The President and CEO of Insomniac Games discusses the studio's first PS3 title - Resistance: Fall of Man.

Can you tell us about the story of Resistance: Fall of Man?

Sure. Resistance is set in 1951, but it's a very different 1951 to the one we've read about in our history books. A race called the Chimera has emerged from Russia and has swept across Asia and Europe, obliterating the population in those areas.

By 1950 they have crossed the English Channel and have entered Great Britain, and in 1951 the US responds by landing their forces in Great Britain, but unfortunately for the US they are wiped out.
One of the only survivors is a US Ranger named Nathan Hale, and the game takes place with Nathan joining the British Resistance and trying to find a way to deal with the Chimeran menace in Great Britain.
Speaking as a developer, what does PLAYSTATION 3 allow you to do that you couldn't on previous platforms?

PLAYSTATION 3 is a significant leap in terms of processing power and storage. And because of the additional processing power we get from the Cell, we're able to create much more sophisticated artificial intelligence, more realistic physics, and of course much better visuals and sound. Having access to a lot more processing power gives us more creative opportunities.

How do you go about recreating a place like 1950s York, where part of the game is set? What kind of research goes into it?

One of our Environment Artists went over to Great Britain with his camera and researched all the towns that the game takes place in, and that was important because we wanted to get it right.

But because the Chimera has made its way into Great Britain, things look very different. They've built their own architecture in many of these towns, so that's an additional element added on top of the existing buildings.

Were there any particular influences on the team during the development of Resistance: Fall of Man?

Well, we have a big team at Insomniac, and everyone has contributed to the game in one way or another. We really encourage collaboration - on the story, the weapons, and on the different enemies - and so I can't speak for the whole team.

But in general, we were influenced by sci-fi - books, films - and also history.

One of the great things about Resistance is the originality of the weapons that Hale gets his hands on. What's the process like for designing the weapons?

There's no specific process... we asked everyone to say what they thought would be cool, and our weapons programmer would take those ideas - and his own ideas - and just experiment.

We discarded a lot of ideas, but we managed to come up with some very unique weapons that you simply will not see in other first person shooters. What's great is that they're all complementary; you don't see weapons that are clones of each other.