The Marvel's Wolverine hand-holding row: what Insomniac actually said, and which assists you can turn down

By DayOneFix Editorial · September 15, 2026

Marvel’s Wolverine launched to a mixed critical reception and one specific argument. OpenCritic has it at 79 (“Strong”), Metacritic at 77 — the lowest for an Insomniac Marvel game — and the criticism reviewers keep returning to is how much the game holds your hand. The Scent Trail is where that argument landed.

What Insomniac actually said

This is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing, because the paraphrases circulating are wrong in both directions. James Stevenson, Insomniac’s director of community and marketing, on the Scent Trail:

“It only is there when he’s tracking a specific scent / sound (a person, whisky, or another clue scent) — story/mission moments or when he catches whiff of a collectible.”

Two things follow from that, and only two:

1. His answer is “it is contextual,” not “you can switch it off.” He is disputing the premise that it is permanently on, not announcing a toggle. Anyone telling you Insomniac confirmed an off-switch is reading something into that sentence that is not in it.
2. The adjustment he does confirm points the other way. Stevenson notes that Adaptations can be equipped to increase the scent detection radius if a player wants that. So the documented player control makes the trail more prominent, not less.

What the official settings list does let you turn down

Insomniac publishes a full settings list, and three entries in it are squarely aimed at hand-holding. None of them is named Scent Trail:

Mission Waypoint Display is the one worth knowing about. The middle value — R3 Hint — is the setting most people want and never find: waypoints stay hidden until you ask for them with a stick click. If “the game keeps telling me where to go” is your complaint, that is the switch, and it has a genuine Off as well.

The thing we are not going to tell you

The same list contains a feature called Navigation Assist: “Shows a direction trail towards nearest enemy or mission objective,” with its own colour and turn-speed settings, plus a Collectible / Interact Tracker shortcut that switches it from objectives to nearby collectibles.

A direction trail toward objectives and collectibles sounds like the Scent Trail. It may not be. Navigation Assist is listed as an accessibility feature and reads as opt-in; the Scent Trail is a story mechanic Logan has. Insomniac has not said they are the same system, and we have not played the game. So we are not going to tell you that turning off Navigation Assist removes the Scent Trail — that is the guess every other site will make today, and it is a guess.

What we will do is check it in the menus once we have hands on the game, and update this page with the answer either way.

If hand-holding is your actual complaint

Based on what is documented rather than what is rumoured:

• Set Mission Waypoint Display to R3 Hint or Off first. This is the biggest documented change and it is unambiguous.
• Turn Enable Reminders off and Tutorials down.
• Do not equip the Adaptations that increase scent detection radius.
• Leave Navigation Assist off — whether or not it is the Scent Trail, it is an additional trail you do not want if you are trying to reduce guidance.

Everything else in the accessibility menu moves in the opposite direction: it exists to add assistance, and none of it is on by default.

Related

• Gore settings and the difficulty sliders hidden in the accessibility menu
• Combat systems — Rage, Techniques, Adaptations
• Trophy list — 42 trophies, nothing missable
• Release time — the 18-region unlock table

Sources

Stevenson’s quote and the Adaptations detail are reported by Game Rant (12 September 2026). The aggregate scores and the characterisation of what reviewers criticised are from OpenCritic’s news post (12 September 2026). Every settings name and description is quoted from Insomniac’s own support article, What Accessibility options does Marvel’s Wolverine feature?. We have not played the game; nothing on this page describes behaviour we have observed.