One of the things that make superheroes who they are is they traditionally handle saving the world in a very clean manner. They try to not kill if they can help it, help every civilian in need, and want to make sure that they help the citizens of the area they’re protecting feel, well, safe and protected. This is a large part of why they’re so marketable to children, because the violence tends to be over the top action with bad guys typically being knocked out rather than killed — or, at least, leaving it very vague. However, not every hero falls into this mold.

Some heroes are inherently more violent, do not have qualms with killing anyone who gets in their way, and have an ends justify the means mindset. One hero who sometimes falls into this area of supering is the X-Men’s Wolverine. With a brutal backstory, metal claws, and near-immortality there have been many different versions of this Marvel hero. Cartoons, and the movies from the early 2000 to mid 2000’s, had him as a gruff but still fairly clean hero. While other versions of him have explored his more violent tendencies, particularly Hugh Jackman’s goodbye to the character in the R-rated Logan. The upcoming PlayStation 5 game, Marvel’s Wolverine, appears to be falling into the latter category.

The developer of Marvel’s Wolverine, Insomniac is coming off two major hits with Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and both games were rated T for Teen. However, they fall on the lighter side of a Teen rating because while there are some mature subtexts here and there, most of both games is fairly accessible to a younger audience. Marvel’s Avengers and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, developed by Square Enix, both receiving T for Teen ratings, and many felt it would be fair to assume that the upcoming Wolverine game would be doing the same. Not exactly! While he didn’t give away too much information, creative director for the game Brian Horton sent out a Tweet about what tone we can expect Wolverine to have.

Full size, mature tone

— Brian Horton (@BrianHortonArt) September 12, 2021

Simple and to the point! While it might seem obvious that Wolverine would have a mature tone, because it’s Wolverine, we have to consider how all the other Marvel games have been rated so far. They’ve been made to be accessible to a wider audience with Teen ratings. If this game’s rating matches its tone then this would likely be the first Marvel game to receive a mature rating since Deadpool received one in 2013, and definitely the first since they started taking more of an active role in the licensing of their games.