Resistance 2: Ted Price Interview

During our brief hands-on with Resistance 2 (which you can read about here), we were granted a mere taste of bigger, better things to come. From what we could gather, developer Insomniac and its CEO, Ted Price, aren't content to pull off the bare minimum, incremental update. Rather, the game is taking a larger scale, much more social, open approach to multiplayer.

We had a chat with Ted Price about the current state of Resistance 2; he was careful not to touch on the single-player too much – though we pressed him a couple of times anyway. He does however go into the new emphasis on squad-play in the 60 player multiplayer, as well as details on co-op, the 1950s setting and much more in this introductory interview on the anticipated PS3 shooter.

IGN AU: Hey Ted, nice to see you. But it's even nicer to see Resistance 2 – even in its multiplayer-only form right now.

Ted Price: Thanks. I think.

IGN AU: So you've just announced that Resistance 2 will be in gamers' hands in six months. How far back does development on Resistance 2 stretch?

Ted Price: Our development is two years on this project. So we began just as we finished on Resistance: Fall of Man.

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IGN AU: So tell me – what's your favourite new feature that you're showing off right now in Resistance 2?

Ted Price: Well, today we showed off one of the competitive modes in the game, and my favourite part of that is the rival squads. That's because, even though I'm playing in a group of 60 people, I can always find my rivals; they're pointed out to me in the game, and generally what happens is, they're the ones that are killing me the most, so I wanna kill them the most. And I can always find them without searching around the entire map. That's been a lot of fun for us at Insomniac as we've been testing the game.

IGN AU: For people who haven't played the original Resistance: Fall of Man, how was this sort of thing handled?

Ted Price: It really wasn't handled in the original; we had our Breach mode and our Meltdown mode – and we relied on players to form their own squads to figure out what to do. But it's hard to do that unless you are coordinating. So what we'd end up doing was promoting clans, promoting parties – and we also had the MyResistance.net site where players could hook up and plan out their strategies. Now we're making it a lot easier for players to just jump in and understand from the get-go what they're supposed to be doing.

If you're automatically assigned to a squad, then there isn't any setup – it's just you're in.

Another thing that's gonna be happening which is pretty cool is, our new community features will make it easier to help find people with similar interests. That way, if you do want to form parties, you can form them based on not just the kind of game so you like to play, but on other interests.

IGN AU: Other interests?

Ted Price: If you're male or female, how old you are, things you like to do outside of gaming; that way, if you decide you want to hang out in the game and have a conversation – which is probably hard to do when you're being shot at – you can do that. Outside of the game, we hope that friendships are formed through matching these similar interests.

IGN AU: This is a much heavier emphasis on the social aspects of the game.

Ted Price: Totally. Games are becoming much more social.

IGN AU: I know you're not really talking about the single player game right now – but I'm gonna press you, anyway. It's my job. The teaser shows the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco being overrun, with the city on fire in the distance. But we know that the US is actually being 'sandwiched' on both sides by the invasion. Is it fair to assume we'll be seeing the other side of the country too? New York, perhaps?

Ted Price: Ha ha! I'm not talking about any of our other locales!

IGN AU: Alright, it was worth a shot. Let's talk about the Co-op mode.

Ted Price: Sure.

IGN AU: What's it been like writing a story that takes up to eight players through a campaign, so they don't get bogged down in story?

Ted Price: Well, we're still working on it. I mean, we still have plenty of work to do before we finish that. [For co-op mode] it's 'story-light'. We're not spending any time on big cinematics; we're keeping you in the game and we'll be figuring out how to tell the story as you're moving through and in between the various levels. What it does is give you more of a purpose as players fighting against these massive hordes of chimera.

What we've found is people have really embraced these different classes in co-op – classes that are really designed to support each other. You can't have just one type of class in a co-op game because you'll all die. You really to have these different classes.

IGN AU: Is there a cap on the number of each type of classes you can have during a co-op game?

Ted Price: No, not at all. There's no auto-balance, and we don't say you can only have two of one type and two of another and so on. That's part of the strategy and it's something you should work out with your friends.