Last night Sony finally re-revealed Insomniac’s highly anticipated next step in the Marvel gaming universe: trading the high-flying webslinging of their Spider-Man games for a gore-soaked soiree into the realm of Marvel’s mutants for Wolverine. While we learned that this is certainly going to be a much more gory take on the studio’s trademark action, we also learned that Wolverine will be including a few familiar faces, factions, and locales from the comics, too.
Of course you know who Logan is already—and just like Spider-Man before it, Wolverine will be remixing and reimagining comic book lore for its own unique spin on Marvel—but here’s a quick rundown of who’s who from the first trailer, and some important locations we know we’ll be visiting.
Where: Canada
Okay, this one might seem a bit obvious: most people know that Logan himself is from Canada, so it’s not too surprising that we’ll at least spend some of our time in Wolverine up in the chilly north of his homeland (a brief sign seen in the trailer points us more specifically around Squamish, in British Columbia). But what most comics readers may not be familiar with is the fact that the Canadian government has a pretty solid history in Marvel’s comics as being absolutely evil.
The Canadian government has long had branches to monitor and encourage official superhero activity, like Department H, the monitoring branch that operated the Canadian superteam Alpha Flight, but it’s also been repeatedly shown (especially during John Byrne’s legendary run on Alpha Flight) that Canada’s government is extremely corrupt and often up to no good, leading to its various heroes rebelling against the government’s machinations. There’s also the unfortunate bit that, perhaps more pertinent for Logan, where another shady department within the Canadian government, Department K, surreptitiously revived the Weapon X program after it had been shut down, conducting horrendous experimentation on subjects as it attempted to re-emulate the American government’s own plans to create the perfect supersoldier.
It was Department K that actually built on Logan’s own prior experimentation to give Wade Wilson Logan’s healing factor, turning him into Deadpool in the process (and getting their revived Weapon X program shut down). But given we know that the premise of Wolverine is going to focus on a confused Logan trying to recover his memories, it won’t be too surprising if going home doesn’t uncover some dark secrets about how he was forged into an adamantium-bonded weapon.
Who: Omega Red
Briefly seen tussling with Wolverine in the trailer, Omega Red—aka Arkady Rossovich—is another figure who has a long history with Logan, although for mostly very silly reasons. A Russian mutant serial killer, Rossovich was eventually arrested by Interpol and handed over to the KGB, who promptly tried to fashion him into Russia’s own answer to Captain America. On top of his own mutant abilities—the ability to secrete deadly pheromones known as “Death Spores” that could kill humans almost instantaneously—KGB experimentation gave Omega Red enhanced durability, strength, and reflexes.
But most importantly, he had two retractable metallic tentacles surgically implanted into his wrists. Made of carbonadium, the Russians’ attempt to create a proxy to adamantium, more malleable but also incredibly toxic. The tentacles slowly poisoned Omega, forcing him to use them in combination with his pheromone abilities to drain the life force of his victims in an attempt to sustain his strength. Told he would require a “Carbonadium Synthesizer,” a device that could remold carbonadium and stabilize the radiation poisoning it caused, Omega Red was eventually put on ice by the Russian government and deemed too dangerous to control, but he was eventually revived by Matsu’o Tsurayaba and the Hand and told to hunt down Wolverine, who allegedly knew where the synthesizer could be found, kicking off a beef Arkady would have with Logan and the X-Men on and off for decades.
However, it was actually true—while part of the Black Ops CIA-backed squad Team X, Wolverine, Maverick, and Sabretooth’s final mission on the team saw them steal the carbonadium synthesizer while recovering a CIA double agent, Janice Hollenbeck. Hollenbeck died during the mission, and Logan eventually stored the synthesizer in her coffin for a time. Omega Red has had access to the synthesizer here and there over the almost 40 years of comics he’s been around for, but regardless of it, he’ll always have a grudge against Wolverine, and that’s seemingly no different in this game.
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