The overwhelming message from Sunset Overdrive is that games are fun, that fun is good, and that everybody should be able to have fun. When you look at this game, with its acid greens and fluorescent purples, it’s tagline of “rules are meant to be exploded,” one can feel a little overwhelmed with how unabashedly in your face it all is. But really, it’s about freedom—not just within the game, but of who you can be while you’re grinding on walls and shooting mutants in the face.
I had the chance to speak to Jacinda Chew, who is the Studio Art Director at Insomniac Games, as well as Carin Cronacher, a fashion designer from Los Angeles who worked on some of the fashion designs for the game, and in speaking to them, I realized that Sunset Overdrive is open in a way that a lot of games I’ve played aren’t. It’s not just the absurd amount of options—although that helps.
“I think if we were making like a space opera, or we were making a military shooter we would have to dress the characters in a certain way,” Chew told me. “If you’re playing GTA, you know, most of us probably aren’t like, drug dealers or thugs. And you can dress like that, and that’s one kind of fashion. But the nice thing about Sunset is that you can dress in that t-shirt and jeans that you normally would wear, but you can also wear some outrageous clothes that still feel that are kind of grounded in real life. I can wear my drum major hat or my kangaroo cod piece. The kinds of things you’d wear for Halloween.”
Cronacher, who designs stagewear for Alice Cooper and has her own small brand in Los Angeles, went on to say, “In costuming for the stage, I do over the top all day long. But for daily wear, people don’t feel comfortable wearing something that’s so crazy, you know, every day. So it was kind of fun to be able to take that every day wear and make it a little more extreme. You’re basically going and cosplaying as yourself.
“I wanted to try and make things that people would identify with, that they would feel comfortable wearing in the real world, but kicking it up a notch. You can make an avatar of your personal style, but it’s still gonna be wild. You can go over the top, because you’re in a virtual world anyway.”
Because why shouldn’t you be allowed to go over the top in a videogame? Insomniac has certainly shown their work when it comes to what’s possible with fashion—outside of the very clear Jaime Hewlett and Scott Pilgrim influences, both Chew and Cronacher named Jean Paul Gaultier as a design influence. While there were a lot of disparate influences to deal with, Chew explained that pretty much anything that anyone saw in the real world could make it into the game if it fit the irreverent tone. She described it as a “two year shopping experience.” In fact, Chew said that Insomniac had designed, but scrapped, ballgowns for this game.
“One of the other things though that really got to me was that we had a really hard time supporting knee high boots,” Chew said. “We had to really choose our battles. In the situation we ended up with we can’t really get a knee high boot which really bothers me.”
“We’ll start out with a 2D design, and we actually have to ‘manufacture’ clothing for four different body types. And we have to manufacture clothing for four different body types—every design we make is gender neutral, right? So what fits on the female also has to fit on the male. So we have to be very careful about where we put seems on clothing. We have to standardize the pattern making, if you will. We already know that we can’t have any clothes that will cut across the knee because that’s just an extra manufacturing thing for us, and it’s just expensive to do. We had to figure out what the definition of the waist is, right? Does the waist cut at your natural waist, or is it cut at your hip, where a lot of clothes are now cut? Then what happens is we have a concept artist that designs these 2D illustrations, which are basically like fashion illustrations. And from there the 3D modeler will come in and actually adjust all the hems as they model and sculpt the clothing.”
This allowed Cronacher to get as creative as possible with her designs, giving her a freedom she doesn’t have in designing for the real world.
“There’s no fighting with fabrics, dealing with one way stretch, if you have to cut on the bias—you don’t have to worry about all those things. You just go straight from the imagination to the actual product.
“I really love the main character’s default outfit,” Cronacher continued. “It was great to hand draw that backpatch, to see it take a real form, and look like it’s fully embroidered. I loved the Bunnygirl that I designed, I think she’s one of my favorite characters that I’ve worked on.”
The end result gives you options that I didn’t even realize I was missing in other games. When I asked Chew what her favorite thing that ended up in the game was, she told me that it was being able to wear a skirt, and Cronacher also said that designing for female players was a part of her process.
“There always has been so many female players,” Cronacher said, “and as a female myself, it’s like, ‘Alright! Pants, pants, pants. What if I want to wear a skirt? Or a dress?’ With things like the Bunny Ear Helmet, I tried to think of things girls would like.
“You know in that movie Clueless—that part where the main character gets to tour her virtual closet. I always thought that was a really cool concept. I think with a videogame, it’s kind of a similar idea. If you see a skirt with a top you like in a videogame, and then you go out and buy it, you’re learning how fashion works.”
As I was talking to Chew and Cronacher, they told me how important relatability was to them. Sunset Overdrive is for everybody, and it’s important for this game to put as much freedom as possible in the hands of the player, so that anyone can pick it up and feel like they’re a part of this world. In particular, Chew told me that they received a piece of fan mail from someone that asked if they could wear a turban in Sunset Overdrive.
“We were like, ‘You know what? Sure. If you wanna wear a turban, you should be able to wear a turban.’ So we made it,” Chew said. “And that made me feel really good, because I wanted to make sure that you had something for you. And that came down to like, trying to find as many pieces of clothing, as many different body types and faces and ethnicities that we could find. Having that diversity was really important. It’s like, regardless of who you are, please, enjoy yourself.”
Gita Jackson has dedicated her entire adult life to wading through the marginalia of popular culture and finding gold. As much as she’d like to be called a “fashion expert,” she is more likely a niche fashion enthusiast. She would probably love to talk to you on Twitter @xoxogossipgita.
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