The level we played took advantage of each new characters’ abilities, with Swoop having to fly up and raise obstacles for others to pass and the smaller version of Toggle fitting into tunnels to activate switches. It’s worth noting that the main story mode that will come with the game won’t allow those playing single-player to freely switch between the four characters, but anyone who wants to enable that option in their own user-created levels will be able to do so.
The story will see Sackboy journeying to a new planet called Bunkum, with a new antagonist, Newton, who wants to be a great creator, but is no good at it, and takes out his frustrations on the world. Sackboy will have to rescue his three new friends and set out with them to save the day again. As per series tradition, British actor Stephen Fry will return to provide his trademark narration for the game.
Much like the Vita version of LittleBigPlanet, Sumo Digital is collaborating with members of the series’ online level-making community for level design. While they aren’t ready to spill the beans on what other new features will be introduced, I did get a confirmation that over 60 new tools will be introduced into Create Mode, and they will be announced in the months leading up to the game’s November release. The series’ logic system will also have numerous new functions and features, and the Sackbot logic introduced in LittleBigPlanet 2 will be exapnded upon and include the three new playable characters.
As stated in the game’s initial announcement, all 8 million user-created levels from the first two PS3 LittleBigPlanet games can be downloaded and played again in LittleBigPlanet 3, with upgraded visuals to go along with the new PS4 graphics engine. It didn’t sound like the new characters will be playable in these older levels by default, but the rep did say that they will make it very easy for creators to go back and revamp their previous levels in LBP3 to allow them.
LittleBigPlanet 3 isn’t too far off from its November release date on the PlayStation 4, and after trying out the demo and learning more about what to expect, I’m definitely excited to get my hands on the final product.