Fuse (Insomniac's Overstrike) Trailer - March 2013 [Update: GTTV Episode]

sTeLioSco said:
i think that in the partner program EA gives you some "guidelines":


Free Radical's other project at this time was the last TimeSplitters game, Future Perfect. After TimeSplitters 2 EA had come sniffing around, and Free Radical was ready to listen. "EA Partners was this part of EA that was involved with third-party things," says Doak. "It was a bit like being groomed, you know. Here's all these friendly avuncular people that will give you all the love and attention you need to get your game out, and then after a while they go away and all the bad guys come around and it's like you're in borstal. Getting held down, beaten around the head with a cue ball in a sock."

"In retrospect, what happened after TimeSplitters 2 was that EA saw the Metacritic and came to us," says Ellis. "I don't actually think they'd looked at the game very much." The publisher demanded Future Perfect have a strong lead character in order that it appeal to the US market. "EA turned up with this stuff that was supposed to help us," says Doak. "And it was just big boards with pictures of Vin Diesel on them. Wesley Snipes was on one in his Blade outfit." Future Perfect ended up with Cortez, a cowardly and dumb marine whose catchphrase falls flat every time: "It's time to split.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-04-free-radical-vs-the-monsters

its a metric driven game dictated by EAs market research.

you must be literally blind not seeing this....
Click to expand...

That situation happened years ago, and the story goes onto mention that FP ended up selling a lot o. We can look at more recent Partner Publishing and see many games that don't have seem to have been touched by EAs influence and yet we casually ignore them because it must always be EAs fault.

Who do we blame for Resistance 2 being a mediocre clusterfuck that chased after an audience it wouldn't ever get? That was Insomniac's fault and this is too. They decided to chase the Holy Grail of Generica then and wish to do it now too.

I can guarantee that EA would've published Overstrike with the humor and artstyle it had because if they weren't going to, they wouldn't have signed on to act as publisher and distributor to begin with. They also wouldn't have released that trailer.

Hell, why would EA turn this into a more realistic and hyper-violent game and give it a March 2013 release when Army of Two: The Cartel hits the same month? That doesn't make sense from a business perspective because an untouched Overstrike could have been bought by folks buying AoT too. Now they'll probably chose between the two and I can say pretty factually they ain't going to chose some game called Fuse.

This is all Insomniac's doing, case closed.
 
I thought It looked Great. The hate Is completely unwarranted. Its just one traIler, you cant tell much about how the humor changed.
 
RobotRocker said:
This game looks so generic that I'd expect it to be in the background of one of those Crime Procedural shows like Law & Order, Bones or CSI whenever they do the generic videogame moral panic episode.

You are much, much better than this dirge Insomniac.
Click to expand...

they are and they proved it before

but they are constrained.
 
Looks interesting, but will depend on the characters/story. I'm not looking for a serious game. I am amazed at the amount of dislikes that video has. Jebus.
 
It's like you guys walked into your own trap. Lazy critics smack Insomniac with the generic moniker all the time (particularly with Resistance) and now you do this. If I have to read one more review of an Insomniac game complaining about "soul" or "identity" I'm going to scream.
 
shink said:
Looks interesting, but will depend on the characters/story. I'm not looking for a serious game. I am amazed at the amount of dislikes that video has. Jebus.
Click to expand...

Why? Look at how much of a switcheroo it's done since Overstrike. Of course folks are going to be disgruntled when the initial reveal looked so different.
 
I love Insomniac mainly for the Ratchet games. They are original, fun, hilarious, colorful and have an awesome cast of great characters (which aren't based on reality). I strongly believe that these are the strong points where Insomniac excels at (with great weapons ofcourse).

Judging by the trailer and screenshots, this looks exactly the opposite of why i love Insomniac. It looks very generic. I'd say it looks rather ugly and uninspired. Brown, dark green and grey all the way it seems. Animations look stale and characters look like any other generic game out there. There's nothing in this game reveal that excites me.

Then again, the co-op based gameplay isn't really my thing since i prefer single player experiences (not co-op games that are tailored for 1 to 4 players since A4O showed that it is really hard to balance a co-op game into a single player experience).

