X-Men Origins: Wolverine Q&A Feature

Arguably one of the most popular characters to come from Marvel, Wolverine's journey from Canadian super-hero to one of the most important members of the X-Men has already been explored in the 20th Century Fox trilogy of X-Men movies.  This year however sees the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which will look back even further into the past of the angry Logan.

In development at Raven Studios, the official video game adaptation of the movie is scheduled to arrive on a number of platforms this May.  What the team at Raven is developing however, isn't your regular watered-down movie tie-in; a ferocious and bloody title, Wolverine is perhaps the first video game to really show the loner as he's always been portrayed in the comic books.  TVG recently caught up with the Senior Producer on X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Jeff Poffenbarger, who asked whether he could pose the first question...

Poffenbarger: Well let me ask the first question first, is that OK?  Did you like the game, did you like what you were playing?

TVG: Can I be perfectly honest with you and say that it wasn't what I expected...

I know it wasn't – you thought you were going to be getting a crappy movie game...

TVG: I did think that I was going to get a crappy movie game.

That's OK, you can be honest with me.  Everybody that picks it up asks, “What's this?  This isn't terrible!”

TVG: I've got to be honest that today's event was more about focusing on Prototype.

“If I get to see Prototype, then OK, I'll go and see Wolverine.”

TVG: It was more like, “the movie is coming out so there's the inevitable tie-in; it's going to be a third-person brawler”, and that's about it.  So for me, I was totally surprised.  What also  surprised me is that you likened it to God of War – that's a franchise with pretty big shoes to fill.

Certainly, but when I'm making comparisons, it isn't saying that we're better than that.  I'm talking about simply from a gameplay experience.  My first playing experience of God of War was very big for me, and what I was trying to say is that we want to make a very memorable experience.  A lot of what God of War innovated with as far as their combat etc, are standards for us now.  So we want to do that, and layer that, and add our own feel to it.

This is a really funny story; I received an email about an hour ago saying that there's a now God of War III trailer out for PlayStation 3 – and they've got a lunge mechanic.  We didn't take that from a game that's not out!  We don't know anybody there, and now people are going to be like 'they totally got that from God of War III', but actually we've had that lunge for about two years.

TVG: Well at the end of the day, Wolverine will be out in May, whereas God of War III doesn't have a release date yet.  At its core, what do you want to achieve with Wolverine?    The game didn't start out as a movie tie-in, so were there any parameters laid out for you once it did link up with the 20th Century Fox movie?

No, not at all.  Our objective from the beginning was very clear; we communicated with Activision that we wanted to make a true-to-character Wolverine experience.  Once we found out that we could link up with the movie, we were very excited but hesitant in the beginning.  We were like, “do we have to make it a Teen game now?”  But they said we could make the game we wanted to make, so we were able to deliver what we call a 'true-to-character experience'.  When Fox got on board, we were like 'We can use this and this and this,” and they were looking at it and giving us ideas; a couple of guys went to the set of the movie and hung out with Hugh Jackman – that stuff is all really awesome, but at the end of the day we just want to make a great Wolverine game.  The fact that we can take the actor everyone identifies as Wolverine and put him in the game is huge for us.  Certainly, it's good for us.

TVG: So where does the game's plot sit in comparison to the movie?

You replay almost the entire storyline of the movie, plus about 40% of our own story.  The movie is, I don't know, about two hours, whereas the game is about fourteen hours long...

TVG: Fourteen hours?  That's quite a lot for a video game...

Yeah, that's a lot for a video game – usually they're like seven hours...

TVG: Be honest though, there has to be quite a lot of padding surely?

This game was bigger than [what we now have], but it all about us going, “You know what, there's no way we can deliver this game on time.  We've got to cut off the extra fat”.  Certainly I think people would be more subjective like, “I didn't need this whole Weapon X level – all I did was kill dudes and open doors.” I wouldn't say there's anything in excess; hopefully we've paced the game well enough so that when gamers play it, they're not feeling like it's super-repetitive and saying, “Dude, I could have completely lost that whole level and it wouldn't have changed [the experience].”

