Insomniac has revealed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be about the same length to play as the first Marvel’s Spider-Man.
In an interview with VG 24/7, Insomniac senior game director Ryan Smith had this to say:
“Spider-Man 2 is in the same ball-park as the first game in terms of overall play time. And we really thought about how to make each of the moments – moments like The Lizard fight you played – a little more epic, or a little deeper, or a little more story-integrated.
We don’t want this to be an 80-100 hour game, that’s not where we want to be. We want to tell amazing stories, the best we can. We want to make every mission really, really memorable. That’s our goal, rather than going super, super broad.”
As VG 24/7 also pointed out, as the first Marvel’s Spider-Man is listed on the website HowLongToBeat to be 17 hours long to finish. For 100 % completion, it takes 34 ½ hours long.
Insomniac’s statement can be seen in the context of Sony’s first party, open world action games also averaging around 30+ hours to complete. The same is also true of the God of War games, the Horizon games, Days Gone, and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
Now, for some of these games, that 30 hour playtime represents a playthrough until the end, while in the other games, it’s the estimated amount for a completion run. It’s not clear if this is an official mandate from Sony, but that seems unlikely.
What’s more likely is that this is the unexpected consequence of PlayStation mandating that their studios finish a project with the time frame and budget that have been allotted to them. In a way, Sony has been playing it safe by making the same kind of game, with the same kind of scale, with an expected return.
It may be hard to see these massive blockbuster games as playing it safe given how much money is poured into them. But, if you see them in the sense of Sony not taking any risks, literally selling fans the same game type three to four times over, it makes a lot more sense. One could even make a direct comparison to third party developer Ubisoft here.
In any case, if the fans are happy to play them, there isn’t necessarily any harm done. Sony is free to make other kinds of games whenever it suits them.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be released exclusively on the PlayStation 5, on October 20, 2023.