Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Spider-Man: Miles Morales Spoilercast - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 49

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Insomniac's Creative Director Brian Horton joins us to do a full spoilercast of the PS5 launch title Spider-Man Miles Morales. Follow Brian here: https://twitter.com/BrianHortonArt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This PlayStation 5 was provided by PlayStation for review. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast. Spoiler cast for Spider-Man Miles Morales. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the new face of video games. Blessing, Eddie Oye, Jr. Be greater, be yourself.

Oh, you nailed it this time. Yeah. Yeah, I had to memorize it. Oof, you bricked it at the review. I did. It was not good. Very great. What did you say?

He was like, be something. He was all over the place. I was like, be better. right, Brian? You know what I mean? It wasn't a good look, but I got to tell you, you're on point today. I love it. Thank you. I appreciate it. You can't stop complimenting him.

In the pre-show, you said he's your new favorite. Now you're saying this. You can't even get the taglines right for your game. You got it this time, though. That's what matters. I mean, he's obviously the king of Halloween, right? Oh, my God. There you go.

There you go. Oh, my goodness. Joining me a blessing is Forbes 30 under 30, a.k.k.a. The second best baby blues in San Francisco, aka the bald one at Tim Gettys. Let's him. I'm so excited at talking about this game.

This is my first time. I'm being unleashed. And it did the spoiler cast. I don't even need to hold anything back. I know. Yeah. I got to, I got my PS5.

I got to play it. Beat the hell out of it, which I did. Very exciting stuff. And remember while we're here too, of course, our PlayStation 5s were provided by PlayStation. Don't come after us,

FTC. And then rounding out our quartet. He is the creative director at Insomniac Games. Brian Horton. Hello, Brian. How's it going, everybody? You know, it's going pretty well. PlayStation 5 launch week.

We are recording this the day before the PlayStation 5 launches. We're posting it the day after the PlayStation 5 launches. I think more importantly, how are you? You're about to launch a video game. Oh, wow.

Well, I'm just so happy to be a part of this team. I mean, Simnet games just killing it right now, right? I mean, and we're, we couldn't be happier to work on a game like Miles Morales. So it's just been cool to see the fan reaction and people digging it.

Now, if you didn't know, ladies and gentlemen, the way a kind of funny spoiler cast works is the gloves are off. We're going to talk about everything. Don't watch this episode of the games cast, or listen to it, until you've beaten this game, because we're going to go into each and every little mighty minutia detail that we want to about this. Nothing's held back. So I'm going to do the rigamarole here, but when we come out of that, the gloves are off. This is all the time you have to stop the podcast. Stop cooking, go over there, mute your radio, whatever you're doing. All right, all right, here we go. Remember, of course, ladies gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every week, we come together to talk about video games, the things we love, the things we don't love, the things we like. all for you, the Kind of Funny Best Friends. Remember, you can get the Games cast over on patreon.com slash kind of funny games. On Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games.

You can write in to be part of the show. You can get the show ad free. You can get it with the exclusive post show that, yes, we've done three episodes this week. This is the one with the post show. And of course, you can usually watch it as we record it live. Today's a little bit different, obviously, with the embargo and the game not being out yet

and that's not wanting to ruin it for you. However, if you have no bucks to toss our way, it's no big deal. YouTube.com, slash Kind of Funny Games, roosterteeth.com, and podcast services around the globe. You can get a brand spanking new episode of the Gamescast each and every week. And speaking of that, housekeeping, if you didn't know, I just told you, this is the third episode of the Gamescast.

You need to go to Kindof Funny.com slash PS5. You, of course, can go get more gamescast. We have the Bug Snacks Review. We have the Miles Review. We have the Astro review. We have the Assassin's Creed Valhalla review. All up right now for your pleasure. Of course, you can get those as podcasts on the Let's Play side.

There's a less play of Demon Souls Up for PlayStation 5 launch. There's an episode of Spider-Man remastered up for your enjoyment. There is so much content, and it's all on kindof funny.com slash PS5 or podcast services of your choice. If you'd like something like PSI-L-U-S-O or Gamescast as an audio feed or blessings, first impressions, which also has the path up right now. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Blackjack, Tom Bach, ALWT, Gaming. Kevin is the best Christmas elf, Jeffrey P-P-P-P-Long, Sancha West Gaming, and James Hastings. Today, we're brought to you by Honey and Hymns, but we'll talk about that later.

Now it's time to talk about Spider-Man, Miles Morales, spoilers. This is it. This is your chance to get out. Okay. Brian, you guys, you know, I don't, I don't even know where to begin sometimes. I think where I want to begin is a personal anecdote about this story, which is the day after I beat it, Jen and I went on a hike, and she asked me, oh, so what happened? And I explained the entire thing to her and got choked up to the point of having to stop talking twice. That is the feels you guys gave us in this game. We love your tears. Always the goal, tears.

Yeah, I mean, go ahead, man. No, no, you go, please, please. This is your chance to talk. This is your forecast. Well, I just want to say that, you know, good goes to our team. You know, we've fallen in love with Miles Morales from the first game. You know, he was an actual part of that story

that Brian Intar wanted to bring into the universe. You may or may not know, Miles and Pete don't usually live in that same universe. They had to be brought together. But we chose an insomniac universe to make them a part of one. So if you think about it, this origin story really started there. So our job was like how to make the best, you know, year one story. Actually, it's kind of a year two story for Miles that was both, that had a heart and really separated being Pete from Miles.

So it was just, I just love this character so much. And it was so amazing to work with the team to bring the story together. Talk to me about bringing that story together. Because I think, you know, when we had Brian up for spoiler cast back in 2018 for Spider-Man, right? It was all the stuff of, man, that ending and having it be Harry and Norman and have it be what looks to be the symbiote and have it to be like, okay, that's what we're building towards. At what point did you guys know you were doing this smaller, uncharted lost legacy, whatever you want to call it, version for. Miles. So I joined Insomniac around six months before the game came out, and Brian Intar and I had a lot of conversations about the possibility of doing the standalone game,

and I jumped at it. It was like, yes, please, let's do this. And the idea here was, how can we ensure that the story we're going to tell is going to be a full arc, something that really pays off in the idea of Miles' journey to become a hero? And for that point, it was just, what do we want that story to be about? How can we tell that story in the most impactful way? And ultimately it came down to, well, what if Miles, who's a kid from Brooklyn, what if he had to move, what if he had to move to his mom's childhood home, and then get to learn all about East Harlem as he's learning how to be a hero?

And that sort of became the seed of which our whole story sort of grew around. And those themes, those themes of family and home, and him finding his way, that was, that was the beginning of all of it. And it's sort of what we always came back to. You know, one of the things after we, the review embargo lifting, we got to talk about it. I was having a conversation on Twitter with our friend Paris, Lily.

And he said what I had been saying, I think even somewhere buried in the review blessing and I did. But talking about like, for me, it's the game has heart. And that's not to say that Spider-Man PS4, Spider-Man 2018, didn't have that. Obviously, it did. But there's something about being with, Miles on this journey and having it be so young, right?

You know, Spider-Man's been going for eight years in 2018's version of that universe. To have it here and be with Miles as he learns these things. I mean, there's such a great moment in the game, right, where when Pete finally checks in on him, they have this phone call conversation. And he's like, so what's going on? And Miles's like, I discovered a conspiracy in my neighborhood. And Pete's like, ha, classic. Like, to get to have those moments is so important.

But how did you go about figuring out what those moments would be? And then also, how do you, is it fair to say this game trim the fat? I feel like that's something we talked about. Not because it's shorter, obviously, in length, but I feel like pound for pound, this game is all gas and it never slows down. Even playing remastered last night, it was like, oh, right, you know, the mini games for figuring out the circuits and all these other things that didn't stop or grind the action to a halt, but didn't have anything like that in Miles. I think it's all about focus. You know, the team knew because we were going to make a smaller and scale product. We felt like there was areas that we really wanted to invest in.

And just one decision that's different, like we chose to be in Miles' shoes the whole time. That instantly changed the dynamic of the game. But we wanted those pacing shifts. So being in Miles Morales' shoes as a kid, you know, walking through the streets of Harlem was going to be as important as being in his new spider suit. So those two things had to be right. But we really just took all the strengths. We feel that we're in Marvel Spider-Man and try to build up on them.

