Marvel's Spider-Man 2 actor researched "the behaviors of addiction" to prepare for Peter Parker donning the Venom suit

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 PS5 gameplay screenshot
(Image credit: SIE)

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 actor Yuri Lowenthal says they researched "the behaviors of addiction" when preparing for Peter Parker's Symbiote suit scenes in the sequel. 

Last week, during the PlayStation Showcase, we got our first look at Peter Parker wearing the Symbiote suit in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. It's clear from the footage shared by Insomniac that Peter isn't quite his usual friendly neighborhood Spider-Man self when donning the new suit, so Lowenthal had to adjust his performance accordingly.

As revealed during the actor's recent appearance at MomoCon 2023 (via The Direct), Lowenthal, and the team at Insomniac, put a lot of work into finding Peter Parker's new personality when wearing the Symbiote suit in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. "We worked really, really hard, as a team to find what was the right thing," Lowenthal reveals, "because sometimes it just sounded comical when I would just, you know, rage."

"We looked at addiction in people and what the behaviors of addiction are," Lowenthal continues, "that's really what we went to for inspiration and to find the levels of it." Referring to his previous roles, Lowenthal spoke about his time voicing Naruto's Sasuke: "Before I started doing Sasuke, I had only played sort of like plucky young heroes that didn't have anything bad happen to them. And so, to sort of turn that around, I had to dig a little bit, but I'm generally a happy guy."

At the time of writing this, we're still waiting for that all-important Marvel's Spider-Man 2 release date. We know that the game is due to release sometime this Fall, but exactly what day or month is still a mystery. We shouldn't have to wait too much longer to find out though, as shortly after the game's appearance during the PlayStation showcase, Insomniac revealed that The Spider-Man 2 release date reveal is coming "soon".

Speaking of game reveals, we're just a few days away from Summer Games Fest 2023, as well as the Xbox Games Showcase 2023, Ubisoft Forward 2023, and more. 

Basically, you should familiarize yourself with the E3 2023 schedule so you don't miss any of the festivities this summer.  

Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.