Insomniac Games recently suffered a major hack that laid bare its operation and development plans for the next decade, spoiling major game reveals, and most egregiously, threatening employee safety. When ransom demands were not met, Insomniac’s files were leaked online, with hundreds of gigabytes of data available to the public. Presumably as part of this leak, one of the studio’s biggest unreleased games has now been revealed.
On Tuesday, footage from a multiplayer project known as Spider-Man: The Great Web was released on social media. This relatively polished trailer revealed a multiplayer live service title seemingly built in the Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 engine, with players taking on the roles of Peter Parker, Silk, Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Miguel O’Hara, and Ben Reilly. Madame Web and Spider-Punk are also seen in the background of one scene.
While we won’t link the trailer here, as it’s likely to be a product of the illegal hack of Insomniac, it remains available on social media platforms.
Read: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Review – Swing, Swing
It’s a curious watch, for a number of reasons. For one thing – it marks the debut of Ben Reilly (Peter Parker’s clone) and Gwen Stacy in the Insomniac Games universe. It also marks the debut of the multiverse, a concept which has been explored in the Spider-Man comics, live-action films, and animated films. So far, this has only been teased in a brief cutscene in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
There is also the curious fact that Silk appears in concept art, and [spoiler alert] she hasn’t yet taken that mantle in the Spider-Man game series (although she has appeared).
Based on context clues and narration from Yuri Lowenthal as Peter Parker, it appears the game is/was a multiplayer-focused action-adventure, with players working together to take down enemies in New York, while dealing with the multiverse. In one scene, a version of the Sinister Six (Scorpion, Vulture, Doc Ock, Shocker, Mysterio, Venom) leaps out of a multi-dimensional portal, suggesting they may have something to do with the main plot and conceit of the adventure.
At this stage, the status of the game is unclear. The appearance of Silk and Spider-Gwen may suggest a tie-in to Marvel’s Spider-Man 3, or the game could have been quietly cancelled before its reveal. In any case, it’s clear the trailer was not meant to be seen in this fashion.
Whether an extremely early glimpse at something yet to be revealed, or a project that was unceremoniously cancelled, it’s clear The Great Web is/was an ambitious, potential-filled project. We’ll have to stay tuned to see whether it gets a chance in the spotlight, or remains a footnote in the history of cancelled video games.