Like making these bombastic set pieces that felt as fluid as possible. To look at opportunities on how we can build upon the combat of Spider-Man by adding these bioelectric powers and visibility and how we can create an opportunity to engage in the open world with the Spider-Man app. All those kind of innovations that we came to, these are things that we think are both telling stories, but also hopefully mechanically feeling richer in the game. Greg brings up the idea that Spider-Man 2018,

that Peter's been doing it for eight years. And like we kind of, that is a not unique necessarily take on Spider-Man, but it's one that I think that we get a lot less of. Like we get a lot of his early years and we get a lot of the kind of, okay, he's in college. But human as an adult, I mean, yes, in the comics, we get that a lot. But in other mediums, we don't really see it. So it was fresh in the video game.

Miles being such a newer character with just, just not, you know, 50, 60 plus years of comic history, only having less than a decade of history, his only stories have been year one, year two, kind of that idea. And I think that we, where I'm very familiar with him from the Brian Michael Bendis, you know, Sarah run, like the initial runs of the story in the ultimate line. But to then kind of get into the Spider-Verse and that blowing miles up in a completely different way that he's now a household name, he is now this character and that movie gave him. gave him so much more character than he had previously and gave him so many things that when

people think Miles, they think of the style. They think of the clothes over the suit. They think of the more hip-hop elements of it and the neon and all of that. How did you guys kind of take that and still have your own take? What were the core tenets of your Miles as opposed to that one? Well, with our partners at Marvel Games, we always start with the comics, right? Those are the Rosetta Stone. So the Brian Michael Bend of Sarah Pachelli comics are the starting point. But they're also, you know, we're in the insomniac universe. So there's always a twist to it. So as you guys know in the comics, you know, his dad isn't dead.

In our game, you know, Jefferson dies. So that sends miles in a totally different direction. And that allows our universe sort of to flex and grow. What was funny is we were working on our story. And we kind of had our first draft of our story when Into the Spiderverse came out. So it was kind of cool in a way to see how. Oh, man, they did some things that we were thinking about doing, but they did it in a different way. So it was like, it was kind of this weird thing, you know, like in the zeitkeist,

when two people were working on the thing at the same time, you might see some similarities. I'd say we definitely learned, like, or saw the success of that movie as like, and it almost just made us feel so much more common. Yes, this is the right story to focus on. This is the right character to elevate. And our team was just so excited about bringing our take on this character. that we loved, to a premier title, just something that really was a video game

that we've never seen before. And to your point, that your one story is so well understood through Peter Parker, but not as well understood through Miles Morales. So that was the great counterpoint that Brian Nihar really wanted to be able to say is, hey, we're going to have our own take on that origin story through Miles Morales

while we have this more mature Peter Parker. I guess both of those things working together made for an exciting, opportunity for us. And it was so cool to see people jazzed about the Into the Spider-Rverse suit, for instance, that went into the game. Because, you know, you could tell that not only did we love that film, we wanted to recreate some of the magic of that film in the way the suit mods work, with the On the Two's and the Anamonopoeia, you know, burst cards. So yeah, there's a ton of love for that movie. But we think they are too analogous, you know, sort of takes on Miles' origin

story. So that's all well and good. You're allowed to have the PR answer. of yeah yeah but you have to it when you're watching into the spiderverse going oh no yeah okay the same thing we're doing right was it nerve-lacking at all like coming off of the spider-verse of course here's the thing that that movie is just dripping with style and cool right it's just the music the um first of all as a story they they they really took miles as a character and just and stretched them in areas that i never expected seeing peter b parker and that take on on a character that we thought we knew everything about and just like no we don't don't know everything about this character.

And then it's just art direction overall. I mean, everything about that film to me is like on that near flawless level. It is probably one of my favorite Spider-Man things ever. So, yeah, of course, it was one of those things where you can go, that's excellent. What is our version of Great look like, right? And that's what our team sort of came back to and said, okay, we knew we had these things that we wanted to do, but we have to swing for the fences, obviously, because they just put up, they just put up a total W, there. It's like, what are we doing to make our own take on it? And with that, I got to ask. People

would destroy me if I didn't bring this up. What was behind the Jordans to Adidas switch? Well, you know, ultimately, the thing it's funny is people think that's where Miles always rocked, right? If you go to the comics, there is not a Jordan anywhere. Absolutely not. No. But now you just have it burned into your brain, right? Like, that is what he wears. So ultimately, it was you know, it's a business thing, right? There are things that we were doing, but what we're excited about is if you think about Adidas and, you know, if you're, you know, an old hat like me, I think of Adidas and hip hop as being like this.

Like they, you know, I think of New York. I think of all the stuff that culturally, the touchstones of that, it, it feels extremely connected. And I'm really excited about that kind of history of hip hop that we sort of infused into the game with his familial connections, right? This is a spoiler cast so we can talk a little bit about it. It was important to us that Miles had a history in not only being a Spider-Man, but he has a love of music.

And that was our take on adding into the tapestry of his character, was he created music. He's a producer. He creates beats. And that love goes all the way back to his uncle and to his father. And just seeing that sort of legacy come through Miles, we loved adding that as part of our story. So how did you guys land?

on prowler, rhino, and the tinkerer as the main three villains in the game. Because that's one of the things I found fascinating, especially coming off of into the Spiderverse is seeing this take on prowler and wondering, okay, how is this going to play out? Because I'm somebody who hasn't read the Miles Morales comics. And so I'm not completely, like, aware and familiar with how things traditionally go down with prowler. I just know the Miles Morales like, oh, snap, okay, now they're against each other sort of thing.

how did you guys lane on those three specifically? Well, that's a great question, because we went through the idea, like, who is going to be in this game? And it was almost like by default, we said, well, the prowlers has to be in it, right? But then we said, well, what is the prowler going to do? Why is the prowler important in our story? And in the comics, it's more, you know, it's actually kind of a, if you think about it, it's like, if Uncle Ben was the good uncle, Aaron Davis was the bad uncle, he was really getting miles into trouble. and he was using him to and further his criminal empire.

And we thought, well, that's definitely a really compelling take. But when you see into the Spider-Verse, and you saw in our story, we were going in a different direction of, well, what if it wasn't like that? So when we saw into the Spider-verse take a different take on the prowler, a sympathetic villain and they didn't know each other's identity, we're like, okay, the way we're stretching our version of the character makes sense to us. And really, the hook there was, here's a guy who's left the life, of crime after the death of Jefferson Davis. That was something that was different that was in any of the films to say, I can't let this happen again. I've got to get back into the family. So that's our prowlers need. He takes a day job to try to get in good graces back into the Morales family. So that's sort of that dynamic. Now, when it came to that to Rhino, if you guys, you know, you guys all played Spider-Man, I love the fact that Miles Morales went up against Rhino in the first game.

I love it. As a kid, right, with no powers, trying to get medicine for the future. shelter and he has to survive in this sort of cat and mouse horror style sequence with with rhino so having a match up against rhino again and get this new take as a superhero we thought that was a matchup we had we had to see right so that became why rhino was important to us well to write a passage too with rhino and spider-man video games i feel like that has to be like the first boss you know it like it has to be that you dodge it whatever and i love the take on rhino in this from a gameplay perspective uh especially early on, it was such a thrilling opening to this game, as being this magical set piece that automatically, to me,

it was like, it screamed, we're back in this Spider-Man world that I love, and this is Next Jack. And this is like we're being run through the mall. It was so fun. It's almost like Rino's comfort food for the franchise. Like you just look at it, Rino's like, yes, this is Spider-Man. I vibe with it. But that extra meaning that we had in the connection to the first game

was why I think Rino versus any other of the Sinister Six. And then it came down to the tinkerer. And that was the villain that we really were trying to think about what makes the best sense. And we knew we wanted a villain. In the comics, Miles Rokes' gallery isn't super deep like Peter Parker's. He doesn't have a Sinicer Six. He doesn't have those adversaries that you think of and go,

oh my gosh, this is the iconic adversary. So we thought this is an opportunity for us to sort of take a classic villain and twist it for a modern day. And that's where the tinkerer comes from. And we really did, like Marvel was so good with us. Like we said, look, we really want to stretch who the tinker is, what the tinker is all about. And we want to introduce almost like it's a brand new character, but still having the DNA of a weapons manufacturer. That's all the tinker was.

But now I would say, what if the tinker is younger? What if tinker is on the front lines? What if instead of just regular weapons, there were these programmable matter, like technology that can make any kind of weapon. And instantly, you get into that modern, cool, fresh kind of take on a classic villain. So that's sort of the triangle. And then, of course, we have Roxon. So Roxanne is the other big component. And in the comics, there was a tension in the ultimate between the tinkerer and Roxon.

