Throughout the last generation, inFAMOUS usually ended up playing second fiddle to the massively popular Uncharted franchise. However, for some fans like myself, Cole McGrath’s journey hit a sweet spot of action, customization and truly interesting storytelling. I love Uncharted just as much as the next PlayStation owner, but inFAMOUS as a franchise tops it in my books. Now, Second Son is looking to take the series to brand new heights, make it all the more impressive and hopefully give the game the spotlight that it deserves. However, there is still a lot we don’t know about Second Son, so we’ve made a list of what we want from this new game and its new protagonist.
Even More Powers
The first inFAMOUS game allowed us to blast lightning bolts and do all sorts of cool stuff – but it was all based on electricity. Its sequel ramped up the ability count by adding in fire for evil characters, ice for good characters and lots of great end-game powers to really wreak havoc in the world around you. Logically, it only makes sense that we would see even more powers in Second Son. So far, we know that Delsin’s base power-set is based around “smoke” and he also gets neon powers (which look like a more colorful version of electricity). That can’t be all they have in store for us, so I have three more recommendations for a nice and round number of five powers.
Wind
We saw some glimpses of wind-based powers with some of the bigger attacks from inFAMOUS 2, but I want to see it taken to a whole new level. Let Delsin manipulate the weather and bring in small, medium and large tornadoes on the fly, gusts of wind can sling enemies and objects all around the environment and he could even ride the wind through the air for quicker traversal of the city. Wind might lack the massive scale of smoke powers, or hyper-precision of the neon powers, but it opens up the door for some really impressive environmental and particle effects.
Earth
Let’s stick with this fundamental element theme and talk about earth powers. We’ve seen these in a thousand games before, but it doesn’t make them any less awesome. Pieces of the earth could shoot up to send Delsin flying across the city, he could terraform the environment and shape it to his advantage or even collapse the earth below his enemies. Seeing as how in past games and based on the trailers for this one, a conduit’s hands tend to be the point of origination for most powers, he could of course shoot rocks from his hands or create massive boulders.
Water
You might have been expecting ice or fire here, but nope. Smoke is already very similar to fire and they also did ice and fire in 2 as well, so let’s keep going with new stuff, shall we? In previous titles, water was fatal to Cole, so hopefully Delsin isn’t as susceptible to the dreaded depths of liquid that surround most video game cities. In fact, how cool would it be to manipulate that as well? Steady streams of water could blast out of his hands and causing heavy downpours on target areas could prove immensely devastating. Finally, the big attack to finish groups off would be a massive tidal wave crashing through the streets.
Branching Story Paths
My favorite thing about this series isn’t the super powers or the amazing visuals, but how you’re always able to develop along a path of being good or evil. The second game did a better job of this than the first and I’m hoping Second Son takes it even further – but they haven’t shown or said anything as of yet. Typically, the choices you make are tied to not juts events in the game, but the powers you can use. What I would love, is for them to expand this to almost Mass Effect levels of differentiation.
I hope they let me truly make him a villain and let me truly make him a hero. While it would be a little too much to ask for what amounts to two full-games on one disc, surely they can come up with some more creative ways to mix up the results of your actions. All I’m saying is that I want more than just a different ending and a few additional side missions in Second Son – I want to feel like the hero and villain paths have large consequences.
Better Power Customization
Tweaking out my abilities and picking exactly what I want to develop as a character is, basically, my favorite thing ever. It’s why I love RPGs so much, so naturally I want more of that in Second Son. Once again, inFAMOUS 2 made some great strides towards a more customizable experience, but at the end of the day it felt a little empty. As long as I play enough, I could unlock everything anyways, so was it really a choice at all? While it would be silly to have a different classes, I would love for each power-set to have its own neat and tidy ability tree that I can develop over the course of the game.
Think of it like this: once you reach a certain point in the story and get your second power (probably neon) a second ability tree would appear in the menu. Once this tree appears, you start to have more choices about which skills and powers you want to take. Now, imagine if they had 3 or more powers to choose from over the course of the game. Throw in the typical good/bad versions of abilities and alignment specific powers and you have yourself a very nicely developed progression system.
What Do You Want to See?
That concludes my short wish list of features for the upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive, inFAMOUS: Second Son. If you’re a fan of the series and have certain features or changes you hope to see, let us know down in the comments below. It’s doubtful that we’ll get to see absolutely everything we want in the upcoming game, but hopefully it’s the best that it can be.
inFAMOUS: Second Son releases exclusively on PlayStation 4 on March 21st, 2014.
