UPDATE
What do you think of this new look for The Lizard? Does it make you excited about fighting him? Let us know below!
ORIGINAL STORY
One of the main reasons that people are looking forward to the arrival of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is that they want to see what characters make their debut in the game. We know about Venom and Kraven and the return of Mr. Negative, but fans want more. Insomniac Games has been unusually tight-lipped on that front, as the only other real “major villain” they’ve shown off is The Lizard, aka Curt Connors. In the comics, he was a scientist that Peter Parker looked up to, but his experiments involving reptiles led to him becoming a monster that Peter would have to fight many times over.
In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, it wasn’t known initially if we would see the man or “just the beast.” But on the PlayStation Blog, Insomniac Games made it clear that they had to put in a TON of work to make The Lizard fit in their world and move and look as “one would expect.”
“The first thing we always do when we look at a Marvel character is reference the comics,” noted Jacinda Chew, the senior art director at Insomniac Games. “And then from there, we collaborate with Marvel to put our own spin on it. It can come from the gameplay, or because of the narrative.”
Calling back to what we said earlier, Chew revealed that they did experiment with the “classic” version of The Lizard via his labcoat and pants and being able to talk to the Spider-Men. However, in the game, that man is long gone. She revealed that he’s “lost all his humanity” and is now just a giant green monster.
The team pushed to have The Lizard not just look like a reptile, but also move like one. That was helped tremendously thanks to the PS5:
“We are also doing muscle simulations–looking at real animal or real human actors and seeing how those muscles deform and running simulations. I think it’s incredible that we’re able to do this at this point in developing video games, but it’s also somewhat subtle, because you may not always notice that difference until we disable all the muscle simulations.”
The blog also highlighted a scene from the actual boss fight that players will do with The Lizard, and it features Peter Parker using the Venom suit to try and beat up the former scientist. One can only imagine how intense the fight will be.
Thankfully, fans won’t have to wait long, as the game will release on October 20th.
