Highlights
- Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine will have a more mature tone, showcasing Wolverine's brutal nature and his adamantium claws. Currently, it's unclear if there are plans for it to become a franchise.
- If it does, Insomniac could pull from the comics to let some of Wolverine's closest allies shine, with spin-off games for some of the standouts being released.
- Just like Marvel's Spider-Man expanded the Spider family, Wolverine has a cast of possible protagonists including X-23, Old Man Logan, and Daken, offering potential for a long-lasting game franchise.
While Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is front-and-center in fans' minds, what with it coming out on October 20, Insomniac's next Marvel-affiliated project, Wolverine, still has its claws in peoples' thoughts since there is so much mystery surrounding the game. Marvel's Wolverine was announced with a brief teaser trailer back in September 2021, during a PlayStation showcase. It is now October 2023, over two years later, and gamers know little more about the project than the information provided back then.
What precious little the public knows about Marvel's Wolverine stems directly from that teaser and a few tidbits dropped here and there by Insomniac. The game will take on a more mature tone than Marvel's Spider-Man, in keeping with the Wolverine's reputation for brutality, using his adamantium claws to full effect on his enemies. The teaser shows as much, with Logan being the last man standing after a bar fight and everyone else being injured or possibly dead. This bar is The Princess Bar, located in the comics on the fictional island of Madripoor in Southeast Asia, so that's a pretty decent hint as to where the game will take place. But while little else is known, should the game spawn a franchise like Spider-Man did, the future of the series is spelled out well in the comics.
Wolverine Has Just as Big a Cast of Friends and Family as Spider-Man Does
Just as Marvel's Spider-Man took a page out of the comics and expanded the "Spider family" to include Miles Morales, Wolverine actually has quite a family of his own that could be brought into the franchise, should one happen. The first and foremost of Logan's “brood” is Laura Kinney AKA X-23. X-23 has been around for a while, even taking Logan's place as the "Wolverine" of the X-Men while he was temporarily dead. X-23 is actually a genetic clone of Logan, except with two X chromosomes, making her female. She's younger than Wolverine, being created by the Weapon X scientists in the early 2000s. In fact, she was presented as Wolverine's biological daughter in the movie Logan.
X-23 has a long and storied history already, having first appeared in the comics in the NYX series as a teenage prostitute before her backstory as a laboratory experiment was divulged. As opposed to Logan, X-23 has two claws on each hand and one claw on each foot, making her kicks rather lethal. She also has no adamantium on her skeleton – only on her claws – which comes with its ups and downs.
The scientists who created X-23 went on to make clones of her. X-23 helped them to free themselves from servitude, and this resulted in the youngest of the clones, Gabby, becoming a ward of Laura's. Unlike her cloned sisters, Gabby has Laura's healing factor as well as a claw on each hand. Laura and Gabby have become very close and even adopted a real-life wolverine as a pet – a gift from Squirrel Girl.
Then there's Old Man Logan, a pretty complicated fellow who sprung from an at-the-time one-off comic series that featured an older Wolverine surviving on a post-apocalyptic Earth. After his family is slaughtered by the Hulk clan that owns his land, Logan goes on a revenge mission, eventually killing an evil Bruce Banner and his offspring. Old Man Logan eventually finds his way to the main Marvel universe known as Earth-616, and even steps in as the X-Men's Wolverine for a short period while the main Wolverine was dead. However, as mentioned, X-23 is the one who winds up with the mantle of the Wolverine.
At any rate, the original Wolverine, AKA Logan, is far from the only one of his kind. His genetics span a number of clones, alternate universe versions, and even a true-born son known as Daken, who, in the comics, has often played the villain. With all of these "familial" characters, most of them being incredibly popular in their own right, Insomniac has a deep bench of "Wolverines" from which to build an ongoing video game franchise for decades to come.
Marvel's Wolverine is currently in development for the PlayStation 5.
