Yesterday’s Sony State of Play introduced us to Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine game in all of its gritty and gory glory. The game was originally announced in September of 2021, and it’s been so long since we’ve heard anything that fans were beginning to wonder if the game was in development hell or was being massively reworked following Disney’s reshaping of corporate structure following several Marvel failures. Whatever their fears, all were set aside after Marvel unveiled the first trailer for the game, and fans were stunned at how brutal the gameplay turned out.
The first thing anyone is going to notice about Wolverine is the sheer level of violence. I honestly wasn’t sure how Sony and Insomniac were going to approach the making of this game. Any longtime reader of comics knows that Wolverine is one of Marvel’s darker characters. Similar to Frank Castle, when Wolverine gets involved, someone is likely to die. The Wolverine MAX comics by Jason Starr were a perfect vehicle for exploring Logan’s psyche and homicidal tendencies. Wolverine was made to be a killer, and that’s really what he knows.
New Wolverine Trailer#Wolverine #WolverinePS5 pic.twitter.com/ZHhVocZi1i
— Megaman14 (@Themegaman14) September 24, 2025
One other major feature from the Wolverine comics that I am very happy to see Insomniac include is the jetset nature of Wolverine stories. In the trailer alone, we see Madripoor, the Canadian outback, and Japan. Wolverine was always on the move. Even in the aforementioned Wolverine MAX books, those stories took place in Hollywood, Vegas, and Japan. Might we even see the Savage Land in this game? God, I can only hope so. The connection the island has to Wolverine/Logan and the X-Men is pretty strong, so I think there’s going to be a good chance we go there at least once.
We even see the Princess Bar, a location very well-known to fans of Logan’s comics. This was just one of many smaller eggs, similar to how the debut trailer featured small Easter eggs, such as a license plate with “HLK 181” on it, referencing Incredible Hulk #181, where Wolverine made his first full appearance. The tab on the register said $19.74, which was the year he was first revealed. There was also a beer called 1048, which is both a play on the actual beer 1602 and a reference to Earth-1048, the Earth designation for the Insomniac Spider-Man games.
Smaller eggs could also be found in this trailer, if you paid enough attention. The license is 229, which is a direct reference to the first appearance of the Reavers in Uncanny X-Men #229 back in 1988. The Princess Bar is a key location in Madripoor, where Wolverine holds court as Patch. Wolverine also appears to be closer to his comic height than what you see in the films. That’s probably the biggest egg nobody is talking about. Finally, there’s a mysterious character behind the bar at the Princess Bar as Wolverine enters. All we know is that they’re wearing green. My best guess would be Tyger Tiger, since she is a well-known figure in Madripoor. Her real name is Jessán Hoan, and she and Logan have a complicated history within the books.
While the trailer didn’t dive into how Wolverine attacks and heals, or even how your healing factor works within the confines of the game, the action we were shown was more than enough to convince me that the combat should be fine. Insomniac did a tremendous job with the combat of Peter Parker Spider-Man and Miles Morales Spider-Man in their games, so one has even more reason to trust in their ability to implement quality mechanics for their characters, especially superheroes. At this point, Insomniac is basically Sony’s go-to for Marvel superhero games.
Speaking of the overall presentation, I’m going to assume that Wolverine will have unlockable famous outfits, similar to Spider-Man’s ability to do the same. We see Logan rocking several different outfits within the trailer, and there’s almost guaranteed to be more that we won’t see until launch. They went with the yellow and blue outfit for this trailer, but I wish that they’d gone with the mustard yellow and brown from the early comics. That outfit has always been my favorite.
The trailer also confirmed that Omega Red, Mystique, Sentinels, and Reavers. If you’re not familiar with the Reavers, they’re basically a small cybernetically enhanced hit squad under the purview of the Hellfire Club. Logan has teamed up with Frank Castle to take them out before in the comics. Does this mean we could see the Punisher in Wolverine in a cameo? Honestly, it would fit and make sense within the confines of their story, and it could also serve as a test appearance to see if there’s an appetite for another game with Frank Castle in a more featured role. Marvel tries to time everything around their TV/Film structure, and the Punisher Special Presentation should be ready for Disney+ around that time. Knowing that, I wouldn’t put it past Insomniac and Marvel to put in a mission that features Logan having to team up with Castle before splitting up and going their own ways at the end.
I will admit to being blown away by the scope, scale, and violence we saw at that State of Play. I think it’s absolutely amazing that Disney feels confident enough in Insomniac and Sony’s ability to deliver a faithful adaptation of one of Marvel’s most beloved characters, but doing so within the savage world that Wolverine occupies. It’s easy to write stories for do-gooders like Captain America or Spider-Man, but it’s a lot harder to write nuanced and meaningful content for characters who were literally created to kill because they’re good at it. It’s so much harder to get your audience to buy into an extremely violent story because our first reactions aren’t driven by violence, but by conflict resolution.
If Marvel can take Wolverine and place him in a scenario where he has to be the best he is at what he does, and what he does doesn’t have to be nice, then the character is going to be all the better for it. These are the stories that comics like Punisher MAX and Wolverine MAX explored in great detail, and they’re some of those powerful stories for those reasons. Logan being forced into situations where the claws must come out is a trope as old as time, but it never gets old.
There will always be something appealing about truly dangerous men putting their skills to work for someone completely defenseless and out of their depth. Films like John Wick or The Equalizer prove there’s an appetite for gory justice, and nobody can dish out the type of gore that Wolverine can. This game will allow you to behead, dismember, and carve your opposition up like they were a Halloween pumpkin, and I’m damn certain they’re going to structure all of that around a compelling and worthy storyline.
I will definitely be pre-ordering this game and grabbing their collector edition, if I can get my hands on it. Expect that we will have more coverage on Wolverine as it comes out. We will also do a full rundown of the game whenever Insomniac and Sony get around to creating a State of Play just for this game, because you know they will. In the meantime, keep it locked here on BSO for all your gaming and comic news.
