The first game received criticism for depicting New York's police force in a very positive manner (to the point where Peter calling himself "Spider-Cop" is a Running Gag), and having the player repair and co-opt police scanners as a side mission, in spite of the heightened awareness of unchecked brutality and abuse of power being exposed in recent years. Creative director Brian Intihar confirmed, in an interview with The Gamer, that this game will focus less on Spider-Man helping the police in lieu of rescuing ordinary citizens through an opt-in community app by Ganke. This intends to bring Spidey closer to his working-class roots. Further, Peter has much more interactions with the fire department and ambulance services this time around.
Many have pointed out that the Webbed Suit looked too shiny and slightly off color. In March 2024, the suit (along with a few others) received a more detailed and faithful upgrade despite there being no hints that it was coming.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Tony Todd leapt at the chance to voice Venom in this game, having been a big comic nerd and fan of the character for years. He did a lot of research on Venom's various depictions throughout the years and also made sure to spend as much time in the recording booth as he could so he could make his portrayal the best it could be.
In late September 2023, the game's trophy list was purportedly leaked, exposing some of the plot developments of the game. However, the veracity of the leak was contested less than a week later. Ironically, Insomniac would themselves release a list of every non-Hidden Trophy in the game on Twitter.
In October, a little over a week before release, videos were leaked showcasing major plot developments and other spoilers. That same month, an image showcasing the game's suits also leaked.
A debug menu accidentally added in the March 2024 update (since patched out) included a list of (unplayable) missions about Beetle, who isn't even alluded to in the game currently.
Creator's Favorite: Tony Todd considers Venom to be one of his favorite roles.
Dear Negative Reader: Senior creative director Bryan Intihar of the game has gone on record to respond to the divisive reception of MJ's missions in the first game, at one point saying he doesn't give a shit if she's a "little OP."
Bryan Intihar: We had two choices. We could say, 'All right, we'll make it easy and just not do it.' And everybody would go, 'Great. No MJ missions.' Or we could say, 'Hey, we've talked about showing the world from all different angles. We're going to make her moments better. We're going to take on the challenge. We're going to make people like playing as her.' We pick and choose our spots. We knew we had to make her more of a proactive, capable person. And if she's a little OP, I don't give a shit. She's fine. I don't care.
A factory/warehouse in Greenwich (just northeast of where Doc Ock's lab used to be) appears to have played a larger role at some point; it's new to this game (the block had apartment buildings in previous games), and glitching inside would reveal a route that took the player to a trophy room which contained the severed heads of Scorpion, Vulture, Shocker, and Rhino mounted on the wall. This would have been the only indication of Rhino's fate, as he is never shown or mentioned in-game, but Electro, who is confirmed in the final game as one of Kraven's victims, is noticeably missing, leaving it unclear whether Electro took Rhino's place as Kraven's fourth victim or what happened to Rhino in canon. As of this writing, the warehouse interior still exists, but the route and the room have since been patched out.note While unconfirmed, the design of the building combined with the fact that the cut room was loaded in underneath it even during free roam suggests the building was planned to be a hunter base. The building itself seems half-finished, as the ceiling has several places where the player can see directly into the inaccessible interior.
North Brother Island is currently out-of-bounds but is accurately recreated, the buildings are solid (although the ground isn't), there are several invisible points and ledges Spidey can zip onto (some of which seem to be misaligned building edges, while others are left over from removed/invisible geometry), and there are some leftover props hidden in the foliagenote such as two floating generator-powered lamps and an invisible lightsource in the southeastern island and a floating staircase near the railway bridge on the southwestern one; notably, the latter can be seen from inside the playable map, suggesting that there were/are some plans for the area. The zoo Kraven uses as a hideout is similar in design, so it's possible it was meant to be there before plans changed.
There's also a bunch of islands in the bay east of Coney Island. They are invisible until the player gets close enough, but two of them can be seen from within the playable area if the player sticks close to the invisible wall surrounding the map. Breaking out of bounds reveals there are several more (some overlapping with the non-solid parts of Brooklyn), and that despite having nothing of note and very simple texturing, they are solid and Spidey can land on them. It's unclear what exactly their purpose is/was meant to be, although their presence in a bay east of Coney Island may suggest they are/were meant to be Jamaica Bay and its wildlife refuge.
