As part of our Marvel’s Wolverine preview opportunity, which saw us tour Insomniac’s Burbank campus, we got to sit down with both Grant Hollis and Brian Wyser, a couple of senior heads on the team heading up the art and animation departments, respectively.
In the brief chat, we spoke about the profound differences between creating Wolverine, whose actions are often antithetical to Spider-Man’s, their partnership with Marvel, and how Aussie Liam McIntyre has somewhat carried on Hugh’s legacy in picking up the cowl.
Despite being in every Spider-Man game, Insomniac’s take on web-slinging became the game’s signature. What’s one thing from Wolverine that, if clipped out, would be unmistakably Insomniac’s?
BW: It’s outright the combat, and we had those sorts of conversations. As you’re working on a video game, you want to find something that personifies the character, that allows the player to feel like the character.
And we all agreed that it was combat in this instance. And we spent a lot of time iterating on everything that he can do, so you can feel like him and feel those claws.
Was there anything that, despite looking incredible during concepts, proved an absolute nightmare to animate and render?
GH: (Pauses) Interesting question. Nothing’s ever a nightmare to render. It just usually means we just have to optimise it, you know?
BW: It’s a challenge.
GH: Yeah, so it’s usually a challenge, right? For example, the hair. Indeed, we wanted good-looking hair on his head, on his arms, everywhere possible that made sense.
He is a hairy man.
GH: Yeah, and hair can be expensive to render. But we have an amazing engine team, as well as amazing technical artists and a character team that is amazing. They were able to find that solution that worked for the amount of hair we wanted and the interactivity of that hair. When Logan would move, we wanted the hair to also move, not to just be like a cap, if you will.
And they pulled that off. To answer the question, did we not do what we hoped to do? No, we did what we wanted to do. It was just a matter of figuring it out. Another thing that you’d think would be another challenge would be the blood, right? We knew we wanted blood, and we wanted to have blood that felt viscous, wet, and would decal everywhere, in that it could hit a wall and it would smear.
It just meant we had to put in time to make it happen.
What particular pieces of media, whether it’s a particular comic run, the animated X-Men series, or even Logan, that helped inform Wolverine’s direction?
BW: We can’t really pinpoint any one piece, because as we jump into any of these properties—first of all, all of us are fans. So, we all understand the character, and then we’ll dive into comics, television, video games, really any expression of the character to understand what other people have done.
So, while I’m not going to be able to give you an answer on specifically what one thing inspired our work, there are little callouts in the game from the animation team, within cinematics and outside of cinematics, where we definitely have moments trying to pay homage to comic book panels or covers, or things that inspired people when it comes to this character.
But overall, the goal is that you feel what we’ve built is Wolverine, true to his character traits, and that you, as you’re playing as him, are getting what you’re familiar with. But we are building our own take on that same character.
Wolverine is exponentially more violent than the Spider-Man games, and that comes through in the animations, not just the blood and gore. How is animating a superhero action game different when you’re thinking more about excessive violence and brutality after having to convey Peter’s relative constraint in combat?
BW: From the animation perspective, and this isn’t for everybody, but it was refreshing. It was a nice change of pace. Spider-Man’s great—I love Spider-Man, I loved working on those games.
But to look at the next challenge of how do we make people feel combat for Wolverine? How do we make attacks make people shiver a little bit with where Wolverine chooses to place his claws into an enemy? It was actually really exciting, and it was a nice change of pace from what we’ve been working on.
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When dealing with art and animation, how pivotal is it to hang on to what are considered “golden frame” images we all know from the comics? Things like Wolverine’s low, rageful stance or claw-first downward plunge seem to be given special attention in animation cycles?
BW: Definitely. Yeah, specifically with animation, we draw a lot of inspiration from comic book posing. And we are definitely looking to, again, personify the character, and maybe present our own technique. One thing that we realised, it’s just an anecdote, but in a lot of the comics, Wolverine is seen flexing with his hands between his legs, and he’s bent over, and he’s roaring at the enemy before him.
Early on in development, we realised that that’s probably not a pose we can use in gameplay, because it’s unappealing. We want you to be able to see the claws; we want you to be able to see a strong silhouette of our character, and that’s not necessarily a great, appealing silhouette from behind. So we’ve used that idea to inspire a lot of what we put in our cinematic content.
GH: Yeah, I think so. And then when it came to the art and inspiration, we have all the suits, right? So you’re going to unlock suits that are clearly inspired by the comics or the films or the TV show, whatever it may be.
