Marvel’s Wolverine is a more linear game than Spider-Man, so don’t expect a city to explore or a base to nose around in

It sounds as though developer Insomniac’s Wolverine game is far narrower in scope than its Spider-Man games. There won’t be a wider city to explore in the way Spider-Man swings around New York, nor will there be a base of operations for downtime between missions (any hopes of exploring Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters have been squashed now Insomniac has confirmed the X-Men don’t exist here). In Marvel’s Wolverine, the adventure is more of a charge from start to finish.

I discovered this while talking to game director Mike Daly, after I’d watched the Marvel’s Wolverine gameplay trailer that aired during this week’s PlayStation State of Play. The trailer primarily showcases one thing: riotous, furious combat, steeped in violence and drenched in blood. Across a several-minute demo, that’s fine – that is clearly a major part of the Marvel’s Wolverine experience. But across a game of however many hours – Daly wouldn’t give me a length because the number is still being finalised – this could become one-note. I wondered what variation there was.

“Logan is a character who’s constantly being driven forward, either by some urgent need, a sense of duty, or trying to seek out things in his past,” Daly says. “He doesn’t really get anchored into one space and wander around. One of the things I feel like we’ve done a good job with is the missions in the story have this almost comic book kind of pacing of action and intrigue that constantly moves forward at a fast pace.”

In other words, it’s a more linear, level-by-level experience. “We wanted variety in our levels,” Daly continues, “so some of them have microcosms of that experience, where it is a little bit more open and you have some agency, but there’s not a home base that you keep returning to to try and complete everything there. It is really a story with a lot of forward momentum.”

Structurally it’s funneled, then, but where there is some variation is in the levels themselves. We see this briefly in the gameplay trailer when Logan picks up the scent of Jean Grey, who he later teams up with, and as he skulks his way around the environment and takes out the enemies who are there. It’s all very action-heavy, but apparently there’s more besides.

“Logan’s more than just claw combat,” Daly says. “His enhanced senses help him track down things, so at the beginning you saw that he picked up Jean’s scent, and that plays a bigger role in other parts of gameplay. There’s not always enemies covering every square meter of the land, so you have a little bit of flexibility to look around in nooks and crannies.

“There are also some downbeats in areas interacting with other Marvel characters” -Mike Daly

“He is a very heavy character so he’s not nimble at all, but he has this animalistic strength that helps him overcome it, so part of the gameplay is using this animalistic strength to traverse around the world, which takes a little bit more effort and a little bit more planning. There are also some downbeats in areas interacting with other Marvel characters, talking to them, exploring the space, and learning a little bit more about the world.”

While we’re discussing Wolverine’s heft: something else I wondered about was Wolverine’s ability to manage battlefields. In Spider-Man, you have webs to catapult yourself around and pull enemies closer to you, and you’re able to disable opponents at range. You have options. But in the gameplay trailer for Marvel’s Wolverine, I didn’t see evidence of abilities like this – not unless you count the help Jean Grey offers in psionically holding enemies still and priming them for takedowns.

But according to Daly, Wolverine does have battlefield control. “Logan’s a heavy and grounded character. Unlike Spider-Man, who can pull himself to enemies or pull enemies to him, Logan pushes enemies around,” he says.

“So if you sprint into them and you do your flying kick, you can knock them far back – you can knock them into other enemies. And knocking enemies into walls or barricades is one of those ways that you can break down their defenses and open them up. So when they’re staggered like that, that’s your opportunity to do some of your strongest follow-up moves that’ll either boost your rage or kick in a healing surge, or let you grab them and throw them into another group of enemies for a chain reaction, for example.”

More tightly focused action games like Marvel’s Wolverine seem to be having a minor Renaissance, with James Bond game 007 First Light recently demonstrating how entertaining they can be. However, a concern that follows this approach is game length and replayability – something 007 First Light was scrutinised for. Simply put, how do you keep people playing once the credits roll? Insomniac has a few ideas for Marvel’s Wolverine. “Yeah, there’s several things,” Daly says.

“Our goal was to make sure that that second time through was just as fun as the first, so we let things be a little higher paced, a little higher danger, and more intensity” -Mike Daly

Marvel’s Wolverine has optional challenges that are hidden in levels and are score-based and replayable, and entire missions are replayable as soon as you clear them, apparently. Why would you replay them? For collectibles or materials for suit crafting, or for expanding your whisky collection for “storytelling” purposes, which sounds intriguing but I don’t yet know more. “You can replay missions basically from the beginning of the campaign, whenever you find these moments to look back,” Daly says. “So mission replay is a thing for completion.

“But also, on the disc, we’re shipping New Game Plus, which means right after you beat the campaign, if you want, you can play the game over again. And our goal was to make sure that that second time through was just as fun as the first, so we let things be a little higher paced, a little higher danger, and more intensity. It’s just a few more things to unlock that really change the dynamic of gameplay to keep it exciting the second time around.”

So while Marvel’s Wolverine comes from the same developer and the same catalogue of superheroes as Marvel’s Spider-Man, they sound like significantly different games. It’s also worth underlining here that a mature rating for Marvel’s Wolverine also means Insomniac has been able to focus on a more mature storyline. “We can delve a lot deeper into emotional darkness and ambiguity and conflict and whatnot,” the game’s creative director, Marcus Smith, told me in a separate article.

The question is whether Insomniac will find the same extraordinary level of success as the Spider-Man games, which have sold 50m copies and counting. Fortunately we won’t have long to find out, as Marvel’s Wolverine is due for release 15th September exclusively on PlayStation 5.