Sucker Punch’s Brian Flemming and Chris Zimmerman have tipped their hats to the chaps at Naughty Dog for the company’s feedback and inspiration during the development of inFamous and its sequel.
Specifically, Flemming recounted a period three months before the release of the original inFamous, where the Uncharted developer offered some handy feedback regarding the game’s climbing mechanics.
“We got some notes from Naughty Dog when we were three months from releasing inFamous about what frustrated them about the climbing system,” Flemming told NowGamer.
“It’s great because it’s like getting feedback from somebody you trust and respect and you know has your best interests at heart. They’re not trying to screw you, they’re saying here’s this piece of information that you can’t get from a focus test.”
“Testers don’t understand what it is you’re trying to do at the level that someone who spends all day, every day working on Uncharted can.”
Elsewhere, development director Chris Zimmerman also chimed in on the matter, recalling how valuable a trip to Naughty Dog HQ proved for the team at Sucker Punch:
“Our visit to Naughty Dog really showed us some things where they just have better approaches to some problems and we’ve been able to fold that stuff into how we’re doing things,” he said.
“And it’s not just technology, although there’s lots of stuff there. Just their approach to how they integrate their game design with the story design. It’s great to see a team you respect – and any reasonable person would have a lot of respect for those guys given what they’ve been able to do in the last 20 years – and see how they work and how they decided to work that way and be able to apply those lessons to the way we go about things.”
Concluding, Zimmerman said that Sucker Punch is aiming to “make as big an improvement between inFamous and inFamous 2 as between Uncharted and Uncharted 2,” stating, “that’s the overall goal” for the studio.
InFamous 2 is due out in 2011 exclusively on PS3.