Q&ERA: Insomniac Games discusses Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, Sunset Overdrive, Spyro and more!

[Deleted member 17491]

Question #6 – Member: Ghost305

"About a decade ago, Insomniac announced they'd be moving away from 60fps games, to very mixed reception. Since then, however, Insomniac's had the opportunity to work on quite a few high framerate titles on Oculus Rift. Out of curiosity, has Insomniac's stance on framerate changed at all since then?"

James Stevenson, Community Director:

People like to bring this one up a lot, especially on Era. I would hesitate at projecting something we said 10 years ago until today. I think at the time what we said was true and we had data suggesting it. That said, to us, it's ultimately about making the game the best it can be. For high-end VR on PC that's prioritizing framerate. In terms of consoles, I think we always try to find the best performance blend, between resolution, what we're actually drawing in the game (geo, effects, post, etc), and framerate, that suits the game. And even if we decide 30FPS is the optimal or only route available to the game, we work really hard to ensure it's basically locked at that framerate and that drops are very rare occurrences – something I think both Ratchet & Clank and Sunset Overdrive reflect.

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So, little chance that'll see another 60fps console title from you guys :(

Question #13 – Member: Trago

"What kind of ideas does the team have for Sunset Overdrive 2 if you had the opportunity to develop it?"

James Stevenson: Lots.

Click to shrink...

James - "We've lots of ideas for SO2"
Me - "Did you say SO2?"
James - "Lots"
Me - ''Oh"
Me - "Do it."

Spoiler

I'm a master in gifs :P

 

[Donos]

Nice read. More of these.

 

[EOS-HDC]

That was great, it felt like too short. I really enjoy reading about Spyro and the early PS1 platfomers.

You guys have helped make a lot of good memories with those games, thank you.

 

[a.wd]

Sunset Overdrive 2 and NG+ patch for OG please. I know thats just shouting into the wind, but its what I want dammit.

 

[Pankratous]

Love Insomniac Games, awesome that they took the time to answer questions.

Will absolutely be there for Spiderman.

 

[Red Arremer]

Thanks for the Q&A! Looks like someone had a similar question as I did (with the innuendos in the titles) hehe.

 

[Sir Guts]

Beautiful Q&A thank you. Insomniac commitment is amazing. I love their work

 

[Spikematic]

Excellent Q&A! Thanks for all the interesting info. Mad love to Insomniac.

 

[Temp_User]

Thank you for this Q&A and good luck!

 

[Deleted member 21996]

Very interesting read, thank you.

 

[DetectiveKenobi]

Great read! Loved all the tidbits. Nice to see a studio like Insomniac thriving. Really hope they make a new Ratchet and Clank game. The movie was my first one and I heavily enjoyed it. Almost platinumed it.

 

[Railgun]

Sad to see confirmation of no SO2 X patch. Really hope the Resistance trilogy remaster becomes a thing!

 

[Septic]

Noice!

 

[cyberFUTUR3]

Thanks a lot Resetera and Insomniac for this interview !!! It is very very interesting.

Ratchet & Clank 2016 being the fastest selling Ratchet game of all time

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Good to know (and well derserved !), expecting the next Ratchet and Clank !

 

[Deleted member 14089]

I'm so hyped for spider-man.
This was a great read!

 

[Basarili]

Amazing read that was. Congrats on the good questions.

 

[Bishop89]

great read

 

[Enazrat]

Amazing. This is god tier content for anyone loving this industry.

Congrats to Insomniac, and some Resistance love, I had tremendous time on Resistance 2 mp back then.

Looking forward to Spiderman

 

[Poison Jam]

That was a wonderful read! Thanks to Insomniac for being great sports, and to the members submitting questions. I'm looking forward to Spiderman, and will probably wishlist Song of The Deep which I'd forgotten about.

The red font has terrible legibility (at least on the dark theme), could you please change it to purple or blue or something else?

 

[goldenageoftelevision]

I really want to know why Sunset Overdrive wont get a release on PC. Who owns the IP and the game assets?

