The successful release of Spider-Man 2 has caused a lot of ink to be spilled over the role of a sequel. How to create a new episode with new things while retaining the acquired knowledge? We were able to meet developers from Insomniac Games.
The release of a sequel, which is also a very high budget game, places a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of the development teams. The game Spider-Man 2 developed by Insomniac Games is a good example. While this is my personal game of the year at the moment, you can see that it has received more temperate reviews from other players. The sequel to the open-world game is particularly singled out for its lack of risk-taking.
Frandroid was able to speak with Bobby Coddington, director of animation, and Lindsey Tompson, Associate Animation Director. That’s good, animation often finds itself at the center of concerns when attacking a sequel.
A sequel doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel
We can often see in certain infamous places on social networks, players having fun mocking a game because it would reuse work already done on a previous episode. Examples include Kratos’ boarding animation which is the same between God of War And God of War Ragnarok, or Insomniac Games which would not innovate with the map of its open world game. And yes, New York is still New York, even if the sequel almost doubles the game space with new accessible districts outside of Manhattan.
In terms of animation, how much work did Insomniac re-use from the first two installments of the franchise?
We don’t count, because it represents thousands and thousands of resources, but we take the development of a sequel very seriously. We have groups of animators dedicated to combat, moving around the city, bosses, making the open world alive, mission mechanics and cutscenes. This allows us to balance and make sure we’re doing enough work in each area without putting too much focus on cutscenes or gameplay. Each of these teams does their best to create “new” things.
But Bobby Coddington warns of the pitfall of wanting nothing but new things. A sequel must remain a sequel: “ It must feel like a return to your hometown » where we recognize the places, but where we can find new things. The connection with previous episodes must be there.
Above all, Lindsey Tompson adds that it is a real intelligent production method to know how to build on what has been learned from previous games. Beyond the other episodes of Spidermanit recalls that the mechanics of movement of Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart (the studio’s previous game) were built on the first Spidermanitself built with the lessons learned on Sunset Overdrive. Without necessarily reusing a resource (a texture or an animation), developers reuse lessons learned from their previous productions.
Balancing gameplay and cutscenes
Another criticism that we can usually read about PlayStation Studios games is their excessive inclination towards cinema. We would be facing titles that increasingly resemble interactive films and not games. Insomniac Games’ games are undoubtedly among the Sony games that place the most emphasis on gameplay.
For Lindsey Thompson “ people can sometimes think that all that matters to us is the cutscenes, but the reason we find that balance is because we care about the gameplay experience first and foremost. Does that make sense to have a cutscene here? Are we slowing down the game too much? These are things we think about constantly. » And Bobby Coddington adds: “Meven if that sometimes means deleting a great cutscene if we have to. »
From now on, the studio will devote itself fully to the development of Wolverinea new adaptation of comics which we know should share the same universe as the games Spiderman. Taking on a new hero will undoubtedly require rethinking a good part of the recipe, but it will be interesting to see what the developers can re-appropriate from their previous games for this new title. On a possible sequel to Spider-Man 2the two interviewed obviously remain silent as carp.