April 13, 2009

GameZone Talks it Up with Dan Vondrak about X-Men Origins: Wolverine
By: Steven Hopper

“…it was about being true to Wolverine’s character, and if that means lopping guys’ heads off or ramming claws into their chest, then that’s what it’s got to be.”

One of the most well-known and loved characters in comics, Wolverine has experienced a huge resurgence of popularity in recent years, largely due to his role in the X-Men film franchise, as played by Hugh Jackman. Now, the hero is getting his own origin story film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine with Jackman in the lead role.

Additionally, Activision and developer Raven software are hard at work developing a game based on the character and featuring plot elements from the film, as well as a sizable chunk of the film’s cast. However, the game is set to be not just another film game, as it sets out to give players the opportunity to play as Wolverine as never before. Players can take full advantage of his abilities and adamantium claws and attack enemies like a wild animal, ripping enemies limb from limb.

At a recent press event held for the game, GameZone got a chance to sit down with Dan Vondrak, Project Lead on the game, and ask him a few questions about the game’s development and how it relates to the upcoming film.

How much of the game’s storyline follows the plot of the film? How much did you guys create?

Dan: If you go see the movie, you’re pretty much going to see 90 percent of that movie content in the game. It’s really tied very closely to the movie, but we also added in another 30 or 40 percent on top of that that’s our side-story, with some comic book stuff in there. It’s really an interesting story; we started getting early versions of the script from Fox after we’d already started doing our version of the game, and we just started integrating both of those. Sometimes we’d find some of our ideas in these script updates coming from Fox [laughs]. We were never told officially that they were really inspired by us, but the two stories are almost the exact same thing, so they both flow together really well.

What kind of input did the film’s creators have toward the creation of the game?

Dan: Not a whole lot, honestly [laughs]. We took from the script what we felt was cool and appropriate. We’ve played through crappy movie games before where it wasn’t anything like the movie, but we didn’t want to be an exact copy either. So, we wanted to have all of these cool twists and characters and Marvel characters that aren’t in the movie. So Fox in the end provided tons of content for us, but it was never that they wanted this or that in the game from the movie.

The game is a lot more “mature” than many comic book games on the market, opting for a lot of blood and gore. What was the catalyst for that?

Dan: That just comes from us being huge Wolverine fans. I kid you not, I’m a huge Wolverine fan and we had seen some games that have just blown, to be honest. We wondered why no one had ever done this guy right, so we said “what if someone made the greatest Wolverine game ever?” We listed a few things on a whiteboard, like “regeneration” and “gritty, brutal” and we just said that we wanted to do something no one had ever seen before, and we decided to talk to Activision and Marvel about it.

Right away, Marvel was totally on board and they loved it. Activision and Fox were a little more tentative, and Fox to this day is pretty tentative about it. But once we said that we weren’t going to compromise, and that this was how we wanted Wolverine to be; this brutal, feral guy who busts out of Weapon X. We’ve seen him do this in the comics, and it’s important that we never said that we wanted to be bloody for bloody’s sake or just to be mature, it was about being true to Wolverine’s character, and if that means lopping guys’ heads off or ramming claws into their chest, then that’s what it’s got to be.

You guys had started working on a Wolverine game before you became involved with the upcoming film and this project evolved into it. What can you tell us about the inception of the game?

Dan: It originally started as us wanting to make a Wolverine franchise; that was our thought. It wasn’t like we wanted to throw everything from the comics into this one game; we really saw it as a franchise and we really wanted to take our time. We wanted to start it with the origin story and make sure that we tied in all of the recent work in the comics. So we knew that’s where we wanted to start, and it was all about getting certain key iconic moments in there, like the Sentinel and all of the flashback stuff; we wanted to tell some of the backstory that people maybe haven’t heard.

Originally we always wanted to tell a little bit of his past, but we also wanted to only tell a certain part of the story, in case we ended up making sequels to it, so this one ended up being the origin story. Then, when the movie game got involved we got a little nervous, but we felt better when we realized that they were making an origin story too. We loved Hugh Jackman in the X-Men movies, especially 1 and 2, I love those, X-Men 3 was ok. Hugh Jackman to me is Wolverine, and for millions of people out there he is Wolverine, so it was really cool once we started being able make him look like Hugh Jackman, and it was a cool opportunity, and that’s when we started to get excited about working with the movie guys.

Would you guys still consider making a franchise out of the game, even if there’s no sequel to the film?

Dan: Absolutely, 100 percent, we’re already working on ideas. Officially, no project has been greenlit and everyone wants to see how this one does first. It’s a big leap of faith, since it’s a comic book game and it’s going to be Mature rated. But this is the way it’s got to be done, I don’t care if it sells 10 copies or 10 million, we have to do this for the fans that are out there. We have some crazy ideas for number 2 and we’d love to be working on it right now. From the beginning, we thought that this wasn’t just some crappy “one off” movie game; this is a franchise. Wolverine is easily one of the two most popular characters in the Marvel Universe, up there with Spider-Man, and it’s nuts that no one has done him right, it’s just crazy, so let us do him right. So, we definitely hope it’s a franchise.

Did you guys get any input from Hugh Jackman in the creation of the game, in its production or otherwise?

Dan: Absolutely, we got a lot of voice work from Hugh, and from a lot of the cast. Liev Schreiber did voice work for Sabretooth, will.i.am playing John Wraith; all of those guys did voice work. They also did full body scans, and we got a full face scan of Hugh. We actually visited the set in Australia, which was awesome to see, and meet Hugh and talk to him about the game.

His actual input on the game was minor, but he was curious to see what we were doing with the game and he was on board with making it true to the character and the comics. His input was there for voice work and he’d change words, and story elements and dialogue. He’d say, “I think Wolverine would say this right here” and we’d go, “totally cool, you’re Wolverine dude, go with it” [laughs]. But as far as the actual production of the game, like level design and stuff like that, no he didn’t get involved, but he was still all about it when he was doing the voice thing. Some actors come in and they don’t like to yell the screams and stuff since it hurts your voice, and Wolverine does a lot of screaming, but he was doing take after take, he’d change up words and do more stuff, and it was like, holy cow, this guy is totally into this. He never wanted to take a break or anything, so it was pretty awesome.

Now that you guys have tackled Wolverine, is there another X-Men character that you’d like to do a spin-off for?

Dan: We would love to do Deadpool, I think, over anybody else. Gambit’s a close second, but I think Deadpool would just make a fantastic game. He’s got the swords, the guns, the teleportation deal, so I’d love to do Deadpool in that sense.

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