 

[Chopin the Third]

That was a great read. Y'all have made some of my favorite games, and I'm incredibly excited for Spider-Man. Demo, please! Also very much looking forward to whatever else you folks are working on. Thanks, jstevenson and the other Insomniacs for taking the time to answer these questions.

 

[Ravage]

So glad R&C 2016 did well :)

I know the ball is on Sony's court, but I'd really really love a remake of A Crack in Time. That's one of my favourite games of all time!

 

[KenOD]

Always nice to hear about what tools and programs are used in development.

Maybe I should go back to learning Substance Painter.

 

[RocknRola]

Aww, mine didn't get answered :(

Still that was a very cool read! Thanks for all the effort guys! :D

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

This was a good one. Thanks for doing it Insomniac. I always felt like Spiderman being done by Insomniac was always kind of a perfect fit. A title where they can take elements from every game they've made and apply it to something as big as Spiderman. Oops I mean Marvel's Spiderman.

 

[New Fang]

Loved reading this one. Insomniac are awesome. Hoping we hear about a new Ratchet & Clank at E3 this year!

 

[Cornbread78]

C'mon Sony, the balls in your court to finally bring trophies to RFoM!


Obviously, time to do a remaster of the 3 games and merge the MP into a hybrid of 1+2 (only thing good about 3 was the new bullseye sight)

 

[Cornbread78]

Stupid phone.....

 

[AuthenticM]

This is such a weird answer. In regards to focus testing affecting Fuse's development, Stevenson says this question 3. The first two sentences:

I think this is a little misconstrued. It's wasn't really a focus testing thing that lead to specific decisions in either of those cases.

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He says it wasn't focus testing. But then immediately, those sentences are followed by these, in the same answer:

Usability testing, playtesting and even focus testing have their place, and data can be a useful tool. We're always trying to make the best decision for the game and the studio. But it's how that information is internalized and applied or even ignored – that's what matters. Over time we've learned how to become better at curating and interpreting outside information. And the more seasoned you become, the more you trust your own instincts and experience to guide you. I think we will always try to stick to our vision – and I think that's reflected in all of our recent titles like Sunset Overdrive, Ratchet & Clank, Song of the Deep, our VR Titles, and of course, the upcoming Marvel's Spider-Man.

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And in question 26, he says this:

I don't know if we'd ever go revisit Overstrike at this point, and as you mention, Overwatch feels like a very similar tone so we'd be kinda late to the party. In terms of learnings, I kinda touched on this earlier, but I think we were reminded that we need to stick to our vision for our games. Sunset Overdrive is a great example of that.

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Like... he starts by saying "it's wasn't focus testing", but then goes on to describe how it was focus testing.

 

[Psychonaut]

Ah, my favorite dev of all time. Ratchet & Clank is the reason I play video games. Good read!

 

[Trago]

Very fun read and thanks for answering my question!

I'm really looking forward to Spiderman too.

 

[Bartend3r]

It's incredible the level of service ERA is providing us. Congratulations to you all.

 

[dred]

Really enjoyed reading this, thanks to Insomniac for taking the time to interact with the ERA community. I've been a big fan of Insomniac since the PS1 days and I'm looking forward to Spider-Man and beyond.

I'll be honest though, no Resistance being in the works makes me sad. R3 is an underrated gem and I'd love to see what the team could do with a Resistance game on PS4 tech. Really a shame how the series flamed out with a bad Vita game that wasn't even developed by Insomniac.

 

[Deleted member 12352]

Interesting read. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions to all who participated. Personally would have liked to hear more about what working for EA must have been like. I always imagined that must have been pretty awful compared to other pubs.

"Can we pretty, pretty please get an Xbox One X enhancement patch for Sunset Overdrive? A game that gorgeous deserves to be played in the best possible way!"

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Indeed, that's why people have been asking for a PC release for it for the past couple of years.

