Resistance 2 Preview, Insomniac Interview

Ryan Schneider prepares us for battle ahead of our review. Will this be the year's top FPS?

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Within that framework, players will need to get the most out of all those possible combinations of weapons and abilities. You can alter your load-out each time you respawn, which should lend Resistance 2 much the same to-and-fro flexibility as Battlefield and the like. Schneider gives the example of a team tasked with filching a Core from under another team's nose. One, relatively straightforward approach might be to lather on the damage buffs, break out the Wraith chainguns and punch through enemy lines as a tightly-knit group. Another might be to play the guerrilla, combining that see-through-walls Berserk with the Bullseye rifle's ability to shoot round corners.

In addition to breaking down its colossal online encounters and fleshing out the tactical possibilities, Insomniac is keen to give each of your in-game actions a meaningful social context. Schneider invokes the analogy of a small-town newspaper. "When you were a kid, or even growing up, you would probably at some point have loved to see your name in the paper for doing something cool. And it's nice to get that kind of recognition when you're involved with something - it's part of your life, it's special. And we just wanted to recognise people and how they relate to the Resistance universe."

Insomniac's game site, MyResistance.net - a "labour of love" in Schneider's view, and still going strong at 200,000 members and almost two million posts - will play a pivotal role here. The idea is to "integrate social networking features with a game-stats-oriented site," chiefly by way of two persistent features: combat badges and the ticker tape.

Combat badges are "sort of like a digital baseball card, or in Europe a digital football card" and are designed to provide a "snapshot" of your Resistance persona. Each player has three slots on their PSN profile which are taken up with whichever badges tally with their actions to date. So voluble commentators will get a high forum post count badge, eagle-eyed snipers will pick up a high headshot count badge, and so forth. The ticker tape meanwhile is a scrolling news feed which keeps you informed of such developments as new post-release content. It can be customised to show only your preferred news topics, so if you absolutely must keep track of every user-created movie ever made, the ticker tape's your man.

We round off our chat by returning to the game's narrative. Will Resistance 2 fans come away with a sense of closure, we enquire, or is another cliff-hanger ending in store? And what are Insomniac's plans for the franchise from this point on? Sadly, Schneider refuses to be drawn into any major reveals, but he makes it clear that the developer is far from done with its youngest brainchild. "We have a long-term future in mind - I mean, look at the PSP game. And there are announcements coming soon about the Resistance universe that will show just how big it's becoming... there's a lot more to come. I'm dancing around how the campaign mode ends, but I can say with confidence that people will be shocked by the ending."

Resistance 2 is out exclusively for PlayStation 3 on November 4 in North America and November 28 in Europe. Kikizo will be laying down the law (and a score) very shortly.

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