Resistance 3s creative director talks fan feedback and moodier tone

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We catch up with Marcus Smith at PAX 2011 for a last-minute interview ahead of the game’s release

Resistance 3’s release is less than a week away as of this writing, and yet new glimpses of the game continue to trickle out. Why, just last week at PAX, we were able to not only play through the St. Louis ambush level that was showcased during Sony’s E3 press conference, but also to see two new areas that ramped up the game’s already creepy tone to survival-horror levels. And, of course, we had a chance to speak with the game’s creative director, Marcus Smith, and ask a few final questions about the game as it trudges toward launch.

As for the two new areas we saw, they were both set in an eerie stretch of the Appalachians in Pennsylvania, first in a town overrun by two of the most hideous breeds of alien-mutant Chimera: creepy, zombie-like Grims, and their diseased, exploding cousins, the Leeches. The place had a dark, desperate vibe that reminded us of Half-Life 2’s Ravenholm, although having the Magnum’s exploding bullets at our disposal did a lot to ease the tension. No such comfort existed in Graterford, the other new level, which we only got a brief glimpse of. Here, Joseph Capelli found himself in a pit-like arena, murdering swarms of Chimera with a blood-caked sledgehammer. Smith was tight-lipped on the details, but apparently Capelli didn’t wind up in the pit of his own accord.

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Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.