It's a lot of game, and when you say there's twelve or fourteen hours of gameplay, a lot of our [objectives] have players back-tracking through some of the levels, so it's not like we've had to build a whole new level.  It's more to do with level design, and change up the level design so that you go back and forth through a level.

TVG: One of the things about God of War or Tomb Raider as inspirations for Wolverine, is that they're renowned for their strong mix of puzzles and action; can you talk about the use of puzzles in the game?

Sure, well the game right now is about 60% to 70% combat with the remaining 30% to 40% as puzzles.  We have a lot of puzzle elements and traversal cool-down moments, where you kinda just look around for a moment and take it in.  We definitely have puzzles, and it's about a 70/30 split [towards action].  I look at God of War and it seems like 50/50 almost, maybe even more puzzles than combat.

Don't get me wrong man, God of War is one of my favourite games of all time.  I bring it up because it is a great game.

TVG: Wolverine is a very mature game, so how do you balance between delivering that true-to-character maturity with any demands from the Activision executives to create a game that's suitable for teens heading off to see the movie?

Honestly, that took a lot of convincing people, but we were like, “Trust us, when you see it, you're going to be behind it.”  At first, people were certainly saying, “How can we use this as the movie game, when it might not go to the same audience.”  What we call 'the Eye of Sauron' was definitely on the game for a little while; people were looking at it with a little concern, but they soon became real believers.

It's like about the [use of] blood in the game.  At one point, it wasn't enough.  They were like, “We need more!”  They went from people who were like, “Erm, should we be showing this game?” to “Not only are we showing this game, but we need more blood...and make sure it hits the screen!”

I understand decisions like “We have to make it a Teen [rating],” because if you make a movie you don't want it to be an 'R'; you want as many people to see it.  Like a movie, a game only has one shot when it comes out.  The first weekend or two for movies, I believe, is like the most important time, and the same can kinda be said about video games because that's when a lot of people initially buy it.  So you don't want to prohibit people from playing, but you don't necessarily want to make a game so that everybody will be able to play – just make a game that you want to play.  So if a nine-year old doesn't have the same opportunity that an eighteen-year old has, well I would rather make the game that we want to make, rather than say “I want everybody under the sun to be able to play it, so I'm going to take away pieces of the character.”

Certainly, if Wolverine was big, soft, and cuddly, and went around giving everybody hugs, then sure I'd want everyone to be able to play it – but we want to make a game that makes sense for the character, and what you've seen is a game that makes sense for the character.

TVG: Raven has been involved with several X-Men and Marvel titles in the past, which have featured Wolverine, so do you think that perhaps you haven't done justice to the character in those other games?

Well they [X-Men Legends/Marvel: Ultimate Alliance] were different games, they were teen-related games where you had a bunch of different characters, and you could only deliver so much on each character because they all had to be balanced too.  A lot of his nature was captured really well in those games; part of it is his attitude towards other people, how that's handled in the cut-scenes, what his dialogue is like in the game – and I thought that was handled really well.

It didn't necessarily under-deliver, but it still wasn't delivering that true Wolverine character; it didn't go that one piece further.  But those are still great games.

TVG: As I said, Raven has developed several Marvel-related titles now, including Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and X-Men Legends.  Do you ever find yourself getting a little bored doing those games?

Certainly when you see someone make a game that's not as good as you'd hoped it would be, you think “Man, if I'd have made that game, I would have made it totally different!”  But you go where your strengths are, and you have to always make people believe in what you're doing, and one of those ways is to back it up with a history.  Let's be honest, if you're working in the video games industry you're on some level lucky – it's a hard industry to break into.  But if you're going to get something going and get people behind you, the best way to do it is have a good resume at it.  Getting people behind Marvel games is probably one of the easiest things to do, because we've always over-delivered.

