Canada is one of the three headline settings in Marvel's Wolverine, and Insomniac has been specific about where in Canada it is. Creative director Marcus Smith ruled out Alberta directly, said the game is mostly West Coast, and confirmed outright that the team decided to use Vancouver for one of the mission areas.
Landmarks
Landmarks identified in the extended gameplay footage back the choice up. Smith confirmed the sulphur pile directly, noting how confusing it is to see a giant yellow pile like that.
Landmark | Detail |
|---|---|
The waterfront sulphur pile | Confirmed on the record by the creative director. Appears in gameplay footage |
North Vancouver | Identified in footage and named in the studio's reference-gathering account |
Canada Place | Identified in the extended gameplay footage |
The Vancouver Lookout at Harbour Centre | Identified in the extended gameplay footage |
Squamish | Named on highway signage in footage, and named as a reference-gathering location |
What happens here
The extended gameplay footage contains a highway set piece in which Logan rides a motorcycle through a Reaver convoy, slashes tyres, hurls enemies off the road and leaps between moving vehicles while fighting Reavers and Brutes. An earlier mission set in Vancouver also features a Sentinel, which in-game dialogue presents as a smaller version of the Sentinel Prototype fought later. See Bosses.
Callisto's journal
Vancouver holds at least one piece of optional content of its own. A journal belonging to a character named Callisto can be read in her garage here. The journal is named through the game's own trophy data rather than through a trailer or an official post, and it is the only published detail about either the character or the garage. Nothing else about Callisto has been published: no role, no affiliation, and no appearance in any released footage. See Trophies and Collectibles.
How it was built
The research ran the opposite way round from how it might look. Insomniac chose the settings for narrative fit first and then researched them, helped by the fact that art director Gavin Goulden lives in British Columbia; one reference photograph of the sulphur pile came from an artist's holiday. Reference was gathered around Squamish, North Vancouver and Whistler, and Goulden has called the game's Vancouver an artistic rendition rather than a reproduction. See Technical Features and Performance.
The rest of Canada
Official copy describes the setting more broadly as the frosted Canadian wilderness, and the snowbound highway and snowfield fights shown so far sit in that register rather than in the city itself. Canada is also the country the campaign opens away from: the game starts in Telambang before moving here. See Locations.