Cole’s back. We already established that with the GamesCom trailer. And apparently his new model is already back and running in the game. This footage out of GamesCom is the same section of inFamous 2 we’ve seen before (note: it looks incredible), but it now features the old Cole character model.

It’s well worth watching again. Are you guys happy now? Can we get on with talking about the game rather than the character models?

There’s a familiar face vying for your attention in this inFamous 2 trailer. Who is it? It’s none other than Cole McGrath. You know, the one you remember. The one you fell in love with. The one from the original inFamous.

The PlayStation Blog’s just uploaded a condensed version of Sucker Punch’s Comic-Con panel from earlier this month. The panel goes into a lot of detail about the original inFamous’ design process, aswell as tackling some hot-topics regarding the sequel.

Interestingly, Sucker Punch dropped a “wait and see” line regarding PlayStation Move support and multiplayer, which a more speculative blogger might want to read into. For now we’ll let you make your own assumptions.

After checking out this comic-book cut-scene from inFamous 2, we’re well and truly in the mood for some more electrified action. We’d forgotten just how well the animated story sequences set the game’s tone. We’d also forgotten how gritty inFamous’ universe is.

It’s a cool little cut-scene. Check it out.

Hair, Tattoos, Bangles? This Ain't Cole.

Proof that developers do listen  — after the gigantic backlash aimed at the new-look Cole McGrath in inFamous 2, developers Sucker Punch have decided to switch back to something more in-line with the original character.

Speaking from Comic-Con, IGN’s PlayStation editor, Greg Miller, had the following to say on the changes to Cole’s character design:

“I can’t tell you exactly what he looks like, but I can tell you he looks more like the person we played as in the original Infamous and less like the man who was in all of those E3 screens and videos.”

We’re sure we’ll get another look at the, erm, new-look-old-look Cole soon. Hopefully he’s had all those terrible tattoos removed.

You know what — Sucker Punch are really interesting guys. This behind the scenes documentary with the studio discussing their influences is heart-warming and interesting. inFamous was a smash-hit when it dropped last year, and it’s so exciting to be in the build-up to the sequel to that game.

Expect to hear much more about inFamous 2 tomorrow as Sucker Punch hold their panel “From Origin to Evolution: The Making of a Modern Day Superhero for the Videogame World.”

If you couldn’t give a toss about the people who make inFamous awesome, then the video is still worth watching. There’s a couple of new cuts of gameplay and some artwork for you to mull over, y’see.

The Graphic Engine's Certainly Been Spruced Up. Just A Bit.

Sony’s first-party is the best in the world. We really don’t care about subjection and opinion — it’s fact. Nobody can touch those guys, they are incredible. As such, it’s always refreshing to see how the internal teams help each other — be it with elements of their engine, programming for the PlayStation 3, or simply giving feedback on each other’s games.

In an interview with NowGamer, Sucker Punch duo Chris Zimmerman and Brian Flemming have described Naughty Dog’s feedback on the original inFamous as invaluable.

“We got some notes from Naughty Dog when we were three months from releasing inFamous about what frustrated them about the climbing system,” Brian Flemming 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’s Chris Zimmer added that a trip to Naughty Dog’s studio proved equally effective.

“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 concluded that the team would like to “make as big an improvement between inFamous and inFamous 2 as between Uncharted and Uncharted 2“.

“That’s the goal,” he said.

You May Have Heard They're Making An inFamous Sequel.

The graphics. Good grief, the graphics. Sucker Punch has released the first footage of inFamous 2 and… Man, is it incredible. Seriously. Sometimes we get excited here at PushSquare. But this goes beyond our usual excitement. Whatever your opinion on the new Cole, watching him glide through the city before fighting a helicopter is truly incredible.

Sucker Punch have worked wonders on their engine. The game looks unbelievably good. Look, stop listening to us and just click through the jump. Incredible, yo.

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Sucker Punch Aim To Get inFamous 2 To Look As Beautiful As Uncharted.

If there was perhaps any complaint attached to the original inFamous, it was that the game just didn’t look very good. Empire City was a mess of jaggy lines, grubby textures and foggy city-scapes. In many ways, the game was supposed to look like that. inFamous’ setting was dark and foreboding. But also, inFamous lacked that next-level beauty that so many PlayStation 3 exclusives provide these days. Sucker Punch want to change that with inFamous 2, and Naughty Dogs’ stunning Uncharted 2 is their benchmark.

“We’re getting a lot closer to it – we certainly are – and we’ve got a ways to go,” Sucker Punch’s development director Chris Zimmerman told VideoGamer.com.

“Clearly they are the inspiration for us. And not just in terms of the visuals, but all the things they did that made that game so great. We’re working hard to get as close as we can to that goal, and I think we’re going to get pretty close. People will look at it and I think that they’ll say, look, you know this is in the same ball park.”

According to numerous hands-on impressions with the game from E3, Sucker Punch are on the right path. Zimmerman puts that down to PS3 exclusivity.

“The thing that we’ve got going for us, like the Uncharted guys, we’re Sony only. All we do is games for the PS3, which means that the engine that we’re building can be completely tuned and targeted at the PS3 and at the things the PS3 does well.

“We can commit to doing all our systems in a very PS3 specific way. We can write SPU code for everything. As a result, we’re able to do more. We’re able to take more advantage of the hardware, because it’s the only system we have to worry about. Just like Uncharted, we’re able to do things that we would never be able to do if we were doing a cross-platform game.

“For instance, we moved most of our lighting on the SPUs for this game. So, casting light on the objects was all dynamic for us – completely dynamically lit. We did it on the graphics card, which was the traditional place to do it before. But we could move it to the SPUs, and so we did. And as a result we’re able to do more stuff with the graphics chip. We can put more triangles on screen. We can have more detail. We can have more characters. We can have more everything. We were able to do that only because we knew we were going to be doing a PS3 game, and that’s all we were going to be worrying about.”

If Sucker Punch can get anywhere near Uncharted 2 with inFamous 2, it could be the best looking open-world game ever made.

inFamous 2 on PlayStation 3 Blow-Out Preview.

Shocked. Perhaps the most fitting word to describe our reaction to the new-look Cole in inFamous 2. The once gruff-voiced egg-head with electric powers had seemingly been replaced by the cover-star of the next Skate game – a brusque, handsome looking extreme sports star who Sucker Punch describe as being “inspired by Tony Hawk”. Beyond the controversy of Cole’s face however was a more pressing matter — what’s the sequel actually like?

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