Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 fast-travel is so quick a dev denied there’s any trickery

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will release shortly, and even before the release, it has eclipsed most of the gaming discourse. One such thing discussed heavily is the near-instant fast travel, so much so that Insomniac dev has to assure there is nothing “hidden.”  

The second major installment of beloved 2018 Marvel’s Spider-Man will be available this week on all PlayStation 5 consoles. It’ll pit both Peter Parker and Miles Morales against the meanest of villains in New York—from Venom to Kraven the Hunter and even Lizard. 

That’s not what the community is discussing, though. The talk of the town has been Marvel’s Spider-Man 2‘s incredible fast travel that has virtually no downtime. 

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Dev remarks on “hidden loading screen” conspiracy

In a thread on ResetEra, someone shared a viral post on X showcasing the load times for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The poster on ResetEra asked the dev to remove the “pseudo-loading animation when using fast travel,” referring to the hold-to-confirm prompt, which is essentially the fast travel button.  

Another look at Spider-Man 2's insane fast-travel system.

The fact that you can travel to any location, even the opposite corner of the map, with ZERO loading is absolutely mind-boggling.

Definitely the most seamless fast-travel system I've seen.pic.twitter.com/StOVtFgFkl

— KAMI (@Okami13_) October 16, 2023

Insomniac’s director of core technologies, Mike Fitzgerald, chimed in to put the conspiracy theory of hidden loading screen to bed. He said:

“That’s a hold-to-confirm prompt, not hiding a load. If anyone wants to check, they can look at how late it’s possible to cancel it out when they’re playing. Last month I brought up whether we should remove the hold-to-confirm, mostly to address that accusation we were seeing. But it was correctly pointed out to me that having a confirmation window was important for player usability, which at the end of the day is far more important than Internet cred points (even though we love our Internet cred points). :)”

Although the fast travel is impressive, it is not totally out of the realm for talented first-party studios like Insomniac, having already achieved similar technological feats with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 load screen is fast, but even faster is the approaching release date, so gear yourself with the best suits, some available with different editions of the game.