In the first Infamous, you kind of chopped and cropped buildings together into a grid, to save resources and build a larger city. Have you gone further with that kind of resource-conscious world-building?

NF: Oh yeah.

I presume because of the user generated content and such.

NF: Well, Infamous 2 features a much wider assortment of places to explore. We've got just gnarly, dark dangerous swamps. We've got New Orleans-inspired French quarter architecture, we've got above ground cemeteries, old plantation houses, dilapidated industrial areas, big civil war forts, and a whole lot of other stuff.

And all of it is completely interactive for the player. So it gives you the sense that you kind of don't know what you're going to walk into next -- at least that's my hope -- and you end up getting around in different ways as well.

For instance when you're in the swamp, there's not a lot of electricity and Cole needs it to fight, so he's in a really different situation -- as well as surrounded by water, which hurts him. However he can toss people into the water and then electrify those people, so you end up adopting different strategies because you're in these areas.

Did you have to create a lot more of those nodes, and figure out how they're going to work together?

NF: Yeah, we've come up with some new ways to make gameplay space; I mean we're always trying to be efficient. But also one thing about making a sequel that's great is you don't have to figure out how to make the game anymore; you can focus on making the game awesome. That make sense?

Yeah.

NF: Like how are we going to make the best swamp possible? So that it's really different and freaks people out. How are we going to make streets fantastic? Like in the demo you saw today, this giant monster's cruising through town and he's knocking down all these verandas and the city's just getting torn apart. We put our time into things like that so that it's all just really real and bigger than life.

Does it feel more iterative to you, making a sequel like this? In terms of trying to perfect ideas you've got, rather than having to like invent something?

NF: We certainly have a chance to perfect things that we haven't had a chance to in the first one. But I've got to tell you, we're always just stupid; we're idiots. We get excited and we're like, "Alright! Now we're really gonna blow the doors off it!" We try something that, frankly, is impossible and then we still keep trying to make it. I think, though, that's part of what makes working on games fun. You don't know your limits; there's more food on the plate than you can eat, and that that's what makes you go farther.

I noticed, as one example, of something that went deeper than the previous game, there seems to be more emphasis on color than there was previously.

NF: [laughs] Yes.

Which is nice. I presume that was intentional.

NF: Absolutely. Going to New Marais was great, because it allowed us to open the doors and make this really vibrant, diverse city that feels real. Because you know, we're drawing from all the best kind of architectural styles and stuff, right? And all of the foliage and decorations of these towns, it's just a more interesting place to be than kind of a dirty, very standard urban place. And I love Infamous 1, I really do. But I love New Marais a lot more.

Not everything has to be brown and grey. Something that has bugged me a lot about the last several years of games is that people feel like everything has to be so gritty and real. That's not exciting to me. I want things to be vibrant and interesting.

NF: Oh, I totally agree. Frankly, the real world is pretty grey, at least if you live in Seattle. So, when you turn on video games, man, you kind of want to go on vacation.

Like I don't know about you, did you play Assassin's Creed II? At one point you get to go to Venice, right? It kind of feels like you're going on vacation in Venice. They made this beautiful recreation of the city and it transports you, and that's exactly what we try and do.

And it's gorgeous.

NF: Oh yeah. Carnevale happens in there, fireworks in the sky. So New Marais is… you know, we don't have Mardi Gras in New Marais -- that's a spoiler --

You should!

NF: We should! Everybody's dressed up for it, right? Because who doesn't want to be in a city that's partying?