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Infamous: Second Son

How the Seattle riots influenced Infamous: Second Son

Game director Nate Fox on how he got teargassed during riots and how it influenced Infamous: Second Son and his opinion of society.

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One of the more interesting things about Infamous: Second Son is that developers Sucker Punch Productions allowed player choice to dictate which ending of Infamous 2 would become canon and set the basis for the third game. A majority of players went with the choice of sacrificing Cole - and we're left with a new protagonist, Delsin Rowe, in the sequel.

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"I'll be honest with you, I actually wrote the evil ending of Infamous 2 to be the one that would be the start of the third game," said Nate Fox. "But when I saw what players were doing I wanted to honour it, you know. The franchise is about choice and consequence, so while I was a little disappointed, in what players were choosing. I think it worked out in the end to be very, very good."

"Delsin is very much a compositive of what I saw players doing when I watched playtests of Infamous 1 and 2. These people were anarchist, man. I mean they would get inside of the open world and they would just break stuff and they'd run around causing mayhem. But then they would always heal civilians or they would try and be conscious of what they were doing. So in thinking about Delsin he's the personification of freedom. He's that open world mayhem guy that is exactly what you do as a player. And because he's so similar to what I saw as the sort of base open world player, there's no distance between you and him. You kind of can identify with the story, because it's so similar to what people do in these games."

With Sucker Punch Productions located near Seattle, Washington, the new game is certainly a lot closer to home for the developers than what the previous games set in fictitious cities have been. And as the game in the city is under siege by the DUP it's easy to draw comparisons to when the world's eyes turned to Seattle as protests and riots broke out during a WTO (World Trade Organisation) meeting in the city:

"Being involved in those riots [protests of the WTO ministerial conference, 1999] in Seattle. Actually being there and getting teargassed changed my opinion a lot about what it means to be safe in a city," said Nate Fox. "And also I would see people inside a cluster of the town where there were no police and some folks would be kicking in windows and rioting and that the everyday person would be giving out food or water to help wash your eyes out of the gas. Makes you think that society is really good and kind, but that it's a fragile thing. So we kind of have a responsibility to reinvent it and trust in other people's kind of inherent goodness."

Infamous: Second Son is released on PlayStation 4 tomorrow and you can expect the review here on Gamereactor later today.

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Infamous: Second SonScore

Infamous: Second Son

REVIEW. Written by Jonas Mäki

"Sure, it would have been better with more varied missions, but ultimately Infamous: Second Son lives up to and surpasses its predecessors."



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