 

[StraySheep]

I wasn't a PS guy until the tail end of the PS3, so I don't have much of a history with Insomniac. However, I have loved the hell out of Resistance 3, Sunset Overdrive, and the new Ratchet and Clank, and Spiderman looks amazing. Keep up the good work guys.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

MS need to pay an outside company to patch SO for X. It would look spectacular in 4k.

Good read overall. Thanks for answering our communities questions!

 

[Pancracio17]

Question #13 – Member: Trago

"What kind of ideas does the team have for Sunset Overdrive 2 if you had the opportunity to develop it?"

James Stevenson: Lots.

Click to shrink...

Oh man

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

I will watch the twitch videos about Resistance 3, thank you

 

[X1 Two]

Well, the Sunset Overdrive 4K patch dream is dead. Microsoft, apply what you do to 360 games (9x the resolution, ...) by giving SO 4x the resolution. Thanks.

 

[Kane1345]

Thank you so much for this Insomniac and the admin team here at ERA. Great read and I can't wait for Spider-Man ;)

 

[jizzywinks]

Insomniac have always come across as a class act and this Q&A only reinforces that.

Good work to the ERA staff too for arranging this and formatting it so well.

 

[JohnnyMoses]

Question #13 – Member: Trago

"What kind of ideas does the team have for Sunset Overdrive 2 if you had the opportunity to develop it?"

James Stevenson: Lots.

Click to shrink...

This hits me right in the feelings module. I really loved Sunset Overdrive. It's the reason I bought an Xbox One. I would absolutely love an SO2! I would also settle for SO One X enhancements. :)

I will pick up Spider-Man day 1.

 

[Deleted member 3897]

Really good and interesting answers. Lots I didn't know. :)

 

[Silky]

I'll say this once again.

I'll wait until the ends of time for Sunset Overdrive 2.

Thank you Insomniac for producing my game of the generation and I'll be right there, day one, for Spider-Man and whatever other crazy (non VR) thing y'all have.

And thanks for answering my question!

 

[Se_7_eN]

Marcus Smith

If you are reading this, RESISTANCE 3 was AMAZING... If (and I hope it does) the series returns, I hope it continues in this tone.

 

[btkadams]

Thanks everyone for the great questions and thanks Insomniac for doing this! I couldn't think of good questions for some reason, but I've been a longtime fan of the studio. This was a good read.

 

[EekumBokum]

That was a really great read, thanks to all involved. Between Spider-Man, Spyro, and now this, this has truly felt like the week of Insomniac.

 

[AuthenticM]

Question #16 – Unclebenny

"Resistance 3 is a fantastic and underappreciated game, at least in my limited view. It was also a fairly major tonal shift from the previous games. What spurred Insomniac to move away from the army versus army bombast and into a more focused story?"

Marcus Smith, Creative Director on Resistance 3:

In the early phases of R3 pre-production, Jon Paquette (writer), Drew Murray (Lead Designer), and I were doing a lot of soul-searching and had decided that we wanted to make this a much more personal story, one that focused on humanity and its last stand against overwhelming force. We wanted there to be a progression from organized to dis-organized, entropy under pressure. Around that time, my wife was pregnant and I was pretty frightened by the prospects of becoming a father, thinking about the world with fresh eyes. The combination led us to where we ended-up, something that shows different ways that humanity survives and resists.

James Stevenson, Community Director:

Also – if you check out our twitch.tv/insomniacgames --- we have an entire playthrough of the game with Marcus and other Insomniacs (broken into several parts) – that has tons of amazing director commentary on the game.

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Resistance 3 was really great. Please talk to Sony about remastering it for PS4. I need that game in glorious 60fps.

 

[Brite_Boy]

This was great.

 

[ShiftyHermit]

Thanks so much for taking the time for this. I played my first Rachet and Clank game when it came to PS+ recently, and all I can say is that it was absolutely charming and fun to play. Will definitely be picking up future titles.

Cannot wait for Spider-Man!

Spoiler

Laughed out loud when I saw the username "A Wild Ambulance Appears"