This week, ahead of Spider-Man 2’s launch on PS5, I got a chance to sit down with Josue Benavidez, design director at Insomniac Games and talk about the work that he and his team put into the game. Josue’s remit on Spider-Man 2 was quite large — among the many, many hats he wore on this project, he directed the layout of the new Brooklyn and Queens maps, led development on numerous campaign missions, and did a lot of work on the game’s side quests and map activities. In this chat, Josue speaks to the ways Insomniac approached the crafting of a sequel starring such a famous, embedded character, but also discusses many of his passion points — the game’s new maps, how internal play led to the creation of the new wind tunnel and wingsuit systems, and why Spider-Man 2‘s collectible Spiderbots are a small but very particular point of pride.
He’s a man focused on the little things that not only comprise the greater game but embroider the experience in ways that make it feel special. As you’ll see when you play it this week, it all shows in the work. Josue’s a great chat and a fascinating guy. I’m really glad we got the chance to talk to him.
David Smith, Kotaku Australia:
We’ll start off nice and easy. Can you tell me a little bit about your role as design director on Spider-Man 2?
Josue Benavidez, Design Director for Spider-Man 2 at Insomniac Games:
Yeah, so as the design director, I was part of working with the design teams on the design and layouts for missions and content. But also, I worked really closely with all the other teams, the art and game plan teams, when it came to developing mission mechanics. And when it came to expanding the city, we expanded the city out to Brooklyn and Queens. So we worked really closely with the environment teams on that and then also on the gambling teams when it came to building new traverse elements and new things that we can add to Brooklyn and Queens.
DS:
Spider-Man 2 is obviously a very story-driven adventure. On a game like this, does narrative inform design or vice versa, or do both develop alongside one another in your experience?
JB:
I mean, it’s a little bit of both. It kind of depends on, sometimes we know there’s a really important story moment that we want to have happen, and so in that way, we’ll think, okay, we have this really great story moment or this really big climax, how do we build gameplay around that? How do we build gameplay that supports that? And then other times, we have gameplay and content to be like, Hey, we’ve got this really cool thing we can do, or we’ve got this really cool thing that we want to have happen. How do we make sure that the story is involved in that, and how can we use these cool things that you can do to tell stories? So it really depends on the thing that we’re looking at in particular. Sometimes it’s story, sometimes story drives it because we’ve got these really important story moments, and then sometimes we’re like, Hey, we got all these cool things that players can do. How can we make them part of the story?
DS:
Video games are often a power fantasy, and superheroes play pretty neatly into that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on designing a superhero game like Spider-Man 2, and which elements of the traditional video game power fantasy you’ve embraced for a game like this or even rejected?
JB:
Yeah, it is been really exciting working on Spider-Man. It plays unlike most other things that I played. I think one of the big power fantasies with Spider-Man is definitely with the Traversal. We have a very unique traversal system, and so it was really interesting being able to think about how Spider-Man would move around the city. How does that inform the design and the layout of the city so that it can support Spider-Man’s traversal? And so that was a huge element of the superhero fantasy, but then also thinking about, okay, well, how does Spider-Man solve problems and challenges? How does he take on enemies? We wanted to make sure that in every part of the game, it felt like you were playing the Spider-Man character. And so we tried to make sure that in combat, you’ve got lots of great Spider-Man options, and he’s got all of his gadgets and his powers and abilities. And then, even with the finishers, we wanted to make sure that it always felt like you’re playing Spider-Man, that he’s always doing something and the unique Spider-Man flair. And so that’s one way that we really tried to deliver on that Spider-Man fantasy.
DS:
You mentioned traversal there. That was something I wanted to ask about as well. You’ve got players in this game crossing the East River to Brooklyn and Queens, which necessitates some changes to traversal. It’s obviously harder to web swing across the river unless you’re looking for a bridge., so you’ve got the wind tunnels and the wingsuit. How did that system take shape, and how did you decide specifically where to place the wind tunnels within the existing New York map and the new boroughs?
