Marvel’s Wolverine has launched today, but Insomniac Games is apparently already hard at work responding to feedback—and a suspiciously smelly joke might be hinting at one particularly welcome change.
Writing on X, Insomniac’s director of community and marketing, James Stevenson said:
“We have been 100% listening over the last few days and the team has been cooking hard today in response to some of the feedback.”
Stevenson didn’t actually say what the team was cooking, when we might get it or even whether he was referring to an update. Instead, he added that this explained the smell coming from Insomniac’s kitchen.
If you haven’t been following the increasingly bizarre conversation surrounding Marvel’s Wolverine, that might seem like nothing more than a rather tortured cooking joke. However, one of the biggest criticisms levelled at the game has been its colourful scent trails, which have inevitably been dubbed “fart gas” by players and reviewers. Because of course.
The trails appear automatically whenever Logan is tracking certain people, sounds, clues or nearby collectibles. Stevenson previously explained the mechanic, pointing out that it isn’t constantly active, but that didn’t really address the actual complaint: there’s currently no way to switch it off or activate it manually.
With that context, the reference to a smell coming from Insomniac’s kitchen feels about as subtle as one of Wolverine’s glowing trails. It certainly appears to be a cheeky acknowledgement of the criticism and may be hinting that an option to disable or reduce the effect is already being worked on.
That is only my interpretation, though. Insomniac hasn’t confirmed that the scent trail is being changed, nor has it provided any details about the feedback it is addressing. The studio could simply be having a bit of fun with the fart-gas jokes while working on something completely different.
There are plenty of other candidates. Reviews have criticised just how determined Marvel’s Wolverine is to guide the player through everything, including conspicuous paint showing where Logan can climb, persistent on-screen markers and multiple visual and audio pulses drawing attention to supposedly hidden chests. Options to reduce some of those assists, delay spoken hints or strip back the interface would probably be welcomed by people who don’t want Logan hovering over their shoulder and explaining how to play his own game.
More routine launch fixes for bugs, crashes, camera problems and performance are also a safe bet. On the other hand, broader complaints about repetitive combat, linear levels or the game’s overall structure aren’t the sort of things Insomniac can realistically cook up in an afternoon.
For the sake of transparency, I’m currently playing Marvel’s Wolverine for review. If Insomniac releases a substantial update before I finish, I’ll make clear which version I played and whether anything changed during the process. At least this article now provides a handy little paper trail—and, presumably, a fairly smelly one.
WGB 