The Evolution of the Militia (from GameInformer)
Creating enemies for a game isn’t as easy as just sketching out something that looks cool. Video game designers want their characters to have personality. Art teams sweat over every little accessory they design for a character, and create elaborate back-stories to inform their decisions. Sucker Punch game director Nate Fox gave us an exclusive behinds-the-scenes look at the creation of one of Infamous 2’s new enemy gangs: The Militia.
“The Militia is a group of redneck guys who, in their free time, like to get pretty drunk and do a lot of hunting. As a byproduct, they are into all this hunting gear. After the events of Infamous, where the Ray Sphere blows up, strange things start to happen along the Eastern Seaboard, and people start manifesting weird abilities. These Militia guys are all about human purity, and they get angry at the idea that people are changing. They don’t want their country overtaken by super humans. They don’t want their city taken from them.”
“They idolize military organization, even thought they are not themselves associated with the military. They try to dress in the fashion of their idols. They’re also hunters, so they have a lot of pouches and whatnot. They want to be faceless, so they have these executioner-style masks. In their mind, these guys are doing the dirty work that needs to be done to keep humanity on top.”
“The inspiration for these guys is that they are kind of a combination between the KKK and Batman. Now when I say KKK, I don’t mean that they are racists, but that they are a kind of secret group that does things that are illegal. Because they believe in these strict values, they are willing to throw legality out the window and do things that – by most people’s standards – are pretty horrible. So if you marry that with vigilantism – you know how Batman gears up and says, ‘screw it, I’m going to take back this city.’ That’s the Militia.”
“The guys with the compound bows have some of the coolest weapons, but they aren’t quite as useful as guns. There is a large part of me that says, ‘Man, I love those bows, but how are we going to get them to trump an AK47?’ I don’t really have an answer for that, but I know I love them, and they definitely project that hunter vibe.”
“We didn’t want them to look particularly military-like. There are a lot of games that feature military opponents or near-future military opponents, and the men that are in this Militia grew up in New Marais. They are a product of this town, and they are going to defend it with their lives. They’re going to fight to keep it the way that they think it should be, so they are kind of more everyday people. They don’t have any super powers. They are human purists.”
“Variety is the spice of like. Generally speaking, we like to try and get a bunch of different visual elements to all hang around a theme. In a lot of other video games, we feel like you see a lot of enemies that are under one camp, and there isn’t a lot of visual variety to them. Like if you ever watched GI Joe as a kid, remember how all of the Cobra guys all dressed the same? That’s not really ideal. These are people – they are individual people. They don’t all come out of a factory looking identical.”
Anatomy of (the new) Cole
Creating New Marais (from GameInformer)
In a lot of games, the environment is just a backdrop for the action. Sucker Punch knows that the city in Infamous 2, however, will need to serve a great purpose. It needs to be a part of the action. Since Infamous 2 is an open-world game, and since players will be repeatedly passing by certain landmarks, its city needs to have a unique visual identity that feels fresh even after several hours of exploration. And since players will also be climbing over every window and chimney in Infamous 2’s fictional New Marais, Sucker Punch has to make sure its city is solidly constructed. How does the team balance all the challenges of making a fictional world against ensuring that its game will be fun? We talked with Sucker Punch’s art team, and they ran us through the elaborate process of building a city from scratch.
Scouting Party
When the team first started work on Infamous 2, they knew they wanted a city that was visually distinct from the first game’s Empire City. The team looked at some international cities like London and Johannesburg, but ultimately settled on the city of New Orleans because it offered a good diversity of urban districts and unique architecture. New Orleans is alive with its array of vegetation and swampland, but it also offers some vibrant culture zones such as its above-ground cemeteries and the colorful French Quarter. The team also felt that New Orleans’ verandas and small alleyways would offer some unique platforming opportunities.
Painting The City
After a location is picked, the team immediately starts collecting art reference materials for all the various city districts they’d like to see in the game. Whatever can’t be referenced with photos will be sketched out by internal artists. The fun part of building a new city is combining various art styles. A traditional gothic structure might not fit perfectly into Infamous 2’s world, but if they team mixes gothic traditions with Victorian or Spanish flourishes they might end up with something that is visually striking and fun to climb over. Another challenge will be blending the various districts within New Marais. In a real city there are several miles between a city’s slum district and its financial center, but for a game the team will have to blend these two zones together in only a few blocks, and they’ll have to do it in a way that doesn’t seem jarring to the player.
Hex Marks The Spot
Since Sucker Punch is a relatively small team, it has to creatively use its manpower to create a city where every district feels different. New Marais is broken up into a grid of hexes. These hexes are modular, so they can be moved freely around the city. Roads and alleys generally run along the sides of each hex, with the buildings, shops, and other structures taking up their center. What this means for practical purposes is that Sucker Punch can duplicate a few base hexes then move them to other parts of the city; after both sections of the city have been built up with additional aesthetic trimmings, players won’t notice the duplication.
Bringing It All Together
Once the city has been roughed out, level designers will come in and start placing missions within the environment. At this point, the team will add extra accessories to the buildings, such as extra platforming pieces or wires for Cole to grind between buildings. In some cases buildings might have to be reworked to accommodate a specific mission. In this way, artists and designers go back and forth, lowering and raising a structure or adding more platforms for Cole to climb on until they feel that the game has reached a fun balance. Sucker Punch told us the whole process to create a city from scratch takes about two weeks. Of course, they started laughing at us immediately after that.
