Sony’s State of Play broadcast on September 14 released even more gameplay footage from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Insomniac Games’ PlayStation 5 exclusive.

PlayStation seems giddy to share more about Spider-Man 2, the direct sequel to 2018 action-adventure Marvel’s Spider-Man, and the third installment in the series that also includes 2020’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

In a new gameplay trailer, we got a look at how the game’s updated progress system works as well as how it will let you switch between Miles Morales and Peter Parker “almost” instantly thanks to the PS5’s SSD. The game will also feature over 65 suits and over 200 different ways to wear them via a new suit-style system. Insomniac says the suits are based on looks Spider-Man has worn in past comics, movies, TV shows, and more.

Pre-order Spider-Man 2: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

At its May Showcase, PlayStation released 12 minutes of gameplay footage that confirmed Spider-Man 2 would keep pulling on its predecessors’ throughline—web-swing from buildings in (a now more realistically congested) New York City and clobber bad guys by the dozens. In the upcoming sequel, players will be able to control both Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, who gains never-before-seen abilities while wearing his black symbiote suit, and Miles Morales.

You’ll help the spider-boys do what they boyishly do best: take down obviously bad guys like big-game hunter Kraven and liquid alien Venom. The latter infiltrates Parker like a parasite, in a way creative director Bryan Intihar compares to addiction.

“The theme of addiction is prevalent [in the game],” Intihar told Eurogamer in a June interview, “especially because of the symbiote.”

“Not to go into too many things about how it plays in the narrative, but we want to treat it very seriously,” he continued. “It’s about really playing into those themes of addiction, how that can impact someone’s personality, impact the people around them, and you’re going to see that it’s not just how it’s impacting Peter on his own, but also those close to him. You’re going to see that play out throughout the game.”

You can see for yourself just how well it pulls that off when Spider-Man 2 comes out on PS5 on October 20.

Pre-order Spider-Man 2: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

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Like Insomniac’s original Marvel’s Spider-Man, the studio’s new sequel, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, looks really good. It’s one of those games that just about anyone will look at and go “Wow, what a great-looking game!” But if you dig a bit deeper and compare the original 2018 Spider-Man and its 2023 PS5-exclusive sequel, you’ll discover an interesting mix of improvements and compromises.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Spider-Man 2 (out on October 20) is the bigger, better follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2018 game and 2020’s Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. In his review, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach said that the latest Spider-Man sequel is as good as the previous games, adding that in many ways it’s “even better.” And I’m inclined to agree after playing Spider-Man 2 for the past two weeks. The sequel is likewise visually impressive, and at first glance seems to be a complete improvement over the prior two. But in reality…well okay, yeah, it’s mostly an improvement. Yet when you directly compare old and new you can spot some cutbacks and tweaks Insomniac presumably made to ensure the sequel’s performance is silky smooth.

Thanks to a fantastic direct comparison video from Youtuber Nick930, we can see just how Spider-Man 2 improves on the already-impressive graphics of the first game.

For example, the sequel sees a huge increase in traffic density. Comparing the new game with 2018’s, it’s almost laughable how few cars can be spotted in the original. NYC looks like a ghost town.

Main character models and textures also see a nice bump in quality, and improved ray-traced reflections can be found throughout New York. Something I noticed when playing Spider-Man 2 is how buildings now reflect other buildings, which helps the city look more real and less like a movie set or video game world. The rivers in NYC have also been improved, with better reflections and more lifelike physics when objects like boats are seen interacting with the water.

Smart cutbacks and compromises

But on the flip side, the number of people you’ll see milling about in the city that never sleeps has been reduced, with some areas of the game being more devoid of pedestrians than I expected. As suggested by Nick930, this change was likely made as a result of Insomniac adding more variety to crowds, and for the most part, I never noticed this when playing.

Another example of some cutbacks is that very small details—soda cans in trash bins, newspapers lying on rooftops—aren’t as nice looking up close as they were in the original game. Similarly, the level of detail of the city seems reduced. So when you climb up a skyscraper and look out you’ll notice, on close inspection, objects like distant radio towers, AC units, or trees are missing or much lower quality than in Spider-Man 2018.

