With Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a remastered version of the game Marvel’s Spider-Man is being released. For both versions, there will be a new face for Peter Parker aka Spider-Man. However, this new face has received mixed reactions. Some angry fans even sent death threats.
What exactly happened? On September 30, the developers announced that Peter Parker will have a new face in Miles Morales and the remastered version.
The developers wanted to create better acting performance on the next-gen console PS5 and have cast a new actor. Instead of John Bubniak, who was previously the face in the game, Ben Jordan has now taken on the role, who is also said to resemble the actor Yuri Lowenthal more closely.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is one of the launch titles for the PS5, but will also be released for the PS4 at the same time.
However, this change has received mixed reactions from fans. Along with much constructive criticism and discussions among fans, there were also players who took drastic measures and sent death threats to the developers.
This was announced by the Creative Director of Insomniac, Bryan Intihar, on Twitter.
New face meets criticism and death threats
Fans express death threats: According to Bryan Intihar, threats have been sent to the developers, such as “We are hunting you down and will find you. We will make this right now.”
After the tweet, the team from Insomniac received much support from the gaming industry, both from players and from well-known developers like Neil Druckmann, the Vice President of Naughty Dog, or Cory Barlog, the Director of God of War.
How did fans generally react? In a thread on Reddit about Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4, there were generally some critical comments from players:
- In the post with the most likes, there is criticism that the new face is supposed to be a downgrade in emotions (via reddit).
- Additionally, it was criticized that Peter Parker now looks younger, even too young for many (via reddit).
- Moreover, some users are annoyed that the face of Peter Parker, which is rarely seen in the games, was adjusted for next-gen instead of the faces of other characters (via reddit).
However, there are also fans who like the new face (via reddit). Some also hope that this new face could mean that Sony is planning more games with Spider-Man as a character (via reddit).
A large portion of the users there emphasized, however, that the change does not matter much. They reacted with head shaking to boycott calls and the death threats.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be released on both PS4 and PS5. However, those who use the new next-gen console do not need to give up their old game library. 99% of all PS4 titles are said to be playable. Some of them will even look better than in the old generation.
