The latest State of Play gave us the big reveal for next year’s highly anticipated superhero game, Wolverine. Insomniac has been very hush about it ever since the major data breach that happened a year ago, and now that they’ve been working hard behind the scenes for quite a while, we now have an almost complete product, as evidenced by its gritty trailer.
But it’s not the gore that I’m most impressed with the upcoming Wolverine game, it’s about how it completely deviates from Insomniac’s structure with their three Spider-Man games, which are all open-world.
Insomniac’s Wolverine is not confirmed to be a fully open-world experience. Rather, it will likely follow what Naughty Dog has with their Uncharted and The Last of Us titles, with semi-open areas that players can explore for a while, up until they finish a chapter. Maybe we’d be strolling through the streets of Madripoor with Logan’s motorbike or travel to Japan for a while and meet Silver Samurai. It’s clear that Insomniac’s choices here are deliberate, as this keeps the story more intimate and tells a linear narrative pace for Logan’s journey of self-discovery.
While there are other people who find this a missed opportunity, I absolutely see this as a good thing. Wolverine not being open-world makes the game much more personal. Removing all the fluff and unnecessary crime-bustling action that the Spider-Man games had will keep the story focused without having to worry about a robbery going on at 5th Street. It would be completely weird for Logan to get sidetracked from the main mission just to deal with a nearby commotion.
This kind of deep storytelling will also mean that we will likely have more time to explore its other characters. In the trailer, we’ve seen snippets of Omega Red battling with Logan. If it were open-world like Spider-Man, we’d be jumping between questlines and lose focus on the rivalry between these two. Wolverine’s lack of an open-world feel makes these characters closely tied to the story rather than one-off encounters, and I’m personally excited to see what Insomniac is cooking for their character arcs.
Combat can also benefit from its lack of an open-world. Similar to Nathan Drake’s combat encounters in the Uncharted titles, we should expect Wolverine to get randomly ambushed by a group of thugs in Madripoor after specific story scenarios. And since it’s a linear experience, corridor encounters could also be a thing, and we’d be fighting waves of hired goons with increased intensity over time. Who knows, iconic Wolverine villains might even pop up in the middle of the arena for a cinematic experience. (We did see Sentinel in the State of Play event.)
But all in all, I see no qualms about Wolverine not being an open-world game. This is exactly what I expected when Insomniac announced their gritty take on one of the most popular superheroes in the world. I can’t see it as an open-world adventure, as I wouldn’t be expecting Wolverine to keep jumping from rooftop to rooftop using his claws.
I guess we’ll find out more when the game comes out in Fall next year.
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