• Posted June 25th, 2012 at 17:13 EDT by Joseph Fait
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PlayStation Universe spoke with Brant Nicholas, Executive Producer at Beenox, about some of the biggest aspect of its upcoming game Amazing Spider-Man. From the Web Rush mode, to the combat system, and Beenox' first open-world game, we spread our questions across a diverse spectrum to learn exactly what this open-world Amazing Spider-Man game has to offer.

PlayStation Universe: "Does Beenox feel any type of pressure after going open world, as it's much more work creating such a massive world? On the other hand, does the team feel relief because they're finally delivering what quite a bit of the fans have been clamoring for with the world?"

Brant Nicholas: "Easy question. Did we feel pressure in trying to tackle creating an open world game?  Absolutely!  There are so many awesome games out there that were inspirations, we really had to pick and choose our feature set carefully as we were constantly debating what would build the best Spider-Man experience in Manhattan.  At the same time, we’re huge fan-boys ourselves and so we really poured our hearts into getting as much as we possibly could into the game.  

"With such a strong Spider-Man legacy from Spider-Man 2, Web of Shadows, and Shattered Dimensions, and more, our team worked super-hard (along with a lot of focus-group testing) to find the best combination that we could for the final game."

 

PSU: "What was the design process behind the Web Rush mode?"

BN: "Web Rush really began as a dream.  We saw all of the awesome things that Spider-Man can do when swinging around in the city in the movies, and we wanted to find some way to put that same level of agility and extreme acrobatics into the hands of the players without requiring painful finger-gymnastics to make it happen.  

"In the end, we had a whole team focused on just Web Rush from the beginning of the project.  Web Rush took dedicated focus and iteration by itself, until we felt that not only finally could you now move like Spidey in the films, but that it was also a ton of fun to play.  

"What makes Web Rush even more complicated is that it must integrate seamlessly through all aspects of the game, from navigation in Manhattan, to stealth tactics, to combat, to interacting with objects in the environment, to multiple types of unique attacks for each major boss in the game, and more. It was a blast to create as a game feature, but it was a ton of work at the same time.

"One of the hardest aspects of creating the Web Rush was identifying the huge variety of animations required to handle every condition of whatever the player could choose to do, whether it was flipping on signs, swinging around flag-poles, running on busses, and more.  In practice, this meant that we would work on it for a while, create new animations to match the expanded capabilities, see how much cooler it had become, then redesign it again to push the functionality even further.  

"For the more technically minded fans out there, one little-known fact about the Web Rush is that we had a constant internal trade-off between the player’s speed and abilities when Web Rush.  Using Web Swing to navigate around not only Manhattan, but indoor as well raised some real issues when you could also navigate very precisely using Web Rush.  Both mechanics had to feel fun and completely natural, yet at the same time, both had to be completely interchangeable in every single environment of the game.  It was a real challenge that took years of focus to balance and reach the final game."

PSU: "From trailers, the random (they are random, right?) car chases seem really fun, what other world events are going to keep players interested in the city?"

BN: "If you took a single “slice” of Manhattan at various points in the story where everything has been unlocked, a quick sample could vary from the Car Chases to Petty Crimes, to Police Deadlocks (Police are in a stand-off with a bunch of criminals exchanging gunfire), to side-missions, photo-missions, unique collectibles, massive boss fights, and a ton more.  In case you did not already know, the collectibles in our game actually unlock fully digitized comics from Marvel…not just a page or piece of art.  

"What’s even better ... (continued on next page)