Not How I Remembered It
I remember really enjoying inFamous on release. I found the story engaging, the combat fascinating and the moral choice system new and interesting and it was always a game I wanted to come back to and replay but never did… until now.
Infamous released in 2009 and was the first PlayStation 3 game developed by Sucker Punch Productions, the studio that had made the brilliant Sly series of cartoon stealth games for the PlayStation 2. Fortunately the studio is still with us under the umbrella of PlayStation Studios and has most recently been creating the successful Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei games.
Looking back at their history you can tell that this game was their first realistic open-world title. It’s a very good entry, not all studios were capable of making the jump from PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3, let alone something as ambitious as an open world but the game is certainly rough around the edges, rougher than I remember.
Graphically the game is OK but not great. It’s quite inconsistent in design overall, sometimes I found myself surprised at how good it could look, the way that the dark sewer lights up when you use your lightning powers is really great, but a lot of NPCs and other non important characters don’t look so great.
The game starts right into the action where you take control of Cole MacGrath who has just awakened in the flaming hot centre of some sort of crater caused by an explosion. As a bonus to surviving he now has superpowers which let him control electricity in a number of really interesting ways that develop over the course of the game.
One thing that stood out to me was just how bleak everything is. The city where the explosion occurred becomes cut off from the mainland and quarantined. Looters are running riot, people are being killed and attacked all the time and food packages are scarce. Personally I just found it quite depressing. Now that is a bit unfair on the game, this is clearly the mood they were going for and they succeeded but for me personally it didn’t create the most inviting atmosphere to sit down to chill in.
Perhaps this bleak landscape is required for the game’s moral choice system to really stand out. Like a lot of games, inFamous experimented heavily with narrative and gameplay choices that had overall effects on the gameplay and story. Put simply, you can use your powers for good or for evil, and each action affects an overall karma meter. There are a number of binary choices during main story missions that heavily sway this meter such as ‘Do you take on a number of enemies by yourself?’ or ‘Incite a riot to distract the enemies for you?’ with the former being the good option and the other the evil one. A lot of these choices are quite laughable in their simplicity and sometimes you could feel hard done by that there is no reasonable or sane middle ground.
My interpretation of this was that it was more about role playing and less about difficult choices that some games try to put on you. There aren’t really any trick options. The world is in chaos, everything is going to hell anyway why not be evil and powerful? Or conversely be the one person who is going to fight back no matter how hard it will be and be a superhero for good.
In addition to the big choices, there are some little elements of gameplay that influence the meter, though not nearly as much, but this is an important distinction often left out by a lot of games that tried this. By default most enemies get knocked out but you can specifically kill them which will of course contribute towards your evil points on the karma scale. Opposite to that you can choose to heal people, usually civilians, with the only cost to you being time and a small drain on your meter that is usually easily replenished.
As your Karma meter sways either strongly into the good or strongly evil it has physical ramifications to Cole which is another really nice touch. Like an evil Sith lord, too many bad options cause your lightning powers to turn red and your presence to be more shrouded in darkness.
The powers you unlock are also different depending on how good or evil you are and it makes little sense to straddle the middle of the road. Going all-in on either good or evil makes the most sense. The way these powers unlock and unfold is also one of the best systems I have seen that genuinely give you a sense of progression and power.
Despite some of the important ideas the game introduced I just didn’t find it as fun to play as I was really hoping to. The overall clunky-ness to a new title like this could be overlooked but some of the repetitive missions and overall depressing environment just made it tough.
It’s still a very important PlayStation 3 exclusive title that was a big deal for a short time and its sequels are much better but I was so surprised that my feelings on the game have changed and it does not amongst my rank of favorites mostly on tone but that’s all on me.