Insomniac Games: Sunset Overdrive Uses A Completely New Engine

Sunset Overdrive has been getting rave previews since the media embargo ended yesterday, for its quirky artstyle, its great mechanics, and its mixing of genres. Insomniac Games, the developers of the title, recently also talked about the game’s engine and technical specifications:

“This is basically a completely different engine, twice removed,” they said on NeoGAF. “A lot of the stuff we built for it was to hit Marcus and Drew’s goals for the game in terms of the mass quantities of enemies on screen (it’s a lot), the size of the world and the ability to move across it quickly (challenging in open world games) and the sheer number of effects (fireworks, pyro, all that good stuff). Everything we’re doing technically is based on nailing the vision of the game, which is exactly as it should be.”

They also denied accusations of similarities with Sony and Sucker Punch’s inFamous games.

“I dunno, we had grinding in Ratchet games, we had a wrench slam in Ratchet games. I don’t feel like anyone can say we ripped those off from anyone else when we’ve been using them for a decade plus. The denim is a denim jacket but you can wear whatever you want. I know we didn’t show the hero using a chain (I’m not even sure we have a chain melee weapon). And honestly, the over the shoulder shooting is the LAST thing you should do while playing the game (and when did over the shoulder shooting in a third person shooter become any sort of “ripoff”?). We keep debating about taking it out (or locking it at the beginning so players don’t try to use it all the time. We’re very different than inFamous.”

Sunset Overdrive is an Xbox One exclusive due sometime later this year.