Highlights
- Insomniac's upcoming game Marvel's Wolverine has the opportunity to introduce Wolverine's biological son, Daken, to a larger audience and establish a more distinct characterization for him.
- Daken's inclusion in the game could bring interesting mechanics, like his unique power of pheromone control, could make him an alternate playable character with a varied combat style. Still, the big thing to focus on would be giving him a better story.
- The game could also potentially feature other characters, such as Laura Kinney and Scout, to create a full-fledged Wolverine family.
Insomniac's upcoming new superhero game Marvel's Wolverine has a lot of opportunities in terms of where it wants to take the iconic character's story and which characters from Logan's large canon it wants to include. Wolverine has been around for nearly half a century, and there is no shortage of allies, family, and enemies that can be brought into his first solo game in some time.
There's virtually nothing officially known about the story or setting of the game yet, as all Insomniac has given the public thus far is one brief Wolverine teaser trailer, and which characters the game includes will largely hinge on the location and context of the story. There is one character that could show up regardless of where Logan finds himself, though, and Insomniac has a pretty major opportunity to redeem their historically controversial existence. That character is Wolverine's very own biological son, Akihiro AKA Daken.
The Daken Redemption Arc in Wolverine
Many who are unfamiliar with the X-Men and Wolverine comics may be unaware that Logan even has a biological son, and that's because Daken has not appeared much in non-comics media outside of minor video game appearances like Marvel Snap. Essentially, Daken is the son Wolverine didn't even realize he had for the longest time following the murder of his pregnant wife. Daken has similar powers to his father with the addition of being able to manipulate people's emotions using pheromones, which makes him a fairly formidable mutant.
Despite his impressive powers, Daken has maintained a fairly controversial status within the X-Men comics fandom throughout the more than 15 years since his debut. This is largely due to the way he's been written, which has made it difficult to pin down exactly who Daken is as a character. He's swung back and forth from psychopathic killer to brooding hero, and opinions on him have equally varied, from fans calling him one of the better new additions to the X-Men to viewing him as just an angsty millennial Wolverine clone.
Regardless of Daken's status in the comics, though, Insomniac has an opportunity to introduce Wolverine's son to a larger audience and establish a more distinct characterization as a result. PlayStation exclusives are already notable for powerful stories involving parent/child relationships via titles like The Last of Us and God of War, and it's unlikely players would turn their noses up at another if it hits those same feelings in an original way.
Daken and Others
Of course, a Wolverine story involving a powerful parent/child relationship has already been established through the critically acclaimed superhero movie Logan, which features another less direct offspring of Wolverine, Laura Kinney. It feels just as likely, if not more so, that Laura - AKA X-23 - could make an appearance in Marvel's Wolverine. It's even possible that both characters could appear in the game to make it a full-fledged Wolverine family, which could even include more Wolverine clones like Scout.
While X-23 and Scout have had their detractors from time to time, though, the character that certainly needs the biggest glow-up in the public eye is Daken. The fact that Daken has been around almost as long as Laura Kinney in the comics while maintaining zero TV or film adaptations, whereas Laura has several, really showcases how much more beloved one character is over another. Insomniac has the opportunity to renew the status of Daken and make him as much of a household superhero name as Wolverine and X-23 currently are.
It doesn't hurt that Daken's inclusion within Marvel's Wolverine could also be very interesting from a mechanics perspective. Seeing how Insomniac could implement Daken's unique power variations like pheromone control into the game would be very interesting, and it could potentially make him an alternate playable character to Wolverine with a similar, but varied combat style.
Marvel's Wolverine is currently in development for PS5.