Fake Russian: Kraven the Hunter and his half-brother Dmitri are depicted as Russian in this game, yet they're both voiced by the American Jim Pirri.
Fan Nickname: For whatever reason, Venom has been given the nickname "Uncle Terry" in certain corners of the fandom, particularly among those who were displeased with him and wanted a more faithful adaptation of the character.
Fandom Nod: One of the most popular mods for the PC version of the first game (as well as something possible to do with a jailbroken console) is turning the Advanced Suit black while keeping its regular white accents, making it resemble the Symbiote. In this game, a black and white version of the original Advanced suit is officially available as a suit style.
Foiler Footage: To obscure spoilers, some trailer footage is slightly different from the final product:
In Kraven's opening scene, the mook who hands Kraven a tablet showing New York has a glove on his hand in the final game, which he lacks in the trailer. The trailer also replaces the Sandman and Vulture with Peter and Miles, respectively.
The trailer adds extra footage of Kraven's mooks flying over New York and an overhead shot of some mooks arriving to Connors's house. When Peter leaps out of Connors's cellar door, he's in the Advanced Suit 2.0 before the Venom symbiote envelops him in the trailer, whereas in the final cut, he's already in the Black Suit. note Although, the Black Suit does form over him if the player is wearing another suit.
After Peter realizes he can't intercept the Lizard in time, the trailer shows a prompt to switch to Miles, followed by gameplay of Miles heading to the fish market. The final game instead shows footage of Miles at a date with Hailey at Central Park before switching to the gameplay.
The Digital Deluxe costs about $20 extra and includes a whopping ten outfits designed for the game, five for each Spider-Man. There's also extra stuff for photo mode and two extra skill points.
Collector's edition costs around $220 and includes a digital copy, a steel display case, and a 19-inch statue of Venom fighting both Spider-Men simultaneously. It also has the Digital Deluxe content included.
Both Yuri Lowenthal and director Brian Intihar have referenced the infamous "19 inches of Venom" during interviews.
In a casual interview, Yuri Lowenthal discusses the "Get back here, Shocker!" line from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, briefly doing his take. He knows "so many people" wanted him to do the meme now, but despite watching the show in his youth, he admittedly forgot about the specific moment at the time.
Official Fan-Submitted Content: The Digital Deluxe suits are designed by various guest artists across comics, films and Playstation Studios.
Playstation Blog: "The featured artists are Kris Anka, Julia Blattman, Sweeney Boo, Anthony Francisco, Raf Grassetti, Jerad Maantz, Joel Mandish, Darren Quach, and Victoria Ying!"
The Other Darrin: Scott Porter, who voiced Harry in the first game, confirmed he will not reprise the role in the sequel, with Graham Phillips replacing him as the voice and motion capture of the character.
Promoted Fanboy: Lily Emil Lammers, the voice actor of Dr. Young, is a big comic book fan, and being able to play the doctor in this game was a dream come true.
Erica Lindbeck came out as bisexual in 2020. Black Cat's mission has her trying to get her girlfriend out of prison, acknowledging the characters' bisexuality.
The Black Suit was originally considered for Spider-Man (PS4) as one of Spider-Man's alternate outfits, only for the devs to scrap it due to feeling it deserved to play a bigger role, considering how much story is behind it. Sure enough, the gameplay reveal trailer would confirm the Black Suit's inclusion in the game, with the costume playing a big role in the game's story. In the final game, many suits have Black Suit-like styles to choose from, including the original white spider suit from the first game.
Additionally, a plot point scrapped from the first game was Miles wanting revenge against Martin Li, to the point it would become self-destructive. This becomes the focus of Miles' storyline in this game. With Martin Li seemingly on the loose by Kraven, Miles' anger and anxiety about him creates personal emotional and physical issues in his life, as he decides whether or not to take deadly revenge.