Overstrike looked a lot more fun. The change of name and look suggests that they suffered a real identity crisis while developing this game. And it shows in the end result.

When Insomniac said that they were developing a new IP, i dreamed and hoped for something completely different than what has been revealed with Fuse. And i still believe that Overstrike played a lot more to their strengths than this game.

Anyhow, maybe it's too early to judge. We'll only know when the game is released.
 
I saw some hints of insomniacs weapon enginuity. I really feel throwing the word generic out is harsh. Generic trailer maybe... I don't think the game will be generic though.
 
Insomniac could really use a story trailer right about now, with a sample of their cutscenes where insomniac said still have some humor and not all gritty serious. also good to re-introduce their character and add some personality to them, something that make these character more than a generic army dude
 
Callibretto said:
Insomniac could really use a story trailer right about now, with a sample of their cutscenes where insomniac said still have some humor and not all gritty serious. also good to re-introduce their character and add some personality to them, something that make these character more than a generic army dude
Click to expand...
The cutscenes they showed on GT.TV didn't feel like the characters had any personality.
Really hope some character gets in, but the entire tone feels very changed. All the colors are gone. A lot blurs together. Enemies and cover aren't distinct. The weapons are neat, but don't seem like real game changers.

Looks like another Syndicate and I don't care for that.

http://www.gamespot.com/overstrike/previews/a-vision-of-insomniacs-future-6396309/
GameSpot: You said that moving in a more grounded direction from Overstrike to Fuse allowed you to make the weaponry more imaginative. Was that a situation where you wanted to draw a starker contrast between the characters and the weapons?

Ted Price: I think that's part of it. Making the weapons more exotic really helps set the game apart. Even though we're set in a grounded world, we're trying to make it very clear that this world, because of this alien substance fuse, and because of these crazy weapons, this story with organizations that you won't see in our own world, it stands apart from a lot of the games that are based on real events from today. We at Insomniac love doing the more fantastic, out-there sci-fi stories and scenarios. So by moving in this direction, it was sort of a nice mix of that grounded but out-there sci-fi approach that we love to take on all of our games.
Click to expand...
In terms of the game's personality, you mentioned that Fuse has a more mature sense of humor--not quite as slapstick as Ratchet. More subtle and dry. That's a lot trickier to do. It's hard to do that sense of humor and not have it go completely over the audience's head. Describe the challenge of that.

The challenge is doing just what you said, having a sense of humor that isn't campy but isn't so subtle that players miss it. And then integrating it into real-time gameplay so players hear emergent dialogue throughout the game that's relevant to what they're doing but also entertaining.

I think that [writer] TJ Fixman and [creative director] Brian Allgeier have worked really closely with all of our designers and gameplay programmers to figure out good places to expose more of our heroes' personalities through humor and through humorous interactions that are much more of a departure from the standard military jargon that we hear in other third-person shooters. We hope that it keeps it more entertaining while informing the players about backstory for each of these characters.
Click to expand...
You mentioned in your PAX keynote address the importance of knowing your audience and focusing on a specific part of the market. Is this a new market for you guys, or are these the people who've played Ratchet over the past 10 years and now their tastes have matured?

Both, I suppose. It works well for the people who grew up with Ratchet and love the crazy weapons but who are looking for a more grounded experience--but with a hint of that humor you don't find in many games. For the Resistance players, this is the kind of weapons-focused shooter that they love, but it introduces a multiplayer aspect--the four-player co-op with unique characters--that enhances that kind of gameplay and takes it further. It's a very Insomniac experience that our previous players will appreciate; it has a lot of hallmarks of who we are and how we design things.
Click to expand...
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/09/12/ted-price-on-how-insomniacs-overstrike-became-fuse/
"We made a very conscious choice recently to focus on the weapons short term" regarding the game's marketing, says Price. But "I will say that a lot of us are happier with where the characters have gone in terms of their backstories and the humor, because the humor is less campy than we had originally. Now we have humor that's more sophisticated, it's drier."
Click to expand...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/12/why-did-overstrike-become-fuse
Six months ago, Insomniac realized Overstrike wasn’t quite working. The core idea was sound – a four-player shooter where each co-op player has a unique role in combat and has a useful role in the story – but something was missing. Little did the developer realize the solution had been sitting in front of them the entire time: the Fuse substance was a story element, but it didn’t play an active role in the form and function of playing Overstrike. When it became both the motivation for the characters as well as the source of their distinct powers, Overstrike became Fuse, and Fuse scrapped its cartoonish aesthetic for something a little more grounded.

