[PS3] Infamous 2

[ultragpu]

I like the look of that ionic tornado, seems like a useful technique to use against the beast though it might unintentionally mess up your karma meter. 100 NPCs on the screen ey, awesome stuff, I wonder how many did Assassin's creed2 or GTAIV used in comparison?

 

[minimoke]

Are the screens in the scans in-game or bullshots because the textures and antialiasing look pretty awesome.

Any news regarding what engine Sucker Punch are using for this game? There was a rumour that they used a "cross platform" engine for the original InFamous that's why they had the limitied draw distance low-res textures etc.

The first game was awesome and I can wait for this one!

 

[RenegadeRocks]

The Cole art on the cover looks like the most embarrassing B-grade sitcom hero ever but , I must say, the Cole inside the article is the coolest rendition ever ! He looks phenomenal ! Wonder why Sucker punch chose that stupid as hell artwork for the cover(or GI did that !)

Looks like everything has changed for the better ! I had not voiced my opinion up till now as I wanted to see whats inside before I commented.

I say, dudes and dudettes, Sucker Punch seems to have packed a super punch this time around ! The new Cole , the one inside the articles, just ROCKS ! Yoohoo !

 

[messyman]

Eurogamer has some screenshots of the game, and it's looking quite good!

http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?game_id=13359&article_id=1150648&position=1#anchor

Hands on

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/infamous-2-e3-2010-hands-on

 

[patsu]

I'm still catching up on E3 content.

Missed Infamous 2 E3 trailer:

This looks like a leap over I1. It is also one of the few games I don't know how to integrate with PS Move.

 

[joker454]

Did they ever explain why they changed the main character?

 

[Squilliam]

Did they ever explain why they changed the main character?

I too would like an explanation, this is a +1 from me. I really liked the first one but without the main character I don't feel any real attachment to the game.

 

[nightshade]

They wanted to give Cole a new look....wanted to make him look athletic, since he is supposed to be an expert at parkor but the one in Infamous 1 didn't looked much of an athlete.

On the contrary the new Cole in Infamous 2 looks a lot younger & doesn't looks like he lost much in his life, which is odd considering what he had to go through in Infamous 1.

 

[tha_con]

Did they ever explain why they changed the main character?

2 reasons. In the first game, all of your hair is burned off in the explosion, and you pick up as cole a few days after that, so he has very little hair. In inFamous 2, his hair has grown out. The departure actually isn't significantly great, outside of a wardrobe change. The biggest alteration is the voice actor has been changed, which I think can be good.

Ultimately in the end, I don't think it'll have a considerable impact on anyones experience with the game.

 

[patsu]

Well, I think the team gave Cole a new look _and_ more positive personality.

Spoiler

I have read in GAF that there's time travel involved in I1; Cole's future has changed

.

If used well, the revamped character development can open up new possibilities too (more than destruction anyway).

Not sure if it's a good thing yet. It depends on the I2 story.

 

[joker454]

Ok, yeah I was just kinda curious. I thought the first Cole was just fine, style, voice and all. It's unusual to change the main character so I figured maybe they changed him for a reason that I missed, like maybe you were really playing his twin brother, alter ego, he was disguised for some reason, etc...

EDIT: Oh, I missed your spoiler patsu, ok well that could explain some of it. Interesting.

 

[KKRT]

New bullshots. Looks extremely impressive for open world game.

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3150/11finalk.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/8844/23final1.jpg
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/4452/26finalt1.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2953/28final.jpg
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/1349/31final.jpg
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2479/39final.jpg
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/153/40final.jpg
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/4636/58final.jpg
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/8467/66final1.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/2159/71final.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9396/75final1.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/435/78final.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8026/82final.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/8981/86final.jpg

This game needs AA so badly, really hope for MLAA, but probably it will be too expensive on their SPU schelude.

 

[JPT]

This game needs AA so badly, really hope for MLAA, but probably it will be too expensive on their SPU schelude.

That seems like a conflicting idea with other suggestions that they used a multiplatform engine and not a "tailored" engine for the PS3.

Is it known that they used the SPU's alot?

 

[Arwin]

That seems like a conflicting idea with other suggestions that they used a multiplatform engine and not a "tailored" engine for the PS3.

Is it known that they used the SPU's alot?

The original Infamous used a multi-platform engine. I'm assuming this one is going to do a whole lot more SPU stuff, but I'm not sure. However, I think they may well be able to add MLAA - they may just not have had it in their E3 build.

EDIT: wait, wut? If I look at some of the screenshots, MLAA seems to be there already.

 

[Bigduo209]

http://www.videogamer.com/news/infamous_2_visuals_in_same_ballpark_as_uncharted_2s.html

 

[messyman]

How do you find out if MLAA is in effect or not in a bullshot?
I remember seeing some of those shots from the trailer (the one Cole is running away from the chopper).

 

[Arwin]

How do you find out if MLAA is in effect or not in a bullshot?
I remember seeing some of those shots from the trailer (the one Cole is running away from the chopper).

Good point. The GAF thread points out some 3000x2500 shots for these, so it's probably just downsampled in this case, sorry.

@Bigduo, thanks for the interview! Very clear on using the SPUs obviously, and it also links to another E310 interview with more info, detailing among others lots of destructibility

 

[patsu]

You mean this E3 2010 interview:
http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/infamous_2/preview-2437.html

Q: Just how destructible will the environment be?

Brian Fleming: It's sort of like the rule for climbing, which is what looks like you should be able to climb on it, you should climb on it. So what looks like should break, we want to break. There's always going to be a line. We can't have you break the ground. We can't have you break the entire church. So there's always going to be a line. The thing that actually limited us more was the technical realities of making everything break, and we've dramatically increased the design of our breakable system such that we could support something like those verandas in high density areas. You're talking about thousands and thousands of individually breakable items. We designed the verandas and we did a demo to the team everyone was like, these are great! And the engineers are all like, oh my fucking God! That's our job, is to make stuff breakable.

Since we touched on AI in one of the tech threads:

Q: What about AI simulation? That takes a ton, doesn't it?

BF: It does. The things that move over really well, to get really geeky here for a second, are better done in batch, and that need fairly linear or simple access to memory. So, take for example, processing all the particle systems - Pretty simple, pretty linear. This particle system doesn't depend on that particle system. This particle system doesn't need to access a lot of memory to figure out it's just exploding and moving all these things. At most it might need some simple collision to figure out where the sparks bounce. Compare that to AI, which needs to do a lot of high-level reasoning, potentially access a lot of memory to figure out what spaces are available, to find out proximity to other objects so that I know if I want to step right, I need to know about you and you and I need to know about the environment, it's a lot of memory access. It's very, very bad for the SPUs, because the SPUs tend to be these big pipelines that you just want to cram information through. So post-processing a rendered frame, very, very much suitable for the SPUs. Less so on the AI stuff.

Read the full interview, they seem to like the SPUs a lot.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

I really think this drives a point home.

Q: Is there potential for you to continue to get more out of the PS3 throughout the rest of its life cycle, which is perhaps ten years?

BF: I think so. At some point everybody figures out most of the big stuff. But we're still figuring out big stuff. There was a check-in today, okay - I sent a mail about it - that was great. There was a big improvement in the performance of our light renderers - that was another thing we figured out, today. Bill Rockenbeck [programmer] back at the office - kudos to Bill by the way - he made a great check-in today taking advantage of some new stuff that we hadn't figured out before.

Great stuff!

 

[Ruskie]

Wow,they really torture poor spus Anyway,that 10yr cycle was to be expected,its like that with any console.