Talking to VG247, Nate Fox, Game Director of Infamous Second Son at Sucker Punch, clarified that the game will allow havoc, rather than utter destruction.
We’re absolutely looking to let people create total havoc and we want to let people walk on the wild side, but also we don’t want to let people level the city to a flat parking lot because that’s not fun.
For instance, we don’t want to level a certain building, even if it might be a very rickety looking building, if levelling it means there’s nothing to climb on or no cover to hide behind. In general though, our contract with the player is if they think they should be able to do something we try to let them do it, so anything you think you can climb on we let you climb on, so that we maintain trust, and if something seems to you that you should be able to destroy it we try to let you destroy it.
It’s a solid concept, and I can easily get behind it. Even though I absolutely love destruction and the possibility to interact with the environment, if it was truly possible to completely destroy every building in a game, it’s likely that gameplay would suffer, rather than gaining from that; I’ve recently talked about something similar happening in Everquest Next, where the world heals itself after a while, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be as much fun if players could just raze the city of Seattle in the first 30 minutes of their playthrough.
Regardless, Infamous Second Son is looking as one of the strongest exclusives for PlayStation 4, and we can’t wait to get our hands on the game, which should be released during February 2014.
