Yesterday, Insomniac closed out PlayStation’s State of Play stream with a new look at its Wolverine game. While the studio’s Spider-Man projects have been pretty PG-13 affairs, Wolverine looks like a brutal and bloody brawler as Logan’s adamantium claws shred through his enemies like knives through butter. Between all the gory kill shots, though, there’s a fair bit to chew on in the trailer. Let’s break down a few key takeaways.
Omega Red
One of the first characters we see Logan fighting in the trailer is Omega Red. The mutant has a long-standing adversarial relationship with the X-Men, particularly with Wolverine. He uses metal coils in his arms similar to Logan’s adamantium claws, and is shown in the trailer restraining our hero before the video cuts to black. It looks like Omega Red is straight-up strangling Logan here, so it seems the brutality in Wolverine won’t be entirely one-sided.
Some of the game may recount Logan’s past
As Logan’s voice tells us over the opening bits of the trailer, he’s been fighting for “longer than [he] can remember.” We then see the mutant dismember a guy, but he’s not wearing his iconic yellow suit yet. This might be a flashback to before Wolverine joined the X-Men, so we may fill in some of the character’s long history along with experiencing whatever Logan’s up to in the present.
Unlike Spider-Man, Wolverine won’t take place in one city
Right off the bat, we see that Logan is a world traveler in this game. Some segments are set in Tokyo, some in Madripoor, while others still are in the Great White North, where Wolverine originates from. Spider-Man and its sequels were set primarily in New York City, which suited the webslingers both because Peter Parker and Miles Morales are very localized heroes who have personal stakes in protecting the city, but also, they can swing around Manhattan on their webs, so from a gameplay perspective, it’s best to keep them where the skyscrapers are high. Logan, meanwhile, has to get around in other ways. We see him running on the rooftops of smaller houses, riding his motorcycle through the Canadian wilderness, and climbing up sheer mountainsides with his claws. It’s clear Insomniac considered Wolverine’s abilities in its environmental design, so while it might not be as freeing as just throwing a web into the sky and swinging away, Logan’s got options, and they’re well-suited to multiple settings.
Damn, this game is pretty gnarly
I’m not complaining, I’m just making an observation. Most superhero media tries to avoid the guts and gore of what’s actually happening and just let enemies fall with some light blood flowing from their wounds, but Wolverine is showing everything from dismemberment to Logan stabbing a dude through his skull. The game is probably not for the squeamish, so just know what you’re getting into if that kind of thing bothers you.
Mystique
Another villain shown in the trailer is the shapeshifting mutant Mystique. However, heroes and villains tend to be more loosely defined in the X-Men series, as the X-Men and members of the Brotherhood of Mutants have been known to team up when they have a common goal. Mystique is shown attacking some of the same guys Logan has been fighting in this trailer, so maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
The Sentinels will play a part in the story
The last shot in the trailer shows Logan facing a Sentinel. These massive mutant-hunting machines are a common threat in X-Men media, and it looks like at least one of them will show up in Wolverine. Typically, taking these things out is a group effort, so it will be interesting to see how Wolfie here manages to take one down by himself. I could see this becoming a Shadow of the Colossus-style boss fight in which we scale up the Sentinel’s body to attack weak points in its structure.
There’s not a lot in the trailer that gives us a sense of the connective tissue linking all this action. Why is Logan on an international quest? What is Mystique’s part in all of this? But Wolverine isn’t coming to PlayStation 5 until late 2026, so there’s still plenty of time for Insomniac to shed some light on the story.
