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 responded directly.

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."

The practical consequence: there is no menu entry that disables it, because from the design side it is a story mechanic, not a difficulty or accessibility setting. It is the one guidance element in the game with no toggle.

Most of what people describe when they say "too many guide lines" is not the scent trail at all. Three separate systems can overlap on screen, and two of them are fully adjustable:

The middle setting is the one worth knowing about. Navigation Assist draws its own direction trail, and it is on by default — so a large share of the "the game is leading me by the nose" reaction is actually two trails at once. Turning Navigation Assist off removes one of them, and the difference is immediate.

The R3 Hint setting for waypoints is the middle path most players end up on: markers disappear from the screen, and you tap R3 when you genuinely want a pointer.

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

1. Press Options to pause, then open Settings.
2. Under HUD, find Mission Waypoint Icons and set it to R3 Hint or Off.
3. 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.
4. 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.

They are genuinely useful for a completion sweep — our collectibles guide recommends them for exactly that. But if the trail is what bothers you, do not slot them during a first story run, because they widen the range at which the trail starts firing.

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.

Nothing has been promised. Stevenson's statement explained the design intent rather than announcing a change, which is not the same as ruling one out — Insomniac has a history of adding requested options after launch, most visibly New Game Plus in Spider-Man 2.

The counter-argument is that the trail is load-bearing. Remove it entirely and tracking sequences lose their only directional cue, which would need a replacement rather than a switch. A more likely outcome is an intensity or opacity slider than a straight on/off.

We will update this page if a patch note says otherwise, rather than speculating about a timeline.

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

• Mission Waypoint Icons: R3 Hint
• Navigation Assist: Off
• Tutorials & Reminders: Off after the first two chapters
• Crate Finder / Whisky Finder Adaptations: unequipped on a first run
• Scent trail: unavoidable — but with the above, it is the only line on screen instead of one of three

That combination is what most of the players complaining about visual noise are actually asking for, and it is available on day one. For the rest of the options menu, including the graphics modes, see our best settings page.