Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has no shortage of villains that Spidey has to face in the game. We saw many of the hero’s previous supervillains being rehabilitated and trying to live normal lives in New York City. However, Kraven the Hunter doesn’t let this happen, as his lust for a strong opponent has proven too powerful.
While creating New York City his very own jungle throughout Marvel Spider-Man 2’s main campaign, Kraven eliminates all of Spider-Man’s old villains. He captures them to fight them one-on-one to find out who can overpower him. At the game’s launch, many fans initially disagreed with the Insomniac’s approach with Kraven the Hunter and argued he shouldn’t have faced off against old spidey villains. However, the game’s narrative director and advanced writer believe their decisions made Kraven a menacing villain.
Insomniac’s Creative Decisions Made Kraven the Hunter a Terrifying Villian
While many in the community consider Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 an excellent game and a worthy follow-up to Insomniac Games’ previous Marvel titles, players felt less thrilled about several aspects. One of these was how the developers handled Kraven the Hunter’s character in the game.
Fans have heavily criticized Kraven The Hunter’s character in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Many feel that he should’ve focussed on hunting more himself or that his sole motivation to hunt others was questionable. However, one of the biggest complaints was how Kraven came out of nowhere in Spidey Universe and hunted down all the villains we’ve seen in the previous games. Fans feel like this trope of a new villain annihilating old villains to establish their superiority is just lazy writing and something that Insomniac should’ve completely avoided.
However, Insomniac’s narrative director, Ben Arfmann, and advanced writer, Brittney Morris, hold a different view on Kraven’s character. In a pre-launch interview with Gizmodo, the duo provided insights into the major plotlines of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and shed light on their creative decisions regarding Kraven’s role.
When asked how they felt about having Kraven kill several villains from the first game, Arfmann believed that it was necessary to establish that he was the world’s best hunter.
Whenever we talked about this game, we talked about it being a darker, more mature story than the first two Spider-Man games, and part of that involved raising the stakes. With Kraven, we really wanted to build up the idea that if he truly was the World’s Greatest Hunter, and he can’t have that title if he’s not collecting some heads.
Morris states that the team wanted to ensure that Kraven was an absolutely menacing character in the Spidey Universe for everyone. It was necessary to show his impact on the story and what he could do.
We wanted to make sure he was extremely menacing to both the heroes and the player. It’s one thing to show him filling up a camera space while being intimidating, and it’s another to show the kind of impact he has. We needed to give you a glimpse of what he was capable of, like in the beginning of the game when he breaks that guy’s neck.
Without a doubt, Insomniac’s approach with Kraven the Hunter was the right one. The decisions they made when designing his character allowed him to be a menace that both players and in-game characters feared. While Venom did kill him in the end, Kraven had a major impact and proved to be one of the reasons behind Marvel Spider-Man’s success.
When is Marvel’s Wolverine Coming Out?
Insomniac’s work on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 excites many fans for the developer’s upcoming project, Marvel’s Wolverine. The developer has been working hard on this standalone Wolverine game crafted exclusively for PS5. The game was announced three years ago, but we didn’t get to hear much from Insomniac. However, last year’s ransomware attack on Insomniac revealed a lot of information on the game.
Unfortunately, there’s still no release date or window for the game. Insomniac’s teams have their hands full, with one still working on delivering updates for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and another on Marvel’s Wolverine. It’s not impossible that the game might eventually make its way to PC; after all, Sony now has an incredible track record of bringing its exclusives to the platform.