With Fuse’s more photo-realistic visuals and altered story came new weapon forms and amplified violence. Enemies melt, explode into chunks, spray blood when they’re cut, and wobble their backward heads after unsettling neck-break animations. “Me, personally? I love this s—t,” says Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games. With Overstrike, “we couldn’t unleash.” And this isn’t uniquely tied to gore.

The heroes of Fuse are barely heroes at all. They’re all deeply flawed, and their group, Overstrike 9, is hardly a team at all. They’re mercenaries who happen to organize together, and some have personal histories with each other. They’re the grown-up version of a ragtag motley crew, each with disturbing (not just dark) pasts. Jacob Kimble, for instance, is a former LAPD cop – “former” because his black-and-white brand of justice once involved locking a child-killer in the trunk of a car and burning him alive. Dalton Brooks, on the other hand, used to work for the terrorists he’s hunting down.

At the same time, Price says “We are not trying to be an ultra-realistic game, period. That is not our space. We love having games that are grounded, but we make big nods to sci-fi and more pulp influences.” It’s a balance of “a game that has humor but isn’t taking itself completely seriously.”

Internally, “It took a lot of us learning about who the audience is halfway through,” Price says. Violence “has such a freeing effect, in terms of doing cool stuff with the weapons, compared to the more restricted, light-hearted T-rated game.”

Fundamentally and philosophically, though, Fuse is Overstrike. There was no major change to the mechanics, and the Xbox 360 didn’t pose problems for the traditionally PlayStation-exclusive team. Price is proud of his team’s game and excited about the new direction. Justifiably so: Fuse is, on first impression, utterly fantastic.
Click to expand...
Impressions: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/12/fuse-adapt-or-die-cooperate-and-conquer
Imagine all of these powers together, combined with a fair and rewarding experience system. Crystalizing someone through the Magshield before a lava bolt melts him gives all three players the appropriate experience points to spend on skill-tree upgrades like higher critical chances or lengthier cloaking time. These experience points also carry over into another, unannounced mode. Progression is persistent across both, so the unified system lets you earn in the campaign as well as… wherever else you’re playing Fuse.

I played the same 10-minute demo four times when I saw Fuse, once with each character. Each attempt played out radically different than the last. The characters function the same -- everyone is fast and nimble, so they hop up walls or over cover with admirable grace -- but their differences encourage separate play styles. As Naya, I would climb and traverse the environment (something anyone can do) to hack cameras I would later crystalize as Izzy. As Kimble, I’d hang back and pick off turret gunners and blow up walls, while storming into the fray as Dalton before sneaking through sewers changed the pace and feel of the same scenario. The common thread in each play through that impressed me most, though, was that everyone needed to adapt to the situation to keep each other safe. If you're not looking out for your friends, using their skills to your advantage, and capitalizing on your alien tech's powers, you're dead.

Fuse is as much about options and variety as it is personality and creativity. The clever ways characters work together will define the gameplay, and the charm of its funny and flawed heroes will give the narrative a fun identity. Excited though I am to play as friends, the notion of employing new strategies by jumping between all four in a single-player campaign is enticing as well.

After a full year of wondering what went wrong with Overstrike to cause such silence from EA and Insomniac, the new direction with Fuse proves there was never anything to worry about.
Click to expand...
Last part is positive, but I haven't seen any of it.
 
Disappointed they moved away from the stylized and cartoony direction shown in the first Overstrike video.
This looked boring as hell. Will skip for Monster Hunter Wii U and God of War.
 