They sort of work for each other. So we sort of had loose threads that we were trying to put together between them. So those that's why. As a fan of the comics and stuff, I love that stuff so much. I love kind of the reinvention of characters and things that we're familiar with. And I think that the 2018 Spider-Man did such a good job with that. as well and set such a great foundation for the world of Spider-Man that like now it's kind of like, cool, we don't need to be reintroduced to a lot of these elements because they're already there for us.

So it's like, cool, what villains are we going to see and what are we going to do? Because, I mean, quite honestly, like 2018 had a lot of villains. Like it had the Sinister 6 as well as other characters, right? So like Taskmaster and all that stuff. So with this one, when we're introduced and his best friend's name's Finn, with P-H-I-N, I was like, oh, no. Like, I know where this is going, and that's a cool twist on this. I knew Tinkerer was in the game, but I didn't know it was her. But the moment that you hear the name, I'm like, that's a cool, I see where they're going.

And the payoff was great. With her, spoilers, big spoilers here, dying at the end? Like, was that always the plan from the beginning, like, to commit to that after he's already went through so much loss? Yeah, I mean, ultimately, there's another theme in addition to home, you know, the idea of grief and how one manages grief is a big part of another theme. So Finn is dealing with grief, obviously, right? Her brother's death. Miles is dealing with grief with his father's death. Those are two characters that were both fundamentally good. In fact, it was super important for us to have a sequence where you saw them in their prime as friends, working, you know, seeing what

their friendship was all about. And you want to root for these kids being friends for life, right? It's just like you just feel this the connection of these two that they're going to do great things But to see how those two lives through grief went in two different directions adds tragedy So you know the death at the end was sort of like I look at it as her redemption and her sacrifice For the friend that she loves so she had her moment of heroism even though she made some poor choices along the way She saw that she was going to do she was not going to let her her best friend die like her brother died that she just wasn't going to let that happen Yeah, I think that works on so many different levels in terms of, you know, I know, Blessing and I went back and forth on the review, right, of Blessing being like,

well, I feel like just having a conversation could stop, because if we could all slow down and talk, which Miles tries to a couple of times, and she's not having it, right? But I was right there, too, of once she got introduced and we'd already known Tinker had been teased or whatever, it was like, oh, you start putting the pieces together of where this is going to go. And to find out her motivation, see how they're attached to Miles, and then, get to yeah this you know giant fight at the end when she's looking down and realizes her plan is not working out and that miles was right to have them get down there and then have the sacrifice and when she said for me it was uh the first time tearing up the next morning with jen was telling her of them going up and her going just just let go like let go and then when they come crashing down and Harlem does the you know he's our spider man when they they they block the reporters and they sit there and they go like no no no like you know you like suddenly every Everybody knows that he's Spider-Man and they all handle it in such a way of knowing. It's that fun thing of like the, you know, usually as you know, I hate the new game plus trophies.

I hate having to replay an entire campaign for one trophy. Go ahead. What are you going to do? How are you going to defend it? Go ahead. Our game is so fun. You're going to want to play it again. And you're not wrong.

You're not wrong. The game is fast. And again, especially when you, if you want to skip certain cutscenes, but to go back to the beginning, you know what I mean, which had been like one, two and a half days or whatever of game playing for me, but to go back and see his initial walk through Harlem and seeing him get off the subway and help with the thing and have the conversation with the graffiti and like, but not feel like a part of the town or the vibe, right?

Because I remember getting dropped into that. And he eventually in the game says something that, yeah, I got asked for directions and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't get that vibe. But to see it bookended of his final walk through Harlem at the end of the game and then go back and immediately start a new game and replay it and see the difference is there. it was that bonding experience of seeing him really become a Harlem resident and really become

their Spider-Man and really have this emotional draw to him in the area, I guess. Yeah, man, I got to tell you, I cried. I played that game, I don't know, let's just say a hundred times, right? Let's just say a hundred, right? I cried at least 30 times at the end of the game. How is that possible? I don't even know, like, and I kept confessing this to my team. Like, how do you guys do this to me every time?

I'm playing the game. I know exactly what's going to happen. And maybe I'm a softie, but, you know, I just think, for us, it was important that we earned that moment. And it was really hard. I'm not saying it was easy. And there's always ways that we can improve upon these big turns, these big emotional moments. But I'm just proud that we were able to take a new, do the new take on Finn Mason that you never knew you wanted. Right?

Like I don't think this is anything people like, God, you know what I really want to do? I really want to see the tinker as a young girl as friends with Miles Morales eventually becomes the tinker and sacrifices their life to save her best friend. That's what I'm so proud of the writing team and the creative team of like really pushing for something different. And that's a high wire act, right?

Like you're really going up there saying, I hope this works. You're talking about hype moments, man. We got to talk about the costume. We got to talk about it when they first him and gang, He's sitting there designing it. The music's playing. And then he finally gets his suit and you get to swing for the first time.

That is such a hard moment, I think, to nail because it can so easily come off as corny or like we've seen it before. Because we have seen it before in Spider-verse. This is the video game version of it. And I think it was nailed. And I think so much of that comes down to the fact that the Spider-Man Insomniac universe really, really, really goes out of its way. to be its own thing. And there was just subtle moments that constantly add up to the greater hole. And that moment for me was when I was like, I had to like pause for a second after I swank for a little bit and just be like,

I'm going to be swinging in this game for years to come. When I'm just chilling at home, like scrolling through, blatant through my PlayStation, I'm going to be like, I'm just going to swing around New York for a little bit. And it's going to feel as hype and as awesome as that first moment did. Yeah. So that montage sequence, it was created by. Alex, one of our animators, to always be partnered with music. So the idea here was how do we express this idea of them building the suit together, the camaraderie they have together in a way that was entertaining and also kind of informative.

Like you're feeling like they're experimenting. There's a back and forth. But the triumphant quality at the end when he's swinging through the city, that was originally going to be all in the back end. But cutting that in between all of the shots, that was just a really interesting way to sort of keep the thing having energy. And the other thing I want to say just as a backdrop is we never understood or we, I don't know why Sarah Pachelli designed the shape, the Chevron shape of the top. But we brought in the idea that he was really inspired by his roots, the Puerto Rican flag.

So the idea of that strong triangle shape sort of informed in his sketchbook one of the design choices of why it looks like that. I don't know. I just geek out on that kind of stuff. I think I think it's what was so fascinating about it. For the specifically the spider suit thing, I both loved and hated the fake out at the front. Because when Peter gives him the box, it was like, oh, here we go. And then he puts it on and drops down in front of Ganky. I'm like, what the fuck is this?

You know what I mean? What is this weird ass spidey suit? And then to play for a while. You didn't like the knee pads and shoulder? I would have gone a different direction. Actually, that's straight up from the comics too. So if you're a comics nerd, that's the, that's his Halloween suit. That's the first suit he gets.

So we very much pulled out from the comics. But it's like guilt fitting and not quite right. But that's the whole point is that wasn't supposed to be his suit, right? Never. Oh, yeah. And that's why I think it's so powerful. And again, like, you know, I can only imagine working on this game having an idea and then into the Spider-Verse drops in is so obviously incredible.

But, you know, to have Ganky tell him, you know, every time you say Spider-Man, you're talking about the other guy. Like, you're Spider-Man. Like, we need to own that. I thought he did such a great job. of that and showing that friendship and having someone to show him what he's doing and how he's in inspiration to people and what he needs to go out and be a part of yeah it's a huge character turn for him because that that whole scene is it's bookended by his failure at the bridge right so

that suit scene is in the backdrop of failure and him being down about it and not feeling like like his his power is out of control he doesn't quite know how to do it but he needs to lean into it and that and that is part of his growth and his identity of becoming a hero but you know genki is i got say that's another thing. I'm just, Griffin brought so much heart into the performance of Ganky. And he's charming as hell, too, right? So having him in your ear, we knew he was going to be in our ear a lot. It was really critical that he had that right mix of, you know, positivity and charm and humor. I want to give you a shout out for Ganky because that's, that's a character that I think the world hasn't really been introduced to on a wide scale yet. I think that this is kind of

the first time that we're getting that, because obviously he's the common character we know. get Ned in the MCU Spider-Man movies and that's a similar vibe but even then it's different. Like even then like that is a pretty different character obviously different name. It is a different character just with similarities. But I think that Ginky was really done justice in this game

as Miles's best friend and you like you just you truly believe that he's been there and he is there the whole time and him working on the video game and like that whole like his own little like backstory going on feels authentic to the character in a very real way. Yeah, that's a merry. Kenny special. She brought the Speed Nottingon thing forward

and we're like at first like, should we cut the Speedan thing, it's sort of off point. Like no, no, no, let's lean in. Let's make it a running gag. So it just became this thing of that gave him character and it sort of fleshed out his character because if he just did the app and he didn't have anything else going on, it's like his only service would have been

to Miles and we wanted him to be his own person. So yeah, it was great to see those charming moments. And the fact that he made the app, though, I like that that allowed you the player and Miles Morales to get to learn his neighborhood, right? So that storytelling device to me was both mechanically cool and story cool. Well, I appreciate how much it came back to trimming the fat like we were talking before, right, from what Spider-Man PS4 was.

