Wolverine is no stranger to solo adventures in a world with the X-Men, whether they’re beloved, reviled or straight-up dominant world figures (never mind everything that happened in House of M). However, Insomniac Games’ take on the character, an original story, doesn’t feature the iconic group. Not for lack of top billing, of course – they simply don’t exist.
Instead, he has strong ties with Team X, a black ops team that also includes Mystique and Sabertooth. Despite eventually leaving the group in-game, it’s still the start of Logan’s many team associations over the years, per narrative director Walt Williams.
“So Team X is canonical. It is Logan’s first team in his history. It was a black ops team from the ’70s made up of wetworks mutant workers. So in telling Wolverine’s story, we wanted to bring it back to the beginning of where his story really began in that long string of teams. Because as we know, he’s been a member of many teams by this point in his 50-plus year history,” he told IGN.
“But really what we were looking to do is, because superheroes have become so mainstream at this point in just pop culture and everything through TV shows, comics, movies and everything, that even especially with our own Spider-Man games, these are characters with superpowers that a lot of the world has accepted, that they are celebrated. They have parades; they are honored and stuff. But mutants at the core are outsiders, even within the Marvel universe.”
Williams notes that such stories haven’t exactly been mainstream lately. “And we have not really had that aspect of them be brought out a lot lately in the stories that we get in the bigger mainstream. We wanted to bring players back to that mindset that these are characters who exist on the outside. They are not superheroes. They don’t have a safe space. They are people who are living in shadow. They are people who are hiding their powers from the world because they are afraid of what would happen if people discovered them.”
Which is why the X-Men can’t exist, because “there would already be that aspect of a safe place for them. And we wanted to remind people that existence for a mutant is not safe. It’s hard. It’s scary.”
Interestingly, such a setting is one where Wolverine as a character can thrive, bringing out some nuanced characteristics while also highlighting why he doesn’t fit in with other mutants.
“Entering that world through Logan, it really felt like the best POV possible. One, I mean, he’s an incredibly complex, layered character that has so much potential to write. But at the same time, he’s an outsider’s outsider. Even among mutants, this is a man who does not feel at home. He keeps people at arm’s length. He was that perfect POV for us to be able to enter into that mutant world and begin to understand just how much mutants do not feel as if they belong anywhere.”
While Logan is intent on helping mutants, he’s also struggling to recall his past life, not to mention a seemingly bottomless well of rage that can make it hard to distinguish friend from foe. Of course, that only adds further wrinkles to the narrative, as he travels the world, attempting to stop Bolivar Trask while reigning in his anger.
With Marvel’s Wolverine launching on September 15th for PS5, and offering 60 FPS Performance Mode with ray tracing alongside New Game Plus, it’s a game of many firsts for Insomniac. Stay tuned for even more details before its launch.
