Game interview: Jess Reiner-Reed on Directing Insomniac's Wolverine

Not only did FutureFive NZ have a chance to preview Marvel's Wolverine, but we also got a chance to interview Jess Reiner-Reed who is the Senior Project Director for the game. We asked her about the game, Marvel and even if she's seen Avengers Doomsday! Check it out below. 

Was it a challenge changing from the kid-friendly agility of Spider-Man to the more, you know, mature visceral strength of Wolverine?

Yeah, so the move from working on kind of Marvel's Spider-Man games, Ratchet & Clank games, and now working on a more mature tone of Wolverine definitely had some different challenges we were working through. So, some of the things we worked on were things like Wolverine can actually kill enemies. With Spider-Man, he has to web them to the side of buildings - he doesn't kill anybody. Wolverine gets to kill enemies.

And with that, we worked on things to make sure like the blood, directionality. So when you claw somebody, that the blood goes in the correct direction. It also looks good on the snow versus hitting the side of a wall.

And we also, since we're much more intimate and closer camera than Spider-Man... Spider-Man's whipping through the city really quickly, right? With Wolverine, he's slower, he's heavier, he's hundreds of pounds. We wanted to really sell that weight of Logan, have those punches feel really visceral and up close, but also have the aftermath of battle.

So, we worked a lot on our destruction for this game compared to past games to make sure that after the combat was done, you would kind of see all the aftermath, whether that's blood on the ground, things destroyed in the corners. So, yeah, I'd say with each game, you always have to look at what does this game need and how are we going to improve our tech in the way we work to be able to show off best for this character.

I heard Marvel puts restrictions on Spider-Man like he's not allowed to have alcohol and drugs. So, were there any restrictions from Marvel for Logan?

Mm, that's a good question. Marvel does not want... we don't have any smoking in our game. So yeah, that's the...

I would say overall, our Insomniac games and Marvel Games have now worked together on so many games. They're such good partners. We call them up, we collaborate, we share ideas. They are fantastic partners. So, I would say for us, it's more about we both bring ideas to the table. It's not a relationship where they're just coming in and saying like, "No, don't do that." They're going, "Hmm, that's a cool idea. What could we do with that?" and collaborating together.

I heard Logan's the only playable character. Was there a decision why we can't play as like Mystique and others?

Yeah, so, we made the conscious decision to make this a very Logan-centric story. That was very much on purpose. So, Logan is the only playable character. We wanted to make this story all about Logan. There are no X-Men in this universe, and we wanted to make sure players can really dive deep into Logan's emotional story here.

So, while we have other characters - you mentioned Mystique is fantastic in the game - we have other characters to play off him and understand more of the story. And we also have,maybe you saw in the demo, some ally moves. So, you can do like moves with Sabretooth while you're killing enemies. So there's definitely a lot of interaction with the other characters, but Logan's the only playable.

Yeah, following on, what made the decision to make this like an early X-Men, like how come like there's no Professor X and Cyclops and the full team?

Yeah. I mean, obviously Marvel has a ton of amazing characters to focus in on, but I think early on, we knew Wolverine is such an iconic character that so many people love that we wanted to spend... really have the time throughout the game to spend it just with Logan and really tell his story.

Well this might be an obvious one, but was there any inspiration from other Wolverine appearances, like did you look at the 2009 game, did you look at the cartoons, and did you look at Hugh Jackman?

Yeah, I can honestly say we looked at everything. I mean, across our team, we're huge Wolverine fans, and we went through the past movies, games, comics. Obviously, Marvel Games was involved with what would be some iconic series, what would be iconic panels to look at.

But in the end, we wanted to make a unique, new experience, and new story. That's so Wolverine fans would have something new to be able to interact with, and also folks that maybe don't know as much about Wolverine have a new, unique Insomniac take on this. So, we took inspiration from a lot of Wolverine's kind of breadth of work, but this is a unique, new experience.

Okay, Spider-Man's like open world, obviously, because of New York. So why is Wolverine more linear?

Yeah, yeah. So, Marvel's Wolverine is a story-driven, linear experience, different than Marvel's Spider-Man being an open world with kind of all the varied optional content.

But we wanted to focus on what's the right game structure for this character. So, if you think about Peter Parker, he has friendly neighborhood Spider-Man guy, right? He gets to... or even playing like Miles Morales, he gets to know people in his neighborhood, he kind of stays put in one spot.

That's very not Logan. Logan is not somebody who stays put in one spot, he's not making friends with everybody. So, when we were looking at the story, it made sense to take us on this linear narrative adventure and really driven by the story, as opposed to Logan kind of getting comfy in one spot. And that means we get to go to cool places like Canada and... yeah. It allowed us to explore a lot of different locations.

Without giving spoilers, how many costumes can we unlock?

There are a lot of costumes. I don't know if you saw how many are in what you played today. You already saw a bunch. There's some secret ones I can't talk about, but there's some very cool ones. And then we also... the Digital Deluxe Edition has five exclusive suits for fans to check out.

Oh, I'm not sure if this is a question or not, but I find it real great that you... we can unlock it rather than pay for it, like... like fighting games, you have to pay for every costume.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like fans love... what we've learned from Spider-Man is that fans love trying different outfits. So, one of the things with the different suits, one of the things I like in Marvel's Wolverine is, if you unlock different suits, your health bar increases.

So, even if you're somebody who doesn't want to try 20 different suits or something, you can still... you're still incentivized to unlock those because it's going to increase your health bar. So, even if you want to stick with the suit we give you for each mission, you can, but we still want you to unlock those other ones if you want to increase the health bar.

Okay. On my final question - you don't have to answer it or not - just say, what if, if Wolverine's a success, do you think we could see more future X-Men games?

I love making Marvel games, and I'm very excited to work on Marvel's Wolverine.

Oh, there's another funny one you don't have to answer. Have you guys been able to watch... I mean, have Marvel allowed you to watch anything of Avengers: Doomsday or...?

I wish! Not me.