'inFamous Second Son' - Delsin uses smoke powers

What would happen if an ordinary person was given extraordinary powers? This simple question has been the basis for countless novels, comic books and movies, but in 2009, Bellevue-based game studio Sucker Punch put its own spin on it by putting players in the shoes of Cole MacGrath, a simple bike messenger who gets a set of electricity-based powers after inadvertently setting off an explosion, and bouncing between the forked paths of good and evil.

Next month Sucker Punch will release the third game in the inFAMOUS franchise, inFAMOUS: Second Son, which introduces a new protagonist with a whole new set of powers. Delsin Rowe (voiced by Troy Baker) is a rebellious 24 year-old Native American street artist who can't stop getting into trouble. This problem increases exponentially when he gains the power to manipulate, direct and transform himself into smoke.

Cue a brand new open-world environment ripe for a series of super-powered battles. inFAMOUS: Second Son is very close to home for Sucker Punch, who set the game in Seattle and filled it with real-world landmarks and businesses. Today the studio is celebrating as producer Brian Fleming announces on Twitter that inFAMOUS: Second Son has gone gold, meaning development is complete and the game is ready for distribution.

inFAMOUS Second Son - neon power

Together with Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch will play a key role in attracting fans of narrative-based singleplayer games to the PS4, since the studio has been producing Sony-exclusive games since 2002. The fact that a third game is also on the way also means that the inFAMOUS franchise ended up outliving Prototype, the other superpower sandbox game that came out in 2009 and ended up being compared to inFAMOUS many times over.

In an opposite trajectory to Prototype, which hit a high with the first game before going horribly and catastrophically downhill in Prototype 2, the slightly wobbly inFAMOUS was followed up with a solid sequel in inFAMOUS 2, which tightened up the writing and even managed to add some nuance to the binary moral choice system at the heart of the game. inFAMOUS: Second Son's trailers have certainly been very promising, even if Delsin's primary attack still looks as underpowered as Cole's, and his ability to absorb the powers of others means that there's plenty of scope for Delsin to gain new and interesting abilities.

inFAMOUS: Second Son will be available for PS4 from March 21, 2014.

_____

Source: Brian Fleming