The New Abilities of Cole MacGrath
Many games build your protagonist's abilities over time, making you more and more powerful until you deal that final blow to the end boss. However, many of these games also strip you of those powers as soon as you start the sequel. It seems that no matter how many times she's used them, Samus always has to reacquire her Morph Ball and Ice Beam. Infamous 2 doesn't want to do that...Cole is a bonafide superhero by the end of the original game, and the sequel wants you to feel more badass than ever before.
Considering that Cole is an electricity-based superhero, the first game hit all the right notes - you could shoot lightning from your palms, throw lightning grenades, hover through the air via static electricity, grind on electrified train tracks and power lines, and even summon giant lightning storms. With all of those powers already in Cole's arsenal, where else is there to go?
New Melee Combat
While the first game did include melee attacks, many players found them too basic and stuck to Cole's electric powers. With Infamous 2, Sucker Punch is making melee far more useful, and (more importantly) more fun. Close-quarters skirmishes will be presented with a more dynamic camera that brings you closer to the action, and you'll have at least one new toy to play with. Your buddy Zeke acts as a sort of low-rent Q from the Bond films, supplying you with new equipment. One such invention is what Sucker Punch described to us as the "tuning fork" (not its final name). It extends Cole's natural electric current via the use of two parallel metal pipes. Getting hit in the skull with a metal pole is rough enough, but Infamous 2 makes it even more brutal thanks to your protagonist's power.
Enhanced Navigation
One of the many great things the first Infamous did was present an open world that was a blast to get around in, despite its lack of vehicles. Gliding through the air and zipping across power lines at inhuman speeds was a blast, making exploration something to look forward to instead of a chore. Infamous 2 takes that even further by allowing Cole to zip alongside buildings both horizontally and vertically. Let's say a highrise apartment building has a metal pipe that runs down its entire side. You can position yourself at the bottom and use an induction grind (placeholder term) to fly to the top without having to slowly climb to the roof. The same concept applies to buildings with metal siding. In addition to the new electricity-based travel options, Cole's parkour animations have been expanded upon and enhanced.
Ionic Vortex
Ok, so it's a tornado. However, it's also a lightning tornado, so we'll give a pass to its fancy name. This brutal ability can cause chaos to your surroundings, enemies, and anything else that is unfortunate enough to get in the way. It seems to be on par with the lightning storm's power from the first game, so we're expecting to see it appear late in the story. We got to see a glimpse of it in action as Cole summoned the ionic vortex to handily dispatch of a pesky attack helicopter.
Smaller Tweaks
While electric pipes and lightning tornadoes are pretty sweet, Sucker Punch is making several subtle tweaks to improve how you use your powers. One such example is the way you'll see the action while performing Cole's basic lightning strike. He used his right hand in the original, which took up a small portion of your view. This time around, he'll be blasting foes from the left, allowing for a larger view of the action. Proving that he's somewhat ambidextrous, he'll now be able to shoot the second part of a one-two lightning strike utilizing his right hand.
While these are the abilities we've seen so far, Sucker Punch still has plenty of tricks up their sleeves. Tearing through Empire City with the original Cole was a blast, and it's looking like Infamous 2 will give fans even more of what they loved.
Gameplay Trailer Analysis
InFAMOUS 2 gameplay video was leaked today and we suspect it’s the GTTV footage scheduled to be shown tomorrow which got leaked. Gamersmint does a full analysis of the trailer.
What an action packed trailer it was! The game shows off a newly designed Cole along with what we suspect an entirely new game engine. The visuals looked really good even in this low resolution video. This time Cole has a lot of new tricks up his sleeves to play with. New powers were shown including a massive tornado attack which took out a helicopter along with everything else in its path. Cole seems pretty agile in this game and he was seen grinding on wires atop buildings and poles.
A new backward roll skill to avoid attacks and even Cole’s gliding action flight ability in air from the first game has been brought back into this one. It was one of the most fun things to do in inFAMOUS and it’s great to see it making a comeback. The city looks so much better now, with beautiful lighting effects thrown in, destruction and particle effects has also improved a lot. The redesign of Cole feels good, but his voice did feel a bit awkward, hopefully it grows on us later.
The game seems to be running on significantly upgraded tech; there were a lack of jaggies, which suggests the use of morphological anti aliasing effects. There were some frame rate issues in the video but we heard that Sucker Punch is pushing for 60 fps, which is simply brilliant if they can pull it off successfully. Now such a significant leap from the first game truly shows the skill and caliber of Sucker Punch as a studio, working on a tough architecture of the Playstation 3.
If the Alpha footage looks this good then we can’t wait for it to be shown in all its glory next year. They have almost a year more to polish the game which gives them ample time to impress. There is still a lot of work to be done to reach Uncharted 2’s visual quality but after viewing today’s gameplay video, we believe that Sucker Punch have it in them to do just that when the game ships out in 2011. This might very well be a GOTY contender PS3 exclusive next year and we can’t wait to use our new found superhero powers once it’s out.