I do remember, you know, for that trophy, for the platinum, swinging around waiting for random crimes. And this is to be able to open it up and know what I wanted to. That was great. Bless. Yeah, I cut you off, blessing, sorry. To shift gears just a little bit. what was it like developing a PS5 launch title? Were there any challenges specific to that?

Because I know you guys had to develop now for what, three platforms being PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5. Did that do anything to the process for you guys in terms of getting this thing out? Yeah, I'd say the great thing about being first party, we've always been tight with Sony, right? But we were acquired as we were building this game. So we got so much attention from Sony

to ensure that our engine and the technology, and Spider-Man was running well on PlayStation 5 very early on. You guys saw the demo. The first thing we saw from PlayStation 5 was the demos of Spider-Man. So they almost looked at us as like, okay, you're sort of our flagship, and we were able to get up and running on 5 really quick. And then it was just a matter of, all right, what do we want to do to maximize all these fantastic features? And rate tracing, obviously that was like one big, huge investment.

But having that 60 frames per second mode, and being able to, we had that almost, like, within weeks of us getting up in line. And it was like, oh, you know, we can play at 60 frames per second. Like, what? As soon as I felt it at 60, I was like, oh, man. I mean, it really does transform the play experience. It's the worst thing in the world, man. I swear, because I am all about resolution. I'm all about the ray tracing.

I love that stuff. I'm usually like, 30 feels fine to me. I'll be fun. I played 60, and I'm just like, oh, no. It's so good. It's so good. I can't go back. Yeah.

We wanted you to have a hard choice, right? We wanted you to go, oh, man, which one am I going to use? But yeah, to finish out with blessings question, it's like the challenges were how we're going to maximize everything we can do when we haven't really got to understand all the amazing features of this system fully, but I'm so stoked that the team embraced that challenge. And I think the haptic controls, the 3D audio, the SSD, all of those things were a huge factor in us bringing what I think is the best version of that game.

I mean, it really does feel special on the PlayStation 5. And the team worked really hard to make sure that we were a strong launch title. Was there any pressure, like being the first Spider-Man game, or just even being a PlayStation 5 launch title, period, right? Like being the ones to kind of kick off a new generation. Was there any, like, pressure or nervousness there for you guys? Yeah, I mean, you really don't want Mark to be upset with you. I mean, Mark, Mark, and his team created a,

a system that was empowering us as developers to make our even more of a reality. And the thing that was great is we brought him by one day just to let him experience 60 frames for a second and let him see rate tracing. And he just, when you see Mark's smile and you're showing him something, it's all you need. Like, just getting Mark's excitement on what we were doing was a huge validation. And yeah, I could say the pressure was on, but we, the insomniac definitely. felt like we stepped up to the challenge and came up

with something we were proud of. So Spider-Man running on PlayStation 5 was one of the first things we saw of the PS-5. But I love that when there was the big PS-5 reveal event, there was just like all the different announcements and the announcement of this game, the first thing we see is Miles' hand and it's like

the electricity and it kind of goes back and it reveals it's Miles. We freak out. Spider-Man, Miles Miles. I love that that's the end of this game. Like I love like seeing that shot in it, I was just like, oh my God, and it made me realize, like, we just first heard about this game like three months ago. Like, and now we've, we've, we've beat it.

I just love that that moment was kind of, it just felt celebratory for the launch of the PS5 and just for this game and for it to, to be the first thing we saw of it, like at the end of the game, I thought was really rad. Yeah, it was, it was a brainstorm we had. It's like, we knew we wanted to do something special. And Ryan Schneider came up with this idea, like, what if we started with this moment at the end of the game that we have an abstract. You don't know what it's all about of that sacrifice moment,

that moment he's willing to sacrifice everything. And having Pete's, you know, obviously Pete's monologue is not a part of that sequence. But putting those two things together was sort of like the passing of the baton in a way to say like, hey, I trust you, it's yours. And then him exploding into that, you know, that pink sky right after that black. I mean, those are the things that are kind of magical that I love working at insomiac is is that we're allowed to push and do something that felt a little

not traditional in how we'd reveal a game. So yeah, it was pretty exciting. I kicked myself so much because when we first saw it, and I watched like the third time or whatever in 4K, I remember being like,

this strikes me as like, it's like the last boss battle and I never set it on camera. So I look, you know, no one will ever believe that I thought that. Blessing, you were going to go, sorry. Yeah, I was saying, speaking of the lightning,

like, what were you guys' approach as far as combat? because that was one of my biggest curiosities going into this one, like saying, all right, so is the combat going to be basically the same combat from 2018 because Spider-Man 2018's combat was already perfect? Like, what are those changes going to be? And actually getting my hands on the game and seeing that you guys have the venom powers and the camouflage and you guys stripped away some of the web powers, like, where are you guys this thought process behind how you're going to refine the combat for this game?

Yeah, it was our number one pillar in our creative mission. And we started day one defining what it was that made Miles unique from Peter Parker. And we started with one thing. And it was that bioelectric punch. People get really confused why we call it Venom. Why we call it Venom? Like, it's Venom because that's what the comic. That's what Brian Michael Benis decided to call his power.

So if everyone's confused, we just, we say bioelectric. It's canon. Blame him. Blame him. Blame Benis. But we let Genki name it. So anyway, I just want to let you guys know where that comes from. But that one punch was the foundation of everything we did from there.

Because we knew it had to have a couple different things. One, that it had to work in concert with the main Spider-Man abilities, that we wanted to be more cinematic and more dynamic. And then the other thing that Cam Christian wanted is he wanted to have that feeling of go from single combatant with Spider-Man, right, which is single punches with single people that you would manage and bounce around to, to now AO-E-based attack. So we really wanted to make sure this AOE style ability folded into and sort of complimented that traditional or that original Spider-Man combat style.

And the L-1 modifier to me was a big part of maintaining flow. And it's my favorite part of the Spider-Man combat system is how well it cancel flows through whatever you want to do. And that the bioelectric powers had to work in the same way. Did I answer your question? That definitely answered my question because, yeah, the Venom Punch is probably my favorite move in the game. Like, that's my favorite addition as far as, like, the combat system. But I also do like the holograms because that that's such a particular, like, if I was to imagine Sparterman game and I was going to imagine like what his web or gadget powers were going to be, the last thing to come to mind would be, oh, yeah, just throw out a hologram. But I'd fight alongside you.

Like, was that, was that like somebody's decision that everybody went like, oh, that's genius? or like how'd that come to pass? Great. This is what's so cool about insomiac. Like, when we were designing gadgets, we put them way back in our design. Like, we didn't put them up front. We knew it was like, let's focus on bioelectricity, let's focus on camo. And then we started making this mission where we wanted Pete to train you. So we still wanted Pete in our ear.

We still wanted some sense of Pete, but we knew he was going to be away. So that's when we came up with a hologram Pete, right? Holo Pete's little, you know, dummy fighters, right? And like, well, what if we, what if Miles got the idea that he could turn that into a gadget? So it was almost like we did that first and said, oh, that'd be a great gadget. And then it turned out feeling really good and organic that he would make a gadget like that because he got the idea from Pete's stuff. And so, yeah, I think it was one of those chicken and the egg things that one thing inspired the other. But I like it as a way to each of our gadgets, there's only four versus the eight.

But we think because bioelectric and invisibility, we counterbalanced. the need for that many gadgets. Like, I felt like in the length game that we have, if we had more than four, it might have just been overwhelming. Yeah, and I think that definitely worked out. Like, that was the thing that kind of balanced out of the combat for me in a way where I was like, oh, yeah, this feels way more refined in a way more than 2018. And so, like, I appreciated that.

