Speaking with Digital Foundry, Mike Fitzgerald, Insomniac Games‘ director of core technology, revealed that the Sony-owned studio only committed to always-on ray tracing for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as early as this year.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with our coverage of the game, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 features ray tracing enabled regardless of your chosen mode, so you can enjoy it at 30 FPS, 40 FPS, or 60 FPS. However, the feature wasn’t always planned to be there.
It has always pained me whenever I see a screenshot of the first couple of Spider-Man games, or if I see Clank with ray tracing turned off. And I always know immediately, when I see that screenshot, and it always bums me out. And so it was always an aspiration for this one: wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to have that real big compromise in there if we got back to a pure performance and resolution trade-off?
And I don’t think we committed to it until earlier this year, but I think basically, we saw the way performance was trending, and we said, ‘You know, it’ll be work, but let’s go for it’. I feel like we got there with the last games, but we always got there, like, a week after launch. Or, right at the deadline, and we’re never quite confident enough. And so this time, it just took a bit of ‘No, we’re gonna do it, and we can get to where it needs to be.’
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was released on October 20, 2023 exclusively for the PS5, and topped the UK physical charts becoming the fourth-biggest boxed release of the year so far. Furthermore, the superhero sequel moved 2.5 million copies during its first 24 hours on sale, and is now the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time.
Read our Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 review.
[Source – Digital Foundry]