Insomniac built the adamantium skeleton for Marvel's Wolverine with its Spider-Man games. The upcoming PS5 game clearly builds on the combat, the cinematic presentation, and even the progression systems of those previous titles. But after spending two hours playing Marvel's Wolverine, touring Insomniac's Los Angeles headquarters, and speaking to some of the developers bringing the game to life, it's clear that this is more than a simple reskin of Spider-Man. James Logan Howlett's burning heart beats at the center of it all.
"One thing we're really proud about at the studio is shipping games," head of technology Mike Fitzgerald tells me. "This is our fifth title on the PlayStation 5. We're really proud of that. Part of that is knowing how to build on prior games effectively. If we'd taken a Spider-Man game and put a Wolverine character model in, that wouldn't feel right. It wouldn't be right for the character. It wouldn't be fulfilling the player fantasy for the fans. So it's about building carefully on what we have and then rethinking a whole lot of the fundamentals."
