There’s a particular challenge that comes with playing Wolverine: The character has to sound like he’s been through hell, look like he’s been through hell and, preferably, move like he could walk away from hell without so much as a scratch.
For Liam McIntyre, bringing Logan to life through voice and motion capture performance in Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Wolverine meant figuring out all three.
During a three-hour preview event of the game at Insomniac’s Burbank headquarters, McIntyre talked to Deadline about the process of finding a Logan who still carries the grit that audiences expect from the iconic mutant while feeling grounded and distinctly his own.
“We wanted to make sure that this felt grounded and real, not too cartoony,” McIntyre said. “Something that still feels like Logan.”
What exactly does that process look like? McIntyre explained that he and the team worked through different vocal styles and degrees of gruffness to find the right sound for Insomanic’s Logan. As it turned out, however, he came to the role with a built-in advantage.
“Fortunately, his attitude and demeanor sort of fit in my rough-and-tumble kind of voice,” he said, adding with a laugh. “Years of asthma. Everyone else had to smoke, I just got asthma.”
The physical performance presented a different challenge. McIntyre had previously tackled demanding physical work on Spartacus, so when it came time to play Wolverine, his instinct was understandably to go all in.
“I was like, ‘Stunts. Let’s go. I’m going to do all this slice and dice,’” he recalled.
But motion capture isn’t quite the same as traditional stunt work. With face cameras also capturing his performance, McIntyre had to be conscious of how much he moved and how that movement affected the footage. Much of Logan’s physicality ultimately became a collaboration with stunt performer Seth Austin, who had also worked on Insomniac’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
“It was a real team effort,” McIntyre said. “My face and a lot of his body and his work in there. So, together, I think we made a pretty sweet character.”
What McIntyre found particularly compelling about this Logan, however, wasn’t simply the opportunity to put on the claws. This is a younger version of the character — “younger” being relative for a man who is roughly 200 years old — and one who begins the game having lost much of his memory.
After the amnesic event, Logan knows there is something buried in his past, but not exactly what it is. He doesn’t understand the source of his rage or why certain feelings continue to surface. He joins Team X alongside Mystique (Nicole Pacent), Sabretooth (Brett Gipson) and Nathaniel Essex (Troy Baker), while trying to make sense of himself and the baggage induced from his nightmares as he tries to form bonds with his found family – including Jean Grey (Krizia Bajos).
“He knows there’s something big behind him, but he doesn’t know what or why,” McIntyre explained. “He doesn’t know why he feels the way he feels or where this rage comes from a lot of the time.”
This uncertainty, McIntyre admitted, makes Logan more human. And he’s excited that the game will ultimately show fans of the character that “beneath the claws and healing factor is a character struggling with the question of who he is supposed to be.”
This isn’t to say that it’s all emotions and vulnerability. During the gameplay, Logan certainly gets his fair share of bloody kicks, deadly swipes, and claw impaling punches. McIntyre references them as a “bottomless rage.” He explains jokingly that sometimes the violence is necessary to prove a point. “Logan wants to protect people who cannot protect themselves, and perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t particularly like the person he can become when that rage takes over.”
Which, admittedly, is unfortunate, because it’s one of the coolest parts of the game’s mechanics. The angrier the Wolverine, the better the bloody visuals and power moves onscreen.
“I like that Insomniac and Sony started with the, ‘I ain’t no hero. I’m Wolverine,’” McIntyre said. “But, somewhere there’s a little bit of hope in him that maybe he could be someone better than that. I loved exploring that.”
With this being the first big solo Wolverine title, I ask what it feels like to be stepping into the pop-culture zeitgeist alongside Hugh Jackman, whose performance (even in the video game space) has defined the character for well over two decades.
McIntyre isn’t pretending that he has shoes to fill.
“Everyone on Earth knows Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, as you should because he’s phenomenal,” he said. Acknowledging that audiences will now be experiencing his story from inside the character, in an intimate fashion, guiding him along a journey instead of just watching how his story plays out in a cinematic universe onscreen is where the magic lies in his performance alongside Jackman. “What I’m really excited about for people now is that we get to tell a Wolverine story where you get to be Wolverine,” McIntyre says. “You get to experience being Wolverine.”
But when the fighting stops, he wants Logan’s story to stay with the player.
“I know this combat’s going to be sick. I know the experience is going to be sick,” McIntyre added. “But when you put that controller down, what do you feel? Are you going to feel something? Is it going to mean something?”
For a character who has spent centuries trying to outrun his past, perhaps the most interesting question is what happens when Logan finally has to face it.
Marvel’s Wolverine arrives September 15 exclusively on PlayStation 5.
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