Peter Parker’s New Face For Spider-Man Remastered Hasn’t Gone Down Well

What do you think of the change?

Spider-Man

Last night, Insomniac Games revealed the brand new face for Peter Parker that was created specifically for Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, a PS5 exclusive bonus for players who purchase Spider-Man: Miles Morales this November. You can check out the new face in the video above.

 

Wait, Why Does Peter Parker Look So Different?

The reasons for Peter Parker’s new facelift were revealed via the PlayStation Blog. In a post from Insomniac’s Community Director, James Stevenson, the decision to recast Peter Parker was so the developers could better convey voice actor Yuri Lowenthal’s facial capture for the character.

In order to bring the best performances to players with our next-generation Marvel’s Spider-Man games, we have recast the face of Peter Parker. We loved working with John Bubniak on the original game; however, to get a better match to Peter Parker/Spider-Man actor Yuri Lowenthal’s facial capture, we have cast Ben Jordan to be the face model for Peter Parker on the PS5 console. He looks incredible in-game, and Yuri’s moving performances take on a new life.

 

How Have The Fans Taken This One?

Not well, as you’ve probably already guessed. If #PuddleGate can generate a huge amount of backlash against Spider-Man, then changing the main character’s face was bound to ruffle more than a few feathers.

The YouTube video announcing the change has been the subject of some dislike bombing, with a ratio currently sitting at 3.4K likes to 7.5K dislikes at the time of writing. The comments underneath the video largely follow the consensus that the new Peter Parker looks like a deepfake Tom Holland. Since the reveal, people have surmised that the change was done so that the PlayStation version of Peter Parker would better resemble his MCU counterpart.

The Twitter replies to the original announcement also tell the same story, with many replies wondering why Peter Parker had to be changed in the first place. Some have made the comment that the new face looks a little bit too young for a character who is supposedly in their mid-twenties, and the backlash became so strong that the hashtag #BringBackBubniak began circulating on Twitter.

 

How Have Insomniac Responded To The Backlash?

A few hours after the announcement, Creative Director Bryan Intihar took to Twitter to release a statement regarding the change to Peter Parker, acknowledging that the news has surprised fans. However, the statement reiterates that the change was made so that the developers could deliver “even more believable-looking characters”, which could only be accomplished by finding a better facial match for Yuri Lowenthal.

 

What Do We Think Of Peter Parker’s New Face?

That’s a good question, because I’m still not quite sure. On the one hand, the Remastered version of Peter Parker certainly looks like a more believable face, but there’s no denying the fact that the dude looks like a Ready Player One version of Tom Holland. He looks a bit too young for the version of Spider-Man the game portrays, who is supposed to be in his mid-twenties with nearly a decade of Spider-Man experience. Maybe this is rose-tinted glasses, but the old version walked the line of youthful yet experienced. I don’t know. Maybe this is just Insomniac fixing what wasn’t broke.

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