{"id":892557,"date":"2026-09-15T06:18:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/892557\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T06:18:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:18:21","slug":"wolverine-discourse-gets-toxic-over-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/892557\/","title":{"rendered":"“Wolverine” Discourse Gets Toxic Over ‘Gas’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Insomniac Games<\/p>\n

Insomniac\u2019s \u201cWolverine\u201d has now begun rolling out on PlayStation 5 platforms, the title arriving in the wake of good, but not great, critical reviews along with vocal discourse that got quite toxic over the weekend.<\/p>\n

The game has faced various successive online backlash campaigns. The root causes seem to stem from it being the first major PlayStation exclusive since Sony announced it was ending physical media for games, along with content farmers spewing outrage for monetised engagement clicks.<\/p>\n

This time last week, the project was being slammed for being \u2018too woke\u2019 because of an \u2018unsexy\u2019 Mystique design, an emasculated title character, and backlash against the title\u2019s linear narrative with a relatively compact twelve-hour campaign length.<\/p>\n

That seems quaint now in the light of the \u2018fart gas\u2019 debate which dominated social media all weekend, especially on X. The game has moments where Wolverine uses a \u2018scent trail\u2019 to track his prey, this being depicted in the game as a blue gaseous line.<\/p>\n

Early claims suggested the line was on \u2018all the time\u2019 throughout the game, a line deemed unnecessary because it\u2019s a linear game as opposed to an open-world one (and thus has a set path to follow). It\u2019s also built into the game with no way to switch it off via the Accessibility menu.<\/p>\n

That, combined with other elements like waypoint markers, white highlights and Wolverine\u2019s own dialogue, has seen social media flooded with claims that the game is being disrespectful to player intelligence and so hand-holding that it has been made for kids despite being a blood-soaked title for adults. <\/p>\n

Backlash quickly rose against that backlash, with clips going up proving the fart gas line only appears in certain scenes\/sequences in the game. Even Insomniac\u2019s Director of Community and Marketing, James Stevenson, weighed in saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt only is there when he\u2019s tracking a specific scent \/ sound (a person, whisky, or another clue scent) \u2013 story\/mission moments or when he catches whiff of a collectible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviews and people posting random clips are getting a flood of reactions even if they\u2019ve deliberately avoided the discourse. Debates are raging over accessibility options, gameplay mechanics for more casual players, and labels being thrown around \u2013 culture war grifters seeking profit, Sony fanboys bending the knee, and Soulsborne fanboys slamming anything that isn\u2019t a bloated open-world title that\u2019s basically a second job.<\/p>\n

With the game finally hitting stores, all eyes will now be on the sales figures and if any of this outrage has had an actual impact on sales \u2013 or if it\u2019s going to end up like the woke controversy over Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d which ultimately had no effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Insomniac Games Insomniac\u2019s \u201cWolverine\u201d has now begun rolling out on PlayStation 5 platforms, the title arriving in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,142132,134],"class_list":["post-892557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bigslider","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}