Insomniac Games is redirecting its focus to Marvel's Wolverine

Thankfully, one of the folks over at Insomniac Games was gracious enough to let us in on a small secret.

According to Tommy Mann, a developer previously working on Marvel's Spider-Man 2, he's since moved on to the next Marvel game as early as September 12.

The pattern of project transitions doesn't necessarily indicate Wolverine's infancy in the development cycle. Insomniac's track record showcases an impressive ability to work on multiple titles at the same time, often releasing their games in swift succession. Not to mention, Marvel's Wolverine was revealed two years ago, so it's not like even a skeleton crew couldn't have achieved much in that period. The timeline of the studio's recent releases - Marvel's Spider-Man in 2018, its Miles Morales spin-off in 2020, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart in 2021, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 in 2023 along with multiple PC ports in between - fuels speculations of a Marvel's Wolverine release as early as next year if not in early 2025.

What's intriguing to many is the potential continuity between Wolverine and Spider-Man, considering the various Easter eggs and references in Spider-Man that alluded to other Marvel characters. Could Insomniac be laying the foundation for a cohesive Marvel Gaming Universe?

There's also the question of gameplay content. Wolverine is believed to be a much grittier, possibly M-rated experience, potentially focusing on Logan's earlier years.

Any hardcore Marvel fan will tell you that Logan, as rough as he remains in his advanced age, was more savage, often in a literal sense, for most of the 1800s and 1900s. If the game doesn't play it too loose with Wolverine's origin story, it will have at least 100 years that it can use as its creative playground and make a unique game. More importantly, by setting up Marvel's Wolverine as essentially a "prequel", the later entries in the same universe could include a multiplayer X-Men game. Of course, even a single-player game where you can switch between X-Men members in real time - a similar feature has been added to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - might be an even better idea.

However, Wolverine's accelerated development might bring potential downsides. Given that a significant portion of the development team seems to be moving from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 to Wolverine, the chances for post-launch DLC for Spider-Man 2 seem bleak. Historically, hints of DLCs, like the Black Cat-centric expansion for Marvel's Spider-Man, were known before the main game's release. The absence of such teasers for Spider-Man 2 and the impending focus on Wolverine may disappoint fans hoping for additional content post-launch.

In any case, Insomniac's journey in the Marvel universe is burgeoning, and gamers worldwide are strapped in for the ride.

Marvel's Wolverine isn't the only game that Insomniac Games is working on. An ex-Blizzard developer teased that the first-party Sony studio is working on a mystery project.