Insomniac Developer Shares Unused Venom Animation From Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Highlights

Fans are impressed with an unused Venom traversal animation from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
In the footage, Venom moves around in his liquid form before turning into the solid monstrous creature players expect to see.
The unreleased Venom footage has sparked debate among fans, with fans divided on its potential and some gamers thinking the concept was cooler than the final product.

An Insomniac games developer has shared an unused piece of animation from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 pertaining to the game’s iconic antagonist, Venom. Despite not making it to the final version of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, fans are quite impressed with how good the animation is.

With Venom having his own fan base far before the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, expectations were high for Insomniac games‘ portrayal of the symbiote. The fact that the Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 community was yearning to get more playtime as Venom speaks volumes about how fans feel about the game’s take on the character. However, it seems like there was a slightly different variant of Venom which Insomniac games had initially designed, and it has left fans in a dilemma.

A screenshot of Venom standing in a dark city street in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

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In a new tweet, Insomniac games‘ Advanced Senior Animator Liam Murphy shared an interesting video from the pre-release version of the game. The post showcases a much different version of Venom from what players saw in the game, with more of a goopy appearance.

While players can travel short distances while briefly controlling Venom in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, what makes this animation stand out is that it fits in intrinsically with Venom’s overall attributes and takes him to the streets of New York. In the video, Venom moves across a road while the Symbiote is still in its liquid form, which gives the traversal a really slick appearance. The way Venom regains his form toward the end of the footage is equally satisfying to watch.

As Liam highlights, this animation over five years old and was one of the first proof-of-concepts Insomniac designed. Considering that Insomniac started working on the sequel after the DLC for the first game, it seems like this is probably one of the oldest pre-release videos of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Liam further adds that the 2D animation was done in Photoshop, by drawing on top of an existing imported video.

This footage has sparked a fresh debate in the community, with some feeling that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was a bit rushed and had a lot of missed potential. Over on Reddit, critical fans were quite surprised that this concept was scrapped, believing that it looks cooler than the release version. In fact, the unfinished nature of the video adds a really interesting layer to the animation, with many drawing parallels to the Spider-Verse movie franchise’s art style. While the community is still split over whether the concept or final version of Venom is better, a common consensus among the community seems to be that the developers might end up using this movement idea for the leaked Venom spin-off game.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

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The sequel to 2018’s Spider-Man and its Miles Morales spin-off, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a PS5 console exclusive. Insomniac’s open-world game features Peter Parker and Miles Morales as dual protagonists, with the two heroes going up against the likes of Kraven, Venom, and Lizard.