Insomniac Reveals One of The Biggest Challenges of Spider-Man PS4’s Development

Speaking to GamesTM, Marvel Spider-Man‘s Creative Director Bryan Intihar revealed one of the biggest challenges he and Insomniac Games have faced during the development of the game, and it’s probably not what you think it is.

When you watch the latest gameplay trailer of Spider-Man PS4, one of the first things you’ll notice is how good and fluid the combat looks. And apparently, to get to this place, Insomniac Games had to bang its head against the wall a bit, as it, a predominately shooter-based studio, had to concoct engaging and quality hand-to-hand combat for basically the first-time in its history.

That’s right, when asked what the biggest challenge of development has been, Intihar revealed that it has been making the game’s hand-to-hand combat.

“While we had Feral Rites in development around the same time as Spider-Man, we didn’t have a ton of experience making a third-person brawler where you’re using melee and other devices in combat at Insomniac,” said Intihar.

“You look at Ratchet, you look at Resistance and you look at Sunset Overdrive…We’re a big shooter company, and we’re really well known for our creative weapons. It definitely was a little bit of a learning curve. We asked ourselves really early on, ‘well, what can Spider-Man do that others can’t?’ and then the world improvisation started to come up a lot.”

According to Intihar, the team received help of local-area stunt people in motion capture work, which helped the combat take shape, but it also “went heavy on web usage” and got Spidey “up in the air” as much as possible.

“You know, it’s hard to get someone to actually swing kick in real life,” said Intihar. “But the benefits of living in Los Angeles is that we have a lot of great stunt people who live here, and we’ve had people who have done many amazing superhero things, and it’s amazing to see what they can do when they’re just flipping around. So it’s actually a combination of both.

“We went heavy on web usage. Whether it’s the quick, rapid-fire webs or looking for things in the environment that you can grab and pull. When the gadgets and suit powers really started to get implemented – when we got him up in the air – that’s when it really felt like a Spider-Man experience met an Insomniac game to me.

“The combat team at Insomniac worked their butts off to get this right. It was extremely hard; it was, in terms of overall development, definitely one of our greatest challenges.”

Marvel’s Spider-Man is in development for PlayStation 4, and is slated to release on September 7. For more news, media, and information on the game click here.

Thanks, Wccftech.