Wolverine for casual gamers
THE NEXT LEVEL
Former Oklahoman Paul Benjamin is putting words in Hugh Jackman’s mouth.
Putnam City North graduate Benjamin wrote the “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” game for the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2. Benjamin, who now lives in Austin, Texas, talked to The Oklahoman about his X-perience recrafting Wolverine’s origin for game players.
Paul Benjamin
“The Wii/Playstation 2 version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine blends story elements from the Wolverine movie and the Xbox360/Playstation 3/PC version of the game with a dash of story elements unique to the Wii/PS2 version,” Benjamin said. “I don’t want to give away too much, but essentially, you play Wolverine’s origin as he loses his girl, goes after Sabretooth/Victor Creed for revenge, and gets his bones laced with the indestructible metal ‘adamantium.’”
Characters in the game include Wolverine, Sabretooth, Silver Fox, Deadpool, Blob, Wraith, Gambit and General Stryker. Because the Wii edition was aimed at more casual gamers, the amount of bloodshed in the game is less than what will be found in the “Uncaged” edition for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and personal computer, Benjamin said.
“Though both versions shared cinematics and followed similar storylines, many other elements of the game were taken in different directions,” Benjamin said. “Where the Uncaged Edition on the other consoles embraces the extreme violence of the Wolverine character, the Wii/PS2 version adopts a feel that is more in line with Wolverine from the three X-Men movies. There’s still plenty of fighting, but there’s almost no actual bloodshed portrayed in the combat.”
The Wii combat also took the specific advantages of the Wii controller into consideration.
“You use the Wii controller in a very kinetic fashion to throw doors open, for example, and to lunge across the room at an opponent in a way that is unique to the Wii,” Benjamin said. “Because this version was developed separately with these considerations in mind, many of the story details end up being different as well.”
Writing for a video game involves writing a lot of different dialogue for a lot of events that could transpire, depending on how the game is played out. While it’s complex, Benjamin, who also writes for Marvel Comics, says it’s very rewarding.
“You have to try to cover all bases,” Benjamin said. “Ultimately, the fun of writing for games is seeing how the gameplay designers apply your words to the game. The coolest part of writing for this game was hearing Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber delivering my dialogue as Wolverine versus Sabretooth.”
By Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman
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