If you thought that the brilliant and underrated X-Men Origins: Wolverine game was violent, Insomniac Games has turned its violence up to 11 for Marvel’s Wolverine.
Following a brand-new trailer during Sony’s recent State of Play showcase, Wolverine may be the most violent AAA game to release since Gears of War 2. In the new trailer, Logan is impaling enemies on forklifts, slicing off limbs, jamming his claws up throats and through eyeballs, and more.
For us sickos, Marvel’s Wolverine is a glorious display of hyper-violence, but Insomniac is giving players the option to turn the viscera off. In an interview with IGN, game director Mike Daly confirmed that squeamish players—or parents of younger players—will be able to disable the gore through the options menu.
“We know that it’s not for everyone,” the game director told the outlet. “And because we knew this was going to be a big part of the game from the beginning, we also implemented an accessibility feature to turn off gore.”
Daly explained that the gore system is “clearly integrated into the game in a lot of different ways”. For example, the titular Wolverine’s health system is shown via a health bar, but also by how much physical damage he accrues with large chunks of flesh ripped from his body.
“It’s a nuanced feature that is very selective about what we show, what we censor, turning off blood and things like that, just in order to make it more palatable to people who don’t really want to have that part of the experience,” the game director said.
While players will be able to turn off the gore if they so wish, Daly also explains that this level of violent was essential to bring Wolverine to life. “We didn’t want to go over the top,” he said. “We really wanted to hit the bullseye on what is the best representation of Wolverine, what delivers fan expectations, and what’s going to keep the claw combat action satisfying over the whole course of the playthrough.
“So those are the things we calibrated against. You can see the results for yourself because we’ve put it in the trailer. The way I would describe it is that we were unapologetically violent. We knew it would have to accomplish that in order to accomplish our ultimate mission. And because of that, the gameplay retains satisfaction.”
Daly explained that “it’s not like limbs are cartoonishly flying everywhere” when you play Marvel’s Wolverine. While there is an obvious gratuity to the sheer brutality of the combat, it’s also more grounded than it could be.
Marvel’s Wolverine is looking like a great game, especially after the underwhelming Spider-Man 2. While the games take place in the same universe, Daly confirmed, the games “don’t have any crossover”. Of course, as we all expected anyway, “Spider-Man will not be making an appearance in Wolverine”.
