What does the allow you to do that might have been technically impossible, previously?

First is the amount of animation blending we're doing. Now of course Cole gets his share -- we're regularly blending 10 or more animations onto him, movement, head look, balance, "cycle-breakers", etc. But that's just Cole, there's only one of him. What about a scene with 25 peds and 10 enemies, all in a battle? Well all of them are blending a pile of animations too - and adjusting them all to their unique skeleton proportions live. Second is our visibility system that helps our rendering system determine which of the zillions of things it might need to draw, that it actually should draw. We do the entire system in real-time without any pre-computed portions, which means iteration for building the game is very efficient, and as a bonus any building could explode or disappear and the visibility system doesn't blink an eye.

The game is described as an action-adventure; but the player's actions carry an impact, and there are decisions to make along the way. Are there elements at play?

Certainly there's an RPG element to the game, though as with everything is the driver of the experience. This takes me back to your "feel like a super hero" question - we wanted your decisions to matter and have impacts.

Many of Cole's powers are linked to his karma, so the powers will upgrade differently as an Evil player than they will as Good - there's a ton to explore and try!

How do you build atmosphere in the game, adding to the cinematic feel we're anticipating?

We really wanted to blend the graphic nature of comics into our video-game-super-hero experience, and so a good deal of the atmosphere comes from those cut-scenes. In the game world, the designers, environments and characters teams spent a lot of time thinking about how to give a sense of despair and destruction to the city in a believable way. A lot of early experiments failed, but in the end a combination of grime, destruction, and lots of subtle animation work on the pedestrians helps Empire City feel like a city under quarantine.

How does combat in the game work?

There's both melee and ranged combat. The controls are generally quite simple, and there's no button assignments to make or powers chooser to wade through. There's base powers like melee and lightning bolts that shoot from Cole's hands. Then there's heavier powers, like shockwaves and even full lightning strikes. The heavier powers can drain Cole's energy reserves, but fear not, find a nearby source of electricity and recharge. They're everywhere!

Is there Sixaxis support planned?

Yep. You can direct your lightning strikes by tilting away!

Do you view as a long term project, with a story arc planned beyond the action we'll play out in the new game?

Absolutely. We're really pleased with how inFamous has turned out and are looking forward to telling more stories!

Thanks for your time!

By Luke Guttridge

  • inFamous
  • Platform: PlayStation 3
  • Publisher: Sony
  • Developer: Sucker Punch
  • Release Date: 2009