“I couldn’t help but be a little nervous with, if you’ll allow me, the responsibility of taking on that mantle of Spider-Man,” voice actor Yuri Lowenthal told me. His excitement was palpable, and his passion for the character was obvious — he wore a black suit Spider-Man tee and an Insomniac Spider-Man statue adorned his home office. “It was nerve-wracking, but ultimately you’d be hard-pressed to make me give this up…you would have had to drag me away with wild dogs to not been drawn to this character.”
And who wouldn’t be so nervous yet so excited to become such an iconic character? Spider-Man has dominated our film screens and comic books for decades now. While he’s starred in his own video games, it wasn’t until Insomniac’s 2018 hit Marvel’s Spider-Man released that fans could really feel like Spider-Man in a universally acclaimed, spectacular game. In advance of the second game, I got the opportunity to speak with Lowenthal, the voice and motion-capture actor behind Insomniac’s Spider-Man.
What makes Spider-Man such an appealing hero, and a factor that made Insomniac’s game so great, are the empathetic emotions intertwined with everything Spider-Man does and feels. “If Peter were happy and nothing were wrong in his life, he wouldn’t be Peter Parker,” Lowenthal said.
So much unfortunately does go wrong for poor ol’ Pete in that first game. When asked about the recording process, Lowenthal took the opportunity to shed praise on his co-stars, specifically their work during the game’s emotional climax. “If I were good in that last Doc Ock scene in the first game, it’s because Bill Salyers was opposite me being better. It’s because Nancy Linari, Aunt May, was there and I was looking at her when we were talking.”
The relationship between its leading heroes is a focal point in Spider-Man 2.
Much of our conversation centered on where we find Peter Parker in the second game, specifically his emotional state and how that has affected his relationship with other characters. “Obviously, that betrayal and that loss carries through Peter into the next game,” Lowenthal said, referring to the ending of the first game. “Luckily we don’t pick up with Peter the day after all that happens – we get a little time.
“Some of this game, you’re literately sifting through Aunt May’s house…If you thought you were going to get away free and clear in this next game, no trauma, I’m sorry to say that you’re wrong.”
Peter of course has outlets for his emotions and ways to process his grief. “Peter escapes the horrible things in his life in many ways. He goes off and does Spider–Man stuff, he cracks jokes, and he uses his smile to cover things up. Is he using Miles to run from [his trauma]?” After the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Miles has really grown into his own hero. “It’s questionable whether or not [Miles] really needs Pete’s tutelage at all,” Lowenthal commented.
While Miles Morales has been a wonderful addition to the Spider-Man ethos for over a decade now, no one has been there for Peter since the beginning quite like Mary-Jane Watson. One of the best parts of Marvel’s Spider-Man was the way Insomniac interpreted and portrayed the Peter/MJ relationship and MJ as a character. So how does Peter’s arc in the first game affect their relationship in the second? “Peter’s dealing with a lot of loss, obviously, and it’s a challenge to their relationship, and they’re moving forward as it’s complicated by having to navigate [Peter’s trauma].
“Now, Pete’s got this house. I don’t know – two people could live in it,” Lowenthal said coyly, hinting at a possible fate — or at least desire — for the characters. “Maybe one of them is more ready for that than the other? Is it still Aunt May’s house, or is it Pete’s house now?…What does Pete want now? Can they ever truly be together? It’s great watching both of them grow. I enjoy spending time with them as a couple, and hope people will also in the new game.”
Peter’s self-control erodes under the influence of the symbiote, affecting both his relationship with Miles and how he plays in the game.
The Peter/MJ relationship won’t be tested just by Peter’s grief, but by the black suit. Once the symbiote gets its tendrils around Peter, it’ll change him and strain his relationships with everyone he loves. “The symbiote starts to give him all the power and erode all the responsibility. It takes a person who puts everyone else before him – his friends, his family, every single person in New York City – before his needs and his wants, and the symbiote is like, ‘No. We come first. Guess what? Let’s go out and have some fun.’” Only the sybmiote’s idea of fun is antithetical to the core tenets of Spider-Man, laying the groundwork for conflict in Spider-Man 2.
“It was a big deal for [Insomniac] to not just flip a switch on Peter. It was a gradual change, and, in the beginning, it’s honestly all upside,” Lowenthal said. “Pete’s got more powers and he thinks, ‘This is going to make me a better Spider-Man.’”
We, the players at home, obviously know that won’t be the case. “We all saw the betrayal coming with Octavius in the first game, and it made it actually worse that we could see what was coming. It’s a similar thing here where you all know what’s coming – but Pete doesn’t. And that’s the beauty of it,” Lowenthal said.
What makes Insomniac’s black suit story for Peter so unique is he’s not going through this alone — in this adaptation, Spider-Man is going to have another Spider-Man by his side. “In a way, the change that comes over Peter helps Miles grow up a lot faster,” Lowenthal said on how Peter’s dark turn affects his running mate.
“[Miles has] looked at Pete as sort of a mentor, and now he needs to guide Peter. When Pete starts to lose his way, what is Miles’ responsibility?” Lowenthal said, tying the game’s story to the evergreen Spider-Man theme of responsibility. “Miles may have been inexperienced, but Peter is out of control.”
With the mentor/mentee relationship reversed, Miles now has to guide Peter away from the darkness of the symbiote.
The symbiote made not just Spider-Man worse for wear, but the man bringing the character to life as well. “I was unaware and caught off guard by the toll it would take on me to make Peter mean. Pete is not mean,” Lowenthal said. “He’s not selfish or irresponsible, but the symbiote makes him into all of those things. It starts off sort of slow, but it ramps up, and I found myself exhausted by the end of those recording sessions when we had to take Peter to that territory because it’s so antithetical to who he is. Forcing him into that box was surprisingly hard. If you just said, ‘Hey, this is a bad guy,’ I’d jump in and be excited, but making a good guy into a bad guy took a lot more work than I thought.”
To close out our discussion, I just had to know — what was Yuri Lowenthal, Spider-Man to a gaming generation, most excited for players to experience when they play Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for the first time?
“Having their expectations exceeded,” Lowenthal said.
Obviously, expectations for this game are higher than the Empire State Building. But, Insomniac’s had nothing but success with this series, and we’ve been given no reason to expect this next game will be any less successful.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launches Friday, October 20th for the PlayStation 5. To read the full transcript of my conversation with Yuri Lowenthal, stay right here at AIPT.
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