With last year's release of Ghost of Tsushima and the release of Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut later this week, it's safe to say that Sony's first-party studio Sucker Punch is on a roll. The studio has been held in high regard in the games industry since the PS2 era when they released the Sly Cooper trilogy. Between Sly Cooper and Ghost of Tsushima, however, the studio is well-known for the wildly popular Infamous series. There hasn't been a new game in the franchise since 2014's Infamous Second Son and its expansion Infamous First Light, so fans have been calling for its return.
It's unclear what Sucker Punch's plans are following the release of Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut, so hopefully, the studio will consider making a third numbered entry in the Infamous series as the second game ended on something of a cliffhanger. Now seems like the perfect time for the studio to work on a new title in the franchise as the series saw great critical and commercial success and fans have been asking for it for years.
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The open worlds that Sucker Punch has managed to create over the years have been impressive, to say the least, but the worlds in the first two Infamous titles have definitely begun to show their ages. As they both came out at least 10 years ago, they don't totally hold up when compared to other, more modern sandboxes. Using the knowledge that Sucker Punch has acquired about open worlds from the studio's time working on Ghost of Tsushima, there's no double that it would be able to create its best open world to date if it were to use everything it's learned for a new Infamous title.
While the fields and mountains of rural Japan share very little with the bustling streets of Empire City and New Marias, Ghost of Tsushima proved that Sucker Punch is capable of making a world feel truly lived in. From the small villages quietly sitting on the edges of lakes to the countryside paths well-trodden by horses, there are details all over Tsushima that give it a special, life-like mystery that could translate well to a more urban environment. Although it wouldn't be one-to-one, if the studio were to put its experience working on urban and rural areas together, it could create an incredible setting for whatever story it wanted to tell.
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The PS5's new hardware is definitely impressive and there's an argument that any new title releasing on it that can take advantage of its hardware would be greatly improved. That's definitely the case with a new Infamous game as it could do some interesting things with the DualSense controller in particular. Making use of 3D audio and the adaptive triggers are all well and good, however, the real magic for the game would come from how well the PS5 can render its setting. The PS5 version of Spider-Man has already shown just how big of an upgrade the PS5 is from the PS4 in terms of rendering life-like open worlds and Infamous should take advantage of that.
Something that makes the original two Infamous games feel a little bit dated is the rigid moral choice system that's in both entries. Moral choices were something that plenty of games at the time were exploring with titles like BioShock, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3 all leading the charge. However, looking at the choices now, it's clear that morality is a lot more nuanced than many titles made it out to be. In the case of Infamous, the player got to choose if protagonist Cole MacGrath used his powers for good or for evil. Unfortunately, the evil options were always maniacally bad and the good ones placed Cole just about one step short of Sainthood resulting in both options feeling a little bit unrealistic.
With the current ocean of superhero content, it seems like the world is in something of a golden age of superhero storytelling where series like Invincible, WandaVision, and The Boys are all able to ask questions regarding what actually makes a superhero good. As the world is not black and white, it's clear that having players make choices based on the idea of absolute good and evil doesn't embrace the nuances of navigating the world as a superhero. If Infamous were to make a return, hopefully, it would bring with it the moral choice systems that were present in each entry, but refined to address the issues with binary moral choices.
In recent years with games like Insomniac's Spider-Man and Miles Morales as well as Crystal Dynamic's Marvel's Avengers, players have been able to take control of superheroes who can seemingly do no wrong. Sure, sometimes bad things happen as a result of the protagonists, but it's very rarely out of ill will or because of a character flaw that's been established throughout the story. There's nothing wrong with those sorts of stories, but it just doesn't seem like video games have caught up with a lot of other media in terms of telling fresh superhero stories with more complicated characters. An Infamous revival could be a chance to make that happen.
As mentioned above, it's been seven years since the most recent Infamous titles and it just seems like PlayStation fans would react well to a new game in the franchise. With plenty of PS3/Xbox 360 era titles making revivals such as Dead Space and Mass Effect, there seems to be plenty of nostalgia that studios can capitalize on. Games like 2016's God of War and Uncharted 4 have proven that PlayStation fans are excited to see older IPs being revisited by the studios that made them to begin with as time away from them has given creators the chance to reflect and make new, better versions of the series they established.
There is currently no indication that a new Infamous title is in development.
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