A debate over “fart gas” has emerged around PlayStation 5 exclusive Marvel’s Wolverine, with some people calling for developer Insomniac to add the ability to disable Logan’s scent trail entirely from the game.
Marvel’s Wolverine will show a scent trail for Logan to follow in certain circumstances, which had been revealed and already discussed earlier this summer. The debate around this was rekindled following the publication of Marvel’s Wolverine reviews online this week, with The Washington Post journalist Gene Park calling the scent trail “fart gas” because of the way it appears behind characters Logan follows.
Jean Grey’s fart gas trail is NOT part of the navigation assist option. i turned it on and there’s another green line that tells you where to go. mission waypoint (yellow marker) is on as well and THAT can be turned off.
2nd pic i turn off the options and the gas stays. it seems… https://t.co/XSBsGa6Xj0 pic.twitter.com/cKs9uTPSG0
— Gene Park (@GenePark) September 10, 2026
There was some confusion online about the ability to turn this feature off via accessibility options. Insomniac’s official list of accessibility options for Wolverine includes a “Chase Assist,” which lets you toggle reduced movement speed for targets during chase sequences, but it does not turn off the trail. Other navigation toggles do not turn off the scent trail either.
This has in turn led some to believe the scent trail is always on in-game, and so have called on Insomniac to add in the ability to turn it off. But Insomniac’s director of community and marketing, James Stevenson, took to social media to nip that suggestion in the bud.
“The scent trail isn’t always on,” he clarified. “It represents Logan’s canon mutant super senses and elite tracking ability. It only is there when he’s tracking a specific scent / sound (a person, whisky, or another clue scent) – story/mission moments or when he catches whiff of a collectible.”
Despite this, some still want to get rid of the “fart gas” entirely. The criticism here is that the scent trail holds the player’s hand too strongly. Referencing previous discourse about Final Fantasy’s yellow paint guides, some have said these lines remove any potential skill required for a chase sequence, for example, or exploration.
This in turn has sparked questions about the difficulty of adapting Wolverine for a video game. Given his canon mutant powers, Logan probably wouldn’t spend much time wandering through levels looking for his target — or his next drink — but that doesn’t make for particularly exciting gameplay.
Some have suggested that Logan’s scent power could be something the player can trigger with a press of R3 on the DualSense, so there’s a way for players to avoid using it if they feel that strongly about it. Based on Stevenson’s post, Insomniac didn’t feel that would make sense for Logan.
Stevenson later clarified that when it comes to finding a hidden collectible, first you have to get close enough to it to pick up the sound or scent. So, there still is a degree of exploration to be done to find them.
IGN’s Marvel’s Wolverine review returned a 6/10. We said: “Marvel’s Wolverine’s slick and satisfying combat wears thin well before its conclusion, so much so that even its strong character work can’t quite save it from being anything more than okay.”
Wesley Yin-Poole
Director, News
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].