Ascension launches today, bringing co-op campaign and endless challenge mode – PlayStation.Blog
When we talked about adding online co-op to Returnal at Housemarque, the biggest question we asked was: how can we support playing co-op in an experience that is intentionally surreal? , isolation and delicate balance to challenge a player ‘s survivability ?
Chronosis
It starts with just setting the mood: how do we get another player to join Returnal? Yes, through Chronosis of course.
Players with a PlayStation Plus subscription interact with Chronosis, and suddenly, another ASTRA Scout enters their cycle, staring down and analyzing Selene as she appears. It feels very bizarre and uncomfortable – which makes it absolutely perfect for Returnal.
Additionally, we’ve actually built the multiplayer experience around the idea that players can be helped to progress in the game. A host player invites another player to their session to help them through the current challenge. The server keeps track of this progress, while participating players increase their Scout Rank, Weapon Traits, and Databank. At first we had Chronosis in multiple places in each of our biomes, but eventually we realized that inadvertently resulted in players only going into Co-Op before the big boss battles. Chronosis is now at the beginning of every Biome, so players are encouraged to explore and see how the game plays and evolves with a partner, and how dividing up the immediate scarcity of resources is a driving force. new.
Keep the advantage
Of course, we wanted to maintain the challenge, drama, and intensity that Returnal is famous for, so some of our new co-op mechanics went through a lot of iterations to ensure those key elements of The game is maintained.
Our most brutal example is our original approach to dealing with a “knock down” player; As long as a player is standing, a fallen player can be revived and brought back into the fray. Reviving a defeated player initially requires the surviving player to sacrifice some of their health in order to revive their teammates.
Turns out: this makes sense. Five minutes into a new cycle, both players will drop to near zero health and get stuck in a vicious cycle of one-shot kills.
While playing around one day, we realized that, indeed, resurrecting a downed player requires a very precious resource: time. Reviving your teammates mid-battle, especially against Elite or Boss where every millisecond matters, is all it really takes to keep the difficulty up while making sure both players are can be active in the game at the same time.
Another element of the game that we’ve changed for the co-op experience is that the House and Ship part is experienced from Selene’s first-person perspective. We ended up removing these parts while playing Multiplayer so that we could keep the pace and intensity of the multiplayer sessions high throughout the experience.
Finally, Returnal has also been rebalanced specifically for co-op so Atropos remains the dangerous planet teeming with deadly monsters we all know and love – just for now. some room for a friend.
The joy of networking
Integrating multiplayer logic into Returnal was not the simplest endeavor and was largely a technical challenge, and as we prepared for the ship, we certainly ran into many “problems” in the game. implementation process. One Titanops, for example, has become quite attached to its prey and sometimes the “Other” Scout has gone through too much of a cycle.
In addition to the technical intricacies, we also talked and worked through a series of Design and User Interface/UX considerations to integrate another player into the world of the host. as smoothly as possible. One of the first accessibility issues we encountered was simply being able to see other players in a scene full of fast-moving enemies and bullets everywhere. We didn’t want to go overboard with this solution, so we’ve built in a subtle ASTRA-Green contour shader whenever your teammate moves beyond a certain distance. We also created a sleek outfit variation to complement the visual difference between Selene and Scout “Other”.
We’re also repeating our core HUD for co-op by providing additional information to keep track of where your teammates are, how far they are from you, and most importantly, the “Ranked by scouts” to reward players who participate in other games that support their fellow ASTRA Scouts. This rank is prominently displayed to both players during a session and provides additional Ether for the player to access each promotion.
Conclusion
Thank you to everyone who participated in Returnal: Ascension and special thanks to our co-development studio Climax Studios. Now that Returnal supports co-op, we’re really excited to see players return to the game and call for some extra support to get through the potential hitches in the game; was able to fight through some of Returnal’s boss sequences with a partner who got very excited during our internal tests.
Meaning: “Take it away, Nemesis. We will help you now. ”
Vinyl background music is back
We’re also excited to announce that Bobby Krlic’s acclaimed Returnal track will finally be released on vinyl with custom art, available for pre-order from this.