I also appreciate the fact that, like, the first time I did the hologram thing, I was like, was this somebody from, like, the Ratchet and Clank team? Like, how did this happen? And so I appreciate that explanation. Yeah, I mean, we definitely have the Ratchet DNA. through everybody, every team member, we really try to be creative with that. And bringing personality to these gadgets is fun.

And if you really listen to some of the things they say, the one that always cracks me up is the deadpan. I exist when one of those things get up. I mean, I just love that they have small sentience, and you feel kind of sad when one of those dudes gets beaten up. I really think that what this game did a lot better than the first one, was kind of having all the different gadgets and abilities. Feel like they have a quest line to themselves when you're upgrading them.

Like there's, especially with the Peter kind of training missions. In the first game, there was just an abundance of things to do, which was great and which was super awesome. And it's the first game into this date, the only game I've ever platinum because I enjoyed doing those things. But with this game,

I really feel like there wasn't too many stealth missions. There was the right amount of stealth missions. And they felt like they built on each other. And they built teaching you how to, use your abilities as opposed to just here's things to do every time there was a mission it was like this one's harder than the last one and i'm now learning how to do something new with the new gadget that i have and with the hollow dexter or the the hollow the graham training like all with all those trainings the payoff at the end of learning how to do all those things step by step by step

and then you get the mission in front of uh empire state university and there's the hollow vulture and you're going through all that that might be my favorite bit of the entire game Wow. Did Yuri not kill it in that? I mean, Yuri's performing. Oh, my God, yeah. It's like, this is why Yuri is the best at what he does.

You give him a script, and he just eats every second of script you give that guy. I mean, I just still laugh, thinking about being in the recording session, watching him lean into all of those vulture recordings. Or when you're, like, rescuing one of the hollow, you know, people, you know, they're just sort of like, thank you, Spider-Man. Like he just, he really enjoys the hamming it up. And for Peter Parker, that is, it's perfect, right?

Totally. Bless and I were talking on Games Daily a couple of days ago. And one of our favorite things was the vaguely racist line about the Volter. It just fits so well. It was just effortless, man. It didn't feel try hard. Really quick. So much of the dialogue was great.

I mean, we got you. We're doing a spoiler cast. We got to talk about my favorite thing, which is Easter eggs, right? We gotten so many fun mentions Spider-Man 2018 was chock full of them. This one, we got some fun little X-Men shout-outs with Dazzler and with Lila Cheney, which I wasn't even familiar with. I had to Google that for myself to see what it was. Of course, we got Doc Ock.

We got the Will's... Wait, wait, I'm not going to pretend like I caught Dad. What are you talking about with Dasler? I didn't catch any of that. Oh, one of the time capsules was concert tickets. Yeah, yeah. And the concert was Dassler and Lila Cheney, who was like a guitar player, I guess, a guitar-based mutant. Gotcha.

Which is cool. But I just love that stuff. And I love that that very much is outside of the traditional Spider-Man lore. So that was cool. What are some Easter eggs that you want to point out and talk about? Well, there's a ton of them. And probably some like you just mentioned that I probably don't know all of them because that's what's great about our team is they'll just add stuff that's small or like you have deep cuts that you have to research. But I love the Big Wheel Time Capsule.

Did you guys see the Big Wheel character? You know who Big Wheel is? Oh, I saw that, but I don't know who it is, though. Okay, go Google Big Wheel. He's one of the characters like, we were amusing. Who's the main villain? I remember one of our designers said, it should be Big Wheel.

We should make Big Wheel the villain of our game. It was like, of course, ridiculous. How could you have a character named Big Wheel for your villain? But, you know, I'd love that the Big Wheels in there. I love that if you actually read the original comic that debuted with the tinkerer that the repair shop is like almost one for one for the for the comic panel i just like doing that kind of doing that kind of research um uh you know i i i think i think in general the the things that i i love best are when the team leans in and i don't even know this isn't

an easter egg it's more of an anecdote um i want to just say where spider man the cat came from yes is that all right yes can they go on yeah okay So we have, we've designed games very early. We just have a big bulletin board with cards, and they'll say things like, save the cat. And we have a little card says save the cat. And we put that up and like, well, that's a great thing for Miles Morales is a new hero to do. We had no idea how that was going to manifest or what was going to be.

Then it turns into a quest, like, okay, what if this guy got broken into and his bodega cat, you know, got stolen? All right, well, that's kind of cool. But then you start to get into the practicalities of that. It's like, well, bodega cat, I need to bring bodega cat back. how am I going to do that? Is he going to go into a magic pocket? Or do I want to, no, let's put them in a backpack. Let's put them on, and then we can swing back for them.

So as soon as you have a Spider-Man with a backpack, and there's a cat coming out, and the animators have done all that cute animation, it's like, well, we got to make that into a suit, right? And then that turns into a suit. And then the animator says, is that okay if I did a finisher with Spider-Man the cat? I'm like, you better do it, right?

It was like, you must do this. And that's the way insomniac sort of rolls. It's like whether you call that an Easter egg or just the little passions that become now, I think Spider-Man the Cat sort of gained his own, you know, internet fame almost instantly when we debuted him. And that's the kind of stuff that you can't manufacture. That's just that organic team coming together and making something more out of something as simple as Save the Cat card. That's awesome. One of the things I think that is wrapped up in the conversation and where I want to go with it,

you're talking about Venom Punch, we're talking about camouflage, we're talking about Spider-Man the cat, and how I think this all makes miles uniquely miles and makes this experience not feel like I'm just doing Spider-Man PS4 again, right? And I think the limited number of gadgets means I'm more aware of my gadgets than I ever was with the PS4. I think the, you know, the venom bar filling in on its own or whatever as I go is a new way, let alone to still have my finishers and everything else. It makes Spider-Man. uniquely Spider-Man and Miles, uniquely Miles. The question I have for you is how, was it an exciting challenge?

Was it more difficult than you'd expect, or am I making it too hard for New York as a character? You know what I mean? I think sequels and continuations, even for this one, people were like, oh, wait, so is it just going to be Harlem? No, it's still going to be all of Manhattan. Oh, was that just going to feel the exact same way? And, like, I think you guys do some really nifty things to keep it fresh. What was that like? Well, I remember we had early discussions about what we could do to make Manhattan feel unique.

And there was a lot of hand-wring around the idea like, well, let's try winter. And I remember there was a lot of technical conversations like, oh, my gosh, that's actually going to be a lot of work, like making sure that that comes off correctly. And Jason Hickey, one of our art directors, says, no, we'll absolutely make that happen. And then him just like committing and working with the team to very quickly sort of throw snow down on all of the city. and instantly making it feel different. We're like, wow, just seeing the team lean on that. And then, of course, all the holiday decorations that come with it and sort of the color that comes with that.

That was one of the first big things that we said, let's try our best to transform the city. And the other one that might be subtle, but I think it's important, is every single one of our times a day feels different because the skybox is different and the weather is different. So you really get a feeling like, yeah,

I've swung through this city before and in similar kind of ways, but it really does feel unique. when you're looking at it with the pink sky sunset or more color in the nighttime or that kind of, if you ever been New York when it's just really oppressive, snowy, and atmospheric, that one diffuse kind of like crappy winter day, that feels like New York to me.

Like I've been there going, oh, I've felt that. I know what that feels like. So I think that was one thing just on a pure aesthetic level. But then I really think the, I keep coming back to the app, but I love the fact that we now have citizen reporting all throughout the city. And those little activities that we dotted around all of Manhattan, those made me think about the city in a new way.

And then the other thing I really love is the musical sampling activity that we did with Aaron Davis. It was something that we came on fairly late. Darius, one of our designers, was assigned to do this with a small team. And the level of storytelling that it brought to landmarks and places, around New York that really provide Miles a new perspective on his on his roots on the relationship that his uncle had with his dad. That's the kind of stuff that really got me jazzed. And then do you guys play the postcards at the end? Dude. Yes. Yeah, I did a couple. Devastating. That was the second thing. I cried about the

next day of to sit there and have Miles plug it in and have his dad talk to him. I was like, oh my God. Oh, my God. So when your dad's talking to you about all these places that you've been and things that you did together, I mean, how do you make postcards collection turn into an emotional moment? And that's the kind of stuff that we always try to infuse story and try to make sure there's an emotional connection with this city. And that's the great thing about New York is it is a really cool city. But you can find ways to make something that feels mundane feel so much, have so much more meaning. And I think if I can for a second, Tim, that's the thing I want to compliment you guys on. and I don't even think I had eyes on it enough playing miles,

but going back last night and starting my remastered platinum play-through, it is the idea that, you know, in the lead-in, it was this, oh, man, how different can New York feel? And for me, what's amazing about it and what I love, and I sold you guys short on, which I think is understandable because there had been the one game, it's the fact that I was happy to be back in New York, and I was happy to be back in the Insomniac Spider-Man universe.

