Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is the latest game from developers Beenox and Activision. When the villainous Mysterio shatters the Tablet of Order and Chaos, it’s up to Spidey to wallcrawl, webswing and wisecrack his way through four alternate universes to retrieve the pieces. Mark McKenzie-Ray sat down with producer Stephane Gravel from Beenox, who chatted about the challenge of developing Shattered Dimensions, reading comics at work and Spidey’s confrontation with the ‘Merc with the Mouth’ himself, Deadpool.

There have been a number of Spider-Man games in the past. What do you think makes Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions different from its predecessors?

Well, the main difference is that there are four different Spideys. Not only do you play Amazing Spider-Man or Ultimate Spider-Man like you’ve been able to do in the past, but now you have the chance to play Spider-Man Noir and Spidey 2099.

How did you go about choosing the villains that feature in the game?

At first, we really wanted to tailor each location to the villains themselves. For example, Kraven the Hunter was one of the first we chose because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t possible [to fight him] in previous Spider-Man games, so that was really new.

I don’t know if you know about the Tablet of Order and Chaos, which basically links all the universes together, but when the villains get a piece of the Tablet, they get more powerful, they get more powers. So by talking with Dan, we decided, “OK, which one would be cool to use and be given new powers?” Marvel had some ideas as well – it was a back and forth.

To be honest, we looked on the boards, and we wanted to know which villains people wanted to see as well. We took all that into account in order to decide which 13 villains would be in the game.

The villains are more powerful when they possess a piece of the Tablet of Order and Chaos aren’t they?

Exactly. In some levels, they get the piece of the Tablet right at the beginning, in others only in the middle of the level, or at the end. So it’s not always the same thing. More often than not, you will be confronting the villains and they don’t get any new powers; they’re just the villains you know from Spider-Man’s history. Then they get one piece of the Tablet and they get more powerful, so basically it’s a brand new encounter because you meet those villains more than once in the level.


Was one universe more challenging to develop than the others?

That might be weird, but the one I would say was the most difficult was the Amazing Spider-Man universe, because that’s the one that has been done for numerous games, so we wanted to bring something new to the table. Doing Spidey Noir was really fresh because it had never been done in a Spidey game before. Spidey 2099: same thing. But Amazing, it has been done in the past. What could we bring to the table that would be new, fun and fresh?

There’s a certain amount of expectation with the Amazing universe…

Yeah. You can’t go in a totally different way. You expect Spidey to play some way, to look some way, to feel some way.

Dan Slott wrote the story for Shattered Dimensions. In terms of the visual style, were you inspired by the work of any artists in particular?

That’s a good question. We looked at a lot of comic books and source material. For Amazing, maybe some Todd MacFarlane stuff, maybe some Romita. For Ultimate, we looked at the Mark Bagley stuff. I’ve been reading Spider-Man comic books since childhood.

So you’re a big fan yourself?

Oh yeah, a really big fan! It was a blast to meet Dan Slott. A lot of people on the team, they weren’t such big fans, so we had to buy a lot of comics.

That sounds like tough work…

Oh yeah, you read comics during work hours – that’s hard work! (Laughs)

In the past, Beenox has been responsible for solely the PC versions of Spider-Man games. How different was it creating Shattered Dimensions for the other gaming platforms as well?

Shattered Dimensions is our third original game. We’ve done the Bee Movie game and Monsters vs. Aliens in the past. We already had our own preparatory engine, so we started with that. Of course, the challenge was that this game is not aimed towards kids like the first two we’ve made.

Also, a lot of people like Spider-Man, but they don’t necessarily play Red Dead Redemption and games like that. So the challenge was more in making a game that would satisfy both casual gamers and hardcore gamers. That’s why we have 180 challenges to complete in the game. If you’re just a casual gamer and just want to play the game, that’s fine. If you’re a hardcore gamer and want to complete it 100%, there’s a lot of stuff to do. If you want to unlock all the stuff, every move, every skill, every alternate suit, you need to complete all 180 challenges.


Is there anything that you didn’t have the time, or money, or that you couldn’t fit into the story that you would have liked to have included in the game?

(Laughs) Yeah, but I can’t talk about that!

The concept just brought so many ideas to the table, and at some point we had to choose which ones we wanted to do and which ones we had time to do. There’s stuff that stayed on the drawing board. Who knows, maybe we’ll see them in the future.

You use four different voice actors from four different versions of the Spider-Man animated series. How important was it to you to get those actors and how did you assign them to the specific Spider-Men and their respective universes?

We knew that because we had four different Spideys, we wanted four different actors as well; that was clear from the beginning. But at some point, somebody proposed, “Why don’t we go with voice actors that have voiced Spider-Man in the past?” And everybody around the table was like, “That’s such a cool idea, that would be really awesome.” All of them, when we approached them, were really keen on the idea of playing Spider-Man again because they like the character a lot.

Regarding the casting, it depended on where they fitted in. Josh Keaton [from the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series] played a really young Spidey, so he was fitting for Ultimate Spider-Man because, in that universe, Spidey is still a teenager. So that was easy to cast. For the others, we could have gone in different directions, but the actors are now more mature, they have evolved as actors. That’s how we decided that one would do one universe and one would do another universe.

We’re really satisfied with the result, because they’re just awesome. They get to deliver an awesome script as well, a lot of quips, a lot of funny, funny lines. For example, there’s a level in the Ultimate universe in which Spidey and Deadpool always go at each other – it’s really, really funny! I’ve heard those lines a lot of times and I’m still laughing.


Are you a big fan of Deadpool as well then?

Yeah. He’s a really nice character. In the game, he basically gets his own TV show. You’re a part of Pain Factor, which is a really, really good TV show. Spidey doesn’t want to take part, but the prize is a piece of the Tablet, so he has to compete. He doesn’t want to do it, and he says that to Deadpool, but Deadpool doesn’t care. All Deadpool cares about are the ratings, so that’s a fun level.

Do you personally have a favourite universe and villain in the game?

At first, as I’ve been reading comic books for a long time, Amazing was my favourite. But then when I saw Spidey Noir with the visuals, Noir became my favourite. Then I got to play Ultimate, and you get swarmed by enemies and get to use the tendrils, so then Ultimate became my favourite. Then Spidey 2099, with that crazy futuristic city... At first we didn’t have the flying vehicles and animated billboards, but when that came in, that became my favourite as well. So I don’t really have one favourite!

For the villains, there are so many favourites in there. Deadpool and Juggernaut are fun, as is Kraven. Vulture is really creepy. I love them all! Spidey has a really rich rogues’ gallery. It was actually hard to choose because there are some villains we wanted in the game, but there were too many, so we had to cut some. I was sad, but at some point we had to choose.

Is there a particular reason why the black symbiote is bonded with Ultimate Spider-Man instead of Amazing Spider-Man?

We wanted the symbiote in the game just because of the different gameplay it would bring. It ended up in Ultimate mostly because we wanted Amazing to be the one that everybody knows. That’s why Amazing ended up being the red and blue suit, and the symbiote ended up in the Ultimate universe.

So it wasn’t really any complicated decision, it was just mostly about recognition for those characters. But we do explain at the beginning of the game why the Ultimate universe has the black suit. It’s part of the story.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is out now for PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, with a PC version following later in the year.