Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Eurogamer Expo Sessions: Sucker Punch presents inFAMOUS 2

Darren Bridges discusses exclusive Expo reveals.

EurogamerAnd the slums?
Darren Bridges

The slums is a bit more wide open. Picture the slums with shacks, metal stuff. Again, it allows for a different look than what we were going for in inFamous 1. We really wanted to make sure people thought they were playing a different game.

EurogamerYou're showing new Corrupted. Tell us about them.
Darren Bridges

The Corrupted is the swamp monsters. The elite guys. With a superhero game it's fun to talk about Cole as a superhero and all his powers. But the thing that completes a superhero game is obviously the villains and the enemies. So we wanted to make sure we had a little bit in that presentation because we're really concentrating on Cole and new camera effects and powers.

We want to say, hey, the reason we're upgrading Cole and all his weapons is because the scale of monsters and enemies in this game is going to be much bigger.

EurogamerWhat danger does the elite Corrupted pose?
Darren Bridges

The Ravager is his name. He's the first enemy type in the Corrupted that has powers himself. So his defensive power would be the tunnelling move, where he goes and gets away from you. His close-range combat is a ram move, where he just charges you. And then his long-range move is his green spore attack, which are homing missiles. I shouldn't say missiles. Homing spores!

EurogamerYou're also showing how the parkour has changed. How has it changed?
Darren Bridges

With the parkour we're trying to integrate the environment much more so. You'll notice the environment flows together with the parkour. We're putting a lot more grind rails between buildings where you can link grind rails together.

Let's just say, the effect of putting this well-designed parkour in place is no one will ever question how to get around the city. Saying, hey, why can't I get into a car? People won't be asking that question because they'll obviously know you won't need to get into a car.

We're incorporating powers into parkour, like the vertical grind to get you up on top of a building quicker instead of climbing all the time. Horizontal building things, so if there's no grind rail in the vicinity, like rail road tracks or trolley tracks, we'll put grind rails on the side of buildings so you can move down the neighbourhood faster.

We don't want people to hiccup on the gameplay as far as parkour is concerned. Parkour should be absolutely fun. The goal is to have a big old jungle gym.

EurogamerYou're showing off Cole's final look. We know he's had a couple of revisions...
Darren Bridges

Yeah. It's a 360. It's nothing you haven't seen. We've already released Cole. We're just showcasing him, making sure you guys know we're not changing him again. This is it. There is no more changing. He's baked!

EurogamerHow is he different from I1 Cole?
Darren Bridges

The first thing you're going to notice is he doesn't have a jacket on. There are a couple reasons why. The logical reason is he's in New Orleans - or New Morais - a southern city, where it's hot and muggy. Are you going to wear a jacket in 80-degree muggy weather? No.

The other reason why we took off the jacket is, one of our main goals is to present this game very well, cinematically, physically and viscerally. Taking off his shirt, being able to show the physique of Cole a bit more does that.

After the redesign and redesign and redesign - whatever - the end result is we've gone back to looking like Cole with an evolved look. At the start of inFamous 2 he's going to get his ass kicked right away by The Beast. He's got to look a little more weathered. He's had his super powers now. He's going through hell right now. He's got to look more evolved and a little grittier.

EurogamerHas his personality changed significantly?
Darren Bridges

We were taking a look at everything. Our motto here at the company is to leave no stone unturned. However, perhaps in that exploration, as we changed Cole - so he grew some hair and all that stuff - well, you know we got a backlash from it.

After 16 pages on your own forum, you got to listen to your fans. But in the same breath, people say, okay, you listen to your fans, but does that take away from the creativity?

We took a long look at that. The bottom line is, for them to ask us to change his face doesn't affect gameplay, doesn't effect story. So it wasn't a big deal to us, really. It's one of those changes.

inFamous 2 is due out on the PlayStation 3 in 2011.