And I don't think we knew with one game, that's what it was. But to come back in this, and like we talked about at the front, to be reintroduced to Rhino, to then also barrel through JJ's wall as he's getting ready to podcast. You know, to have the JJ podcast be there, but also have this new podcast there with, you know, Ashley Birch doing the voice. Yeah, exactly, that we're able to sit. Like, even last night swinging around and, like, cutting through the park in seeing the amphitheater, where Genki and Miles meet up and do the suit.

I was like, holy shit, right? Like, you've made memories in this world. It happened playing as Miles, too. Like, oh, yeah, I remember doing this is such and such here or whatever. To go through and have that feel of it. So last night, swing by as Pete, where I know Aaron's going to work in a year.

It's like, oh, my God. Like, it is this connected tissue and whether that be a throwaway line about Hammerhead, whether it be the kingpin popping back up. Like, I was like, oh, my God, I was so excited to be back and not feel like, you know, I know so many people are like, oh, Miles, you know, when it got announced,

oh it isn't Spider-Man too oh it isn't a full-blown thing and realize that to even think about i think as sequels or whatever is short-changing it it was a new issue it was a new issue of the comic book that is the spider-man universe you guys have built and i was so happy to have it thanks man i mean that that really was the way we wanted to do and to your point that connective tissue those many stories like what happened to all the fisk real estate after you know fist falls yeah we sort to answer those questions, you know, in a way that's kind of, it's a twist, you know, the fact that the underground occupies it, well, of course they did, right? Oh, they have trophies of these old gangs they took over. Well, of course they did. And then that deepens your connection if you've

played those previous games. Like, I remember what it was like for me to deal with those people. And then the Underround did, so that's how much, that's how badass they are. Yeah. That's the kind of stuff I really enjoy seeing. And the comic analogy is good. And so to the comic analogy in the world you're building, this universe of it, you know, again for remastered, that's playthier to go through and meet Gloria. And she's like out on the street

doing her thing and she doesn't want to go to Feast and then to be in Miles and here she is working at Feast, pretty much running it. Here's her girlfriend. Like you see this whole thing of like these people have actually changed

and evolved in there. And even in Miles with a shorter window and a shorter time frame to introduce characters like Haley where I'm like, I barely know you, but it's awesome.

And I see this spark between you and Miles and I want to see what that's going to look like in Spider-Man 2 or whatever you call the next iteration of the universe.

I totally agree with what we're great saying here. I think that what this game did so well is kind of get on the ground level. And that's something that, you know, Spider-Man is, we've always talked about. Like, why do we love him? We love him because both Spider-Man and Peter Parker are dealing with issues that usually affect him on both levels. But both of those levels are on the ground. It's not the Avengers-level threat.

It's New York City. And I think that with what we have with the Spider-Man in 2018, eight years in, it's a little bit different. He's not necessarily the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. So to get that with Miles, and it's not just the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, it's Harlem Spider-Man. To focus in on that, having the characters and the ground level, the graffiti, the murals, the Christmas kind of like decorations and reits and stuff, let alone just Christmas. This is the type of game. I can't think of a Christmas game off the top of my head. But I bet you, guys, that years to come down the line, people go into every year play this game around Christmas.

Because that sense of family, that sense of holiday, that that sense of like, you know, kind of just community is built around Harlem and being connected. And even Rio being running for like, you know, like some local government stuff. Like that felt, feel so believable to her character. And it doesn't feel like everywhere around the city, the entire Manhattan, you're seeing billboards for her. Because I feel like other video games, that's what they would do. No, she's only in Harlem because she's running in Harlem. Like that's so cool. And she represents the everyday hero.

Miles has, you know, family was super important to us. And bringing Harlem to life, that is the heart and soul of this game, right? We wanted to bring, Harlem was there in the first game, but not to this degree. Like the amount of attention and detail we were able to give Harlem was just because that story was focused around this location. So I will say, Greg, when you asked the first question, what made it unique, I think out of all the things we did globally across Manhattan, we're most proud of what we did with Harlem and not just the place, but the people and all the side quests that it did with the people of Harlem and how you help them. That's why I think we can earn the title of, oh, he's our Spider-Man. And that's that's what I hope people feel at the end of the day. Talk to me about one of the things that we talked about recently on one.

one of the games dailies about reviews and coming out. Gita over at Vice had put up a piece, right, talking about loving the game and how great it is, but then also this struggle of, you know, her being a person of color in New York and this pushback of NYPD, and even go as far back as Spider-Cop at 2018, there was still a conversation.

Yeah. What do you guys, and I don't even say, what's your stance? Like, how do you wrestle with that? There is the Black Lives Matter in this, right? It's very prominent. A mission ends that way, so you can't miss it.

it. How do you guys wrestle with what is going on in the real world with the NYPD and policing versus what's going on in your Spider-Man world and where the line needs to be blurred? Well, Stanley's principle for Marvel stories were always like, let's reflect the world that's around us. And to ignore it is not going to make our characters feel grounded. So in the first game, you'd swing through the city and you'd see pry flags, you know, painted on the walls or hung up. As a part of the emergent part of the city, something that you would see, that's something that reflects New York City today. Black Lives Matters, same thing.

We'd expect to see Black Lives Matters murals up in New York City. The relationship that Miles has with his city and Harlem specifically is that of a mixed race teen. He has a black father and a Puerto Rican mother. And the community that is of Harlem is multicultural. So we wanted to reflect all of those things. Now when it comes to the criticisms of the issues of like the relations, that people of color have with the police, the idea here is that we want to make sure that Miles had his own unique way to interface with the city directly.

And that's where I think the app, gosh, I keep coming back to that, but it really is important on many levels. That this is the way that he can interface directly with the people and they could report their problems. And then they knew that there was someone there for them, that someone was going to listen and hear them and see them and help. them in a way that was meaningful and in making strong connections. So that sense of community and that sense of people coming together and having ownership of who they are and having pride of who they are. You know, you see the Puerto Rican flags on the street. You see the sense of culture and pride. We wanted to celebrate that aspect of it in this game. And we wanted to acknowledge that there are issues. But in our story, Miles being connected to this community and that

authenticity of the community was our number one goal, as much as we could possibly do it within the Marvel's New York City. Did you expect the reaction you saw, I mean, based off the demo you guys put out of the Puerto Rican flags? Like, you know, it was so heartwarming that day to go through and see the Twitch streamers and people reacting of crying, of seeing this and saying, I've never seen my flag in the game before. It was a wonderful surprise. When you work on something for a while, even though it was two years that we were working on it, you've become numb to some of the exercises we go through. And one of those was, how do we continue making our world feel more unique?

So we actually went to Harlem. We sat down with families of mixed-race families, black families, people with different backgrounds, and we showed them our content in midstream. Like we were only a couple, three, four months in. And they gave us all this amazing feedback of how not correct it. it was. This is not right. You know, you guys are not doing it right. And here's all the reasons why. Like, hey, the way that Miles is talking to Rio there, that doesn't feel authentic. Like that, if she talked, if he talked to him, my mother like that, he would have been smacked by his mom.

Like, we got all this wonderful feedback of how to represent this culture correctly. And so we took all of that feedback and we, that sort of just became part of our process. And we live with it for a while. It was like, it was a part of our DNA. So when it came out, we forgot that, oh yeah, we did this thing and it resonated with people, seeing themselves, seeing their culture represented with such pride, and it feeling correct, brought people to tears.

And I think where we are coming from is this is all through the lens of authenticity, but it matters, right? Representation matters. And that's something that we feel as insomnia at games. We want to make a positive and lasting impact on people's lives. That's sort of our studio mantra. By representation, I feel like

we're, in being authentic, that's a big part of our mission. Well, I mean, it goes so much further, I think even that's what I was talking about in our review and just in general, again, like Haley, where it's like, here's this street artist. And even when Ganky's trying to explain to her, no, you've met her and she's, he's never like, oh, the deaf girl. It's not like, that's not what defines her. It's there. And not to mention when Miles drops in and starts signing to her, she is never like, oh, my

God, you know sign language? It's just like, no, this is how life works. So this is how it is, and you would understand that and move on. Yeah, we really felt it was essential that we could organically weave these different aspects of the human condition within our story, right? We wanted it to be normalized that you'd see these people throughout the world, and it wasn't a story about her being deaf. That wasn't what the story was about. This is a woman who is politically engaged in trying to rally people, and she happened. to be deaf, and she makes a huge impact in her community.

