Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is probably one of the most surprising announcements made during yesterday's PlayStation 5 showcase event. No one quite expected Insomniac Games to be already capable of delivering another brand new entry in the franchise so soon (the 2018 game launched in September and then had a slew of DLCs), and on top of that, the Californian studio also announced a new Ratchet & Clank game.
However, what exactly will be in Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales? According to an interview published today on the Telegraph (behind the newspaper's subscription paywall), it will be more of an 'expansion' and 'enhancement' over the 2018 title. Simon Rutter, Executive Vice President Head of European Business at Sony Interactive Entertainment, stated:
I guess you could call it an expansion and an enhancement to the previous game. There’s a substantial Miles Morales component - which is the expansion element - but also within the game as well there’s been major enhancements to the game and the game engine, obviously deploying some of the major PlayStation 5 technology and features.
It sounds like more of a standalone expansion, then, perhaps akin to what Infamous Last Light was with respect to Infamous Second Son. Don't expect a full-fledged, 20-hour-long adventure from Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales when it launches later this year. However, it will certainly look stunning as you can see in these direct-feed screenshots shared by the publisher with the press.
Later in the same interview, Rutter also tried to express how the PS5's generation leap will come from the full package of improved visuals, audio, and gameplay feedback (through the DualSense's haptics feature).
I think what is very interesting for everyone to see is how familiar games might be to some degree changed through the workings of PlayStation 5.
I’ll give you a couple of examples of that. I think everybody could see Horizon Forbidden West’s graphical quality. The visual spectacle that the Guerilla team are able to draw upon using various technologies and feature sets of PlayStation 5 is making that game ever more believable. The way the textures are drawn, the way they’re lit, the way they draw distances immediately are created wherever you look without any pop-up or glitches, the amount of assets and architecture that can be displayed on the screen at one time allows the creators to draw a more holistic and deeper world vision.
And when you layer on top of that things you can’t see, like 3D audio, you will be able to hear all those mechs and creatures and environmental effects going on all around you, and you will be able to pinpoint them to the extent that you will feel within the game. And then you add to that the visceral experience you will get from the DualSense controller where pulling on a bow to release a shot will feel very different through the adaptive triggers than, for example, throwing a weapon.
All that rolled up - the visual fidelity, the sensorial aspects - offer that kind of generational leap.
