14 DAY TRIAL // Sucker Punch Productions, the developer behind the upcoming Infamous: Second Son open world super hero game, will have a realistic version of Seattle as its main setting, not to mention smarter pedestrians that know how and when to run away.
Infamous: Second Son takes a departure from the core franchise in terms of main setting, as its action takes place in a real-world city, in the form of Seattle. Infamous 1 took place in the fictional Empire City, while Infamous 2 and its Festival of Blood expansion were focused on New Marais.
Second Son developer Sucker Punch is actually based in Seattle, so it made sense to set the game in the large city, as it already had enough knowledge about it.
The studio's co-founder, Brian Fleming, talked a bit with PS blog about the initial decision to use Seattle as a setting.
"It made a lot of sense to us, in this case, to do Seattle properly. For example, it’s pretty hard to imagine doing Seattle and doing a fictional Space Needle. Some kind of galactic tower just doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re just being provincial because we live here, but it seemed like it had to be the real Space Needle. And if it was going to be the real Space Needle, it had to be the real Seattle," he said.
Fleming even mentioned that lots of nuances and quirks from the real-life Seattle would be found in the virtual one, from street vendors to landmarks.
Besides being able to realistically recreate Seattle, Sucker Punch also managed to improve the AI behavior of pedestrians and non-playable characters, as they'll react much better to what's going on around them.
"The population of the city is a big part of how you gauge your progress in Second Son. The team working on that aspect of the game is always trying to make things more detailed and add more volume," Fleming said.
"We also want pedestrians to be intelligent. There’s a lot of combat in the game, and pedestrians do as pedestrians do in real life: run away! So when you’re in heavy combat, you shouldn’t expect to see lots of people wandering around. There’s a balance to strike between having the city feel lively, but also have pedestrians behaving realistically."
Infamous: Second Son is set to launch worldwide on March 21 exclusively for the PlayStation 4 from Sony. You can expect to hear more about it as we get closer to its release.