- Insomniac Games announced Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PS5 on Thursday.
- It wasn’t clear if Miles Morales was a full game or an expansion pack or what, but the confusion only grew in the hours following the Future of Gaming event.
- Insomniac finally clarified that Miles Morales is a standalone game on Friday.
One of the first, and most exciting, trailers to debut at Sony’s PS5 Future of Gaming event on Thursday was for what appeared to be a brand new game set in the same universe as 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales was set to be the first PS5 title from Insomniac Games, and one of the first next-gen exclusives period, with a release window of holiday 2020. But details were sparse. Was this a full-fledged sequel to the 2018 game? Was it a spinoff? We had no idea, but in an interview with The Telegraph published after the event, Sony executive Simon Rutter referred to Miles Morales as “an expansion and an enhancement to the previous game.” The Telegraph then called Miles Morales “an expansion bolted on to an upgraded version of the original title.”
At this point, our best guess was that Miles Morales would be DLC for Marvel’s Spider-Man, sort of like The City That Never Sleeps, but for a remastered version of the game that would be available on PS5 later this year. But it turns out that this is also wrong. How wrong, exactly? We aren’t quite sure.
Understandably, fans of Spider-Man (the game and the character) were confused when reports about Miles Morales being an expansion began to make the rounds. While Sony didn’t specify what form Miles Morales would take during the presentation, the expectation was that it would at the very least be a standalone title.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg added to the confusion with news from a source close to development who claimed that Miles Morales was “not an expansion or enhancement, but a new video game.” The source compared it to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which was a standalone game that wasn’t quite as long as a mainline Uncharted game.
Just as anger on social media began to peak, Insomniac Games swooped in with a tweet to clear everything up:
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the next adventure in the Marvel's Spider-Man universe. We will reveal more about this standalone game at a future date. #MilesMoralesPS5 pic.twitter.com/GOTAvNhUaF
— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) June 12, 2020
Finally, here’s a synopsis for the game which says so little with so many words that it’s honestly impressive:
The latest adventure in the Spider-Man universe will build on and expand Marvel’s Spider-Man through an all-new story. Players will experience the rise of Miles Morales as he masters new powers to become his own Spider-Man. With PS5’s ultra-fast SSD, players can near-instantaneously fast-travel across Marvel’s New York City, or feel the tension of each one of Miles’s web-swings, punches, web shots, and venom blasts with the DualSense wireless controller’s haptic feedback. Highly-detailed character models and enhanced visuals across the game intensify the story of Miles Morales as he faces great, new challenges while learning to be his own Spider-Man.
The reason that this entire saga has been so hysterical is that Sony could have put it to rest at any point and chose not to. There might be a very good reason for this. Perhaps Sony still isn’t sure what form this game will take, or if it’ll come included with a remasted version of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS5. Whatever the case, following an evening of joyous celebration, Sony found a way to temporarily kill all of its momentum. Quite an achievement.