A meta one: Delilah was originally set to appear in Across the Spider-Verse, with Spot visiting The Bar With No Name. She ends up appearing here in a brief cameo, retaining her multiversal ties.
In her second level, Mary-Jane attaches one of Peter's spare web shooters to her Symkaria pistol. As revealed on IGN's Spoilercast, this is based on a very early idea for the first game where she would have grabbed both of Peter's web shooters during one of her sections.
Screwed by the Lawyers: The Chrysler building is as absent as it was in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. For similar reasons, the windows and the top of the Empire State Building were altered due to the ownership of the original building changing after the 2018 game and the rights not being able to be settled. Amusingly, neither of these apply to the footage used in the game's plot recap that uses footage from the first two games.
Sequel Gap: While there was a standalone spin-off released in the interim, this game is meant to more directly continue the plot threads established in the first game and is coming out just over 5 years after it.
Throw It In!: Erica Lindbeck improvised Black Cat's "thank you" to Miles because Billy Kametz was dying of cancer at the time and she related to the character's emotions.
Concept art of Venom shown at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 shows them with the classic spider emblem typically sported by Eddie Brock, as opposed to the more jagged final design. Further concept art for prospective powers included Venom transforming his hand into massive claws, transforming his head into a massive set of jaws akin to the "Venom Predate" attack from the Marvel vs. Capcom series, and rolling into a spike-covered ball and spin-dashing into opponents a la Sonic the Hedgehog.
A concept pitch for a follow-up Sandman fight, where he's been Venomized, was planned. According to senior creative director Bryan Intihar, this plan was scrapped after considering whether or not the idea would be flexible within their production cycle.
Venom was originally going to retain his weakness to fire like in the original source material, as well as have at least "five other weaknesses" for the player to exploit while fighting him. It was eventually reduced to him being weakened by high-pitched sound only, as Bryan Intihar realized that it wouldn't be very intuitive from a gameplay perspective for the player to have to keep track of so many ways to defeat one villain.
According to Tony Todd, Miles was going to have become infected by the Venom symbiote at some point in the story, with Venom himself speaking to Miles while he's under his influence. He also stated that only around 10% of the dialogue he recorded for Venom was used in the final game.
Agony, Phage, Lasher, and Riot were originally planned to be in the game alongside Scream, but were scrapped fairly early in development.
Venom's design apparently went through some minor changes during production. In the 2021 announcement trailer, he had far fewer teeth and lacked the white spider legs that went over his shoulders.
A since removed debug menu accidentally added in the March 2024 update included a very unfinished act 2 mission called "meteorite"; taking place in a separate map with what appears to be long path in a forest. Judging by the name and map design, it either involved Oscorp and Dr. Connors first obtaining the Venom symbiote (shown in a cutscene in the final game) or someone trying to find a part of the meteorite Venom needs to terraform earth, which doesn't become relevant in until act 3 in the final game.
Early concept art of MJ's symbiote form shows that she was initially going to have a black-and-white appearance, and wasn't going to be Scream specifically. Brian Intihar eventually changed this, as he felt that the costume was too similar to what was already seen with Venom, and felt that Scream would make more sense for the symbiote she becomes.
Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Stephanie Tyler Jones, the face model for Mary-Jane Watson, released a statement in January 2024 revealing that she has stopped auditioning for for acting and modeling jobs after a fan attempted to call her workplace and left voicemails that made her uncomfortable.
According to Mike Fitzgerald (the Director of Core Technology), this is the first PS5 game to use the native Dolby Atmos mix for home theater systems, instead of relying on the system's Tempest 3D Audio Engine converting into Atmos channels like the Spatial Sound on TV and headphones. Previous PS5 games with 3D audio mix prioritize the conversion to the Atmos track which sounds different and ineffective to the TV and headphone usage.
, that this game will focus less on Spider-Man helping the police in lieu of rescuing ordinary citizens through an opt-in community app by Ganke. This intends to bring Spidey closer to his working-class roots. Further, Peter has much more interactions with the fire department and ambulance services this time around.