“Did you see the Weapon X outfit in the list?”
We continue our conversation as Jess Reiner-Reed inquires about my costume choice during my Marvel’s Wolverine playthrough. “It was there…but I couldn’t do it. I saw John Byrne’s classic brown suit” I say. If you don’t know who John Byrne is, well a lot of what the modern X-Men is can be attributed to his work with Chris Claremont before Jim Lee’s reboot in 1991. And he was the creator of the brown suit. You know, this little thing:
It exists because Byrne wanted his costume to align more closely with the animal Logan is named after. Because the original costume was blue and gold. And that’s not what a wolverine looks like.
“I just…I love that suit” I add. Reed responds “I think many folks are gonna love that we made that one the early unlock for pre-orders. I figured a lot of people are going to be excited about that, so I use Weapon X!”
I just call that the Undies Suit, because that’s all I think of.”
Xenojay, Serial Yapper (XENOJAY.COM)
I then continue on about the odd helmet/cowl for the outfit, and Reed replies “For most of our suits, you can turn the cowl on and off. So that counts as a cowl! You can turn the helmet off”. As Logan is uncovered in his Weapon X suit, I pivot toward my coverage of music in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and how the team uncovered this. Marcus Smith said at the time, they wanted the sound of Thor Ragnarok for the game. Inevitably, the team thought “why not just reach out to the composer” and that’s how DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh ended up on the title. With that in mind, I ask who scored the Wolverine soundtrack and wondered what musical direction fits Logan’s darker themes.
“Widow’s Bay. The Last Of Us.
David Fleming.”
With that, Reed swiftly answers my question with two properties Fleming has worked on. “He really understands dark, emotional and nuanced music which brings some weight to it. At San Diego Comic Con a couple weeks back, we released the ‘Logan’ track. It’s fantastic. Give it a listen”. Which you should do, and can do here:
I had to respond saying I had missed this announcement. Especially as I really enjoyed the Ghost of Yōtei soundtrack. “That’s a beautiful soundtrack” remarks Reed. Similarly to Yōtei and its point in the past, I ask Reed how Marvel’s Wolverine handles the narrative around Logan’s age, fragmented memory and centuries of accumulated trauma.
I think being able to lean in to Logan not remembering much of his past was a really helpful narrative mechanic for us.”
Jess Reiner-Reed, Senior Project Director (Insomniac Games)
“We can allow the player to discover things and uncover mysteries along with Logan. We have things like the Nightmare Trials where after you complete one, optional content Logan reads through shows a kind of involved back story of something that maybe happened hundreds of years ago. Those are the kind of things we can dig into and Logan’s learning that with the player”.
“We also knew going into this, as I mentioned in the intro, that we didn’t want to make an origin story. It’s been done. But being able to meet Logan in a moment where he is trying to figure things out felt really exciting for our story”.
I picked up on a particular part of Logan’s long history during my playthrough in the Nightmare Trials. And I said that it was great continuity to see that part of his history mentioned in this optional content.
“I love that! I will tell our writers. As you can imagine, Insomniac developers, and especially the writers…Huge Wolverine fans. They did their homework.”
“I’ll say they they dove in because we wanted to be able to have things that maybe folks that know Wolverine well are going to find in those little tidbits. But to also have enough content where folks that are new to Wolverine can learn some some of his background. Put together pieces. And you mentioned Jean [Grey]. Logan and Jean are going to have a complex relationship here. They’re about to be very intertwined throughout this story.”
As I excitedly ate this up, I pointed out that I had caught a little Easter Egg referring to a certain person named ‘Slim’.
“There’s some things to notice in there! Yeah!”
Join us back here soon, for our final part of an interview with Jess Reiner-Reed for Insomniac Games Marvel’s Wolverine.
