Marvel is open to mature-rated games, but they must ‘fit with the characters’

Marvel's Wolverine trailer — Marvel’s Wolverine – should we expect Mortal Kombat levels of violence from the Wolverine game? (photo: Sony)

Don’t ever expect to see a very violent Spider-Man or Iron Man game like Miracle The Vice President of Games explains what influences the tone of a game.

Insomniac still hasn’t explained much, if anything, about its PlayStation 5 Wolverine game, but creative director Brian Horton did describe it as a “mature tone.”

It’s not clear if this means it will deal with particularly heavy subjects or if it will just be extremely violent and gory. Either way, it sounds like the tone of the Wolverine game will be very different from what we’ve seen in most other Marvel games.

Contrary to how Marvel has been willing to make less kid-friendly movies and TV shows like Logan and The Punisher, there have rarely been adult games. As it turns out, this is something the company has considered, but it doesn’t want to release an adult title if it doesn’t fit the character.

In a recent interview, Vice President of Marvel Games Bill Rosemann touched on the topic of adult Marvel games, explaining that it’s always been a talking point.

However, the company isn’t willing to make a property or character grittier and bloodier just to appease a potential market. What determines the tone is whether it suits the character and whether the target audience wants it.

“It’s something we’ve talked about and it comes down to character, being authentic, being appropriate, and power and responsibility,” Rosemann explained to Comic book.

“The strength is that we get to work with these great characters. The responsibility is to use them correctly.’

Screenshot Spider Man 2 — Spider-Man 2 – the Spider-Man games got quite heavy and dark in places, but not obscene (Photo: Sony)

As an example he cites a relatively obscure (though not if you read the old UK Transformers comics!) team called the powerpack, which consists of four young super-powered children. Rosemann believes that a mature Power Pack game would not fit the themes and characters. It’s not a good thing to do.’

He adds, “We sit down and talk about what is the player’s fantasy? What do you expect from this character? Who is the audience? If we were to go down that road, how could we responsibly create, market, sell it?’

A Marvel game with a high age rating would be a hard sell, as most of the company’s popular characters are enjoyed by kids and adults alike. Not only would such a game limit its audience, but Marvel would also have to be careful not to incite angry parents for potentially promoting an inappropriate game for children.

However, a character like Wolverine has the kind of history in both the comics and the movies, meaning fans expect a solo game to be more mature in its presentation.

In fact, it’s been done before with the tie-in game for the 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. The Uncaged Edition of that game was age-rated at 18 due to its violence, so it’s not unreasonable to assume assume that Insomniac is pursuing a similar one. direction for his game.

There was also a Punisher game in the PlayStation 2 era that was so violent it ended up being censored in most countries. However, all of these examples were well before the current era of Marvel popularity, with the most recent game rated 18 being the 2013 Deadpool game.

It will be a while before Insomniac shares further details about the Wolverine game. Right now, the studio is focused on getting Spider-Man 2 out the door, which is planned an autumn edition this year.

Like Wolverine, there haven’t been any real updates on Spider-Man 2 since then the 2021 announcement. Except Insomniac says so development went well last October.