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- Marvel's Wolverine director Mike Daly says the violence was an important part of bringing the character to life
- Daly says Insomniac "didn't want to go over the top" to keep the game "grounded"
- He confirms that players not a fan of the gore can turn it off in the settings
Insomniac Games has confirmed that players can tone down the violence in Marvel's Wolverine in the accessibility settings.
Speaking in an interview with IGN following Wolverine's extended gameplay reveal at Sony's State of Play on June 2, game director Mike Daly explained how Insomniac was dedicated to bringing the character to life.
If you're familiar with the Marvel hero, you'll know that he's pretty violent and is often seen shredding apart his enemies with his claws, and Daly said this was something the team knew needed to be a "key part" of the game.
"From the inception of the project, we knew that the number one most important thing was to bring the Wolverine fantasy to life. Not just that, but make it the ultimate Wolverine fantasy," Daly said. "And when you look at the aspects of the character and all the stories he’s been through in his history, it was clear that violence was a key part of that.
"So that was never really in question, and it was kind of baked into how we made decisions from the very beginning. So we knew that we were going to have to bring that out in gameplay, put it in your hands as a player, make it a part of the story."
However, Daly said that to keep the story and character in a "grounded world with believable things that happen," Insomniac "didn't want to go over the top."
"We really wanted to hit the bullseye on what is the best representation of Wolverine, what delivers fan expectations, and what’s going to keep the claw combat action satisfying over the whole course of the playthrough," the director explained.
"So those are the things we calibrated against. You can see the results for yourself because we’ve put it in the trailer. The way I would describe it is that we were unapologetically violent. We knew it would have to accomplish that in order to accomplish our ultimate mission. And because of that, the gameplay retains satisfaction."
The latest gameplay trailer showcased that violence in action, and it does get quite bloody and might turn some players off; a far cry from Insomniac's toned-down Spider-Man games.
That's why Insomniac implemented an accessibility feature that lets players turn off gore if they're not too keen.
"All that being said, we know that it’s not for everyone, and because we knew this was going to be a big part of the game from the beginning, we also implemented an accessibility feature to turn off gore," Daly confirmed.
"It’s clearly integrated into the game in a lot of different ways, and so it’s a nuanced feature that is very selective about what we show, what we censor, turning off blood and things like that, just in order to make it more palatable to people who don’t really want to have that part of the experience."
Marvel’s Wolverine launches on September 15 for PS5. Preorders are now live.
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