No X-Men, No Spider-Man in Marvel's Wolverine

You'd think a Wolverine game would be drowning in X-Men. Jean Grey, Mystique, Sabretooth, Omega Red, a Morlock named Leech; the extended gameplay trailer Insomniac showed during Monday's State of Play is packed with familiar mutants. But creative director Marcus Smith made the distinction bluntly in an interview with Eurogamer: "The important thing, I guess, is the X-Men don't exist in our game."

That's a deliberate creative choice, not a licensing limitation. Insomniac has set Marvel's Wolverine in a timeline where mutants are known but not organised. There's no Xavier's School, no blue-and-gold uniforms, no Danger Room. Instead, mutants are being hunted by a cybernetic militia called the Reavers, working for Bolivar Trask. The team Logan joins isn't the X-Men; it's Team X, described as a "last-stand mutant task force" assembled out of desperation rather than ideology. I love this framing. It strips away the safety net of a sprawling roster and forces the story to live or die on Logan alone.

And if you were hoping Insomniac's shared universe might at least deliver a Peter Parker cameo, Smith shut that down too. "It's correct that it does take place in the 1048 Marvel Universe, which is the Insomniac video game universe," he told IGN. "It happens in the same world, but we don't have any crossover. Spider-Man will not be making an appearance in Wolverine."

Logan's Story, Nobody Else's

Game director Mike Daly reinforced the point: "This game is all about Wolverine and you play Wolverine the whole way through. We wanted to keep the focus on him throughout the whole story." Jean Grey and Mystique do appear as allies who can assist during combat, including team-up critical strikes and stealth sections. Sabretooth shows up too, but as a rival who steals your kills rather than a cooperative partner. "When you're fighting with Sabretooth, it's more like you thought you got the kill and he snatches it right out of your hands just to deny you the pleasure," Daly told Eurogamer. None of them are playable.

This is a significant departure from Spider-Man 2, which split its campaign between Peter and Miles. Insomniac is going the opposite direction here, and I think it's the right call. Wolverine's appeal has always been that he's the loner who gets dragged back in, not the team leader rallying the troops. Making him the sole playable character in a linear, non-open-world structure means every system, every encounter, every upgrade path can be built around one moveset. Daly confirmed to IGN that they "did not set out to make an open-world game or a sandbox game," instead aiming for a "high-octane, high-intrigue, linear single-player adventure."

The combat itself revolves around a Rage meter that builds through attacks, parries, and kills but decays over time. Players spend that meter on either offensive power or healing, since Logan's regeneration in this game is tied to adrenaline rather than being passive. If his health hits zero and he has enough Rage stored, his heart reboots for a last-stand recovery. If he doesn't, he dies. It's a smart mechanical translation of the character's durability without making him invincible, and it creates a genuine risk-reward loop: burn your Rage for damage now, or bank it as insurance.

Insomniac also confirmed through its support page and Daly's interview that the game's extreme gore can be toggled off entirely. Given how much dismemberment the gameplay trailer showed, this was clearly planned from early development rather than bolted on at the end. "It's a nuanced feature that is very selective about what we show, what we censor, turning off blood and things like that," Daly said.

Marvel's Wolverine launches September 15 exclusively on PS5, with the standard edition priced at $69.99 in the US and £69.99 in the UK. Pre-orders are already live, with a physical copy available for £64.95 at TheGameCollection and a Digital Deluxe Edition at $79.99/£79.99 through the PS Store. There's no Collector's Edition this time around.