Marvel's Spider-Man 2 cut Venom's fire weakness because it was too much to communicate to players
Nov. 8, 2023There were originally “like five different weaknesses of the Symbiote”
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Marvel’s Spider-Man 2director Bryan Intihar has an answer for why the sequel’s take on Venom isn’t weak to fire like his comic book counterpart.
Light spoilers ahead for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
For reference, in the comics that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is drawn from, Venom has a couple of key weaknesses: high frequency sounds and fire. However, you might’ve noticed in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the villain is completely invulnerable to fire. As explained in anIGN interview, this isn’t a continuity error, but rather an intentional design choice made in service of intuitive gameplay.
“Fire doesn’t hurt the Symbiote and Venom in this game, did you guys notice that?” Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 director Bryan Intihar said. “So originally, there was like five different weaknesses of the Symbiote, and we were like, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to communicate all these different things?'”
Just in case you’re thinkingInsomniac Gamesmight’ve actually just goofed and this is an attempt to justify a mistake, there are both visual and audio cues throughout Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 that put that theory to bed.
“We were like, ‘you know what, for our universe, we’re just going to keep it to high frequency sound,” Intihar added. “Someone was like, ‘why is Harry not getting hurt by the fire?’ and it’s like, if you noticed, in the rescue Tombstone mission, Pete purposefully says, ‘Is the fire bothering you?’ and he goes, ‘no, I don’t feel anything’, just so I can make sure that we cover our bases.”
Despite this little discrepancy between the comics and the new game, critics and players are in near uniform agreement that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is an absolute triumph of an open-world superhero game. Insomniac’s take on Venom in particular has been praised, with GamesRadar’s Joe Donnellyhailing it as the best version of the Symbiote since the 1995 16-bit Spider-Man.
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Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has such a vibrant open-world that Joe wants Insomniac to build a GTA 6-rivaling crime sim.
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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