Can You Turn Off the Scent Trail?

The scent trail became the loudest complaint of launch week — Skill Up's review criticism of it drew tens of thousands of agreeing votes, and the clips circulated with the nickname "fart gas". Insomniac's first response was a defence, not a setting.

Community director James Stevenson explained that the trail "represents Logan's canon mutant super senses and elite tracking ability. 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." At launch there was no menu entry that disabled it.

Three patches later, that has reversed:

Full notes for every patch are on our update history page.

On the current version, every guidance layer that people complain about has some form of control. They are not all in the same place, which is why players still report "I can't find the option":

Two catches from Insomniac's own notes. First, the Whisky Finder and Crate Finder Adaptations override the Senses settings — if either is equipped, the collectible trails come back regardless of the toggle. Second, the 1.001.006 toggles covered collectibles only; Insomniac said story-critical Senses would still appear, citing tracking "Red" during The One That Got Away. The story trail control arrived separately in 1.002.001, and it lives on a button rather than in the Senses menu.

Navigation Assist is still worth knowing about: it draws its own direction trail and is on by default, so a large share of the "the game is leading me by the nose" reaction was always two trails at once.

All of these sit in the pause menu rather than the PS5 system settings:

1. Press Options to pause, then open Settings.
2. Under Gameplay → Senses, switch off Whisky Bottle Scent Trails, Material Crate Audio Clues and Nightmare Door Roots individually. Each is independent.
3. For story tracking trails, use the Hint button (R3 by default) in play, per update 1.002.001. If nothing happens, check your version first — see the bottom of this page.
4. Under HUD, find Mission Waypoint Icons and set it to R3 Hint or Off.
5. Under Accessibility (or Gameplay, depending on build), find Navigation Assist and switch it off. The Navigation Assistance Turn Speed slider and the trail colour option are directly beneath it.
6. Turn Tutorials & Reminders down or off once you know the parry timing.

Navigation Assist can also be retargeted rather than disabled — it will point at collectibles or nearby interactables instead of the mission objective, which makes it a cleanup tool for a second sweep rather than a story-mode crutch.

Stevenson's description is accurate but easy to misread. The trail appears when Logan is tracking a scent — the catch is how often that is true in a normal playthrough.

Two things keep triggering it. First, tracking sequences are a recurring story beat rather than a one-off, so a large fraction of traversal between fights is technically a tracking segment. Second, the trail also fires for collectibles: whisky bottles announce themselves with a blue trail whenever you walk within detection range, and there are 20 of them plus 68 material crates scattered through the levels.

So the honest framing is that the trail is conditional, but the conditions fire constantly. That is the gap between Insomniac's explanation and the player reaction, and both descriptions are true at once.

One thing to be aware of if you are trying to reduce the effect: two Adaptations, Crate Finder and Whisky Finder, extend collectible detection radius and mark items through walls from a distance. Since 1.001.006 they also override the matching Senses toggles, per Insomniac's patch notes.

They are genuinely useful for a completion sweep — our collectibles guide recommends them for exactly that. But if the trail is what bothers you, unequip them: with either one slotted, switching the setting off does nothing for that collectible type.

Conversely, if you have given up on turning it off and want the collectibles done fast, equip both and let the trail do the work. The Adaptations guide covers where they sit in the tree.

On September 19, 2026, four days after launch, patch 1.001.005 reduced the opacity of the Scent Trail and Audio Sense indicators and said Insomniac was continuing to evaluate improvements to Senses, including toggleable options in a future update. "Evaluating" turned out to mean six days.

1.001.006 (September 25) delivered the collectible half: three independent toggles under Settings → Gameplay → Senses, defaulting to on. 1.002.001 (October 6) delivered the story half, with Insomniac's summary that "players now have more control over the visibility of Scents, Audio Cues, and Nightmare Roots based on community feedback."

The design reason it came in two steps is the same one Stevenson gave at launch: the story trail is load-bearing. Tracking sequences use it as the only directional cue, so it went on a button you can press when you want it, rather than becoming a menu setting you could forget you had turned off.

Almost every "the option isn't there" report comes down to version. The game does not show its version in-game; check it from the dashboard:

1. Highlight Marvel's Wolverine on the PS5 home screen.
2. Press Options → Information.
3. Below 1.001.006: no Senses menu. Below 1.002.001: no story trail toggle. Use Check for Update.

The same 1.002.000 update that preceded the story toggle also switched the game to Sony's new QSSR upscaler on base PS5, so it is worth being current for the image quality alone.

If the goal is the cleanest possible screen while keeping the game playable:

• Senses (Gameplay): Whisky Bottle Scent Trails, Material Crate Audio Clues and Nightmare Door Roots all off
• Story Scent trails: toggled off with the Hint button (R3) — tap again if a tracking section stalls
• Mission Waypoint Icons: R3 Hint
• Navigation Assist: Off
• Tutorials & Reminders: Off after the first two chapters
• Crate Finder / Whisky Finder Adaptations: unequipped, because they override the Senses toggles

That combination is what the players complaining about visual noise were asking for at launch, and it has only been fully possible since October 6. For the rest of the options menu, including the graphics modes, see our best settings page.