FUSE just looks less fun. Guess that's the easiest way to say it. I'd enjoy playing in the tone of Overstrike so much more.

Why does everyone have a dark past and a piss filter and muted colors? Couldn't you take that route though character development as they learn how serious FUSE is and their DARK PASTS reveal themselves?
Or did they have to start out as silent and ragtag husks first?

Oh and the shield should be blue.

More on the art changes:
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...-game-formerly-known-as-insomniacs-overstrike

and

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2012/09/from-the-ashes-of-overstrike-is-fuse-insomniacs-new-i-p/
The plot alone seems fairly standard in a sci-fi genre, but Insomniac is pretty good at taking a concept and making it wholly unique, even if it doesn’t reflect the shift in design and tone. “We’d started off with a cartoony art style, but it just never felt like the stakes were that high. You really couldn’t take anyone seriously. We actually evolved the style quite a bit just to get to the Overstrike trailer from E3 2011. We were still developing the characters, but there was a certain point where we were ready to go to press and get these characters in the trailer. And they were kind of pulling it out of our artists’ hands.”

Fuse also started life as another game entirely, a four-player stealth based game, which according to president Ted Price, never worked at all. Eventually, the style changed again after the focus became on the element of fuse itself, over the campy, self referential humor of the Overstrike trailer. Even after the change though, not everyone in Insomniac is fully happy with the new direction of Fuse.

Comments regarding Fuse by Ted Price, president of Insomniac:

“When we went in a darker direction, a less comic direction, we were able to do a lot more over-the-top experimentation with the weapons,” he says. “We were able to make them look more brutal and do things to enemies that we simply couldn’t do with our previous incarnation of the game. It wasn’t until we started trying these things that we realized that’s where the core fun, in terms of the minute-to-minute combat, lay.”

Price says reaction to the change, even within Insomniac, was somewhat mixed.

“A large percentage [of the team] was relieved that we were embracing a more mature existence because it was more relevant to the gamers we were targeting,” he says. “But there are some folks who loved the original campy direction. You can never please everybody. You have to do what you think is best for the game.”

Price says the decision to move from Overstrike to Fuse only happened after “a lot of soul-searching,” and plenty of “debate and analysis of what’s going to make this game great.” Allgeier says the decision to center the game around Fuse was made in early 2012.
Click to expand...
 
This was definitely one of my highly anticipated games until this re-reveal. With the deluge of games coming out next Spring, I doubt I'll even pick it up.
 
OK I need to see some uncut gameplay ASAP. That trailer sucked. Like someone else said, if this wasn't an Insomniac game I would have immediately written it off. Maybe if I watch it again with the sound off?
 
Y2Kev said:
It's like you guys walked into your own trap. Lazy critics smack Insomniac with the generic moniker all the time (particularly with Resistance) and now you do this. If I have to read one more review of an Insomniac game complaining about "soul" or "identity" I'm going to scream.
Click to expand...

Yeah, pretty much.
 
Hate the art style. Super generic. But the weapons look good, and some interesting stuff was shown.

It has my attention because it is Insomniac. But honestly, if it was made by any other developer, I would probably look at it thinking "Oh, another generic shooter."
 
I still prefer the old artstyle and name and character designs (even though the news a=ones are similar I felt they had more personality when it was OverStrike).
Nice to see there is still a big robot though.

Game could still be super fun though but I'm no longer hyped as much as I was from the first teaser. This trailer showed none of the humour I was looking forward to.
 
The 'action fizz trailer' and GTTV footage doesn't change anything in my post I thought based on the screenshots and previews in the other thread.

I will add that the logo does looks average and doesn't stand out.

The gameplay looks fun but my concerns mentioned before about teamwork are still there.

The fuse substance in the container looks menacing and alien, I should imagine the (back)story around it will be good. Aliens coming back to collect it in sequel? ;)

Bad song choice, a song about the feeling around poor estates being used to promote this is a little insulting tbh. Plenty of other drum and base tunes to use for the feeling/audience they are after atm.

