During a panel at the recent Game Developer’s Conference, associate animation director James Ham revealed that significant changes were made to the climactic sequence of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 within the last few months of the game’s development. Insomniac Games scrapped months of work on the initial concepts before landing on the ultimate showdown.
According to information gained by GamesRadar, the QTE would have been different during the production of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Ham mentioned that the QTE constantly changed, especially in the last three to four months. At first, a truck was a big part of the scene, but it was removed in later versions. Ham described the development process as a learning experience, trying new ways to make QTEs more exciting for players.
A central focus of the redesigned QTE sequence was to prioritize the player’s experience. It involved using stick controls for movement inputs, even within the limitations of the QTE format. The dynamic between Peter Parker and Miles Morales was also a key part of the final sequence. Both Spider-Men react to each other’s movements while landing blows on Venom, who primarily responds to the heroes’ attacks due to a lack of a fully developed combat system.
“That whole final QTE scene was changed a lot over the duration of the game, like especially the last three or four months… But a lot of it is just kinda figuring it out. I kind of learned a lot on the go of like ‘how do we manipulate this?’ And kind of what we were saying before of like, we just wanted this to feel good. And we still wanted to have as much of it on the sticks as we can.”
James Ham
Ham compared the development process to working on a movie set, requiring frequent feedback and check-ins from Insomniac leadership. After agreeing on a general direction, Ham focused on the technical challenge of making the entire QTE “crack” and function flawlessly.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is one of the few games that still relies on a QTE system for a lot of its most cinematic moments. To be fair, this is more interactive than cutscenes and you can’t expect to be able to make animation just for one QTE to be used normally. Despite the substantial alterations and discarded concepts during development, the epic QTE fulfills Insomniac’s goal of delivering a thrilling and unforgettable conclusion to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. In my opinion, that’s the whole reason a QTE exists.
