Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine Takes a Bold New Direction

Marvel’s Wolverine: A Linear, High‑Octane Adventure by Insomniac

Why a Linear Design Fits Wolverine

Considering what Insomniac has been able to achieve with its Marvel’s Spider-Man games, Marvel’s Wolverine is probably one of the last Marvel characters that fans would’ve expected the developer to try to tackle. Wolverine is basically everything that Spider-Man isn’t—he’s a hairy ball of fury who isn’t much for creatively traversing wide landscapes and has no compunction about rending his enemies limb from limb.

Logan in Marvel’s Wolverine.

But in a backward sort of way, that kind of makes Insomniac the perfect studio for the job. Plus, it’s not as if Insomniac has only made open-world games, and its bread-and-butter gameplay being far more condensed than in a Marvel’s Spider-Man game actually gives it a hidden strength in terms of how Marvel’s Wolverine’s linear level design may take shape.

After three open-world Marvel’s Spider-Man games, some fans are likely to be disappointed by Marvel’s Wolverine being linear. Indeed, many fans might’ve even imagined that Marvel’s Wolverine would attempt to find a way to adopt an open-world level design due to how phenomenal Marvel’s Spider-Man’s open-world traversal is.

Marvel’s Wolverine game director Mike Daly explains precisely what players can expect from its gameplay design: “What we really wanted was a high-octane, high intrigue, linear single-player adventure, and the missions reflect that in their structure.” On Reddit, fans are somewhat surprisingly in favor of Marvel’s Wolverine’s decision to be linear.

Community Reception

User danielrobertcampbell writes, “Good. We need more expertly crafted linear narrative experiences with in-depth gameplay,” and user B_Minusx agrees, “Good, not every game needs to be open world.”

User Fancy-Prompt-7118 knows that, for them, it’ll be a relief not to feel obligated to indulge in an open-world that could suffer from bloat: “As much as I love a sandbox, it’s a breath of fresh air not having to find your way around a sprawling, icon-filled world in every game these days.”

marvel-s wolverine screenshot

Marvel’s Wolverine official screenshot.

Of course, Wolverine can’t leap great distances and doesn’t have web‑shooters, and must instead hop across rooftops or ascend/descend buildings by stabbing his claws into them, presumably. Consequently, he was never going to be well‑suited to an open‑world game.

Insomniac’s Proven Track Record

The immensely beloved Ratchet & Clank games alone are proof that Insomniac can crush linear games, and there’ll hopefully be less bloat this way, too. If nothing else, Marvel’s Wolverine will further demonstrate how versatile Insomniac is.