Marvel’s Wolverine is not the open-world superhero romp fans have come to expect from Insomniac Games, whose previous comic book games like Spider-Man 2 featured city-sized sandboxes. I actually enjoyed Wolverine’s relative linearity because a shorter game with a smaller map is exactly what I wanted after over a decade of increasing bloat from open-world games. But for those still yearning for a big map to do acrobatic parkour and sidequests on, Wolverine’s more on-rails nature has been underwhelming. However, if you want a glimpse of what a larger game world for Insomniac’s latest release might have looked like, there’s a player who found a glitch that lets you break outside of Wolverine’s levels.
YouTuber Turned has posted a short video showcasing a point where you can climb out of the geometry of the level during the “One That Got Away” mission. There’s a building that, if you manage to time your jumps just right, Logan can climb over, leaving him free to walk through a larger, unfinished part of the map. You can run through the woods, find other areas in the small town Logan’s moving through, and also stumble upon some places Insomniac very obviously didn’t intend for players to see.
Some areas are not fully rendered and you can even fall through the ground. Overall, it’s clear players weren’t meant to be able to walk around here. You can also explore some areas that you’re not supposed to see until later in the level, though they don’t seem to trigger the actual combat encounters and missions that are there if you reach them in the intended way.
Turned also posted a video that shows you can do something similar in the game’s Tokyo section. It reveals some of the “video game magic” that exists to make a level look more lived-in from far away, like having cars that drive through the streets where the player can see them, but then drive straight into walls and despawn in the areas players aren’t supposed to be able to get to.
It’s cool to be able to see some of the environmental details Insomniac worked on that would otherwise go unnoticed. If you want a taste of a game that lets you explore a bit more than Wolverine does, you can find ways to break free if you look hard enough.