Will Insomniac Games Make More Resistance?
Resistance: Fall of Man PS5
Back in 2006, Sony was launching a console by the name of the PlayStation 3 and isn’t it funny how history has a way of repeating itself. Almost exactly fourteen years ago, on November 17, 2006, Sony released a very oversized gaming system, at two different, premium price points with an exclusive Insomniac launch title. When you look at the launch of the PS3 like that, it’s easy to draw parallels to the launch of the PS5 in 2020.
The good news for Sony is that the PS3, despite its early missteps and chunky size would go on to outsell the Xbox 360 with approximately 87 million units and a great library of games include beloved series and brand new IP. The PS3 was the birthplace of Nathan Drake, Sackboy and Ellie as well as many famous third party titles including Metal Gear, BioShock, and Red Dead Redemption.
Circling back to Insomniac, Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the game that will be on most people’s must play list this fall when the lucky few will be able to get their hands on a PS5. After the excellent first entry in the series in 2018 with Spider-Man, Insomniac has set the bar high for themselves and fans have a good idea of what they can expect. Back in 2006, this was a very different story. If you were looking for a launch game that you was from existing IP, your best options would be Ridge Racer 7 or Call of Duty 3. If you were looking for the best launch title then you would look no further than Resistance: Fall of Man from Insomniac.
This got me thinking with all of the success either commercial, critical or both that Insomniac have seen with their most recent releases such as Spider-Man, Sunset Overdrive, and Ratchet and Clank 2016, the question is will they ever return to fight the Chimera again?
At a time when brainless, first person shooters were a dime a dozen, Resistance: Fall of Man entered into rarified territory with only a few other titles. The game introduced a novel perspective by using an alternate world war 2 timeline where aliens known as Chimera have landed in Russia and are infecting and spreading. In 2006, mainstream shooter with a story driven approach were limited to titles such as Half Life 2 just being released a few years earlier on PC as well as Halo 2 on Xbox. PlayStation was desperately in need of something that could compete in this arena.
From a glance, Resistance was very unassuming, looking like just another brick in the wall. World War 2 first person shooter with a very brown palette from a studio mostly known for Ratchet and Clank as well as Spyro The Dragon doesn’t sound like the formula for success. However, Insomniac did what they have become known for and created something special by elevating each elements of the game. From the first moment you boot up the game and hear the air raid siren, you understand that this game will be much more of a crafted experience. In a very reductive view, Resistance: Fall of Man is basically a grown up version of Ratchet and Clank, which is a very good thing. Solid gameplay, strong visuals and innovative weapons are all elements that are shared between the two series.
Resistance: Fall of Man is exactly the kind of launch title you want to pair with a new system. A very marketable, mainstream first person shooter featuring an easy to identify alien enemy. The game would go on to be a critical and commercial success. Resistance scored a 9.1 from IGN, 9.5 from Game Informer and an 8.6 from Game Spot. Resistance was also recognized by many different outlets as the best in its class at the time with IGN, GameSpot and GameSpy awarding it the best PS3 game of the year. It would also do commercially well as it became the first title to sell a million copies on the PS3 and would go on to be part of the PS3 “Greatest Hits” lineup.
The flame for Resistance burned fast and hot. Between the launch of the PS3 and early 2012 there were 5 games released in the series. That is a lot of Resistance in a short amount of time, especially considering that this IP essentially came out of nowhere. Three mainline games, all created by Insomniac, and two spin-offs that made their way to the PSP and the Vita, both of which were outsourced to Sony Bend, and Nihilistic software. Bend, at the time mostly known for Syphon Filter, and now for Days Gone. Nihilistic, on the other hand would go defunct in 2012 shortly after the release of Resistance: Burning Skies. Their most notable game would most likely be StarCraft Ghost, which would never actually see the light of day.
It’s hard to tell if it’s a coincidence that the best selling games of the PS4 aren’t shooters or if its a self fulfilling prophecy. Obviously, if you aren’t making first person shooters, then they aren’t going to be ranked among the highest sellers of the generation such as God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Uncharted or Last of Us. Out of the deluge of first person shooters this generation, it’s hard to find ones from first party studios.
