While Insomniac Games is telling an entirely new story with its upcoming title, Marvel’s Wolverine, the studio has been adamant about it not being an origin story. In an interview with GamesRadar, creative director Marcus Smith said that, in the game’s story, Logan “already has adamantium infused into his bones”.
“He does not remember how that happened, why it happened, and we are not really covering it because we’re not doing an origin story.”
The publication brought up the fact that the demos for Marvel’s Wolverine have included many scenes that have Logan interacting with various other characters, including Nathaniel Essex, and just about every interaction indicating that the characters already have history between them. How this will play out, however, remains to be seen.
Insomniac’s last Marvel-based superhero outings, Marvel’s Spider-Man and its sequels, also avoided telling yet another origin story for the webslinger. Rather, the narrative of the first game revolved around Peter Parker figuring out how he can balance his dual lives. Interestingly, his conversations with many of the villains, including Wilson Fisk, indicated that the two had clashed in the past.
The studio had also previously confirmed that there won’t be other playable characters in Marvel’s Wolverine. According to project director Jess Reiner-Reed and head of technology Mike Fitzgerald, the story will see Logan teaming up with many other characters.
“There’s definitely the team vibe in that sense,” explained Fitzgerald. “But we were really focusing on Wolverine as a playable character and making sure we nailed that.” This also means that the side characters that occasionally pop up to aid Logan will serve as important supplements to the protagonist’s combat capabilities.
The question was likely raised due to the presence of MJ as a playable character in Marvel’s Spider-Man. Her gameplay sections have gone on to be largely derided by fans, and when it came to some of the gameplay showcases, some took to Reddit to compare Jean Grey in Marvel’s Wolverine to Control protagonist Jesse Faden instead.
As for whether we’ll see hints at a larger Marvel universe in Marvel’s Wolverine, Smith had previously said that the studio wanted to focus its efforts on the main character, and that means that the X-Men won’t be showing up.
“The important thing, I guess, is the X-Men don’t exist in our game,” he said. “We wanted to focus on a Wolverine storyline and really build it from that character and build a world that is in a state where mutants aren’t well known. They are known; they’re falling victim to people who do know about them and want to destroy them.”
Smith went on to note that there will, however, be other Marvel characters, including Sabretooth and Jean Grey, as already confirmed by the trailers. Whether Spider-Man will show up or not is another matter altogether. Rather than having a full-fledged appearance, the game might feature “some Easter-eggy sort of overlap” with Marvel’s Spider-Man. However, “there is no crossover between Spider-Man and Wolverine”, said Smith.
Marvel’s Wolverine is being developed exclusively for PS5, and is slated for release on September 15th.