These changes were likely a result of the game increasing its map size to include Brooklyn and Queens, nearly doubling the playable space. At some point, to keep performance from dipping, it’s likely that things most players barely notice were tweaked so resources could be spent elsewhere.

Update 10/19/2023 7:08 p.m. ET: Video creator Nick930 just tweeted that Spider-Man 2 may have a bug wherein the engine’s level of detail system might be misbehaving when the game is installed on a secondary drive, resulting in lower-than-intended detail in certain visuals. Sounds like more investigation will be needed to nail down exactly what’s happening there.

These tweaks are a good thing

Overall, the main takeaway shouldn’t be that Spider-Man 2 is a visually inferior game to the first entry. In fact, most of the cutbacks and compromises spotted in the video were tweaks or changes I didn’t notice in my 30 or so hours playing the game on a fancy 4K 120Hz TV. Instead, it seems Insomniac went through Spider-Man 2 with a fine-tooth comb and subtle hand, trying to balance impressive visuals and responsive, consistent performance. I personally didn’t notice a single dropped frame.

In an era when it seems like every other big game released these days is launching in a dismal state, with numerous performance issues or game-breaking bugs, it’s nice to see a studio taking the time and effort to ensure its game arrives in a rock-solid state. I mean, one look at how snappy fast travel is in this game, and I’m sold on whatever minor, hard-to-spot tweaks had to be made to get this thing running so well.

Maybe some of these changes mean cups and soda cans in Spider-Man 2’s trash bags don’t look as good as before. But if the tradeoff is I get a 60fps open-world Spider-Man game featuring two playable characters and hours of side content and RT reflections everywhere, I’ll live!

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Happy Spider-Man 2 Day, everyone! (Sure, all your family on your mother’s side are celebrating Super Mario Bros. Wonder Day, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all get along.) And what better way to celebrate the release of Insomniac’s latest web-shooting action blockbuster than to demand they make another game for you? That’s what the developers are inviting in response to the suggestion of a Venom spin-off for the franchise.

Check Out Marvel’s Spider-Man 2: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

This latest entry in Insomniac’s Spider-Man franchise (the third, following the 2018 original, and the 2020 Miles Morales spin-off) introduces the alien-goo monster Venom to the cast. It seems how he’s introduced is quite widely known, but I’m not going to say here as I just had to spoil it for myself to research this article, and no reason to do that to you too. The response from jubilant reviewers, and excited potential players, is a hope that we might see the alien symbiote getting his very own game, much as Miles did following the first game’s DLC.

The game certainly leaves a lot of threads open, meaning there’s potential for the story to spin off in all sorts of directions. More of Tony Todd’s Venom seems like a pretty good one to grab.

Read More: Spider-Man 2: The Kotaku Review

Insomniac, notably, isn’t ruling it out. In an interview with Insider, senior narrative director Jon Paquette was asked what the chances were of seeing such a project, and while his response was fairly boilerplate dismissal of the question, he did open the door to fans letting Insomniac know their desires.

“So, here’s what we’re doing,” Paquette told the site. “We’re focused on Spider-Man 2, and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna wait to see how the fans react. We’re gonna listen to the fans and we’re gonna ask ourselves, ‘Okay, what do the fans really want?’”

So while that’s a standard, “I’m not allowed to talk about anything but the game I’m promoting” response, what it’s not is a shutting down of the idea. And, well, he just asked what the fans really want. So, if a Venom-based game is on your wishlist, let them know! You know, politely.

In the meantime, Insomniac said in 2021 it was making a Marvel’s Wolverine set in the same universe as the Spider-Man games, although things have gone awfully quiet about that since. At the time of the announcement, Insomniac’s head of franchise, Ryan Schneider, explained that it was coming from the Miles Morales team. “In the vein of our Spider-Man games,” he wrote in the same post that announced Spider-Man 2, “our goal here is to not only respect the DNA of what makes the character so popular… From what I’ve seen of its emotional narrative and cutting-edge gameplay (see what I did there?), the team is already creating something truly special..”

