Jacinda Chew, the senior art director behind Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, has explained how Insomniac Games has put its own spin on Marvel villains like Lizard and Kraven.
Speaking to NME, Chew shared that the element of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 she is proudest of is the sequel’s villains. “Working on Venom, or bringing Kraven or Lizard to life and putting our spin on [them], has been super rewarding and fun,” shared Chew.
“For Lizard in particular, we definitely want to pay respects to what was done before in the comics, where you have Lizard in his lab coat and pants, and he’s kind of human-size and struggling with his humanity,” they continued. “But we also want to crank it up to 11 and make our version of Lizard one that’s lost all humanity. He’s humongous. He’s not wearing clothes, he can’t be reasoned with.”
Peter Parker will have to “both contain and help [Lizard], but also stop him,” which Chew says offers “some really interesting narrative opportunities”. In the preview played by NME, this meant battling Lizard in a challenging boss fight, while also trying to protect him from rival villain Kraven The Hunter.
Besides Lizard, Chew shared that adding more Marvel villains to the sequel has been “super exciting” for Insomniac, particularly with Kraven. “When we were first working on Kraven, we were like… is he gonna look weird walking around the streets of New York with all this fur and leather on?’”
“We tried a lot of concepts where we just put him in camo,” shared Chew. Ultimately, Insomniac felt it was “losing the essence of Kraven,” and decided to double down on the primal outfit that can be seen in his first trailer.
Elsewhere, senior creative director Bryan Inithar has revealed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2‘s map will be double the size of the original game.