We used Seattle to inspire the architecture, weather, lighting, materials and numerous local businesses and references that help marinade our game with a feeling of believability. "From the very beginning, we were looking to create a jungle gym custom built for enjoying your super-human powers.
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"We avoided placing any modern apartments in there to have more segregation of style in the city to help with navigation and progression for the player. "Our Pioneer district, for example, is populated with only brick buildings and historical structures," continues Dociu. By creating these palpable themes within the playing space the player is able to more effectively engage with their arena. Something I tried to push for was making each district more distinct by doubling down on its main theme."Įditing the real Seattle in this way is not done purely for aesthetic reasons, however. The team took hundreds of photos here in Seattle so that we could capture the vibe of all the different neighbourhoods. "That’s why it’s important that the city itself has a lot of character. "We certainly use lighting and environmental storytelling (an abandoned cop car, burning debris) to inform the mood of our more scripted sequences, but for the most part the player is on his own to explore the city," Dociu explains. "Stencil graffiti was a great fit for Delsin’s attitude, because a lot of well-known street artist are actually activists and social commentators with disrespect for blind authority." All of these elements change what would otherwise be a 'standard' environment into something more exciting and immediately appealing.ĭociu refers to these embellished elements as the city's 'character', design approaches that take it to a heightened level of distinction. The way neon shines off of the impressive water effects, the stark distinction in architecture and style between different areas of the city, the position of key buildings to allow them to be seen (for the most part) no matter your location at any given moment. With Seattle the changes are more subtle, designed to embellish and facilitate what we, the players, expect from a videogame world. With Delsin the deviation is obvious: he has super powers to play with. At surface level both are representations of what we might expect to encounter in our day-to-day lives, but you don't have to look far to see how they deviate from that exception. Delsin is, more or less, a regular guy."ĭelsin is a 'regular guy' in the same way that Second Son's Seattle in a regular city. We also made the distinction that it’s a real city and a realistic world, so there are no superhero spandex costumes in our game. The enemies are a government agency that was created to deal directly with super-humans, and all of the fictional things you come across have their roots in super-powers. We don’t have ghosts or aliens, super-powers are the only ‘strange’ thing that is different between our world and Delsin's. "A lot of the believability from the game also comes from what we leave out. I don’t know how a guy could turn into trails of light and run up a building, but it feels great and looks amazing in our game so we put it in. So we wanted to spend our 'non-realistic points' on something that would make the game fun. "From day one, however, we knew the game was about super-powers and the joy of being super-human.
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"Crossing that line is different for everyone because we all have things that we don’t believe in," Dociu tells me. It's no surprise then that Second Son's art director, Horia Dociu, cites getting that balance between portraying reality and fiction as one of the most difficult tasks for him and his team to get right. The game's world is at once realistic and fantastical, offering a recognisable foundation in which to indulge the common dream of possessing wholly impossible abilities and doing with them what we will. This is no easy task considering Second Son's narrative revolves around the existence of super-powered humans and the oft-misplaced fear that surrounds them.
Infamous second son graffiti license#
From surly protagonist Delsin Rowe himself to developer Sucker Punch's use of artistic license to recreate real-world Seattle in digital form, each of the game's aesthetic elements (audio included) comes together to form a visual playground that is both believable and engaging. Second Son's visual cohesion and clarity is, arguably, among other commendable elements, its most powerful and charming hook. "I don’t know how a guy could turn into trails of light and run up a building, but it feels great and looks amazing in our game so we put it in." John Robertson talks graffiti art, Seattle as a character, and the style of military oppression in the PS4's best-looking game so far.