Insomniac Games has already ruled out the possibility of another Marvel superhero appearing in its new game.

The latest State of Play opened with new gameplay footage from Insomniac’s upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine. After the presentation, even more information surfaced thanks to an IGN interview. Since the announcement, fans have wondered whether there would be any connection to the Marvel’s Spider-Man games, since the titles take place in the same universe. Game director Mike Daly and creative director Marcus Smith quickly dashed those hopes.

Daly explained that this game is entirely about Wolverine, and that the player controls Wolverine throughout the whole experience. Insomniac Games wanted the entire story to keep its focus on him. Marcus Smith added that, yes, the game is set in Marvel Universe 1048, which is Insomniac’s video game universe. It takes place in the same world, but there is no overlap between them. Spider-Man will not appear in Wolverine. Logan, however, will not be alone in Marvel’s Wolverine: he will team up with other mutants, including Jean Grey and Sabretooth. The latter is a surprise, since Wolverine and Sabretooth are enemies in most stories. According to Daly, though, this time they will be enemies and friends at the same time.

“When Logan and Jean Grey meet in the trailer you saw, they have a common enemy, so naturally they team up, but they still have to feel each other out. Jean Grey is really her own hero. She can hold her own, and she acts independently. So she defends herself, fights enemies, and takes them out. And when you get close to each other, you will fight enemies together. One element you saw is that Jean can set up enemies for Logan, so the player has to listen to Jean, pay attention to her, and use those opportunities for faster kills. So there is an interactive element to it. Later in the game, they will work together more, and Jean can use her telepathy to help Logan in stealth sections as well, giving him an advantage by clouding enemies’ perception.

There are other allies you fight alongside too. At the end here, we revealed Sabretooth. In this game, Logan and Sabretooth are actually on the same team, but their alliance is not really like the one with Jean Grey. Logan and Sabretooth have a very competitive dynamic. While Jean Grey may give you an opportunity to kill an enemy, with Sabretooth it is more like when you think you have killed an enemy, he rushes in to steal the glory from you, and their combat banter highlights that dynamic and makes the whole fight more entertaining” – Daly said.

In the interview, two Insomniac developers also revealed more about the gameplay. This is not an open-world or sandbox game; rather, it is a linear action-adventure game built around a classic globe-spanning adventure. At the same time, there are multiple routes and optional content to discover, and stealth is often a good choice, at least when starting combat. Wolverine’s self-healing ability, often considered too powerful, appears to have been slightly toned down here for balance reasons. It is passive and relatively slow during combat. If Logan takes enough damage to overwhelm it, his heart can stop and he can die. However, if enough rage has been built up, players can trigger Healing Surge, an adrenaline burst that activates his healing factor and gets him back into the fight. This creates two different combat states: at low rage, players need to play defensively and focus on survival to refill the bar; at high rage, pure aggression is required for kill streaks and maintaining the meter.

Every move gradually increases rage; killing enemies grants a larger amount of rage, while particularly brutal moves increase it even faster. The meter represents the momentum of the fight. In the middle of the meter, combos become stronger, encouraging players to stay aggressive, since rage decreases if they slow down. At the highest level, Rage Level 3, Logan enters a feral state and can perform critical strikes, piercing enemies with raw force for quick kills. The price is that rage drains very quickly at this level. This is a fast, aggressive combat system that includes justified dismemberment and is designed to highlight Wolverine’s unique fighting style.

Marvel’s Wolverine will launch for PlayStation 5 on September 15, and seeing how Sony has turned its back on PC, a PC port is out of the question.

Source: WCCFTech, IGN