Spider-Man 2 takes Naughty Dog’s house style and makes it its own

polygon.com:

There’s a celebrated scene in Naughty Dog’s 2009 game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in which the protagonist, Nathan Drake, just wanders around a village. He’s high up in the Himalayas; after a dramatic action sequence on a train, Drake fell unconscious and was rescued by a Tibetan Sherpa, who brought him to his home. Drake strolls around the village, exploring it, chatting with the locals even though they don’t understand his English. He pats a yak, kicks a football with some kids, disturbs the chickens, looks at the (stunning) view.

Amid all the high adventure of Among Thieves, this scene gives the player five minutes of total downtime. It’s deliberately purposeless, only of course it has a number of very important purposes: giving the game a sense of pacing and rhythm; spending time with the lead character being charming; rooting the player in a convincing world where everyday life is still a thing; letting that player soak up the vibes.

The scene was profoundly influential, and not just at Naughty Dog, where moments of calm in gorgeous environments became a signature part of the studio’s storytelling style: Think of the equally famous giraffe encounter in The Last of Us. Many other game designers have imitated these moments, at least those among the elite tier of AAA action-adventure studios that have the budget, freedom, and confidence to put together expensively rendered interactive scenes that don’t advance the gameplay. Often, scenes like this are used as a casual setting in which to deliver exposition or build relationships while the player ambles about and the characters chat.

Spider-Man 2 is absolutely stuffed with moments like this. Early in the game, Peter Parker tidies up his catastrophically messy house with