Insomniac Games may still be laughing about Spider-Man PS4’s “Puddlegate” controversy. The developer released a new promotional screenshot today for its upcoming Spider-Man: Miles Morales game, and it just so happens to have the black-clad wallcrawler performing a signature Spider-Man pose next to a gorgeous-looking puddle of water.
As the name suggests, Puddlegate was a controversy revolving around a puddle of water. Insomniac premiered a Spider-Man PS4 demo back during E3 2017 that featured this water puddle, and fans used it to represent how good the graphics of the game looked. However, when Spider-Man PS4 actually launched a year later, the puddle was gone, and some people used it to represent the drop in quality they saw in the game’s graphics when compared to the E3 demo. But Spider-Man PS4’s overwhelming success confirmed that the majority of players really didn’t care.
Whether or not Insomniac actually intended for the new Spider-Man: Miles Morales screenshot to poke fun at Puddlegate remains uncertain, but it’s very likely. Insomniac has openly made fun of Puddlegate before. The studio once released a Spider-Man PS4 update that allowed players to place puddle stickers in their screenshots when using photo mode, and it used the scene featuring the infamous puddle as an example.
For now, though, Insomniac joking around about the puddle is just the interpretation some fans got after seeing the new image. If the developer removes the puddle come Spider-Man Miles Morales launch, then we’ll have our answer.
Beyond that, the screenshot comes by way of an interview Insomniac Games recently had with Entertainment Weekly. The developer sat down and discussed what players could expect from its upcoming PS5 Spider-Man game. Here, Brian Horton, the creative director of the project, once again touched on how long Spider-Man Miles Morales is.
Horton explains that the reason Spider-Man: Miles Morales is shorter than Spider-Man PS4 is that Insomniac felt that it could tell a more emotionally impactful story that way, and by extension, do the character justice. Horton claims that players will see Miles achieve a full character arc, which echoes what he said about the game in a PlayStation Blog post.
It’s still unclear exactly how long Spider-Man Miles Morales will be. One Insomniac developer pointed out that the studio hadn’t specified how long the game was on either the short or long end, and it doesn’t look like it will anytime soon. The game certainly looks pretty enough at the very least, though.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is in development for the PS5.
