Marvel's Spider-Man 2's final quick-time event "changed a lot" over the months devs spent on it, with lots of scrapped concepts left on the cutting room floor as a result

News
By published

A lot of work went into that final Venom fight

Marvel's Spider-Man 2
(Image credit: Sony)

Marvel's Spider-Man 2's climactic quick time event sequenced changed a lot of over the final few months of development, and Insomniac ended up scrapping months of work.

During a panel at the Game Developer's Conference this past week in San Francisco, Insomniac associate animation director James Ham revealed the development process behind the Spidey sequel's final QTE sequence. We won't spoil the actual events of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 here, but suffice it to say that the game finishes on one huge QTE sequence involving Venom.

"That whole final QTE scene was changed a lot over the duration of the game, like especially the last three or four months," Ham said of the game's ending. Ham revealed that the sequence repeatedly changed, and that there were originally a lot of sequences involving a truck in the whole QTE sequence in general. 

"But a lot of it is just kinda figuring it out," Ham continued of his time working on the sequence. "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," Ham added, referencing the QTE sequence's involvement with movement in particular.

"So like, gaming as they're like punching Venom," the Insomniac lead continued. Ham also revealed that Venom didn't really have a "system" for attacks in place, so a lot of the sequence was the villain reacting to Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Peter, therefore, reacted to Miles preparing to land a punch on the big bad, and the two ultimately fed into each other.

The Spider-Man 2 animation director then compared the final QTE sequence to a "movie set" - but he still had to repeatedly go back to his bosses at Insomniac and check that it's what they actually wanted. Leadership eventually settled on one conclusive design for the QTE sequence, and Ham was subsequently tasked with "cracking" the entire thing to make it work.

In other recent news for Insomniac's game, a new Spider-Man 2 patch let players see the game's DLC plans via a new menu, which Insomniac warned could potentially corrupt save files. 

If you're done with Spider-Man 2, here are all the upcoming Marvel games you've got to look forward to from developers around the world. 

Hirun Cryer
Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.