Insomniac Gamescontinues to be a leaky ship.After a high profile breach last year that saw materials for Wolverine, Venom, and a number of its other upcoming projects emerge onlinealongside countless confidential documents and personal information, it looked like the studio had finally begun to bounce back. Until earlier this week when yet another trailer appeared.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Great Webwas a recently cancelled live-service game in development at the studio, likely amid all the layoffs and canned projects that Sony has been butchering in recent months. For one reason or another, The Great Web was deemed unable to grow into the experience Insomniac wanted it to be.
On paper, The Great Web looks like a pretty great idea. Thanks to the multiverse opening up, several Spider-Men now occupy the same world, and can seemingly jump through others to fight bad guys and save the day. Much like Insomniac’s first superhero outing, focus would be placed on the Sinister Six.
Gwen Stacy, Scarlet Spider, 2099, Miles Morales, Silk, and a classic version of the hero can be seen duking it out with all manner of enemies in the trailer, while also jumping from Manhattan to all manner of other distinct locations. Yuri Lowenthal even lends his narration to the trailer, immediately linking this game with the single player efforts that it liberally draws from.
LikeSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice LeagueorMarvel’s Avengers, it seems this was going to be a live-service game that would receive continuous updates and seasonal passes that would keep players engaged, all while single-player games such as Spider-Man 3, Venom, and Wolverine helped build out this new universe. But much likeFactions 2, a decision was made to nip this project in the bud before it got too far in development. Chances are, Sony realised that its long-term success simply wasn’t guaranteed.
Fans online feel pretty excited about the idea of a multiplayer Spider-Man game, so much so that some are convinced this is some manner of stealth marketing strategy, or that a couple hundred people signing a petition will suddenly bring The Great Web back from the dead. It won’t, and I think it’s worth putting aside that initial hype and thinking about precisely what you’re asking for.
Similar excitement was expressed for the reveals of Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, until the closer we got to release the more we began to realise how two excellent superhero adventures have been twisted into multiplayer snozefests with far more quantity than quality. As a result, almost nobody is playing them now, and our hopes instead remain pinned on single player games like Spider-Man and Wolverine, or even future Black Panther and Iron Man titles in the works at Electronic Arts.
Our love for the webhead might be clouding our reality right now, convincing us that we’re in dire need of a Spider-Man live-service game which ultimately won’t live up to our fantasies. I get the appeal of swinging around Manhattan with a group of friends, and how it expands on the occasional co-operative bouts glimpsed in the second game, but the gameplay formula just wouldn’t hold up in a multiplayer environment like this.
Combat grows repetitive during the chase for the Platinum in the single-player games, let alone a constant grind to fill out a battle pass or earn just enough experience to level up. Even different Spider-People with all their own unique abilities wouldn’t be enough to carry The Great Web for a few months, let alone the several years live-service games need to last for it to be worth it.
Resources at Insomniac would likely be thrust onto this project, requiring a sizable team and constant maintenance to keep it ticking when said resources could be put into a single player project that we keep demanding be mine. You can’t have your superhero cake and eat it too, not without sacrifice. So as we mourn a game that never was, let’s take a moment to ponder why it was left behind in the first place, and why, in our current landscape, it wouldn’t work.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
WHERE TO PLAY
Spider-Men Peter Parker and Miles Morales face the ultimate test of strength inside and outside the mask as they fight to save the city, each other and the ones they love, from the monstrous Venom and the dangerous new symbiote threat.Explore an expansive Marvel’s New York with faster web-swinging and the all-new Web Wings, quickly switching between Peter and Miles to experience different stories, epic new abilities and high-tech gear.Wield Peter’s symbiote abilities and Miles’ explosive bio-electric powers in battle against new and iconic Marvel Super Villains – including an original take on a symbiote-infused Venom, the ruthless Kraven the Hunter, the volatile Lizard, and more from the Marvel Rogues’ Gallery.
