The New ‘Wolverine’ Game Is “Unapologetically Violent.” But It’s About More Than the Body Count

He wasn’t even supposed to last, let alone become one of the world’s most popular comic book characters. But that’s the thing about Wolverine. He doesn’t go down easily, and just when it seems like he’s on the ropes, he comes back swinging, even better than before.

This can be chalked up to the character’s unique ability to evolve, and not simply evolution as the result of his mutant DNA. Rather, it is a result of the character’s history which has seen him as adversary, agent, samurai, X-Man, Avenger and Death itself. Despite his unbreakable adamantium skeleton, Wolverine is malleable, never simply a superhero, and as a result, he can fit into any scenario, while still retaining the core tenants of the character we know and love.

It’s this malleability that serves the character in Marvel’s Wolverine, Insomniac’s follow-up to their Spider-Man video game series. To gain deeper insight into the game and the popularity of Wolverine, The Hollywood Reporter, spoke with the game’s director, Mike Daly, and executive producer at Marvel Games, Eric Monacelli.

The PlayStation game remixes and reimagines elements of Wolverine’s background and relationships to redefine the character within Insomniac’s corner of the Marvel multiverse, Earth-1048. The game is set in a world where the X-Men don’t exist and the mutant population is in short supply. After three years on his own, Wolverine/Logan (Liam McIntyre) is drawn back to mutant strike force, and found family, Team X, which also consists of Mystique/Raven (Nicole Pacent) and Sabertooth/Victor (Brett Gipson). It begins as a rescue mission to save their leader and benefactor, Nathaniel Essex (Troy Baker) from Bolivar Trask, a mutant hating scientist who develops the Sentinel program and employs the cybernetic mercenaries known as the Reavers. But soon the game finds Logan in a far-reaching conspiracy that puts him in the path of the ninja clan, The Hand. This conflict makes him reconsider his role among mutants and discover revelations about his past that force him to confront the truth of who he is.

The game doesn’t skimp out on the action or bloodshed – seriously, so much bloodshed. Those looking to feel what it’s like to have control over the berserker mode Wolverine won’t find the experience lacking. In terms of combat, the game’s director, Mike Daly, says one of the core tenants of the combat aspect of the game was “we wanted to be unapologetically violent and honest with how that character would behave.” But Wolverine isn’t simply an animal, and as fun as it to tear Reavers limb from limb and impale Hand ninjas with their own swords, the game has more at stake than carving up bodies. At the end of the day, ultraviolence isn’t what has kept Wolverine in conversation for 52 years. It’s certainly an element to his appeal. I mean, what kid doesn’t like to imagine claws popping out of their knuckles and going to kick some ass? Hell, what adult doesn’t imagine that from time to time? But what’s crucial to Wolverine are the instances where we’re allowed to glimpse beyond those rough edges, even when it’s not immediately apparent.

To fully grasp what makes Wolverine so compelling we have to go back to his past. And as any Wolverine fan knows, the past is complicated territory for Logan. The character, first created by Len Wein and John Romita Sr., made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk No. 180 (1974). His conception was the result of then editor Roy Thomas’ desire for Marvel to have a Canadian superhero. Originally, he was a secret agent for the Canadian government, in a bright yellow costume with whiskers, no less! It would be half a year later until his next appearance, in an issue that changed the course of comic book history and took the man called Wolverine from a minor adversary to a major player. That issue, Giant-Size X-Men No. 1 (1975) by Wein and artist Dave Cockrum, redefined and reinvigorated Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s canceled X-Men title and populated the team with an international cast of characters, including the ill-tempered Canadian Wolverine.

Little was known about Wolverine’s past in those early issues, even by his creators. Ideas floated around, but they changed often. Wolverine’s claws were originally conceived as part of his gloves, until Cockrum suggested making them a part of his body. Wein considered making Logan an actual wolverine who had been mutated into a man by the High Evolutionary (similar to Rocket Racoon’s origin story in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3). Thankfully, that never happened. Instead, Logan’s mysterious past became part of his appeal, along with his hot-headed penchant for violence, and interest in Jean Grey, which led to him butting heads with team-leader, Cyclops.

When Chris Claremont took over the series after Giant-Size, he made no attempt to hide his disinterest in Wolverine, usually reducing him to a minor role in the series and playing up the tension between Logan and Cyclops when he was around, presumably with the thought that Cyclops would ultimately win out the favor of the audience. He was the tall, classically handsome, reasonable hero after all. But these were the ’70s, and audiences had grown an affinity for anti-heroes and violent defenders portrayed by the likes of Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson and Robert Shaw.

