Actor Yuri Lowenthal is known for many characters, especially the lead role of Spider-Man in Insomniac Games. Spiderman series. But he has actually played the character a few different times and recently spoke to ComingSoon about what it was like to play Spideys in multiple games.
The games in question are e.g. the aforementioned Insomniac series, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3and lastly The midnight suns. Lowenthal noted that he was “honored” to have these opportunities and how different teams have their own visions of the character.
“I just pride myself on getting more than one shot in a couple of cases,” he said. “One of the things I like the most is working in a group with other people. Every iteration I jump into, it’s a different group of people telling a different story. And thus the character is bound to be different. Even if I jump in with the same stuff as last time, it will change. That’s a different story. It’s a different set of writers, and they end up crafting and eventually changing.”
He went on to explain that he doesn’t necessarily go into it with something in mind that he wants to change, because that happens naturally when working with new ads.
“So more than going into it, ‘Oh, this is something I want to try differently,’ I love seeing what they bring to the table and how that changes it naturally. It definitely helps alleviate a little bit of my fear of, ‘Oh, what am I going to do differently with this times?” How can I distinguish this from the previous one?’ At the end of the day, I rarely have to because it’s not just me. Me and a bunch of others create that character. Then of course it’s fun to say, ‘Oh, look how he changed.’ So it’s been great.”
He’s even been multiple Spider-Men in the same game, as Insomniac famously changed the Peter Parker model from the original PlayStation 4 when the Remaster came to PlayStation 5 and PC. When asked if having a younger face would have changed his performance, he said that he doesn’t always get a lot of information about what the model will look like, and that the visuals are only part of the character anyway.
“All the visual things I get at the beginning — and I don’t always get something,” he said. “Most projects have done a bunch of R&D trying to figure out what the character should look like. As often as possible, I love when they share it right from the top, because of course it affects how my brain turns on when I see a certain image.
“So I think the visual part is an important part of creating a character, but it’s just one piece that sometimes I don’t get. Sometimes I work on video games and they might have concept art for the game, but not necessarily for the character I’m playing. Or it will eventually change during game development. So it has to be just one piece. But it’s definitely important to me and I love getting it to the top.”
