Insomniac Games clearly put a lot of thought into representing Manhattan in Marvel’s Spider-Man. Quintessential landmarks like Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State Building are present and accounted for.
So what didn’t make the cut?
Recreating New York City in fiction can be complicated! You can’t just plop a one-to-one model of a famous building into a game without permission. There are some landmarks that Insomniac couldn’t use — and some changes that the studio made because of the realities of a multiyear development cycle.
Polygon is lucky enough to be based in the beautiful, filthy city that is New York. So we went on a tour of Manhattan to show you what Insomniac changed about Spider-Man’s New York, and why.
Come on a journey with us, from the southern tip of Manhattan, all the way up to ... Midtown. (Come on, we didn’t have all day!) And in all fairness to us, Insomniac largely ignored the northern part of Manhattan. You can learn more about that in the video.
Make sure you subscribe to Polygon’s channel, too. We also interviewed the developers about why Spider-Man’s swinging feels so dang good:
