spider-Man’s voice distinct, but came to decide that both cannot be completely different in their tone, pitch and quality, spending countless hours finessing and fine tuning his act to achieve a balance working with two different experts throughout the game’s development.

I’ve turned this blog into a short video essay if that’s your flavor here

The guys at the Marvel Entertainment met up with heads of Sony Interactive to pitch them over publishing a Marvel game and treating it like a first party Sony Interactive Entertainment title.

Marvel won them over and Sony moved on to choosing Insomniac Games, discussing which marvel property they longed to adapt for the world to witness. After countless hours of ideas, they both agreed on Spider-Man!

Upon agreement between the two’s approach, the game became the first licensed property to be developed by Insomniac Games after 22 years of developing original properties that bags in a name like Ratchet and Clank where a key gameplay feature is a swing-shot that the players can use to grapple targets and swing across gaps.

The producer of Sunset Overdrive was named as the lead creative director for the game, where it became an assurance that Marvel’s Spider-Man is going to be a celebration that the players will have for the decades to come. Prince of Persia, Jet Set Radio and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skaters were among the big names that heavily inspired the design team for Sunset Overdrive and so the game itself came to be known as a celebration of games.

Marvel’s Spider-Man was officially announced to the world during Sony’s E3 2016 press conference and was marked as the first in a series of games made by Insomniac Games with Sony, initiating Marvel Games’ new strategy to work with the best game companies passionate about their characters. The game became a milestone having the largest production team for an Insomniac game to date.

The first gameplay demo was shown at Sony’s E3 2017 conference and the world knew it would experience not only the best Spider-Man game, but one of the most fine-tuned games ever!

When the game hit the market, it coincided with the release of a Spider-Man special limited edition PlayStation 4 Pro bundle that sweetened the whole immersion deal for the game.

And when Joe Paesano was brought on board to compose the music for Spider-Man’s new world, the game’s immersive quality was taken even deeper, he’s the same guy responsible for composing Marvel’s Dare Devil series on Netflix.

Listening to the main theme tracks side by side, gives you the same quality of mystery, suspense, thrill and the need to witness the birth of characters like Spider-Man and Dare Devil.

Controlling this Spider-Man would mean the same thing as it meant to control Batman in the Arkham series or Lara Croft in the rebooted Tomb Raider. You will know what it means to feel like another being, you will know what it means to be Peter Parker, you will know what it means to be Spider-Man!

The new Spider-Man game has now become a big part of me as a gamer and that was the inspiration point of this essay.

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In the hopes of connecting with story lovers all over the world, this is Mr. Zeecon, in the making of a great story.