Insomniac Games has shared an interesting little tidbit about Marvel’s Spider-Man 2‘s Digital Deluxe Edition exclusive extra suits.
As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, the robotic Tactical Suit was created by Sony Bend Studio. In specific, Sony Bend Studio’s concept artists Joel Mandish and Darren Quach designed the suit for Insomniac, two of many collaborators who made these bonus costumes.
Bend Studio was most recently prominent for 2019 release Days Gone. But before that, it made its name as the developer behind the Syphon Filter games, from as far back when they were known as Eidetic.
So Days Gone may make it look like Bend doesn’t know much about the high tech aesthetic, but they had been actually making spy media style technology for years, and were just as good at making this suit as anyone.
Insomniac provided this description for the Tactical suit:
“From Bend’s concept artists Joel Mandish and Darren Quach, the Tactical Suit is inspired by Japanese media and the vast universe of comics. It’s a futuristic and lighter design that stands out in our roster of Digital Deluxe Edition suits.”
As is the case with the nine other suits in the Digital Deluxe Edition, these were all deliberately made as all-original designs, giving players completely unique costumes to imagine their own Spider-Men heroes. While some fans may have a point looking for different Spider-Men, for example, like the one in the Toei tokusatsu show, or the ones who appeared in the Spider-Verse movies, Insomniac is offering something completely novel instead.
The suits that fans are clamoring for the most, or at least the ones that Sony could license, were added to the base game. So, Insomniac had to come up with something completely different to offer as pre-order exclusives. There are a total of 65 suits that are available in the game.
We should also recognize the possibility that if these Digital Deluxe suits prove popular enough, they could make their way back into the comics. It’s not that hard to see Marvel paying Sony to add these as new suits for Peter Parker or Miles Morales, or maybe adapted for other adjacent Spider-characters like Silk or Spider-Ghost. Or even better, they could end up becoming original and new characters on their own.
After all, it’s that sort of thing that got Harley Quinn introduced, from the Batman 1990s cartoon, to the comics, to now some multimillion dollar movies. It would certainly be something if we saw a few of these suits become famous in their own right in the future.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is releasing exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on October 20, 2023.