New Sunset Overdrive details from this month’s Edge
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The latest issue of Edge magazine has a 14-page feature on Sunset Overdrive, Microsoft and Insomniac Games‘ upcoming Xbox One open-world shooter.
The game centers around Fizzco, a company weeks away from the release of a new energy drink called “OverCharge Delirium XT.” To celebrate its launch, everyone in Sunset City is invited to sample the drink weeks before its official debut. But rather than have a good time, the player character is stuck working a cleanup job for the party.
But while you’re working, you’re attacked by an enemy covered in orange boils—zombie-like enemies Insomniac calls the OD’d—and Fizzco puts the city on lockdown, producing a virus story to keep people out, and leaving the player as a prisoner inside Sunset City.
Players will create their own character, male or female. Insomniac enlisted help from fashion designer Carin Cronancher to work alongside character artist Gavin Goulden, who previously worked on the character creator for BioShock Infinite‘s canceled multiplayer mode.
Players can also craft “Amps,” which are crafted from OverCharge drinks, to activate superpowers (like a human fireball) when the Style Meter is filled. The Style Meter is filled by doing stylish things. A kill will fill more of the meter if it’s a kill made while grinding. And much like Tony Hawk, your Style Meter will go down if you’re not doing anything.
Sunset Overdrive has a full day-night cycle, and verticality that can be compared to Crackdown. Every wall can be run on, every ledge mantled, every car spring-boarded, and every rail and wire grinded. Players can move at eight meters per second, with the quickest way to cross the city being via rooftops rather than by ground.
The player isn’t the only survivor in Sunset City. There are others you’ll fight and some you’ll support. The city is divided into factions, each with a fortress constructed of spike traps and barbed wire. Some characters will give you side-quests.
Edge describes Sunset Overdrive as “a Dreamcast game dragged 14 years into the future,” something “aggressively new” and a “manifesto for what cmes next with a new generation.”
For more details, pick up the latest issue of Edge magazine.