Given the news, we reached out to Insomniac Games President Ted Price with a list of topics we plucked from a recent Twitter call for questions. Enjoy, and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

PSB: Games this generation have take a longer time to develop, how long have you guys been working on the Fuse concept (via @jaydawg6958)?

Ted Price, President, Insomniac Games: We started working on Fuse a few years ago. It’s evolved significantly since then, as all of our games have. Thematically the best way to describe Fuse is to take the dry humor and teamwork of Mission: Impossible (the new films, not the old TV show) and combine it with the crazy weapons of District 9. That’s the kind of alien marriage we believe helps Fuse stand out among all of the real world, gritty sims which are so prevalent in the shooter genre today.

One of the aspects of the game we believe will feel fresh for players is that Fuse does NOT take place in real-world hotspots and doesn’t reflect real world politics. Ours is a very “Insomniac” world where you travel around the globe to exotic locations where larger-than-life bad guys have established strongholds in sometimes improbable locations. While our story has twists and turns along with dire consequences for failure, it also has plenty of lighter moments where we offer players a break from the grim, serious attitude that so many other shooters have adopted.

How many weapons are there, and do they all have secondary fires? Do the weapons level up similar to Resistance 3? (via @justincasuccio)

Ted Price: Each of the four characters in the team has his or her own experimental weapon powered by the alien Fuse substance. Each of these weapons has unique strategic functions and an upgrade path which allows you to unlock additional abilities and buffs. We don’t have secondary fires per se. We have secondary abilities which are different for each of the Xenotech. For example, Dalton is equipped with the Magshield which by default is a large, see-through bullet barrier that Dalton can wield when tanking for the team. By default you can also release a kinetic blast which liquefies nearby enemies. Later you can unlock the ability to drop copies of the Magshield which allows you to build a safe area for your team – something that’s incredibly useful if you’re ambushed from multiple sides.

Naya by contrast has the Warp Rifle, which coats enemies with an antimatter/Fuse mixture. When enemies reach critical health levels, they detonate a black hole and the enemy gets ripped apart. The resulting explosion sends out a shock wave that knocks down nearby enemies and can trigger a chain of additional black holes if other enemies have been coated with that mixture. It’s a pretty sweet AOE function.

Later, Naya can unlock an invisibility function which makes her a great flanker. Thematically this function is tied to the Warp Rifle’s use of antimatter which allows Naya to temporarily disincorporate.

Jacob’s Arcshot and Izzy’s Shattergun have unique primary fires and secondary abilities as well. But in each case the Xenotech fires/abilities create what we think are some very useful multi-class characters. For example, Naya is not only the rogue-like stealth specialist with her invisibility, she’s the group’s AOE expert with her ability to chain black holes.

Also worth noting is that it’s not just the Xenotech you can level up in the game. Each character has his or her own substantial skill tree which allows you to improve your Xenotech weapons, your abilities with the more standard weapons in the game and your character stats.

PSB: In co-op gameplay, how do the different weapons and skills complement each other?

One of the keys in making a game focused around teamwork is giving everyone incentive to work together. I say “incentive” because we never want to force teamwork down anyone’s throat. Instead we reward teamwork with bonus XP which will allow players to unlock cool stuff faster. We originally experimented with something similar in Resistance 2’s eight-player online co-op mode, and some of that DNA has made its way into Fuse.

As a simple example, Dalton can push forward with his Magshield up. The Magshield protects his teammates who can cluster behind him and fire their weapons through the shield. Kills made through the Magshield garner more XP for both Dalton and the hero who made the kill.

Here’s another example using Naya and Jacob. Naya can cloak and get into a good position, and then “paint” multiple enemies with her Warp Rifle. Then Jacob, can use his Arcshot from a distance to nail one of the soon-to-be victims. Provided Naya has coated the enemies with enough Fuse/antimatter mix Jacob’s Arcshot bolt will set off a singularity that could result in a chain reaction taking out all of the enemies.

There are lots more complex examples where more Xenotech weapons are combined, and any co-operative interactions like these will reward the players with additional XP.

PSB: Is there going to be extensive character customization? Will there be weapon mods or just upgrades? (via @Sulphurburn)

Each of your four characters has his or her own skill tree. As you play the game you can choose how to level up each hero to fit your playstyle. We have some additional cool skins and customizations you’ll be able to unlock as well.

PSB: Is the gameplay going to be easy for someone who basically sucks at shooters? (via @raycat27_2003)

There are several difficulty levels in Fuse, so you can pick one that might work for you. And we’ve worked really hard to make taking cover, vaulting, climbing and especially shooting intuitive. At Insomniac we’ve always placed great importance on tight, straightforward controls so that our games are accessible to all types of players. It doesn’t mean that the game is easy by any means. But we’re passionate about making sure that Fuse has the same pick-up-and-play feel that our Ratchet & Clank and Resistance series have had.

