inFamous: Second Son, the third installment from PlayStation exclusive developers Sucker Punch was originally set to launch along side the PS4. Shown off with the console during its Spring 2013 debut and later shown to gamers at E3 2013, inFamous offers the quintessential experience we’d like from a next gen game. Beautiful and vivid graphics, mixed with a dazzling and fast paced gameplay made it seem like the must own launch title every console craves. Sooner after E3, it was revealed that the game would not make its November debut and instead be pushed back till mid Spring in order to give Sucker Punch more time to polish the game which I’m perfectly ok with. I’d rather developers delay a game and deliver an experience worth playing intend of trying to win a race against the clock and delivering whatever it is that’s done by then.

Does this mean that inFamous: Second Son is just a more visually enhanced version of past inFamous titles? Not at all it seems with the developers heavily investing time at creating a more intuitive AI. Sucker Punch explains.

Speaking with Edge,  inFamous: Second Son Producer Brian Fleming revealed that while inFamous 1 and inFamous 2 shared a common AI engine, the team took the daunting task of complete rewriting the enemy AI for inFamous: Second Son.

 It was an enormous undertaking and made the first year of the project kind of a pain in the ass, because the enemies were behaving very badly. But we’re finally over that hump and now we’re spending time polishing and improving those encounters and giving enemies more specific things to do. We spent a lot of time watching people playing the game, learning how the AI can be improved. It’s not one quantum improvement, it’s [lots of] little improvements, and they all add up to the combat being a marked improvement over our previous games. 

With much greater CPU and RAM on the PS4 versus the PS3, in edition to dazzling graphics, gamers should expect a more robust world with smarter enemies and more on screen destruction, something that past titles could only hint at. Nearly a year ago, Naughty Dog, the developers behind Uncharted would delay The Last of Us by two months to further polish their game with the end result being what many call “one of the greatest games of all time.”

Discuss:

Do you take it as a bad sign when a game is delayed?