And then the fact that Miles interfaces were with her, with ASL, was our commitment from our animation team. We brought in actors and consultants to ensure that ASL was correct. Like, there was no shortcuts to getting that right, because we knew if someone could actually, who speaks ASL could recognize that, that that was going to be important. So that's the attention to the detail that the team put in to the game. I love it, man.

100%. Now, I know we're getting long in the tooth here. I said probably 430. We're already getting really close to that. So before then, let's hear a word from our sponsors. But then we're going back and talk about the ending, ending, ending, and where we're going. All right. So here's a word from our sponsor.

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and require an online consultation with a medical provider who will determine if the prescription is appropriate. See the website for full details and safety information. Remember, that's For Hymns. dot com slash kind of funny. All right, Brian. I won't lie to you. Like, I enjoy the entire ride.

I had this. Like, when the post credit scene happens, I had completely forgotten about it. Like, it wasn't like I was sitting there waiting for it. I was expecting something for miles, something with Rio. I love, we didn't even mention that, by the way.

I love how much that she knows. I love that it's revealed. I love that that's out there now, and she's supportive and, like, you know, you remind me so much of your father. Like, that's all brilliant, beautiful stuff. But let's talk about Harry. Let's talk about Dr. Connors.

Because I'm nerding out when I see it. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God. And he calls him Kurt. I was like, oh, my fucking God. I mean, it's big. It's big too because Lizard was not in Spider-Man 2018. However, people were dressing up as lizard at the Halloween party. So who is lizard in this world?

Was Kurt Conner's lizard at some point? I think you guys are missing the most important question. Where is shirtless Spider-Man? And when is shirtless Spider-Man going to make a return to our game? That's my biggest question. I want you to know that I did. I did at one point message James Stevenson, and I said, it was right after you guys recast Peter's face, which we're going to talk about as well.

But I was like, hey, why don't you recast again? Let me come in and voice shirtless Spider-Man, the man whose photos I take, and James did not respond to my text. So that's where that conversation ended. That's because you are not the shirtless Spider-Man, so let's get that straight. I know, I just take his photos. I would have, you know what I mean? Like, I could have.

Right. Yeah. Remember, we're all about authenticity, Mr. Miller. I understand. So anyway, to answer. answer your first question. There are things obviously that Brian, the other Brian might want to talk about

in the future. So I'm going to hold all that close. I'm not a coward. I'm letting you know that that there are certain things Miller that must not be said, right? And some of those things are things that will happen in the future. But the fact that you were excited about the potential

with these characters moving forward, we are also extremely excited. You did such a good job of just hiding. I didn't even think about Norman. I wasn't even thinking about the mayor, right? And then he obviously, he's like, let him out. I was like, oh my God, the symbion's jumping off him. It's awesome. Yeah, I mean, look, I'll be honest. These are, this is, Miles Morales is what we believe in a central part of this Spider-Man universe that Insomniac games and Marvel games and

some of you are creating. And that that story, we want the promise of exciting new adventures in the future. So, of course, there are threads that we left hanging on the first game, and that we want to make sure people remember that these are still important threads that we want to continue. So Brian and the crew have some exciting stuff to plan for the future. Okay, wink twice

if the name Spider-Men has ever been thrown around for the sequel. I like it. I'm just going to smile through all this. You're like, don't blink, don't react. Do you think this is something you want to do again, right? Miles Morales being this kind of paired down Spider-Man experience,

that is a shorter game that is stripped back in some ways, but a step forward in other ways. Do you think that the feature could hold Balls and Browless 2 or like any sort of like a, all right, here's a smaller Spirited Main Package that is, you know, I guess like a sidestep from like the mainline series, but still as core to the series. Well, let me answer it in this way. Our whole team relished the opportunity to make a product of this size. And I'll throw something back to you guys. I think this is an important part of how we as video game makers can tell compelling stories in a faster cadence.

I really enjoyed being able to make something in a two-year cadence versus a four or five or six-year cadence. So for me, I think it's essential to think about the ways we think of products, maybe taking different shapes and sizes, and that's okay. So for me, I could just tell you, blessing, I love working on something of this scale, and I would totally work on something like this scale in the future. But can you answer you guys my I mean I'm just curious I think what do you guys think it feels like to have a product of a different scale that tells a story like this I personally love it I've been saying since day one when uncharted lost legacy came out I was like I will take one of these a year please and thank you I just love the fact that it's like it can get in get out give you all the thrills and set piece moments you need and all that stuff introduce some new mechanics and you know have those like those heartfelt moments that I'm not going to swell from uncharted loss legacy you're probably this is an uncharted lost legacy spoiler cast exactly don't talk about the elephants and uh when when miles morales was first announced and then there was like the

questions of like okay well what is it is it a sequel is it and this is that when it was said oh it is a smaller mild story i was like this is like kind of ideal situation for me because i don't think that this was paired back in i haven't really given my full review of this yet anywhere but like it as a post show

patreon dot com slash kind of games uh i don't see it as a scaled back thing i see it as kind of like like i don't even want to say cutting the fat. It's kind of just like, okay, what should this game be? And I feel like it kind of achieved that. I think from the storyline perspectives, I would love to get more frequent Spider-Man stories in this world as opposed to having to wait longer to get longer ones because there's still so much to do. It's not like from a gameplay perspective, I still don't have hours and hours and hours of collecting things that feel meaningful and doing side quests that feel

meaningful and all that like the content's there i think just from a character and story and new york world perspective like i would i'd prefer this bless you man yeah i like this too like i like the idea of uh hey if we can make a and i know games have gone up to do it's 70 dollars now but like instead of making something 60 dollars and making it this 30 30 hour thing or 20 something hour thing and making it feel full and in some cases bloated right like i like the idea of hey let's scale down and tell a story that needs to be told within the time and scaled and it needs to be told in and yeah like i say all the time my uncharted lost legacy is my favorite uncharted game for that exact reason right like uncharted four towards the end of that game i started to feel like

all right this probably wrap up at a certain point and uncharted lost legacy i had i had none of that and i had characters that i hadn't experienced before and i had all these things that made that game that game feel fresh uh i like i do really like the idea of especially for for a A games, games of the skill, PlayStation First Party games especially, playing around with what they can be, playing around with, hey, even if, like, what does, what would a

$20 spire to main game look like, right? Like, that's probably a longer, different conversation, but, hey, if, if, if we could put out a three-hour experience and it works for what it is, right, if we are putting out Mary Jane the game, or, yeah, Mary Jane Watson the game, right? And it is like a stealth game or whatever, right? Like, if

if it's, if this, if this, if this, if it's the scale down thing that works for what it is. I'm totally down for that. I think Miles Morales is for what it is, right? Like it coming out at, I think like $50 on the PS5. You know, I like the length and scale that it is. Cool, man. Yeah, I mean, I'll just say one other thing,

is it really allows us to also bring up other creative voices to, you know, when you think about these things, they're huge investments, right? So I'm excited about the future of different size titles for that very reason as well. Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about in terms of, or what I said, but you agreed with, because I'm always right. But this being like issues, right? Yeah, I'm right there with Tim, man. Give me one of these every year, every two years, whatever it is to keep not burned out, but keep these stories going.

And let me come back to this New York and let me be a part of that. Because again, like, you know, hats off to you. Like, I think this is a better game than Spider-Man PS4. And that's no shade at Spider-Man PS4, which I think is a fantastic game and still adore. And it's cheating because clearly, like, even playing it last night through the Kingpin stuff. And it's like, man, to think of the camera angles that we're used here and the storytelling visually that was done, it's like clearly you guys learned so much

from making that first game to apply to this game that it's cheating to compare. Yeah, we're standing on the shoulders of giants, right? You can't, you know, there's no Miles Morales without Marvel Spider-Man. That's what's so wonderful about it. It's a continuum. It really builds on the foundation we created.