So, we like to pay homage to what’s come before out of respect.
As Aussies, we love to see other Aussies do well and we’re excited for Liam McIntyre to take on this role. Did you deal with him much?
BW: Yeah, I worked with him a lot. I work on the stage, and I direct the actors and work on our performance capture sets. Liam’s a great collaborator; he’s been fantastic. As we approach any scene, any moment, any part of the game, he has great ideas. We come to the stage with ideas, we plan exhaustively, but I would say a lot of the character is Liam.
A lot of it is his choices and what he’s brought to his version of Wolverine, not something that we directed him towards. We were constantly pleasantly surprised with the ideas that Liam would come up with, and just the emotion that he would apply to moments in the game where maybe myself, my animation team, or animation leads who are also helping to plan for our mocap shoots, had one intention, but we completely flipped the script based on Liam’s performance.
GH: Yeah, and visually, when Liam came in for the audition, I was like, “That’s the guy.” Right? Because we wanted to find a one-to-one likeness, when he came in, he looked the part, but then he also could act. He was Logan when I saw him.
BW: That’s another good point, too. When we were looking for our Logan, we wanted someone that felt real, someone that you could meet on the street, that is a human as well as this fictional superhero character. Liam’s choices early on hit that right out of the park.
How hard is it to deal with fans’ expectations of how characters should look versus what the vision is from the team and yourself?
GH: Yeah, great question.
I don’t know whether you pay attention to the scuttlebutt online or read the comments?
GH: I tend not to read all the comments. (Laughs)
Probably a good thing.
GH: For us, when we were designing all of the different suits, we wanted to take inspiration from the vast amount of what has come before, you know, the different suits. So, we really want to take a look at what’s existed and then put our own little spin on it. We’ve also, with some of the suits, hired specific comic creators to create unique suits.
I don’t really look at the comments. I just hope that people find stuff that they like, and that’s why we aim for the variety that we do.
BW: Yeah, I think we try to stay true to the character, and what we believe the character would behave like or look like. And you can’t please everybody.
You can’t, no.
BW: You can’t. Yeah, so why try?
GH: The most that we pay attention to is the usability and the focus testing to see how people are understanding, how people are enjoying, or what are some things that they’re rubbing up against. That’s really where we do a lot of our R&D.
What sort of runway does Marvel give in terms of suit design or storycraft?
GH: They’re heavily involved, and they’re a great partner to work with. They are fantastic. The relationship we’ve created with them over the Spider-Man games has just continued into Wolverine, and they come up with great ideas that we then try to see if we can make sense for the game and incorporate it into the game.
BW: Yeah, they’re regularly involved in all aspects of the game, whether it be storytelling, to character art, right through to gameplay. I mean, we are heavily involved with Marvel.
Having endured a couple of decades of Hugh Jackman not donning the traditional yellow suit, how early in the piece was it decided that you wanted to really hit on that visual?
GH: Day one.
Hell yeah.
GH: We were like, “We want Logan to have battle armor and wear a cowl and make it cool.” You know, that was our thing, and we thought what would be a grounded version of that suit be like?
What kind of freedoms does a linear, non-open-world game afford you as designers to pack in more detail than you might have before?
GH: Yeah, well, it’s a little more curated, right? We know where you’re going to go versus where you’re not going to go. But then we do have to balance that, because we want the world to be alive. That means that, sure, you’re only walking through this one street, but there is a street next to it, and a street after that.
So, we need to have enough detail on those other streets so that, even if you don’t play on them, it looks like a living, breathing world. In Wolverine, the world does not revolve around you; you are a participant in that world.
It was obviously distressing at the time, but, to search for a silver lining of sorts, was there anything that the team was able to take away from the big leak?
BW: The only thing I would say is I’m just really impressed with kind of the rallying cry that it put within Insomniac, and our IT department, and everyone who supported us and helped us get through it. I think it was an unintentional bonding experience. That’s really the biggest thing I would take out of it.
GH: Yeah, it was definitely disappointing, but I don’t feel like it affected anything.
So there was no change in vision?
GH: We were in the middle of production, and at Insomniac, it’s a very iterative process. So things are constantly changing and adjusting. So, it wasn’t like, “We need to throw everything out and start over.” It was more like, “Okay, that’s where we’re at, and this is where we’re going.”
Marvel’s Wolverine is out on September 15, launching exclusively for PlayStation 5. Amazon has the lowest price of $99, including free delivery.
The Author of this article travelled to Insomniac HQ in LA as a guest of PlayStation for the purpose of this preview.
