‘Marvel’s Spider-Man’ Graphics Have Actually Been Upgraded From E3

An analysis of Marvel’s Spider-Man has shown that Insomniac Games did indeed make technical changes to the game, but they resulted in improvements as opposed to downgrades like some people expected.

Digital Foundry shared news of the upgrades to Spider-Man’s various systems in a video analysis of the new game that was shared by Eurogamer. Games are typically under watchful eyes from gamers who track progress from big gaming events like E3 to the next over the years, and Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man was no exception as people compared a demo in 2017 to more recently shown footage. It was in that instance that a minority of people took issue with an apparent downgrade that involved a certain puddle that had been reduced in size.

The situation came to be known as “Puddlegate” as vocal gamers clashed with Insomniac Games about the supposed downgrade. The game’s creators have refuted more than once that there was any downgrade, and thanks to a release patch, Digital Foundry says that there’s actually been an upgrade.

“The locked 1440p we measured in prior presentations is swapped out for a pixel-count that changes according to GPU load, reaching a peak of 1944p (90 per cent of 4K) in our test samples from across the game,” Digital Foundry’s John Linneman said when analyzing the puddly scene in question. “The contested area with the adjusted puddles runs at 2816×1584 in our review code, a 21 per cent increase in resolution over the 2017 demo. It’s the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the changes are performance-related – it’s simply not plausible that reductions were made that would actually introduce a substantial chunk of overhead that allows for a large increase in pixel-count.”

Similar to the discussion around the puddle, there were also concerns that the quality of Spider-Man’s suit had been reduced. Digital Foundry said that after looking at the release version of the suit, there appears to have been a change in material while the texture resolution is “virtually identical.”

“The E3 suit features more prominent specularity, and it’s basically the difference between plastic and cloth. The final material is more diffuse in appearance while the E3 suit is extra glossy, so even though the resolution of the suit material textures is identical, the way light behaves across its surface has changed.”

Digital Foundry’s full analysis can be seen here, and Spider-Man releases for the PlayStation 4 on September 7.