Resistance 2 co-op "pared down" from original design
- Posted December 9th, 2008 at 14:11 EDT by
- 23 Comments
In an interview with Gamasutra, Resistance 2 co-op Lead Designer Jake Biegel has revealed that many of his original ideas were "pared down" during development. He also discussed the game's intellectual debt to Valve's Team Fortress 2 and, less predictably, World of Warcraft.
"A lot of it was paring down my original design, because my design was very aggressive in scope, and it still is to a large degree," Biegel commented when asked about how the cooperative mode had evolved. "In the end, we treated it like a flagship mode, in terms of the depth we tried to add to the mode, and we had to taper back from that.
"That's where we got the gravity of the mode, by treating it like a flagship mode, and then pulling back from there. The development of it was very much a very aggressive design. It definitely got scaled back from what it originally was."
Insomniac hunted for instructive precedents both within and without the first-person shooting genre. "We looked at experiences like Team Fortress 2, in which there are dependencies on classes," Biegel went on. "And games like World of Warcraft, in which there are large amounts of people working in tandem, creating this kind of epic synergy to overcome these encounters that wouldn't be overcomeable as an individual.
"We really wanted to focus on teamwork and the buzz that comes from people working together online, because even though there's some downtime when you're not playing together, the buzz is that much higher when the group locks together and everything falls into place."
With Resistance 2 performing competently if unremarkably at North American retail, Biegel is happy with the response from co-op players. "Yes, it exceeded my personal expectations for how intuitive it was going to be, because there's a lot of subtlety there. The thing that I am probably happiest about [with] the co-op is the teamwork that it invokes, organically.
"People just play together, and it's really good for us and inspiring for us to see that."
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HalfOfZero
- 9:43am EST - December 9th, 2008
- 3
I remember all the hype about this game pre launch. Now it's out and all I hear about is how it doesn't quite live up to the hype. JUST LIKE I SAID WOULD HAPPEN. Not to say it's not a good game, don't missunderstand me, but as usual, over hype = overkill.
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edward_moffet
- 10:06am EST - December 9th, 2008
- 6
it's not surprising part of development is scaling back from original ideas, and this game absolutely lives up to the hype, i can gaurantee they never talked about the original coop design concepts unless they were final so you wouldnt even know the difference anyway
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DemonOfRazgriz07
- 10:42am EST - December 9th, 2008
- 8
@4 yes, there's 2 player split online. IMO opinion the first and just about only other game to attempt and online split screen coop experience like this is TimeSplitters Future Perfect and they did it perfectly. u could log into your own profile and it was up to 4 players. it's to bad there isn't 4 split on R2.
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west_end_matt
- 11:30am EST - December 9th, 2008
- 11
This is a great game and the online is totally addictive. A must have game, though I am looking forward to KILLZONE 2
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darksora
- 11:44am EST - December 9th, 2008
- 12
Co-op is amazing. Easily my favourite mode for R2, its just so damn addicting and 99% of the games i've played have the teamwork apart from the odd time when some guy was the only spec ops in the team and wouldnt supply everyone would ammo XD. hats off to insomniac though, its a brilliant game.
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darthrazorback
- 12:06pm EST - December 9th, 2008
- 13
R2 EASILY has the best co-op mode of any FPS. The fact that you are forced to play together is great. Without everyone helping out, you fail. So, everyone helps out. In other games with co-op, someone eventually goes off on their own and it stops being co-op.
Oh, and I have no idea what HalfOfZero is talking about. Everywhere you hear it doesn't live up to the hype? That is hilarious... since I have never talked to anyone who says it doesn't live up to the hype, and I talk to everyone.
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BlueDragoon0
- 12:32pm EST - December 9th, 2008
- 14
Too bad the single player campaign is only average at best, however the multiplayer side is the best I've ever seen in a shooter.
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