Its EXTREMELY clear that this marketing early on is trying to to draw in a bigger 'CoD' Xbox crowd. Which is fine, they need to broaden their appeal, this is multiplatform after all.

I take James's word that there will be humour and more colourful environments. But I understand peoples trepidation, seeing is believing and a proper trailer in the next couple of months should back up what is being said by Insomniac.
 
“We’d started off with a cartoony art style, but it just never felt like the stakes were that high. You really couldn’t take anyone seriously"
Click to expand...

This idea is such complete bullshit. I find it impossible to believe that anyone actually honestly believes this and isn't just saying that because that's what PR came up with when it was time to give excuses.
 
Toppot said:
I take James's word that there will be humour and more colourful environments. But I understand peoples trepidation, seeing is believing and a proper trailer in the next couple of months should back up what is being said by Insomniac.
Click to expand...
"Dry humor and wit" doesn't sit well with me.

I do like the idea that they want to tell the story and develop character in the game and less with cutscenes and stuff.

I was thinking something more similar to the Spec Ops: The Line where the characters get more and more serious as time in the games passes on.
 
If its R2 Co Op style im there day one.
 
lol...I had to rewind the end a few times to make sure that the 4 walking away from the explosion wasn't meant to be satirical...
 
Hazaro said:
"Dry humor and wit" doesn't sit well with me.

I do like the idea that they want to tell the story and develop character in the game and less with cutscenes and stuff.

I was thinking something more similar to the Spec Ops: The Line where the characters get more and more serious as time in the games passes on.
Click to expand...

The writer (TJ Fixman) has done some small amount of Joker dialogue well in a Legend of the Dark Knight comic. Only a dollar and may show you some of what he is capable of, as well as being an interesting short Batman story anyway. Unless dry humour/wit just isn't your cup of tea.

I hope we get a real or tonal trailer in the near future that shows us this humour and the feeling between the team. It's not going to be at the original Overstrike kind but I have faith in Insomniac.
 
Looks alright, some parts look like they have just taken mechanics from Resistance, but it didn't seem very Insomniac like at all to me.

Also, coming out march next year in the middle of all the other big games that were moved back from this year? Unless this game is really going to strike a nerve with the audience it seems rather like suicide, wish it the best though.
 
What I don't get is why do the stakes have to be high? The main characters are killing people with the indifference of a sleepwalking Nathan Drake. So they've not focusing their sense of grit of impact in that area at least.
 
Feels like Timesplitters kept much of its identity intact despite meddling. This looks like a complete U-Turn in the art department.
 
Protocol7 said:
This looks so generic... just make Ratchet & Clank games Insomniac! Come on!
Click to expand...

If they just kept making R&C games, how long do you think it would be before people there got bored of it and they started losing talent? They managed 4 years on PS2 doing R&C before they started working on something different (Resistance) because they didn't want to lose people getting lethargic.

Insomniac have expanded a lot and have lots of different teams. We are still getting pretty much yearly R&C games. I can't see Insomniac stopping anytime soon so long as Sony still want R&C games made, and lets face it R&C games still sell well and R&C are one of their best mascots. They are just diversifying and growing as a business, making themselves better prepared for the current industry and the future of it.
 
Y2Kev said:
It's like you guys walked into your own trap. Lazy critics smack Insomniac with the generic moniker all the time (particularly with Resistance) and now you do this. If I have to read one more review of an Insomniac game complaining about "soul" or "identity" I'm going to scream.
Click to expand...

People were already crying that when Overstrike was revealed. Of course, this new direction doesn't help things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

X4 Diplomacy Update - Coming 2025!
Trailer 
0
228
IbizaPocholo replied
Frostpunk 2 | Free Major Content Update
Trailer 
1
174
Brakum replied
Pathologic 3: Quarantine Releases March 14th
Trailer 
13
893
Heimdall_Xtreme replied
Insomniac Games just released a new patch update for Spider-Man 2 (full support for DLSS4)
45
2K
ArtHands replied
Atomfall releases March 25, 2025
News Trailer 
12
1K
GymWolf replied
Top Bottom