The announcement of Spider-Man: Miles Morales has caused some confusion.
The announcement of Spider-Man: Miles Morales has caused some confusion.
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The announcement of Spider-Man: Miles Morales has caused some confusion.
One of the games featured in the PlayStation 5 reveal event was Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It’s a game that features fan-favourite Morales as its main protagonist. This marks a change from the original Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4, where Morales is playable, but he (and Gwen Stacey) are secondary playable characters to Peter Parker’s trad Spider-Man.
But it’s a little different to the game that precedes it.
For one thing, the footage we’ve seen of Spider-Man: Miles Morales looks like it features an older-looking Morales. This represents a change from the 15-year-old depiction we’ve seen in the PS4 game, and also the hit animated movie, Into the Spiderverse.
We’ve also heard talk of the game being spruced up for the PS5. In an interview [paywalled] with the Telegraph, Simon Rutter, EVP head of European business at Sony Interactive Entertainment, saying that “major enhancements to the game and the game engine, obviously deploying some of the major PlayStation 5 technology and features,” which led to confusion that this might be a remaster of the full PS4 game.
We’ve also only heard it mentioned in the same breath as the upcoming PlayStation 5 console; never the PlayStation 4. So the question is, then: What exactly is Spider-Man: Miles Morales? A full sequel? A remaster? An expansion?
It’s an expansion, according to a tweet from Insomniac Games. Well, more accurately, it looks like a standalone expansion, or “expandalone” for short.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the next adventure in the Marvel’s Spider-Man universe. We will reveal more about this standalone game at a future date. #MilesMoralesPS5pic.twitter.com/GOTAvNhUaF
Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 12, 2020
Think of it like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a brilliant, shorter, standalone game built on the underpinnings of Uncharted 4, which retailed for two-thirds the price of the main game. Or even The Last of Us: Left Behind, a three-hour DLC for The Last of Us which could also be purchased without the base game as an expandalone game.
According to a Bloomberg report, Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be packaged more like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy than The Last of Us: Left Behind. We don’t know how long it will be or how it will be priced, of course,
The talk of “major enhancements to the game” appears to simply relate to porting the base Marvel’s Spider-Man game – the engine, the world, the visuals – to the superior PlayStation 5 platform. Remember those videos we saw of the PS4 game running on PS5, to illustrate the reduction or removal of loading times? It’s that sort of thing.
What Insomniac and Sony haven’t confirmed at this stage is whether Spider-Man: Miles Morales will ever be available on PlayStation 4. It would make sense, from a sales perspective, to see the game span the two console generations.
But if they plan to use Spider-Man: Miles Morales as a carrot to tempt people onto the PS5, it seems less likely that the expandalone will see a PS4 release.
Follow Thumbsticks on Facebook, Google News, Twitter, and Flipboard for more important clarifications.
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Tom is an itinerant freelance technology writer who found a home as an Editor with Thumbsticks. Powered by coffee, RPGs, and local co-op.
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The Pokémon Sword and Shield expansion and a classic racing game are our picks from this week’s new Nintendo Switch eShop releases.
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The Pokémon Sword and Shield expansion and a classic racing game are our picks from this week’s new Nintendo Switch eShop releases.
This week’s big Nintendo eShop release is The Isle of Armor, the first part of the expansion pass for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield.
