It’s been long in the pipeline, but we should be getting a Marvel’s Spider-Man sequel at some point next year, and there has already been a significant change made by the developers since the first game. For the people lucky enough to get a copy of God of War Ragnarök, the name Scott Porter might ring a bell. Porter voices Heimdall in that game, and he also voiced Harry Osborne in Marvel’s Spider-Man, but the news is reaching us that the actor will not be reprising his role in the Spider-Man sequel.
The news was revealed by Porter himself via his Twitter account. Porter was replying to an excited fan who, while playing the new God of War, was reminded that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 would be out next year after hearing Porter’s voice in the game. But Porter was the bearer of bad news as he confirmed in his reply that Insomniac Games had not called him back to voice Harry Osborne, instead deciding to travel down a different path. The tweet has since been deleted, which probably meant that the studio wanted to reveal the news itself, but as expected, someone screenshotted the post and shared it on Reddit.
As you can see in the Reddit post below, Porter explained “While I voiced Harry in the first Spider-Man, I, unfortunately, will not be in the sequel. They decided to go photo real and the difference between me and Harry’s ages was too much to overcome I believe.” It is quite the kick in the teeth for Porter, who must have thought he was bang on to reprise the role, but it’s a decision he understands and hasn’t become salty over. Porter followed this up by saying “I was bummed but I get it. Gonna be an incredible game.”
This sounds awfully similar as well because Insomniac will be following the trend that it set when replacing Peter Parker actors when the studio released a remastered version of the first game, so this is nothing out of the ordinary. Insomniac was asked about the decision to replace Spider-Man actors, with the studio explaining that it wanted to bring in the best performance it could for players. One of the biggest determining factors as to why the decision to replace Osborn’s actor does make sense though, and Porter knows it as well, and that’s because the game will be a PlayStation 5 exclusive, which means having the characters look exactly like the actors is very important it seems. And like Porter mentioned, he is quite a bit older than the in-game version of Harry Osborne would be.