Fox revealed that Sucker Punch took its control cues from skateboarding games, which are known for gripping players in an almost hypnotic flow as they trick and combo their way across the environment. The same is true of Delsin’s smoke and neon powers – as well as some unannounced abilities that the team doesn’t want to spoil pre-launch. Fox wants you to feel like Spider-Man, swinging through New York at break-neck speed, feeling brilliant as you go. That fun, however, will hit moral choke-points now and then, dragging you back into a position of grave responsibility.
He explained that the branching narrative paths will result in a tailored personal experience forged by the individual. “The choices you make along the way will not only impact Delsin’s story, but also the way that his powers mature and evolve, and the way other characters around you evolve and change. It’s very, very different. You’ve got to play the game twice to see it all.”
Once you make your decision the game will let you know through various methods if your choice rested on the good or evil side of the moral fence, but again, just how this will impact your progress and the world state down the line won’t be immediately clear. That feeling of not knowing exactly what you’ve just done, and suspecting that something ugly or perhaps even righteous is about to happen out of nowhere will drive players on.
“We try and make it pretty clear when you’ve done something evil,” he added, “mainly because it really sucks when it’s nebulous. It’s not fun to feel like, ‘Well I think I did the right thing in that videogame,’ because there’s so much you have to understand about the rules of the world, your abilities, what the mission is asking you and all of that stuff. We try to cut down on ambiguity as much as possible, but at the same time we try to put situations in front of the player that are frankly tough, because that’s what games are good for; they can transport you to places you’ve never been and let you do things you’ve never done before.”