As we get closer to the release of Marvel’s Wolverine, Insomniac Games has revealed why the studio announced the game so many years before it was actually ready to show it off. In an interview with TheGamer, game director Mike Daly acknowledged that the studio knew that it would be difficult to keep the development of Marvel’s Wolverine a secret.
“We announced Wolverine very early because we knew it would be very difficult to keep a lid on it. We wanted to be able to cast the crew knowing that. Insomniac does take on the very difficult challenge of working on multiple games at once, and we’ve tried to stagger our releases so that the team can help out where they’re needed the most while allowing the other projects to proceed efficiently, which is one aspect of it.”
Marvel’s Wolverine had been announced all the way back in 2021, and Insomniac Games essentially went fully silent as it continued its work on the title. Reports at the time had indicated that it was still quite early in development, which falls in line with the studio’s timeline of releases, since it was also working on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which would eventually come out in 2023.
This year, however, Insomniac has kicked things up a notch when it comes to revealing details about the title, especially since its September 15th release date is less than a month away. Among the things the studio has confirmed is that Marvel’s Wolverine will not be an origin story for Logan. Creative director Marcus Smith said earlier this month that, by the time the game starts, Logan “already has adamantium infused into his bones.”
Senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed has also revealed that, unlike the studio’s Spider-Man series, Marvel’s Wolverine will not be an open-world game due to Logan’s nature as a character, where he seldom stays in one place for too long.
“We’re telling a Logan story. He’s so different from Spider-Man in so many different ways. One of the ways is that Logan is not somebody who stays in the same spot for a while. He’s not somebody who has a friendly neighborhood. He’s not settling down in one location. He’s a loner guy in a lot of ways.”
In gameplay terms, this also means that traversal won’t be an important part of the character. As head of technology Mike Fitzgerald puts it: “It took us a while to say ‘traversal is not an important part of Wolverine as a character. As we talk about those key things, it’s about his claws, his healing factor, his rage and anger, his past and dealing with that. These are some of the core things. The game doesn’t have to be everything and have everything. At the same time, you don’t want to be frustrating or slow.”
Marvel’s Wolverine is coming exclusively to the PS5. For more on the game, here are our thoughts on why it might have more gameplay depth than its linear structure might suggest. Also check out 10 things we’re looking forward to the most with the game.
