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E3 2014

Insomniac Games is full speed ahead on 'Sunset Overdrive'

Mike Snider
USA TODAY
A screenshot from the Chaos Squad multiplayer mode in the upcoming Xbox One game 'Sunset Overdrive.'

Sunset Overdrive, the next video game from Insomniac Games, represents new horizons for the fabled development studio.

Past hit games from the L.A.-based developer such as the zany, cartoonish Ratchet & Clank games and dark apocalyptic first-person shooter sci-fi Resistance series were linear in nature with players progressing through a chronological story.

After making its name on these PlayStation standardbearers – as well as the original Spyro the Dragon games – Insomniac Games planned to shake things up for the newest generation of game platforms. This new game is Insomniac's first exclusive for the Xbox (it hits the Xbox One on Oct. 28), and is also the studio's first open-world game, the most popular example of which is Grand Theft Auto, a genre that let players explore and progress as they choose.

"We needed to change up what we were doing in terms of presenting a different approach to action games," says Ted Price, founder and CEO of the studio, headquartered in Burbank with studio in Durham, N.C. "What we had seen over the last decade is the same thing again and again. We certainly made games that were traditional shooters but we wanted to change the mechanics and (this) was the perfect opportunity to do that."

Sunset Overdrive does share some genetic code with past Insomniac Games. The vibrant, colorful and tongue-in-cheek world is an evolution of those Ratchet & Clank games.

When the game starts, the player is working as a janitor on the night of a big party thrown by energy beverage corporation Fizzco. But Fizzco's new drink OverCharge Delirium XT wasn't properly tested and as the night goes on, those drinking it start to mutate into monsters that seek out the drink as vampires do blood. Now you must survive the aftermath. "It's not an apocalypse, it's an awesome-pocalypse," Price says.

Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games talks about the studio's upcoming game 'Sunset Overdrive.'

To succeed in the world, you must move fast. Luckily, your character is agile and can gain power and weapons to fend off enemies and other survivors. (Here's a nod to the weaponry in both the Resistance and Ratchet & Clank series.)

You can run on walls parkour-style and move like a skateboarder over an endless variety of surfaces. "We are encouraging you to go fast and grind down power lines and bounce on umbrellas and cars and vault around on street lamps. We reward you for doing crazy things," Price says. "Among our guiding principles, my two favorites are 'velocity' and 'Fun trumps realism'."

Another of the studio's goals with Sunset Overdrive is to give the player as much control as possible, so that they connect with the game. "At the very beginning, you can choose to be a male or female, you can choose your race, your clothes, your hair, your body style and you can change it at any time in the game," Price says. "It's your game."

It's not just a free-for-all in the game. "You can do anything and go anywhere but there also is a robust story driving you along," he says. "This is an emotional journey for our main character, who is discovering who he or she is as they help various factions in the game uncover the nasty things that Fizzco. has been doing."

A screenshot from the upcoming Xbox One game 'Sunset Overdrive.'

In addition to missions that flesh out the story line, there are also many side quests and special challenges, that players can opt to tackle. Along the way, you gain abilities and powers for accomplishing things with a certain style. "We love to break the fourth wall in this game. For instance, you will see "Boom" spelled out in a giant mushroom cloud," Price says. "For us, it's all about reminding players that you are in a game and let's celebrate that fact."

Players can easily move into an online multiplayer mode called Chaos Squad from the game without shutting it down and parsing through menus. Simply find one of the photo booths in the game and have your character enter it and you've moved to multiplayer. "So you can have this giant world being shared by multiple players at the same time," Price says.

This new revolution of hardware, in this case Microsoft's Xbox One and the software giant's Azure cloud server, which stores the online game, helped Insomniac step up its game. "Obviously, open-world games have existed for a long time," he says. "We wanted to bring our own handcrafted feel to an open world where every corner you walk into has that handcrafted feel. We couldn't do that without the additional resources we have on Xbox One."

As players bounce and grind through Sunset Overdrive, "we need to be able load in different sectors of the world quickly, which is something we couldn't to do at this fidelity on previous generations," he says.

Insomniac is not beholden to the Xbox One. As an independent developer that made most of its games for the PlayStation, Insomniac also just released its first iOS game Outernauts. "We have multiple teams working on various things."

Technology helps keep things interesting for Price and Insomniac, now in its 21st year. "In this environment where the budgets go up, the risk continues to go up and the expectations from players gets higher and higher, you have to do more to fulfill those expectations," he says. "But that's also what makes the business fun."

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