While Claremont planned to kill off Wolverine, or at least write him out of the book, co-plotter and penciller John Byrne saw potential in Wolverine, further highlighting the character and how his willingness to kill made him an outsider. But Wolverine’s lack of a no-kill rule, which separated him from other heroes at the time, opened up larger questions about mortality for the mutants and the responsibilities of a species feared and hunted. It wasn’t so much that Wolverine wanted to kill, but that he would to protect those he cared about. The introduction of 13-year-old Kitty Pryde into the ranks of the X-Men in 1980 showed a softer side to the character. While he wasn’t quite a father figure to the teenager, he did become a kind of weird uncle, which the game pays tribute to through Logan’s relationship with younger mutants in the game like Nature Girl and Leech.

It wasn’t until Wolverine’s four-issue miniseries with artist Frank Miller in 1982, that Claremont finally clicked with Wolverine. He wasn’t just a murderous thorn in the team’s side, or a man with disdain for authority, but a ronin, masterless samurai with a distinct code of honor. Not only was Logan honorable, but he was also a romantic, showcased by his tragic, unrequited love for Mariko Yashida. Suddenly, Wolverine was cast as a lovelorn Byronic hero, who didn’t fit in with the culture of the East or the West. Arguably, because of the soap opera nature of comic books, Wolverine had the most chaotic love life outside of Peter Parker.

It’s this sensitive side too that Marvel’s Wolverine explores, and McIntyre’s whose likeness, voice, and mo-cap performance all serve to flesh out Logan in what stands as a masterful performance. On casting McIntyre six years ago, Daly said, “what we were looking for was someone who could represent a character with a gruff exterior but a big heart. And that’s not just two modes. We needed to go beyond surface gruffness.” He further pointed out McIntyre’s commitment to being present through every part of the game’s development process, giving him a deeper understanding of the character and filling in emotional gaps that would serve as a throughline during missions. Inevitably, any Wolverine portrayal is going to be compared to Hugh Jackman who has played Wolverine for a legendary 26 years. But McIntyre makes the role his own, playing Logan a little more like a wounded animal, suspicious and hurt, but ultimately deeply wanting to be loved and accepted.

Logan’s concept of love and acceptance, as well as finding a place within the larger mutant community, primarily comes from his relationship with Jean Grey (Krizia Bajos). Marvel Games’ executive producer, Eric Monacelli says, “a quintessential thing about mutants is that they have this bonding, and community, as outcasts.” And while Wolverine is often seen as a solo character, he always comes back to his community to remind himself who and what he is fighting for. Bajos’ Jean, who is a little older than her typical comic book counterpart, and whose abuse suffered at the hands of her mother and other humans have made her something of a selfless revolutionary who never shies away from a fight, brings out the best in Logan and shows him a community that exists beyond the toxicity of Team X.

Jean and Logan’s relationship in the game recall Claremont’s take on the characters in which they are core elements of the universe, life and death, whose bond is eternal in all the ways in which their respective relationships with Cyclops and Mariko are not. Even though Marvel’s Wolverine is telling an entirely unique story that isn’t directly based on any from the comics, Daly says, “if we are able to represent the thing that made people fall in love with these characters in the first place, in their characterization, then the thing you really want is to just see the characters be themselves in new situations.” It is this x-factor, much like Spider-Man games, that makes Marvel’s Wolverine feel authentic beyond claws and costumes, and what Marvel Games’ executive producer, Monacelli, hopes will allow the game to stand alongside all the other [Wolverine] touchpoints be they the comics, animated series, or films.

Marvel’s Wolverine is one of the most anticipated and pre-ordered games of the year, and even ahead of release has stirred up plenty of conversations and expectations. As for the enduring appeal of the character, I ask Monacelli what he attributed it to. Without missing a beat, he says, “He’s ultimately this very human character who cares very deeply about the people he’s sworn to protect and love. It’s a very relatable characteristic. It’s a very human characteristic. Some people see him as a raging ball of fury and claws and that’s awesome. But he also has this softer side that allows people to connect with him. Here’s this short little dude who just overcomes the odds. He pushes through everything. What can be more human than that? It’s one of the hardest things to do in life but also one of the truest, especially as you get older.”

Ultimately, Wolverine is about connection. Sometimes it’s violent, sometimes it’s cynical and misplaced, but other times it’s full of hope, love, and community. Video games, in their purest forms, are about that very same connection. Marvel’s Wolverine connects 52 years of the most popular mutant’s history, bringing together famed comic book talents like Adam Kubert and Iban Coello, two-time Emmy winning composer, David Fleming, and a host of talented actors and team members at Insomniac and Marvel Game to deliver a layered character study that gets to the heart of why Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he does makes him all the more relatable.