So, yeah, but I appreciate your take. No, and it's definitely... I think this one for miles ahead. Hey, all I'm going to drink is LaCroi. did it, what a weirdo, all right, fine. Yeah, but I do want to get a question in here from Anakin, JMT, who wrote into patreon.com slash kind of funny games

just like you can to be part of the show and says, this question is for Brian. Can you go into detail about the decision to change the face model for Peter instead of upping the look of the ones you guys already had? Will this new model be included in the Thanksgiving patch for Spider-Man PS4, or will that continue with the original model? Of course, you guys made

headlines changing Peter Parker, and you put out a statement, obviously, of like, hey, for next gen, this is what we think works for our Peter. Yeah, ultimately, we wanted to provide the next level of performance from Yuri Lowenthal's reads, because he's more, he's not just the voice. There's a lot of, just to be clear, he is performing Peter Parker. Like, everything you see is motions, its mannerisms, all that stuff is being captured in a performance capture booth or in a Vio booth. So we found a model that we felt was going to best translate the nuances of Yuri's face and performance to create this Peter Parker.

What's kind of really cool, as I'm seeing, as more people get to see the remaster and see it in context, they're like, oh, now I get it. Now I'm sort of seeing how this works. And it, you know, every, you know, do gamers like change? Obviously that's a challenge, right, where people are, they love these characters. So all I can say is please, you know, please give it that chance to play it. And know that at this, stage we are only planning on going forward that the new head to happen. So there was a question in there too about going back, bringing that, patching that back. I don't think there's any plans to patch back. Yeah. You guys had been pretty clear about it being the next gen thing. And

even with me with Miles, which we didn't even talk about, the amazing flashback to them at the Science Fair, Science Center, and then running into Doc and running into Peter, that was another, like, me with the giant anime eyes of like the bump. And then you, I did it my second play-thro. walked away right away, right? And you guys don't force the conversation. But the bump and then just to stand there and listen to them talk and, like, see Peter try to come up with an excuse to get out of it. I was like, oh my God.

So fun. There it was, I would say, quote unquote, jarring because it was just like one of my first looks, right? We seen him at the very beginning of the game and then that. But even now being a few hours into remastered, like when it pops up, I'm like, it's, Peter, that's Peter. It's except, you know what I mean? I understand what it is. It's not like pulling me out of the experience.

Yeah, for sure. Before you go, I need to bring up one thing that can't believe we haven't talked about. Suits, baby. What suits did we rock with with our playthrus? Oh, man. I was about it was 2020, I want to say? The 2020 suit?

It's the best, man. It's amazing. Okay. So blessing 2020, Miller? For the most part, I was going to be into the Spider-Verse. And I didn't have the effect on. I turned off the suit mod. I played with it for a little bit.

I thought it was cute. And then it was that thing of like, there's always that thing when you play the, and Somnian Spider-Man the universe of like how far can I push it where I still feel like I'm in the universe but I'm not breaking the universe and so like I turned off the suit mod early on and kept swinging with that but I do want to give a shout

to it's the Spider-Man Miles Mariles but then it's the gold one it's the one you get unlocked I think for doing side missions or something like that but that one I thought was dope hometown pride yeah hometown pride and then a lot of the if it wasn't that it was the normal one but with the scarf and hat the earmuffs on I love the scarf

Yeah, I was like, that's, I just say on that, that's another deep cut going to the comics, you'll see Spider-Man with that scarf. It's almost like a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a comic book. So, that's another, that's another one. Uh, for me, I was waiting so much to get the Spider-Ver suit. I was like, I just need to get to level 14 so I can get this damn suit because that's all I want to play with.

And then once I got it, it was kind of like Greg where I, I tinkered with it for a bit, but I actually liked the animated suit better. I thought that it kind of felt more authentically miles to me of what I was trying to get from the Into the Spider-Ver suit, which I also loved. But I played with the animated suit the most. There's just something, and this goes back to even 2018, the cell-shaded was always my favorite. The comic book-looking, I love your suit, was always my favorite because I just love how it looks in the insomniac world. I love that. But then once I got the 2021, when they first revealed that suit on the screenshots of it and there was like the whole art,

I was kind of like, this ain't my vibe. Like, I don't really, it's going too far. I don't really like this. Yeah. I immediately knew. When I saw it, I was like, that's the one. I'm going to write that one. In the game, seeing it, I'm like, oh, this is it.

Like, this is Tim Geddies is fuck, and I love it. And, like, seeing him swing through and I love the animations of the way Miles swings. But in that suit in particular, with all the LEDs and the headphones and like the modified bomber jacket, like, I'm like, this is the, the dovest suit in the game. Yeah. And I just shout out to the character team and the tech art. The fact that the expressions change on the LED lights like the eyes would, every single one of those suits, if you go through our cinematics, like when he pulls off his mask, we have solutions. They had to animate specifically for those suits. You have to understand the level of detail because we know, we knew that people wanted to rock that suit that was important to them.

And we didn't want to compromise the experience. So that's the kind of extra level that the team goes into. So special shout out to the character rigging and tech. teams for those. And it's quite a loaded question here. But last time when we had the other Brian on, we were talking about the suits and how some, there was some notable omissions where it's like, how is this or that suit not here? Were there any suits that you guys were like, we can't do this? Not yet. Okay. So Gavin, one of our art directors, we desperately wanted to do the Cape suit. There is this suit that you have full-on cow cape. It's sort of, it's reminiscent of another

character, I would say. But to achieve that level of cloth, that amount of cloth, it was sort of too, like we had to make choices, right? And that was one of the things like, okay, we can't do the suit for all these technical reasons. But man, we do wish we could have done it. So that's the one suit that we weren't able to get in. You talk about all the love that goes into it. Another thing we'd be remiss without saying, I really thought your Stanley tribute was great. Like, that's one of those trophies that's there it's an Easter egg and like you for me obviously pre-launch

I'm going off of people talking about Spider-Man PS4 of where that restaurant was and I'm like and when I finally found it it was just it was understated but it's perfectly on point for where it should be yeah he's a man he obviously inspired so many of us

and I just can't imagine our world without him and Jack Kirby and all these these guys that just sort of toiled away making these these comic books that have lived forever i mean they they've created characters that um that speak to us and to we we we are um we would have loved to have another cameo but we couldn't to respect his his is we just needed to memorialize him right and that and happy like the memorial well it's another one of those that works right because you believe that you understand how much

he meant to the neighborhood and how much you know what i mean like everybody had this connection to him you believe that that would be there so their mourning their character not even stand. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I haven't got that yet. I can't wait to see it. That sounds so, so right.

Sorry, spoiled it for you. Oh, no. Hey, this is this Squattercast, man? Brian, before you go, is there any other questions you have for us? Anything you want to take issue with us? You want to yell at us? You want to yell at me?

You want to yell at Tim? Go at it. I can take it. No. No, I just wanted to thank you guys for the opportunity for us to talk about this game. I mean, obviously, the team feels very proud of it. It's just been rewarding to see the reaction.

And we welcome all. all feedback, right? So blessing you and I will talk after the cast. Oh, yeah. I got some words, but I got some words for you. Give me some words. What are you words? I'm joking.

I'm joking. I don't really have any words. All right. Give me all your words. But no, we really appreciate the feedback, positive and negative. And we can't wait for you guys to, if you haven't played it yet and you're watching the spoiler cast, shame on you. But if you have played it, watching the spoiler cast, if you have any other questions,

and Samiak's really open. Come talk to us on Twitter. We will answer your question. there. Awesome. Well, thank you for your time, Brian. Thank you for everything, man. This game was awesome. It's like such a great thing in a year that's been so ridiculously weird in so many ways, hard in others. I think video games have been the one thing that consistently have been awesome. And, you know, it's been such a great year for gaming and to launch this new system with such a hit, such an amazing experience that like really just solidifies me that man,

video games are cool. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thanks, brother. Yeah. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, of course, thank you for watching. This has been the Kind of Funny Games cast. Remember each and every week we get together to talk about all the things we love and dislike in video games. Of course, you can catch it early. Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games. You can be part of the show. You can get it ad free.

You can get it with the post show we're about to do, which is Tim Getty's review of Spider-Man, Miles Morales, spoiler film. However, if you wanted to toss us, no bucks, no big deal. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Rooster Teeth and Podcast Services around the globe. Remember, it is next gen. It is here. it is happening, it has launched, we're in the living it, we're doing all these previews and all the stuff, you can go over to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or more specifically, kindof funny.com

slash PS5 if you want to catch all our hands-on impressions. Until next time, though, it's been our pleasure to serve you. This PlayStation 5 was provided by PlayStation for review.