This game will be the same, I'm confident of that, and I'm not being an egotistical American or anything like that – I'm not saying we're the best.  I'm just saying that this is not a bad game; this game is above average; this game is good; this game in my mind is actually great.

TVG: Well in my mind, this game surprised the hell out of me!

Everybody says that!  That's why this is exciting for me.  After sleepless nights, flying over here and not being over there to finish off the game right now, but I know that when everybody sees this game they're like, “What?  No way!  That's actually not bad!”

TVG: Wolverine has been built with Epic's Unreal Engine 3, but it doesn't look like it; the game actually looks quite organic compared to the usual 'metallic' traits of UE3; how much did you have to change it to suit your needs?

We didn't really have to do anything.  Once we'd decided on the game, our next choice was about the engine, and what would make it look totally awesome.  We were certainly anticipating Gears of War and all these other games; we put our own stuff into it – everybody does – because we want the engine to focus on certain things that perhaps other people didn't want to.  Epic has been great; their customer support has been great; and their engine has been for the most part really easy and simple to use.  It takes a lot of work to get those art assets in, but to make them sing like that, a lot has to do with the render engine.

TVG:  Can you also talk through some of the technology going on in the game to make Wolverine visually regenerate in real-time?

Essentially it's made up of three different models, there's a skeletal model, a muscular model, and a skin model.  Through shaders in the game and in the engine, we're actually able to do procedural healing, so each piece gets to heal up and you see that throughout the game.  Also, each piece produces a certain amount of blood that runs down; the blood also has a spec[ular] map on it so that it's nice and shiny.

Getting the tech behind it and making sure we got what we call our 'gore shader' was really about highlighting those different layers, and that the holes look realistic.  Certainly when somebody shoots at you, the hole is maybe sometimes a bit too big or isn't where you thought, and I'm sure I'll read about people saying, “That isn't super-accurate!”  But it's frikking cool, man.  I just don't see this in other games; in other games it doesn't look like you get hurt.

TVG: OK, so the movie comes out in May, the game comes out in May – both are a success.  A sequel is required; which X-Men Origins story would you like to do next, or would it be Wolverine 2?

I would like to do a Wolverine 2.  The thing is once you take the time to make a game, over two and half years usually, to do sequels using similar technology can [be done] pretty quickly because you already know the game; everything makes sense to you, including all the gameplay mechanics.  So design doesn't need much iteration, there aren't as many question marks on the road.  [Therefore] Wolverine 2 would make the most sense for us, because now that we've figured out the single-player, we could figure out online and offline co-op, playing as different characters – all those things would be in a sequel.

TVG: The use of quick time events in Wolverine was drastically reduced during the course of development; do you think that studios should move past this 'staple' of the action-adventure?

I don't know man, that's an interesting question.  I really like them, and we had them in the game but the Creative Director, the Project Lead, and a couple of others disliked them.  So they came in and were like, “Why are we doing all this [quick time] stuff – why can't I just do most of it anyway?  OK, there is still some over-the-top animation that I'm not controlling because there's no mechanic in the game for Wolverine to flip three times beyond this one time, but I can certainly do things like move from point A to point B.”  So we tried it, and there's some considerable difference.  There's still something happening, but you're a part of it now; you're not staring at the bottom of the screen waiting for a button prompt and you miss some of the really cool action.  I really like the button prompt thing, but it is kinda played out.

TVG: I was just wondering whether you felt the quick time mechanic was a little like lazy gaming?

Well yeah, kind of.  I just think that it's a way of doing something over-the-top that isn't you just watching.  I never like those games where it's like, “There's this great cinematic; there's this guy flipping over this other guy,” but all you're doing is watching it.  So I always thought quick time [events] pulled you in a little bit, because at least you're triggering these things.  I guess the next level is to move around in order to trigger these things...it's cool.

TVG: Thanks Jeff.


TVG would like to thank Jeff Poffenbarger from Raven Studios, together with Lucy Fairbrass and Johanna Hakala at Activision UK.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine is scheduled for release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this May, with versions on Wii, PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS, and PC, also in development.