Insomniac Games Leak Reveals Wolverine Footage

Video Games

The best there is at what he does has been exposed a little early. A week ago, Insomniac Games was hacked by a group called Rhysida, who threatened to release the stolen files online unless the video game studio paid them $2 million. Insomniac declined, so the hackers followed through with their threat yesterday. Among the many things released are information about Insomniac employees (which is the worst part because it hurts individual people), plans and a timeline for future Marvel video game releases, and footage from the still-in-development Wolverine, including rudimentary gameplay and storyboards for what we can assume are in-game cinematics. I won’t be embedding the footage here or linking to it, but it won’t take much effort to find it on social media if you are so inclined. Insomniacs Marvel line-up, according to the leak (via Kotaku), is:

2024: Spider-Man 2 multiplayer

2025: Venom

2025-2026: Wolverine

2026: Wolverine multiplayer

2027: Spider-Man 3

2028: X-Men muliplayer

2029-2030: X-Men

2031-2032: New IP 1

2035: New IP 2

I’m not quite sure how the X-Men multiplayer comes out before the base X-Men game, but maybe that’s a misprint. Outside of that, the list makes sense; the Spider-Man games are hugely successful, so Sony and Insomniac capitalizing on that is a no-brainer. Presumably, Spider-Man 3 will be all about Miles Morales based on what Insomniac representatives have said about the series’ future. The Venom game has been speculated on as well; if it’s coming in 2025, it must have been in development for some time. And Wolverine will apparently lead into an X-Men game, which could be very cool and likely different from the solo games Insomniac has been making so far. I’m interested in seeing how that plays out; will players get to choose between an X-Men roster or have to play as different X-Men in different levels?

As for the Wolverine footage, it’s getting a lot of flak, but people need to remember that the game isn’t going to be released until at least 2025, so there’s a lot of work still to be done. Taking its early stage into account, I think it looks cool. I like the way some of the action is presented, keeping the point of view close to Wolverine as he moves and attacks to emphasize his animalistic movements. The camerawork seems pretty fluid, and I like how he’s using his claws and fast reflexes as he fights. Hopefully, they go hard with the violence, not only to keep it close to Logan’s character but to differentiate it from the Spider-Man games, which are relatively bloodless. It sucks that Insomniac was targeted like this, but I’m hopeful for the game.