So, easy? No. Challenging but rewarding and fun? Yes. Also worth noting is that each of the characters has his or her own specialization that may work better for you. If you’re the type that likes to hang back and snipe in shooters, Jacob is perfect since he’s outfitted at the start with the Arcshot – a very powerful, scoped long-range weapon. But if you aren’t into precise aiming, Dalton’s Magshield is fantastic for close-range combat. It’s got a wide blast radius and can keep you and your teammates safe as you close the distance to foes. Just don’t run out of Fuse in the middle of a bunch of tough enemies!

What types of enemies will we fight in the final game? So far we’ve seen general troops and mechs…but given Fuse’s extraterrestrial origins, will we be encountering anything more monstrous?

No Fuse zombies…but there are lots of different archetypes you’ll see in the game. For us it’s important to vary enemy look, weapons and behavior to keep combat fresh. Plus as you progress in the game, you’ll face more and more enemies using Fuse-powered technology against you. Players will have be constantly changing up their strategies as they encounter these new types.

PSB: What is Raven’s role in regards to Overstrike 9? What are their goals, and why have they stolen the supply of Fuse?

That’s something we want players to discover during the game through the story we’re telling. Fuse itself is an incredibly powerful, renewable, living, alien energy source and multiple factions you’ll encounter want it for different reasons. Having control of the source of Fuse is an instant game-changer, which is why it’s so important that Overstrike 9 retrieves it.

PSB: Can players play splitscreen while playing online with other people? (via @DampRevil)

Yes indeed. In fact you and a friend can be playing splitscreen online with two others who are playing splitscreen.

Is there a join in/drop out co-op mode with PSN support? i.e. can I join my friend’s session and chat? (via @HAWCGaming)

Yes, two-player split-screen at home still allows you to go online to fill out the team with four players. However, if you don’t have four-players or you prefer playing alone, don’t worry! We have a feature called LEAP that allows you to instantly jump into any of the four characters that isn’t currently being played by a human-player. This gives you some great strategic options for gameplay. LEAP is available as long as at least one of the four heroes is being played by a bot.

PSB: What type of replay value will Fuse have after I beat the campaign? (via: @cros1625
This is something we were really focused on with Fuse. Each character has a full skill tree you can unlock and the gameplay experience can be quite different based on which character you are using. We’re finding that it takes several playthroughs to unlock everything in all four skill trees.

Beyond that, those looking for a ton of replay value will also find it in our Echelon mode. Echelon is our wave-based mode, but it brings forward a lot of the ideas we had back with Resistance 2 co-op. An important feature of the game is that the experience you earn in the campaign carries over to Echelon mode, and vice versa. In other words, if you spend a lot of time leveling up your characters in Echelon you’ll be bringing your leveled-up characters to the campaign (and again, vice versa).

PSB: Will there be any competitive multiplayer component? (via @angrytacoz)

We built Fuse as a cooperative experience. While we experimented with some ideas for competitive multiplayer, we ultimately realized it was more fun when players could use the co-op skills they were building in both of our game’s big modes. Yet our Echelon mode does feature a competitive aspect. As you defeat enemies, they’ll drop different types of Fuse Credits in the form of coins, bags of money, or gold bars. It’s a little like the classic game Smash TV – when you see the money, you’ll want to make a run for it.

Those Fuse Credits are useful as they unlock and improve special Team Perks. Team Perks are team-wide buffs and each hero can equip one at a time. Fuse Credits also unlock customized skins for your characters and weapons.

And by the way, each game of Echelon features 12 rounds. Those rounds feature randomized objectives which can spawn at various locations in each of the six large maps. As the rounds progress, the game becomes incredibly difficult. Echelon is a very strong nod to hardcore players who want to go for it with the cooperative skills they’ve been building in campaign.

PSB: Does Fuse still have the sense of humor that Insomniac games are known for? (via @pmac131)

While Fuse doesn’t employ the same slapstick humor seen in the Ratchet & Clank franchise, it’s not a completely serious game either. The characters poke fun at each other and often make light of dire predicaments. Our goal was to create the more sophisticated, dry humor you might encounter in a movie like Mission: Impossible. It’s definitely not a grim military shooter.

With November 4th marking the 10-year anniversary of Ratchet & Clank’s release on PS2, PlayStation.Blog caught up with Ted Price, Insomniac Games’ president and CEO, to learn more about how this impactful PlayStation powerhouse came to be. To learn more about the development of this classic series, be sure to check out our recent post that showcases 10 years of concept art.

