The city's famous Pink Elephant Car Wash even plans to sell Second Son in its store. Of course the iconic Space Needle makes an appearance, and many businesses embraced the idea of being in a video game.
On the PS4, Sucker Punch created detailed shaders and effects to accurately mimic drenched buildings, fog-covered landscapes, even reflections in puddles. Dociu described reference gathering as "photo safaris," during which the team snapped pictures of bricks, wear-and-tear, graffiti, even recorded the bustle of city traffic and the chirp of local birds. So detailed in fact, the developers needed the most accurate reference material possible, so they chose their own city of Seattle. With the PS4's improved graphics capability, the team could create settings, textures, and weather effects with stunning detail that would have been impossible on previous systems. Once the team saw its first official kit, things came together quickly.
Infamous second son Ps4#
These improvised rigs gave the devs an idea of what the PS4 might be like. "It doesn't matter what system it is, if you're working on it and it isn't built yet, nothing works." For a year, the team worked on what Zimmerman described as "Frankenstein, homebrewed dev kits"-consoles hacked together with commodity hardware and bits of Sony technology. "It was a complete pain in the beginning," Zimmerman says. "We weren't flying blind, we just didn't have the exact specs."īuilding Second Son, at least in the early stages, still came with headaches and frustrations. "We had a lot contact with the hardware team and were giving input into a lot of the requirements," Dociu says. But in August 2011, Sucker Punch suddenly became an insider after Sony purchased the then 14-year-old game studio. There was just one problem: the PlayStation 4 didn't exist yet. " I was at a really good point where I could help shape the direction of the story … this one was almost like a new game." "Because of the new console, the engine was being built from scratch," Dociu says. That's where we started-a new protagonist with a new story to tell."įor Dociu, who joined Sucker Punch during early production on Second Son, it was perfect timing. The thing that requires more conscious effort is making a game that works well for people who've never played an inFamous game before. "Just by our natural impulses, we'll build a game that's great for the franchise. "We weren't building a game for fans of inFamous but for people who were buying a new platform," Sucker Punch co-founder and technical director Chris Zimmerman says. But from the beginning of development on Second Son, Dociu and the other 110-plus members of Sucker Punch knew that the third installment of the franchise needed something fresh. Wandering the streets of Empire City and New Marais, inspired by New York City and New Orleans, Cole is reluctant and sees his new lightning-powered gift as a curse. The first two titles in the series, inFamous and inFamous 2, followed the exploits of Cole MacGrath, a bike messenger-turned-superhero who must choose whether to use his new abilities for personal gain or for the greater good. It's complete freedom, and Second Son is only the beginning. Combined with industry-leading particle effects and motion capture, the game is a visual spectacle.įor developers, the new generation of consoles isn't just about graphics, teraflops, or pixels per inch. Second Son is one of the first big budget (AAA) titles to take advantage of everything the PS4 has to offer. For the past two and half years he has been the art director at Sucker Punch Productions, where he's dedicated his creative efforts to building the best-looking console game ever: inFamous: Second Son. "It was this whole weird abstract way of working where the artistry came through in how you cleverly you got around these preposterous limitations," he says.ĭociu doesn't have that problem anymore. He remembers creating entire fronts of buildings with just 32x32 pixels or a train engine with only 22 polygons. Horia Dociu's first job in the late 90s was adding textures to store fronts in video games.