Looking over the large portfolio of shooters on the PS4, the only first party title was Guerilla Games KillZone: Shadow Fall, which launched with the system in 2013. Shadow Fall wasn’t critically adored but it sold well enough as a launch title that it became a member of PlayStation 4’s greatest hits. According to Sony, Killzone: Shadow Fall sold over 2 million copies in the first few months due to its next gen graphics and mainstream appeal to go alongside your new console purchase, similar to Resistance launching with the PS3.
Based on Insomniac’s cadence of releases, it’s clear that the studio has a minimum two team approach to development. In 2018, Insomniac released Spider-Man, which will be followed up by Miles Morales this year and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart landing in early 2021, which are all games on the blockbuster level. With around 350 employees according to LinkedIn, it’s no surprise that Insomniac is able to turn out such quality in the short amount of time it seems like between releases. Basically since the release of Spyro the Dragon, back in 1998, the studio has released at least one game every year with multiple premium titles falling in the same year.
This is relevant because once Ratchet and Clank is hopefully released next year, as it’s currently scheduled to, it’s unsure what the studio will be working on afterwards. With another MCU Spider Man being released likely over the next few years depending on filming delays, it’s hard not to imagine at least part of the studio working on a true sequel to Spider-Man from 2018. Capitalizing on the popularity and relevancy of the film makes marketing your game much easier. The studio also has a tendency to want to flesh out ideas in sequels as we have seen three entires from Spryo, soon to be twelve entires from Ratchet, and three mainlines entries in the Resistance series.
Resistance 4: Rise of Man
Founder of the Studio, Ted Price, said shortly after the shipment of Resistance 3 that the studio was finished working on the franchise in a direct video to fans of the Resistance series on YouTube. When giving the answer as to why the company is finished with the series, he said “reached a logical conclusion based on the story Insomniac wanted to tell” Price continued on to say that the series will likely go on as the series is in good hands with Sony. However, asking someone if they want to work on a fourth game in the same series right after they finish shipping three games in five years would be like asking some who just climbed Everest if they wanted to do it again. The immediate answer would likely be no, but with enough time away from the project, you get the space needed to remember what you loved about the series in the first place and are able to come back to the franchise with fresh ideas.
As the years have passed, the tone of the answer gets a little softer as the community director at Insomniac games said “never say never", when asked about the possibility of the studio creating Resistance 4. This is almost nothing being said at all but it’s a much different tone from earlier in the decade when the answer was a definitive no. On a side note, Insomniac is still hiring project leads today, which once again doesn’t mean anything in particular but with over 350 employees and multiple series already in being actively developed, hiring a new project lead is at least worthy of a mention.
The last time Insomniac released an Resistance game it was 2011, meaning we are coming up on a decade from the last time they worked on the series. Absence does tend to make the heart grow fonder, as we have seen the studio very active about Resistance on their Twitter account. This was obviously before the social media blitz that the studio embarked on regarding their next gen titles, Miles Morales as well as Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. As late as August 2020, the studio had been posting about Resistance on an almost daily occasion. This doesn’t confirm that the studio is working on a reboot, remake or even a trilogy but it’s a better sign of a possibility than what the studio has said publicly in the past. You could argue that they are just posting games from their portfolio but there isn’t much content from other games like Sunset Overdrive or Spyro the Dragon.
The argument could easily be made for or against Sony needing a first party, first person shooter. On one hand they don’t have a premium exclusive shooter in their portfolio and we have seen the mainstream success this genre has, especially with the Battle Royale spin offs. On the other hand, they don’t necessarily need to have a first party shooter, since some of the best selling PS4 games are third party, first person shooters. Based on the fact that Sony owns the Resistance IP and not Insomniac, the chances of seeing Resistance 4 on the PS5 are decent considering the amount of first party studios that Sony could get to develop the game. There is still a chance that Insomniac could be the ones to create another entry in the series but there is a better chance that it happens from a new studio with close guidance from Sony.