Marvel’s Wolverine Gets New Directors

Video Games

The best there is at what he does may be getting better. During a PlayStation Showcase in 2021, Sony announced Marvel’s Wolverine, a video game from Insomniac, the studio behind Marvel’s Spider-Man and its sequel and spin-off. And just like those Spidey games, Sweet Baby Inc. – the woke DEI consulting firm behind Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the mention of whose name causes gamers’ eyes to roll – announced that they’d be working on it. Nothing else was heard about the game until earlier this year when some leaked gameplay footage made the rounds. The gameplay was very rough but looked like it was on the right track; however, subsequent screenshots revealed that Jean Grey, one of Wolverine’s fellow X-Men and the object of his unrequited affection, had changed. Much like (the miserable, selfish, condescending nag they called) Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man games, Jean’s looks were downgraded from her initial representation, making her less attractive and feminine.

Something big happened yesterday and most people missed it. Every theory we had about the uglification of women in AAA gaming turned out to be true.

Look at what happened to Jean Grey from @insomniacgames Marvel’s Wolverine from these leaked early screenshots of the first,… pic.twitter.com/Zm5h6ovgwD

— Grummz (@Grummz) June 19, 2024

Jean’s “modern audience” makeover was seen as an indication of an almost assured woke streak that would run through the game, an assumption bolstered by the creative team behind Marvel’s Wolverine: Cameron Christian and Brian Horton, the game director and creative director, respectively, for Spider-Man: Miles Morales, who would serve in those roles again for Wolverine. This week, however, Game File learned from “two sources familiar with the matter” that Christian and Horton are out and that Mike Daly will be the new game director, and Marcus Smith will be the creative director. The new directors were confirmed for Game File by “a rep from Sony Interactive Entertainment.” The updated directors have also been added to the Wikipedia page for Marvel’s Wolverine, if that means anything. Smith and Daly were the directors of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Game File’s sources told them that this switcheroo was due to “creative decisions around the game,” although the Sony representative wouldn’t comment on that. Marcus Smith, meanwhile, is now the creative director of Perfect Dark.

Obviously, the hope is that this changing of the guard means Marvel’s Wolverine is abandoning its woke Sweet Bay Inc. nonsense, and that’s certainly possible. Based on the leaked footage, the game is still in the early stages of development, so this isn’t like those ridiculous rumors about Assassin’s Creed Shadows ditching Yasuke with only a three-month delayed release in which to do it. Also, consider that we don’t know how woke Wolverine was going to be; was it limited to Jean Grey’s looks (and probably other women in the game), or was Logan going to be replaced with a more diverse version of Wolverine – probably X-23 – like Spider-Man was at the end of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? Who knows? Either way, there’s probably time to fix these issues, especially since the game has no release date yet. There’s no way to know till Marvel’s Wolverine comes out; it could be something else, like they want more (or fewer) Marvel characters involved. But the mention of creative differences, the history of these guys working on the (first) Miles Morales game, and the recent string of woke video game failures – particularly ones that employed Sweet Baby Inc.’s services – strongly indicates that Sony and Insomniac are terrified of spending a ton of money on a game nobody wants to play. Look what happened to Concord, the first-person shooter Sony wanted to be the launchpad for a Star Wars-esque franchise; it bombed so hard it took down its in-house developer, Firewalk Studios. In the wake of a financial failure (not to mention an embarrassment) like that, I can see Sony turning to one of its highest-profile video games currently being developed and telling Insomniac to fix it. I hope that’s the case because I really want Marvel’s Wolverine  to be great.

Let us know what you think of the creative team overhaul on Marvel’s Wolverine in the comments!

***

Get Your Geeks + Gamers merch here!