[GDC 2011] LittleBigFamous
inFAMOUS 2 takes a page from Sackboy with user-created missions, and we've got all the details.
Published: March 12, 2011
Well, you've got to hand it to Sucker Punch. The dev studio behind the upcoming inFAMOUS is clearly pushing hard to make leading man Cole McGrath's adventure in the New Orleans-ish city of New Marais something that's truly a step up from its predecessor. What we'd seen so far was relatively tame. Sure, Cole would have the choice between siding with "good" or "evil" characters, which would then provide the catalyst for his New Marais morality path, but it was more about getting ice or napalm powers in addition to his normal lightning-based attacks and using them in a new area.
Don't get us wrong, we're all about having new toys to play with; some of the powers in the original inFAMOUS were fantastic stuff (even if they tended to mirror standard weapons), but it turns out inFAMOUS 2 is much, much more than just a bunch of new ways to blow up baddies -- though we must say after playing through a short demo on both sides of the morality spectrum, the game is a hugely impressive leap over its predecessor even on just visual terms alone.
We'll get to that single-player experience in just a bit, but at the Game Developers Conference last week, we were treated to a rather impressive display of just how far-reaching Sony's whole "Play.Share.Create" campaign that began in LittleBigPlanet and spiraled out to stuff like ModNation Racers has become. The short version of the big secret the studio had been holding onto for the past two years is simple: user-created missions.
The reality of what they've created, however, is absolutely staggering. Sure, one can make things like races by simply finding an area in New Marais while playing the story mode, opening a menu and tweaking every object in the world or adding a bazillion new ones from enemies to allies using all the models in the game, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. We were shown four bite-sized examples of what could be made; a simple horde-style enemy wave suppression mission, another that was a race through rings across multiple power lines, a third that offered a kind of shooting gallery with raised platforms using Cole's new Electrokinesis ability to levitate and throw metallic objects and a final challenge that had us leading a charge on a cathedral to disarm a bomb.
All of these missions; Onslaught, Ring Race, Angry Cole and Save the Cathedral were designed to be one-off proofs of concept, but Sucker Punch also offered a peek at the kind of depth that would be allowed, including a platforming challenge over normally-lethal water using floating propane tanks. Concepts like shooting galleries, search and destroy missions, timed climbing challenges and more were thrown out, and initially it seemed almost like a way to remix what Sucker Punch was making (and indeed users can remix other user-generated levels, and those can in turn be remixed, though the original author is noted alongside the remixer)...
And then we saw it in action.
Don't get us wrong, we're all about having new toys to play with; some of the powers in the original inFAMOUS were fantastic stuff (even if they tended to mirror standard weapons), but it turns out inFAMOUS 2 is much, much more than just a bunch of new ways to blow up baddies -- though we must say after playing through a short demo on both sides of the morality spectrum, the game is a hugely impressive leap over its predecessor even on just visual terms alone.
We'll get to that single-player experience in just a bit, but at the Game Developers Conference last week, we were treated to a rather impressive display of just how far-reaching Sony's whole "Play.Share.Create" campaign that began in LittleBigPlanet and spiraled out to stuff like ModNation Racers has become. The short version of the big secret the studio had been holding onto for the past two years is simple: user-created missions.
The reality of what they've created, however, is absolutely staggering. Sure, one can make things like races by simply finding an area in New Marais while playing the story mode, opening a menu and tweaking every object in the world or adding a bazillion new ones from enemies to allies using all the models in the game, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. We were shown four bite-sized examples of what could be made; a simple horde-style enemy wave suppression mission, another that was a race through rings across multiple power lines, a third that offered a kind of shooting gallery with raised platforms using Cole's new Electrokinesis ability to levitate and throw metallic objects and a final challenge that had us leading a charge on a cathedral to disarm a bomb.
All of these missions; Onslaught, Ring Race, Angry Cole and Save the Cathedral were designed to be one-off proofs of concept, but Sucker Punch also offered a peek at the kind of depth that would be allowed, including a platforming challenge over normally-lethal water using floating propane tanks. Concepts like shooting galleries, search and destroy missions, timed climbing challenges and more were thrown out, and initially it seemed almost like a way to remix what Sucker Punch was making (and indeed users can remix other user-generated levels, and those can in turn be remixed, though the original author is noted alongside the remixer)...
And then we saw it in action.
