No Graphics Mode In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Will Have Ray Tracing Turned Off

As Insomniac’s front-running IP Marvel’s Spider-Man gears up for another iteration in the franchise, more and more news appears to pop up in its context with each passing day. As of late, the developing studio’s Director of Core Technology Mike Fitzgerald has confirmed that no graphics mode of Spider-Man 2 will have the ray tracing feature turned off, and the reason for this will pleasantly delight you. 

Apparently, the folks over at Insomniac want players to enjoy their best work yet in, well, the best possible way with no room for compromise. Mike Fitzgerald says that the studio has really gotten a hold of how to portray the visuals of Spider-Man accurately, and, therefore, would have it perfect if everyone got to perceive the game’s true potential. 

Sitting down in an interview with IGN, Mike commented on the graphics modes of Miles Morales in the following manner, consolidating his view on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Such a boost of confidence coming from the game’s developer is something to vouch for here. 

 So I think I want to say for those titles, we had Fidelity Mode, which had the full 4K and ray traced reflections, and then we had a Performance Mode which turned the ray tracing off and rendered at a lower resolution. And then we were able to add I think around launch, if not just after, the Performance RT Mode as we called it, which was trying to be the best of both. And for this game we’re really able to deliver that as a baseline performance mode. There’s no mode of this game that has the ray tracing turned off, no need for it. We’ve really figured out how to deliver what we feel like is the right Spider-Man visuals and we want to make sure every player is seeing that.” 

In addition, the focus is going to be pretty heavy on character models and their faces in the sequel, where oftentimes, you’ll be able to read the expressions of in-game characters, even if there’s not a lot of talk going between them. Mike emphasizes this and says that there are times in Spider-Man 2 when the Insomniac team had to optimize five to six characters simultaneously on-screen all at the same time.  

We’re scanning faces with more fidelity and we’ve built out more of our processing pipelines to handle that in more detail. Certainly our models are more dense than they have been in the past. There’s some scenes in this game that have four, five, or six main characters on the screen at the same time.” 

For those who missed it, the recent State of Play event showcased an extended reveal of Spider-Man 2, highlighting the stark differences in the new rendition, such as a map size that’s twice as big as the previous title, and the ability to glide across the skies with “web wings.” Moreover, it’s been confirmed as of late that the game will feature multiple FPS modes, such as 30, 40, and 60, alongside VRR support.

Other Content to Check Out: 

• The World May Not Be “Quite Prepared” For Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Claims PlayStation Studios Official
• Stunning New Spider-Man 2 Screenshots Now Out In The Open
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Will Let You Adjust Combat Speed; Graphics Modes Leaked

Spider-Man 2 will be released on October 20, 2023, for the PlayStation 5 exclusively.