Jaime Griesemer, who left inFamous: Second Son developer Sucker Punch yesterday, has been hailed by studio director Nate Fox as "a very accomplished combat designer."
Griesemer is a former Bungie alum and brought with him a host of processes he'd learned making the Halo series for Xbox. Speaking to Eurogamer, Fox said:
"Jaime is a very accomplished combat designer. He really understands the feel of the way that the heroes' abilities interact with enemy AIs, and how enemy AIs can do intelligent things to test the player. The controller feel for Second Son has been revamped – it's more streamlined – and that's really Jaime's good work. A lot of the powers we have in the game come from a couple of programmers, and the streamlined interface is definitely Jaime."
inFamous: Second Son launches on Friday and it seems that without Griesemer's intervention it may have been a very different game indeed.
Elsewhere in the interview, Fox addressed the fact that Sucker Punch originally assumed that most players would choose the evil options in inFamous 2 and that when this didn't happen, they changed Second Son's entire set up.
"We looked at player trophies on PSN for inFamous 2. You'd get one if you got the evil or the good ending. 78 per cent of people decided to sacrifice Cole, so we said, alright, these are the votes. Whether they knew it or not, they were voting – and this is the way that the franchise will change. We view the series as being about choice and consequence, and it seemed relevant to make that a deciding factor."
Fox previously said as much and it seems that once again that the majority of inFamous: Second Son players will decide to be good but that doesn't mean the producer is annoyed with how things have turned out.
"I wrote the evil ending of the game to be the continuation. We worked on him for so long, and the world was in a good spot so that's what I was hoping it would be. I was definitely grumpy. But! I'm happy now that it ended up the way it did. With a new hero, new powers and a new story it's a lot easier for people who've never played inFamous to get into the series. You don't have to have played the first two games to get it. If you have played those games, you'll notice some references, and it'll be a deeper experience."
In the game, hero Delsin's powers will constantly shift based on player choice and Fox believes you'll probably have more fun being evil. To get the best of both worlds, you might want to play Second Son twice when it launches exclusively on PlayStation 4.
