Given the keys to the future of Spider-Man's videogame franchise after the success of last year's Shattered Dimensions, developer Beenox isn't planning on squandering the opportunity.
Associate Producer Kevin Umbricht has been talking to comic book news site Newsarama about the fairly swift turnaround the sequel's development, explaining it wasn't a quick cash-in sequel, but a continuation of mechanics the studio wanted to include in the original.
"This story was starting to be developed while we were working on Shattered Dimensions," he explains. "The idea came up, "What if we did this interconnected gameplay" and it didn't really work for that game.So we thought we'd focus on it for the next game, pitched the idea, got it greenlit, and Marvel was on board with the concept. We really wanted to start right away, right when Shattered was finished, to go into this game."
The title focuses on two of the Spider-Men that appeared in Shattered Dimensions: classic Spider-Man and his 2099 counterpart, with the interconnecting gameplay letting you effect changes in one timeline by doing something in the other, offering an interesting dynamic to the usual superhero slug-fests.
"Because the timelines are linked together by the time gateways between the two timelines, the actions of one Spidey in his time directly affect the other," states Umbricht. "So while you're playing the Amazing "present day," things that you do will affect the narrative, and you see the immediate affect going on via the picture-in-picture....and then while you're playing on the other side in the future, you have to react to what the other Spider-Man is doing off screen. So if he defeats enemies or destroys things, the world around you will change. So you'll be going down one path and boom, a wall comes up in front of you and you have to find a way around it. Enemies can appear and disappear; things are constantly in flux in the future."