Sat, May 23, 2009 | 19:39 BST
No middle of the road for inFamous, you’re either good or evil
Nate Fox, the director for inFamous, says that there isn’t a middle ground for players in the game.
They will either do good deeds or evil deeds. No shades of gray.
“We had [neutral karma] initially, but we found that people wanted to be really good or really evil,” he told PlayStation.Blog. “No one cared about the middle.”
“All of Cole’s base powers get twisted by his moral decisions. We wanted to give people who were heroic powers that offset that play style and the same for evil people. Really you get two very different play-throughs depending on which side of the moral fence you land on”
“The karmic changes to your powers work better for different kinds of play. So some people will find evil easier, some people will find good easier. Both are super fun.”
We’ve heard this before earlier in the month from Sucker Punch co-founder Bruce Oberg, when he explained that “good and evil is not just a binary choice.” You can switch between the two.
Via That VideoGame Blog.
8 comments
#1
Hunam
23/05/09, 9:08 pm
I really didn’t like the demo at all, but I’m also one of those neutrals you here about. Shades of grey is where I live. More reason for me to not get on with the game then.
#2
David
23/05/09, 9:33 pm
exactly how do you become good or evil if there isn’t a middle ground to progress out from. Do you select what side you want to play as before you start the game :S.
#3
frostquake
23/05/09, 10:00 pm
I was really Fired up for the Demo…and really got into it, then something happened…I started to get Bored…I really was wondering why??? The Train Ride was great, but it just led to really nowhere with no Drooling Drug induced Boss, which would have been better. It was as if I was playing a Beta Version of CrackDown Lite!!! The Environment seems alive until you look close and you realize that the NPC’s are really just 3 types of people. With the Depth of Blu-Ray they could have really maxed out the content and made this game seem really alive. Instead it looks alive from a distance until you look close then it is all paper cut outs of the Same thing. I really want to like this game, Why I don’t know…But I am on the fence for buying it…..Sigh…I just don’t know what to Do!
#4
David
23/05/09, 10:23 pm
Frostquake: rent it from lovefilm or boomerang rentals then once your done send it back. You wont be out of pocket or feel cheated for buying a game you thought would be great but turned out to be average.
#5
DrDamn
24/05/09, 9:59 am
@David
I think he means when presented with moral choices there is only a good choice and bad choice. So your character starts off neutral and becomes more evil/good depending on your decisions. So you get variations of good / evil across several situations – but within an individual situation it’s clear cut.
#6
freedoms_stain
24/05/09, 11:22 am
Surely if you do a selection of good and evil things that just makes you a bit of a bastard rather than “evil”
#7
Aimless
24/05/09, 11:56 am
You could essentially play the game as neutral if you really wanted, but you’re only rewarded — both through power upgrades and Trophies — by heading down either the nice or nasty route. According to the Fantastic Mr. Fox here the game was originally going to afford neutral players some benefits over extremists, but evidently it wasn’t seen as a very worthwhile use of resources.
I think it’s probably better to view the good and evil tracts as two branches of a talent tree as opposed to an actual moral bifurcation. The Karma system is about bolstering replayability rather than allowing someone to carve their own ethical path moment to moment, if you get what I mean.
#8
XDamage
24/05/09, 3:40 pm
Never took the neutral route in Fallout 3 for example, so I don’t care.
And by the way, the good powers are designed so that they minimize collateral damage, and doesn’t kill people/only kill bad guys. The evil powers doesn’t discriminate and just blows up everything. What would neutral powers do? Kill an equal amount of good and bad guys or something?