Yesterday's State of Play opened with new gameplay footage of the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine game by Insomniac. After the presentation ended, even more information dropped courtesy of an IGN interview.
Ever since the announcement, fans have wondered whether there would be any crossover with Marvel's Spider-Man, since the games are set in the same universe. Well, Game Director Mike Daly and Creative Director Marcus Smith quickly dashed those hopes:
Mike Daly: This game is all about Wolverine and you play Wolverine the whole way through. We wanted to keep the focus on him throughout the whole story.
Marcus Smith: It's correct that it does take place in the 1048 Marvel Universe, which is the Insomniac video game universe. It happens in the same world, but we don't have any crossover. Spider-Man will not be making an appearance in Wolverine.
That said, Logan won't be alone in Marvel's Wolverine: he'll team up with fellow mutants, including Jean Grey and even Sabretooth. The latter is a surprise, since Wolverine and Sabertooth tend to be enemies in most stories. However, according to Mike Daly, they will be more like frenemies this time around:
When Logan meets up with Jean Grey in the trailer that you saw, they have a common enemy, they naturally work together, and they kind of have to feel this out. Jean Grey is sort of her own hero. She can hold her own and she operates autonomously. So she'll defend herself, she'll fight enemies, she'll take them out. And when the two of you are close to each other, you'll work together to take out enemies. One of the elements of this that you saw is that Jean can open enemies up to Logan so that it's on the player to listen to Jean, pay attention to her, and see these opportunities for quicker kills. So there is an interactive element to that. They will work together more later on in the game, and Jean can use her telepathy to help Logan in stealth segments as well to give him an edge by dimming enemy perceptions.
There are also other allies you fight alongside. We revealed Sabretooth at the end here. In this game, Logan and Sabretooth are actually on a team together, but the way they ally is not really anything like the way you ally with Jean Gray. Logan and Sabretooth have a very competitive dynamic between them. Whereas Jean Gray might give you an opportunity to get a kill, with Sabretooth fighting alongside you, it's more like, you think you've got a kill and he rushes in to steal it from you, and their combat banter brings out that dynamic and makes the whole fight more fun.
In the interview, the two Insomniac developers also revealed more about the gameplay. This is no open world or sandbox game; instead, it's a linear action/adventure game featuring a classic globetrotting adventure. That said, there are multiple paths and optional content to find, and stealth is often an option to at least start combat.
Wolverine's oft-overpowered healing factor sounds a bit nerfed here for balance reasons. It is passive and relatively slow during combat. If Logan takes enough damage to overload it, his heart can stop and he dies. However, if you have enough rage built up, you can trigger a Healing Surge, an adrenaline burst that jumpstarts the healing factor and gets you back in the fight. This creates two distinct combat states: low rage means you need to play defensively and survivally to build back up; high rage means pure aggression to chain kills and sustain the meter.
All moves build rage incrementally; kills give larger chunks, and particularly brutal moves build it even faster. The meter represents battle momentum. Mid-meter, combos become more powerful, creating an incentive to stay aggressive, since rage decays if you slow down. At the top tier (Rage Tier 3), Logan enters a feral state and can do Critical Strikes, impaling enemies with brute force for fast kills. The trade-off is that rage drains very quickly at that tier. It's a fast, aggressive combat system that includes non-gratuitous dismemberment and was designed to highlight Wolverine's unique fighting style.
Marvel's Wolverine will be available on September 15 for PlayStation 5. Given Sony's decision to stop porting games to PC, it's likely it will remain a console exclusive for good.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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