A beloved superhero is clawing his way into a massive new video game… but in “Marvel’s Wolverine,” out Sept. 15, Logan isn’t one of the X-Men anymore.
In this iteration, he instead joins Team X, a task force made up of familiar faces like Mystique and Sabretooth, as they face off with Bolivar Trask, a mad scientist hell-bent on eradicating mutants.
The game had a hands-on preview event in Los Angeles last month, before a Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
When players first take control of Wolverine, he’s wild in the woods with few memories of his past. For Insomniac’s narrative director Walt Williams, that blank slate was vitally important, especially when Hugh Jackman has become so synonymous with the character.
“This is a rare opportunity. Logan, as a character, has been dominated for over a decade by a very iconic performance,” he says of the mutant, portrayed in the game by Aussie actor Liam McIntyre. “We’re getting to reintroduce the world to Logan for the first time, and this is not something that pops up often. What is it about the character that we really want to explore?”
Even as Wolverine claws through jugulars and rips out enemies’ entrails (with brutal haptic feedback so players can feel the gore through their controllers), a softer side emerges as he begins to pursue a burgeoning relationship with telepath Jean Grey.
“He’s an outsider among outsiders, so being able to explore that relationship with Jean without any of the ‘X-Men’ already in existence, without that safe space of people welcoming him, that was a deep level of emotional connection for him and her that players have never seen before,” Williams says. “This is a Logan that is going to surprise people in just how much he feels, and how much we’re able to see how deeply he feels – not just about Jean, but about everything in the world – and how it’s actually his desire for connection that drives a lot of that rage that he’s known for.”
Jean’s not the only key relationship at the heart of “Marvel’s Wolverine.” Enter Dr. Nathaniel Essex, who finds Logan in the woods and helps him find purpose.
But comic fans know him by a different name: Mister Sinister.
Unlike Insomniac’s lighter fare including “Ratchet & Clank,” “Marvel’s Spider-Man” and “Spyro,” “Marvel’s Wolverine” for PS5 carries an ESRB rating of M for Mature.
“With Wolverine, there is obviously the surface level violence. But that rage and that violence is driven by a deep, deep well of emotion and feeling,” Williams says. “The violence isn’t just because this is a man who’s traumatized. It’s violence because this is a man who feels everything deeper than anyone that we know.”
