--- description: The one good thing that comes from being a sequel is the new story avenues that get opened up. In Infamous, gamers got to play... title: ‘Infamous 2’ Turns Chaos and Order into Sexy Super-Vixens, Makes You Choose image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Business](/section/business/) * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) # 'Infamous 2' Turns Chaos and Order into Sexy Super-Vixens, Makes You Choose by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Apr 4, 2011 4:00 PM CUT by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Apr 4, 2011 4:00 PM CUT The one good thing that comes from being a sequel is the new story avenues that get opened up. In _Infamous_, gamers got to play the origin story of Cole McGrath, a bike messenger who got electrical powers in an explosion that ruined his hometown of Empire City. So, what you won’t be doing in the Sucker Punch dev studio’s _Infamous 2_ is rehashing all that stuff. **(**[**Simply Electrifying: Hands On with Infamous 2**](http://techland.time.com/2010/10/12/simply-electrifying-hands-on-with-infamous-2/ "undefined")**)** Cole’s accepted who he is and knows what he can do. He also knows what happens if he tries to shirk his responsibilities. The Beast, the monstrous threat teased at the end of the first game, destroys Empire City and heads south on a path of destruction with Cole hot on his heels. The mission to try and take out the Beast brings Mr. McGrath into conflict with xenophobic villain Betrand. The game’s big bad guy sets out to kill anyone who’s been genetically altered like Cole in the new locale of New Marais.  \[time-ad size="banner" align="center"\]rnrn\[time-interactive id=time100landingpage\]rnrn\[time-ad size="large" align="center"\] It’s two such women who embody the good-vs-evil karma angle in _Infamous 2_. Where the first game had you making decisions around strangers, this one centers on relationship building with two super-powered ladies. Kuo’s a former NSA agent who gained cryokinetic powers while captured and tortured by one of New Marais’ criminal factions. Just like the ice powers, the Asian woman’s chilly and represents the order portion of the game’s narrative. Her counterpart is Nix, whose oil-based powers can smother enemies to death. A black woman with wild dreads, she’s designed like a wild child with any number of tattoos and piercings all over her body. Kuo got her powers after being tortured by New Marais’ Ice Gang and views herself as a freak, whereas Nix gained her abilities from a genetic cleansing attack by Bertrand that also killed her parents. Kuo’s background as an NSA agent has her wanting to stick to the rules of any engagement with bad guys, while Nix’s grief and anger is responsible for her eff-the-world, blow-stuff-up attitude.  It's that time of year again. The TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world is officially out, and while boldface names like Beyoncé, Pope Francis and Robert Redford will get most of the attention, there's also a surprising number of figures whose influence extends to the environment. A quick rundown:nntTom Steyer: Steyer became a billionaire as a bold hedge-fund trader. Now the San Francisco financier is betting some of his fortune on climate change, spending tens of millions of dollars to support candidates who are willing to act on global warming—and punishing those that won't. Suddenly the Koch Brothers have competition.ntKatherine Hayhoe: The bubbly Texas Tech climatologist has been doing work on climate change for years, but she came to the country's attention earlier this month when she was featured in the premiere episode of Showtime's global warming documentary Years of Living Dangerously. What sets Kayhoe apart from most climatologists is her faith: She's an evangelical Christian, and proud of it. She's made it her mission to bring the facts of climate change to her fellow believers.ntAlice Waters: Waters all but kicked off the locavore revolution when she opened her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse in 1971\. But in recent years she's turned her focus to children, using her pioneering Edible Schoolyard Project to push the idea that kids should be able to learn about food and farming in schools. Waters continues to change the way Americans eat—from the ground up.ntYao Chen: Every Chinese knows the air quality in their country is bad and getting worse. But not every Chinese is willing to say that out loud. Yao is the exception. The beloved movie star has more than 66 million followers on Weibo, China's microblogging network, and she uses that platform to raise concerns about the country's poisoned air and water.ntJack Ma: The founder of the Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, Ma has become one of China's richest businessmen. But last year he stepped back from his business to become the chairman of the Nature Conservancy's China program, taking on his country's catastrophic pollution.ntKathryn Sullivan: NASA may get all the glory, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forms the backbone of U.S. climate and weather research. NOAA is led now by Sullivan, part of the first class of female astronauts and a veteran of three space shuttle flights—including the one that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. At the start of certain missions, both ladies make a case for Cole to handle things in the way they want. The mission I got to watch was called “Storm the Fort” and involved Cole and the two ladies clearing out a seaside fort of Betrand’s armed thugs. This mission showed off how the order & chaos alignments would affect Cole’s abilities. When paired up with Kuo, he could electrocute enemies frozen by her blasts and when fighting alongside Nix, he could ignite her oily constructs into lethal waves of flame. In addition to this buddy mechanic, Cole could use a device in the game to transfer powers with one of the women, letting players burn or freeze enemies if they got sick of the protagonist’s electrical attacks. nextpage Sucker Punch’s Ken Schramm said that it wasn’t just going to be powers that changed depending on who you favored in the game. About 25% of _Infamous 2_ changes if you go for order or chaos, locking players out of the storylines and narrative branches associated with either side. Whether you played as hero or anti-hero, _Infamous 1_‘s content only differed by 5%, said Schramm. Not only does this give you another reason to play through the entirety of the game again, it also creates real dramatic weight and urgency to the choices you make as you play. Throughout the demo and play session, improvements in _Infamous 2_ jumped out at me. It continues to look much better than the last game and better still than the last time I saw it. The sequel’s included 3D cutscenes rendered in the game engine in addition to the 2D comic-book panel style interstitials of the first game. Also, I noticed that Cole sounded gruffer than the last game and Schramm said that they’ve brought in a new actor named Eric Ladin to do both the voice and performance capture for Cole. Schramm also detailed a bit about the user-generated missions that will be coming to _Infamous 2_. Players will be able to craft Chase, Escort, Defense, Search-and-Destroy and Survival mission types. While the tools to make these levels will be robust, Schramm said not to expect anything on the level of Playstation cousin _LittleBigPlanet 2_, since that game was built from the ground up with user-generated content in mind. Still, the UGC initiative from Sucker Punch and Sony is a big one and should entice players to hold onto the game long after they’ve finished the main Story Mode. **(**[**Make It Your Own: LittleBigPlanet 2 Review**](http://techland.time.com/2011/01/20/make-it-your-own-littlebigplanet-2-review/ "undefined")**)** The other good thing that comes from being a sequel is the chance to improve a franchise, and it looks like Sucker Punch is well on its way to doing exactly that with the new chapter of Cole McGrath’s adventures. Infamous 2 comes out exclusively for PS3 on June 7th. ‘Infamous 2’ Turns Chaos and Order into Sexy Super-Vixens, Makes You Choose ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7241959/infamous-2-turns-chaos-and-order-into-sexy-super-vixens-makes-you-choose/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7241959/infamous-2-turns-chaos-and-order-into-sexy-super-vixens-makes-you-choose/"},"headline":"'Infamous 2' Turns Chaos and Order into Sexy Super-Vixens, Makes You Choose","datePublished":"2011-04-04T16:00:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T10:52:29.706Z","description":"The one good thing that comes from being a sequel is the new story avenues that get opened up. 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