Today at GDC, Sony unveiled a brand new system in the sequel that allows players to place enemies, objects and more to create your very own challenges that pop up in New Marais. You can come up with stories, limit it to races, and even assign XP to completing a quest. A trailer listed a variety of missions (Defense, Escort, Search and Destroy, Survival, Shooting Gallery, Platforming, and Obstacle Course), but Sucker Punch said that the possibilities are endless and users can create whatever they want.
Once the creation is whipped up and uploaded, it's shared with the world. Players can select the criteria they want in their game -- say, the best shooter missions or the newest puzzle missions -- and those events auto-populate that the map. From there, players just walk up to the green cone of light, scope the vital info, and start the event. If a player hasn't cleared a story mission and a created mission uses an enemy or something from it, the player won't be able to access that created mission until he or she has unlocked that part of the story.
How does all this work? Well, if you played LittleBigPlanet 2, it's a lot like setting up a circuit board except the circuit board is the world. You choose to create a mission and can then fly to any part of the map. You place enemies and then start placing nodes -- little blue circles that govern the action of a level -- on the ground. You can set a node that cues enemies, connect that to another node that makes a car explode, and then connect that to a node that kicks on the music for a fight. Connected nodes get strung together with wires so you can see the relationship. If it sounds complicated, it's because it is, but once I saw someone tinkering, I understood how it all came together and think I'll be OK when I get my hands on the creator.
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