Venom seems like it has a lot more fun options for leaping around a city than ol’ grumpy-claws.

If there was still any question about whether Insomniac Games was done with making Spider-Man games, the end of PlayStation 5-exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 makes it clear the studio still has a lot of stories to tell in that universe. Between post-credits cutscenes and new interview teases, it’s clear Insomniac has big plans for Spider-Man 3, and we already have plenty of clues about what it will focus on.

In a recent interview with the Friends Per Second podcast, Spider-Man 2 creative director Bryan Intihar likened the latest game to 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s box-office-topping third phase. “I think, if Spider-Man and Miles were our Iron Man, and Spider-Man 2 was like Civil War, where logically do we go from there?” Intihar said. “I think it’d be pretty epic.”

Insomniac is currently working on a Wolverine game, and while Spider-Man’s in-game universe features an Avengers Tower and other nods to additional Marvel superheroes, there’s still no confirmation on whether the two will be set in the same world. We also don’t know if the studio has plans for another Spider-Man spin-off. In a recent interview with Insider, narrative director Jon Paquette didn’t rule out doing another game with Venom if fans show they want that.

But we do have some idea of what Spider-Man 3 is likely to tackle based purely on the major red flags at the end of Spider-Man 2. They are giant spoilers obviously, so if you haven’t already beaten the game and don’t want to know what happens, turn back now. Otherwise, let’s briefly dig in.

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So Spider-Man 2 ends with Peter Parker and Miles Morales defeating Venom and sending the symbiote’s host, Harry Osborne, into a coma. His dad, Norman Osborne, loses it at this point. Unable to fathom that the alien lifeform he forced onto his son in order to cure his Oshtoran Syndrome needed to be defeated at all costs before it took over the world, Osborne senior blames the Spider-Men for his son’s new condition.

At this point you may have been wondering if Osborne was finally going to go full Green Goblin and try to exact his (misguided) revenge on the web-crawlers. No need to speculate, however! Sitting in Harry’s room before the credits start to roll, Osborne makes a call to his lab and tells his staff to, “ready the G-Serum.” I imagine this is his way of saying, “inject the goblin juice directly into my veins.”

That’s the first big clue of where Spider-Man 3 will go: a showdown between Peter, Miles, and the Green Goblin. The second comes right after the first batch of credits. Osborne is seen walking down the hallway of a high-security prison to the cell of none other than Otto Octavius, Peter’s mentor in the first game driven to become the super villain Dr. Octopus by Osborne’s greed, stubbornness, and ambition. Osborne wants to know Spider-Man’s real identity and Octavius knows it. The former asks the latter what he’s writing in his notebook. “The final chapter,” the doctor responds.

Given Octavius’ role in forming the Sinister Six in the first Spider-Man game, it seems like a good bet that all of the old supervillains will be coming back out to play in Spider-Man 3. Perhaps some new superheroes as well. Spider-Man 2’s final stinger shows Miles and his mother greeting her new boyfriend at their apartment for dinner. The new beau’s brought along his daughter though, Cindy, who just so happens to be Silk, another New Yorker with spider powers. We don’t know exactly how Insomniac will re-interpret her backstory, but it seems likely she’ll be fighting alongside Peter and Miles in Spider-Man 3, or possibly even before that in some upcoming DLC, expansion, or spin-off.

Spider-Man 2 also teases Carnage at the end of the Flame side-missions, with Cletus Kasady escaping with a sample of the symbiote, while frenemy Yuri Watanabe, now the vigilante Wraith, will probably reappear at some point as well. Plus Black Cat is still out there in Paris. With these new hero and villain rosters beginning to take shape throughout Spider-Man 2, Intihar’s Avengers analogy begins to make a little more sense. Spider-Man 3 might not end in a big Infinity War, but the decks are certainly stacked on either side for a much bigger confrontation than we’ve seen in any of the games thus far. Hopefully we won’t have to wait until the PlayStation 6 arrives to see it.