Wolverine’s narrative director, Walt Williams, opened up about why it was important to him that Logan was made to be significantly shorter than his hulking counterpart, Sabretooth, and why the emotional aspect of their relationship was essential to portray in the game.
Now that Marvel’s Wolverine is out in the wild and in players’ hands, the viral discourse surrounding Insomniac’s latest superhero game has taken a different turn. Scent trails and Sentinel boss fights aside, Logan’s characterization has become a new talking point, with a vocal group of online critics arguing that Insomniac made him too ‘soft’ and that their version of the character isn’t tapped into his rage enough.
Speaking with journalist Gene Park on the Low Power Mode podcast, the game’s narrative director, Walt Williams, chatted about Sabretooth and Wolverine’s relationship with each other and why it was necessary to dig deep into their emotions rather than present the characters as angry, alpha mutants.
“Anger and rage is a response to something,” he said. “It’s usually a response to some feeling of loss or a perceived feeling of loss. It is an attempt to fill something that is missing in you, whether it’s momentary, whether it’s rational or irrational. Simply trying to present the traditional Logan-Sabretooth relationship as antagonistic simply because it is, simply as an alpha male kind of a thing — as archetypal as that is for the characters, it did not fit what we were trying to reveal about Logan, about the depth of his feelings.
“Because Sabretooth is a dark mirror of Logan. If we’re telling a story where we’re trying to make people truly understand how much this character feels and become empathic towards his entire emotional journey, that means Sabretooth also has to feel just as deeply as Logan. He also has to have the same feelings of yearning and tenderness and loss. They just express themselves in the darker side of that. Logan feels that yearning. He gets scared and pulls away. Sabretooth feels that yearning and it makes him hurt, and he wants to lash out to exert that hurt outward.”
Williams went on to praise Sabretooth’s voice and motion capture actor, Brett Gipson, saying he had “such presence” on set and delivered his “favorite interpretation” of the mutant he’d ever seen — which led to a humorous anecdote about the height difference between Victor and Logan’s in-game models.
“Full props to our character department, too, because what they did with his model, I love. I love the size difference, because early on I was like, ‘Guys, let’s be honest. Wolverine needs to be like five feet tall,’” Williams added.
In the X-Men comics, Sabretooth is six feet, six inches tall; Logan, by comparison, is five feet, three inches tall. The difference between these two mutants’ height is made abundantly clear in the game, and it’s something that many fans have pointed out positively, praising Insomniac for staying true to the source material.
In fact, the game’s developers said they had to adjust the character models’ sightlines to make sure they were looking down at Logan, and he was looking up at them, since Logan’s actor, Liam McIntyre, is actually six foot one in real life.
Marvel’s Wolverine is out now exclusively on the PlayStation 5. You can read our review of the game here, or peep our 17 Essential Tips and Tricks to help you get started in Marvel’s Wolverine, plus our recommendations for the 10 Best Adaptations, and a guide on How to Farm XP Quickly. Check out our full Marvel’s Wolverine Walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to every mission, and make sure you don’t miss a thing with our Collectibles guides, All Wolverine Suits and Claws Guide, and our thorough list of all the Easter Eggs and References we’ve found.
Virginia Glaze
News Editor
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.