X-Men Origins: Wolverine Preview

We tend to take games for granted. We enjoy and care only for the end result - the game itself. Rarely do we consider the blood, sweat and tears that go into making a disc packed full of of electronic entertainment. Here, in the second part of our interview with X-Men Origins: Wolverine senior producer Jeff Poffenbarger (first part is here), he dishes the dirt on life at developer Raven Software, and what it takes to make the Wolverine game we've always wanted.

VideoGamer.com: Gamers love God of War. Do you think that when they play Wolverine they will be surprised because they will compare it to what they're used to with movie games, or will it be compared with God of War 1 and 2?

JP: I certainly think that people's expectations, and I'm confident even your expectations before you walked in here, are like, oh this is crap, it's a movie game, I know, I've been burned by this before. So it's really going to take people playing it and people downloading the demo, word of mouth kind of stuff, getting the word out there that the game is not complete crap, and it's not like your normal movie based game. That's certainly a hurdle. I'd love if reviewers give comparisons to God of War. That's how we want to be compared to games. Not just God of War but Ninja Gaiden, to all these great action adventure games. That's the kind of conversation we want to be in. We don't want to be in this movie suck, movie good conversation because personally I think the game transcends that. It can stand on its own. Obviously a partnership with Fox and using the likeness of Hugh Jackman and his voice, that's a huge win for us because that opens the door to a lot of people that maybe would not have bought the game. But the important thing for us is making a really really good game. As far as how that's packaged and wrapped, probably not so much important to us.

VideoGamer.com: Is Wolverine as good as God of War?

JP: It's hard to even make the comparison because it's been a long time since I've played a God of War. It's like saying is WoW better than EverQuest, or is EverQuest better than WoW? One of my first gaming experiences ever was playing EverQuest, and we got on a boat and went to an island, it was one of the most nerve racking experiences I've ever had in a video game. Now, after a while I started to get over it and I played WoW and I was like, wow this is great. But I never duplicated the experience I had when I played EverQuest, because EverQuest was the first one. So I'm not going to compare these two, but I know an experience like God of War 1, that's going to be a hard thing to ever duplicate, because it's just the first time you see something, and that's just innovation. The first time you see and play something and it creates these emotions in you. The next time you see that same thing it's not going to have the same emotional impact.

VideoGamer.com: Are you planning to do a demo?

JP: Yeah, right when we release. Demo's coming out of that level that you played (check out the hands-on preview here). It's going to come out at the same time as the game's released.

VideoGamer.com: It's a single-player only game. Was there any pressure to do any multiplayer?

JP: For us it was concentrating on the single-player experience. Once you start adding things into multiplayer and you're on a two years and four months schedule, that's not enough time to get both right. That's the way we felt about it. Now we feel like we have the single-player experience right, if we were privileged enough to work on a sequel for this that would be on the top of our list of the things that we need to add to the game.

VideoGamer.com: Part of what makes playing as Wolverine great is the knowledge that you are Wolverine, and there is only one Wolverine.

JP: Totally. Well you wouldn't be two Wolverines. It would be you and Deadpool or something like that. I'm not giving away any features, this is not happening right now, but it would be Sabretooth or Deadpool or something.

VideoGamer.com: Are you looking at doing DLC?

JP: I'm not at liberty to discuss what the plans are but there will be something.