Rumor: Marvel’s Wolverine Will Have Real-time Damage, Even AI Upscaling

Some leaked details for Marvel’s Wolverine suggest that the game will make use of advanced features, even features that aren’t possible on current PlayStation 5 hardware.

This is just part of the many details that have leaked as a result of Rhysida’s ransomware attack against developer Insomniac. We will discuss the leaked information below. We can’t ignore this news, but we will point out the way the information was obtained was particularly unethical.

You may want to consider this yourself before you go forward with reading this news. But, like Pandora’s Box, it isn’t possible for us to just close the box and pretend nobody found out what they did.

A screenshot was shared on reddit from one of many documents from the leak. This is what the screenshot said:

• Ziva: Film quality facial animation, muscle and cloth simulation
• Destruction 2.0: Hierarchical Destruction (Functional)
• Healing factor: Real-time damage and regeneration
• Real-time global illumination (Functional)
• Dynamic weather and foliage (Functional)
• Photogrammetry pipeline
• AI upscaling (Machine learning)
• Fluid dynamics (TBD) will be investigated
• Deformable surfaces: snow and mud
• Motion Matching: Improved locomotion

These are all very impressive technical details, but two items in particular emerged of interest.

Real-time damage and regeneration hints that the game will have a hyperrealistic depiction of Wolverine’s healing factor. We believe such a feature could have been possible in earlier generations, but current generation technology would make this look impressively realistic.

Of greater interest is AI upscaling, by way of machine learning. As shared on Reddit by user Fidler_2K,  the current PlayStation 5 hardware isn’t capable of machine learning. It doesn’t have the physical hardware, nor the capability to follow the instructions to execute machine learning as a command.

So, why would Marvel’s Wolverine have a feature that isn’t supported on its target hardware? One could say that this technology is being prepared for PC, but it doesn’t seem likely that Sony would greenlight such a feature for its smaller platform. Therefore, many fans have concluded that this is being prepared for Sony hardware that will support AI upscaling. That would be the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Now, it is notable that someone shared a rumor about a PlayStation 5 Pro with AI upscaling and machine learning support. Resetera user RandomlyRandom67 posted on December 8, 2023, that:

“XDNA2 NPU will be featured for the purpose of accelerating Sony’s bespoke temporal machine learning upscaling technique. This will be one of the core focuses of the PS5 Pro, like we saw with checkboard rendering for the PS4 Pro. Temporally stable upscaled 4K output at higher than 30 FPS is the goal.”

So that rumor now sounds at least a bit more credible than before, but we of course won’t know for sure until either Sony announces it, or these things release with or without these features.

It also suggests that Sony has put their eggs into the Marvel license. Let’s see if it works out for them.