PlayStation Blog: What was the original base concept for the game?

“He cited Marvin the Martian as inspiration.”

Ted Price, President and CEO, Insomniac Games: After deep-sixing the concept we called “Girl with a Stick,” we had to come up with something else, and we had to do it quickly. Brian Hastings, our chief creative officer, suggested we make a game about a spacefaring alien who has an outlandish arsenal of gadgets and weapons, citing Marvin the Martian as inspiration. That idea clicked with everyone and we all started digging in to flesh out the concept.

PSB: Did you know you were working on something special? What were your creative conditions as you worked on it – uncertainty, confidence, terror?

TP: I don’t think we ever know something is truly special until well after the initial inspiration. Sometimes we get that “Yes, this is working!” feeling early in prototype phase, sometime it hits during production. With Ratchet though, we knew we had something promising when we built a test for Metropolis – one of the first worlds you visit in the game. We had Ratchet running around on platforms looking out over this vast city with streams of airborne traffic whizzing by. You could switch between the “suck cannon,” “pyrocitor,” the wrench and (I think) the blaster. It was a lot of smoke and mirrors because we weren’t using our final engine. We didn’t build out the backs of buildings, you could only travel a few meters in the world, and Ratchet was in his “brown” state, and I don’t recall having any enemies. But it convinced us and Sony of the potential for the game.

PSB: Did you draw inspiration from anywhere in particular for the game’s look and feel?

“What you see is a result of our team having fun.”

TP: We drew from all sorts of sources. Cartoons, sci-fi movies, popular culture… There were certainly some direct playful references to other properties in both the initial concepts and in subsequent games. Captain Qwark was partially inspired by The Tick. Metropolis with its flying cars and city canyons is reminiscent of The Fifth Element. Courtney Gears from Up Your Arsenal was a riff on Britney Spears, who was popular at the time. But these are exceptions rather than the rule: Most of what you see in the games is a direct result of our team just having fun in a universe with very few constraints.

PSB: It was an ambitious title for its time. What were the biggest challenges in realizing your original vision?
TP: Controlling scope was (and still is) our biggest challenge. We were moving onto a new platform with a new IP and we had very little time to get it done. We knew we needed to be ambitious for the game to stand out. But we also knew that if we spread ourselves too thin with too many features, the game would be half-baked. Dealing with this conundrum hasn’t gotten any easier over the years because players’ expectations continue to skyrocket for all platforms.

PSB: How close to your original concept was the finished game?
TP: It depends. Some of us consider “Girl with a Stick” as an important part of the Ratchet genesis, and Ratchet & Clank does owe some its mechanics and ideas to that concept. With that in mind, both Ratchet and Resistance went through drastic changes on their way to their final incarnations. However, once we had Ratchet up and running on the PS2, the changes were less severe. Ratchet did change in appearance along the way. When I look back at the original model versus what ended up in the final game, I see a big difference. We also continued to add mechanics to the game as we figured out what worked and what didn’t.

“We were yearning to jump back into the realm of oversized, overpowered weapons.”

PSB: Which element of the game are you most proud of?
TP: The crazy weapons! Coming off of Spyro, a series where the main character couldn’t use weapons other than his breath and his horns. I think a lot of us were yearning to jump into back into the realm of oversized, overpowered projectile weapons. We spent some time in that world with Disruptor but took a four-year break while focusing on purple quadrupeds with Spyro. We also latched onto weapons as a way to separate Ratchet from other platformers, which seemed perennially tied to bonking, bouncing, and punching. Finally, in my opinion, creating weapons without any real-world rules gave us a chance to operate at max creativity –- which is ultimately the goal for a lot of us in this industry. It really didn’t matter WHAT the weapon was, as long as it was satisfying and fun to use we knew we’d be able to make it fit.

PSB: How would you like Ratchet & Clank to be remembered? What did it bring to the video game medium?
TP: Ratchet is still alive and well, with Full Frontal Assault coming out in a few weeks. A lot of us at Insomniac are very proud that Ratchet & Clank is one of the last platformers standing and still going strong. And we all like to think that Ratchet has contributed to the evolution of platformers and action games in general over the last decade and a half. As a minor example, seeing radial quick-select menus in other games is a compliment to us because I think Ratchet was the first to have one (though I could be wrong). And I’m still waiting to see a sheepinator in another game. To be fair though, I think Heretic (1994) and Hexen (1995) were the first games to have weapons which turned enemies into farm animals!

PSB: Which of the Ratchet & Clank characters is closest to your heart?
TP: Captain Qwark. I love him because he’s always larger than life, always 100% sure of himself, and usually wrong. My wife tells me she knows people like that. Still trying to figure out who she’s talking about.

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