Sucker Punch: inFamous team thankful for Naughty Dog help

Sucker Punch duo Brian Flemming and Chris Zimmerman have said Naughty Dog gave them valuable feedback and inspiration for the studio's work on both inFamous and inFamous 2.

Speaking to NowGamer, the pair said advice received from Uncharted studio was invaluable.

“We got some notes from Naughty Dog when we were three months from releasing inFamous about what frustrated them about the climbing system," co-founder and producer Brian Fleming said.

"It’s great because it’s like getting feedback from somebody you trust and respect and you know has your best interests at heart. They’re not trying to screw you, they’re saying here’s this piece of information that you can't get from a focus test.

"Testers don’t understand what it is you're trying to do at the level that someone who spends all day, every day working on Uncharted can."

Sucker Punch development director Chris Zimmerman added that a trip to see Naughty Dog provided more inspiration for the team.

“Our visit to Naughty Dog really showed us some things where they just have better approaches to some problems and we’ve been able to fold that stuff into how we’re doing things," he said.

"And it’s not just technology, although there’s lots of stuff there. Just their approach to how they integrate their game design with the story design. It’s great to see a team you respect – and any reasonable person would have a lot of respect for those guys given what they’ve been able to do in the last 20 years – and see how they work and how they decided to work that way and be able to apply those lessons to the way we go about things."

Zimmerman said the team would like to be able to “make as big an improvement between inFamous and inFamous 2 as between Uncharted and Uncharted 2,” adding “that’s the overall goal” for the team.

inFamous 2 is expected to release next year for PS3, and so far it looks awesome.