JB:
Well, one of the interesting things is one of the earlier pieces of content that we built were wingsuit challenges. So we knew we were going to have the wingsuit in the game, and we wanted to leverage that as much as possible, and we wanted to create some new experiences for players. And so we had the idea of, well, what if you were using the Wingsuit? What if we had a challenge where you basically used the Wingsuit the whole time? So it was just like a kind of race with the Wingsuit, and that’s when we had our Talon Chases. That’s where the idea for that came up. And to do that, we made basically these wind tunnels that would follow behind the Talon. And so you could go into the wind tunnel and then you would just be in the wingsuit and you would just kind of be gliding around following after it.
And we were like, well, that’s a lot of fun. Wouldn’t it be fun if these were just out in the world and so you could just do this out in the world? And so that was actually one of the ways that we developed the wind tunnels was we actually were building the Talon Chases first because those were a wingsuit-focused mode, and we’re like, wow. And we just thought it was fun, so we wanted to put that out in the city. And then from there, we’re like, well, what are different interesting ways we can connect them? That’s where the updrafts comes from. It’s like, oh, well, what if you come out of a wind tunnel, and then you can kind of hit this updraft, and it sort of shoots you up, gives you a little bit of height, and you can kind of continue along.
And then, when it came to thinking about how to lay them out down around the city, it was mostly about, well, what’s going to create some interesting traversal links and traversal options? We wanted to make sure that you had to mix it up so we don’t have, for example, one wind tunnel that goes all the way through the whole city. We have parts of tunnels, and the idea there is you take the wind tunnel for a bit and then that shoots you out and then maybe you’ve got to hit an updraft, and then after you hit that updraft, maybe you’ve got to swing from a building or something to build up some more speed. And so just giving players some options to really play with the city as a kind of little bit of a playground and mix it up. And so, we tried to place some space things out so that it gives players different options on how they want to traverse through the city.
DS
I loved getting the (wingsuit-focused) Soar trophy as well, getting from the Financial District to Astoria. That took me a solid three hours of experimentation and I was having great fun the whole time. Really loved it.
Spider-Man is obviously one of the more popular superheroes in the world, and the things he can do are very much set in people’s minds. What challenges does that pose for you as a designer? We’re speaking about traversal, but more broadly, does it make it hard to find ways to surprise people? How do you design around two Spiders-Men?
JB:
One of our goals was to make sure that we provide some new experiences and some new, we know gamers love to try new things and to have news always to play with basically when they play games, even if it’s a sequel. So it was a really important thing that we focused on and it was, we work really well with, we’ve got a great relationship with our Marvel partners and there’s a lot in the actual, I think people think they have an idea of what Spider-Man can do and what that character is, but if you look at the background and the real history from the Marvel history of everything Spider-Man does, there’s a lot there to work with because he is really creative, a really inventive hero. So a lot of that comes, inspiration comes from, well, here’s things that he may have done before that we haven’t seen before.
We Wings is a great example that was really natural. We Wings are things that have been part of the Spider-Man comics and Spider-Man lore for a while. And so it was like, oh yeah, that was natural. Yeah, let’s do that. That’s a really great piece of inspiration. The same thing with the Iron Arms is one of the new features that we have for Peter. He is got the iron arm abilities and a lot of those, again, are inspired by things in the comics, so it’s a little bit of, there’s a lot of really good history or lore there to look through to see where some ideas, it’s a little bit of that and also just sort of what would be fun to do, what would be fun to add. And like I said, we work closely with Marvel and we’ve got a great relationship with them and they’re always positive on try new things, put new things out there, let’s really show everything that this character can do.
DS:
On a related note, I was going to ask about Boss fights as well. It’s a similar sort of thing. You’ve got villains like Kraven and Venom in this game. What are some of the things you look for to create that element of heightened danger in an encounter when these characters are so well known?
JB:
One of the, I think, big things that we want to do with our boss fights is also make sure that they have meaningful character and meaningful stories, too. There’s the challenge side of it, where we want to make sure that we’re offering unique challenges and have fun gameplay moments with the bosses. We want to make it feel like, hey, this is a special experience. But I think a lot of where the danger comes from is also just from these characters, and you get to know Kraven, and he seems like a scary dude. And so when you finally do get to fight him, it’s like, oh man, this is a guy. We set all that up. I mean this is a little bit spoiler, so I don’t know if you want to put a spoiler warning for anything on this topic, but early on we show how Kraven is sort of taking out other enemies and how he takes out Scorpion.
