A few years ago, I took a bus across town to attend a party at ex-IGN editor David Clayman 's apartment. I brought along a paperback copy of Empire that I had recently bought, the Orson Scott Card novel that inspired the excellent Xbox Live-exclusive title Shadow Complex. As a fan of both alternate and future history settings, Empire was a fun read for me, but it was missing that special something, that certain je ne sais quoi. Truth be told, I was growing bored with it.

“ If+you+thought+Resistance:+Fall+of+Man+and+Resistance+2+were+hopeless,+just+wait.

The+Road's+somber+content+was+shocking+to+many.

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It's with this in mind that I suddenly started to appreciate why Insomniac's Resistance series resonated with me. Resistance tells the story of an alien virus that plagues the world mere decades after its arrival, turning regular, everyday humans into monstrous villains known as the Chimera. But Resistance isn't a feel good story in any respect. There's no human triumph to be found. Other than little victories here and there, Resistance actually becomes darker and bleaker the further into the timeline you get. Much like The Road, Resistance gives you small things to feel good about, but you know in the back of your mind that things are only going to get progressively worse, and that there's very little to actually be hopeful or optimistic about in reality. After playing Resistance 3's first seven chapters , this has been cemented into my mind. If you thought Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2 were hopeless, just wait.Coincidentally, the minds behind Insomniac Games ' Resistance franchise have been equally affected by McCarthy's book, even though Fall of Man and The Road were in their respective stages of development around the same time. Drew Murray, lead designer on Resistance 3 , told me more. "If you had told me 10 years ago that a post-apocalyptic book was going to win the Pulitzer Prize and my mom was going to read it, I'd have thought you were crazy, but Cormac McCarthy's The Road clearly hit a nerve with people."It's clear that with Resistance's continuing story-telling efforts following the first game, the team at Insomniac wants to keep the bleak feeling of the series going. If anything, the success of something as pitch black as The Road with the mainstream gave them confidence to continue with their vision. "We were trying to tap into some of those themes and concerns," Murray concluded, "and hopefully it will appeal to players."Resistance has appealed to players, and a loyal legion of fans are ever-eager to learn more about the nature of the Chimera, their virus-led invasion, and their plans for a perishing human race and the planet Earth as a whole. But isn't this the case for any similar sci-fi story? Jon Paquette, Resistance's writer, thinks that Resistance stands out not only because of its dark nature, but because of one "key difference" between Insomniac's series and other tales of alien invasion. "First of all," Paquette explained, "it's not a typical alien invasion," referencing the fact that humanity isn't fighting aliens from another planet at all, but rather a proxy species that has "coded in [its] DNA... hundreds of instinctive behaviors that led to the rise of the Chimera and the massing of an unstoppable army."This has opened up more questions than answers for those who are into the story of Resistance. The Chimera on Earth aren't necessarily the same as the alien species that inevitably engineered the virus that created them, and that has thrown many gamers for a loop. Marcus Smith, Resistance 3's creative director, told me that "the Resistance story is haunting because of the fact that the Chimera are converted humans. The 'Chimera' as we know them so far are biologically mutated humans, infected with an alien virus."