So this is the character you fought before. And so we build a lot of that danger up through the story. We build him up as this dangerous who’s just sort of taking hits and giving it back twice over. And so then when you fight him, it’s like, yeah, you kind of know that danger is coming. Same thing with Lizard. We build up, you see all the destruction and everything that he does leading up to that. So again, I think a lot of that is making sure that we set the stage properly for those characters, and then when you actually do go face to face with them, it just makes those moments all that more exciting.
DS:
For sure. For sure. I did want to say as well, the Lizard fight is fantastic. I really enjoyed that fight. I had a great time. When designing around a sequel that’s as technical as this one is, I’d love to hear your thoughts or process around iteration. How do you decide what to keep from the original game, for instance, and what to change or maybe even do away with in a sequel?
JB:
Mostly we’re focused on what new features we can offer to players, and from there, we prioritize and we’re like, oh, these are the new gadgets that we want to feature. And so we focus on giving players some new gadgets and new toys to play with and sometimes that means that some of the other toys don’t make it in, but the idea there is again, to offer player new stuff, right, new things. There’s not a ton that we leave out. We try to get as much of it as we can in there for, I mean, the entire city from the first game is Spiderman two plus basically a whole nother city. So we wanted to make sure that we try to pack it with as much as we possibly can, but at the same time we want to make sure that there’s room for the new and the new fun, exciting toys.
DS:
For sure. For sure. I definitely felt like that vibe of we’re throwing everything in, it felt like there was a whiteboard somewhere and you guys were just like, what if just all of it though? We’re bringing back the portals from Ratchet & Clank too, we’re getting them back in. So there was so much stuff in this game. There’s a lot.
JB:
Yeah, and that’s really one of the things, the reasons I love working with Insomniac is we really like to foster that creativity and so we’ve got our big main blockbuster missions, but then sometimes we’re like, how can we create a fun mission that maybe has got some different types of experiences in it and just let people kind of be creative with it? And that’s how we get some of the fun smaller moments in our game that are more unique where you get to play in a flashback as Peter or something. Those things are just things that kind of come from the team just trying to stretch their creativity and that’s why we also get things, we use the tech, we use all the tech, we use all the parts that we have, all these tools and we try to think about each way that we can apply a tool and a new way that kind of creates a fun experience.
DS: I liked the quiet moments, like the walking sim segment at Coney Island where we go around and we’re playing little carnival games and things, like a moment to breathe, you know what I mean?
Okay, I’ve got some fun ones for the end. Can you tell me about a tough goal you set for yourself for this particular project and how you got it done?
JB:
One thing that, a goal that I had set is I wanted to improve discovery of just content and things in our world. And that’s something that as a team, we were very focused on and, so we sort of set this challenge of how can we make it so that players can swing around and just discover things naturally as they’re going through the world. And we put a lot of focus into putting all kinds of visual cues in the world, like the talents circling around talent chases, and we’ve got the Mysterio Mysteriums, eyes in the sky, just a lot of that stuff just so the players could just look around and explore with their eyes and know where to go without necessarily needing to ask where they should go next.
DS:
For sure. It made a world of difference, too. That was a lot of stuff I noticed in my playthrough. It’s like, oh, it’s very clear, even in the next sort of district over, where everything is. I know very much what I’m getting into when I head over there.
What’s something you got into Spider-Man 2 that you are really proud of but don’t know that anyone else will notice?
JB:
I hope they’ll notice it all. We put a lot of effort into making sure that people notice things, and I’m proud of a lot of it. One of the things that I guess is maybe sort of on the smaller side is I’m really proud of the Spiderbots we put in. I thought was really cool, and that was a really fun thing. That was really the team pulling out and I remember we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get all the variety and they really pulled it out. They’re like, no, let’s just go for it. Let’s just do all these little different little versions of Spiderbots, which I thought was a lot of fun. So it’s a smaller thing. I do think people noticed it, but it’s a smaller thing that I am particularly proud of because it just shows what the team can do when you just let them flex their creativity, and you also trust your team. You’re like, ‘Hey, what if we made a bunch of these little guys and we put ’em all over?’ And then, instead of walking away from the challenge, they step up to it and they really delivered on that.
Our thanks to Josue for taking the time to chat. Spider-Man 2 is out now on PlayStation 5. You can read our full review right over here.
Leave a Reply