L'Ascension est lancée aujourd'hui, L'Ascension est lancée aujourd'hui

Les membres EA Play continueront d'être récompensés avec encore plus de jeux, Les membres EA Play continueront d'être récompensés avec encore plus de jeux: comment pouvons-nous soutenir le jeu coopératif dans une expérience intentionnellement surréaliste, comment pouvons-nous soutenir le jeu coopératif dans une expérience intentionnellement surréaliste, and finely-balanced to challenge a single player’s ability to survive?

The Chronosis

It starts just with setting the mood: how do we get another player into Returnal? Eh bien, through Chronosis bien sûr.

Players with a PlayStation Plus subscription interact with a Chronosis and, suddenly, another ASTRA Scout enters their cycle, staring down and analyzing Selene as she emerges. It feels very surreal and uncomfortable — which makes it absolutely perfect for Returnal.

Beyond that, we really built the multiplayer experience around the idea that players can get help to progress through the game. A hosting player invites another player to join their session to help them overcome their current challenge. The host keeps this progress, whereas the joining player increases their Scout Rank, Weapon Traits, and Databank. D'abord, we had Chronosis in multiple places in each of our biomes, but we ultimately realized it was unintentionally resulting in players just engaging in Co-Op before major boss battles. Maintenant, Chronosis are at the beginning of each Biome, so players are encouraged to explore and see how the game plays and evolves with a partner and how divvying up resource scarcity is immediately a new dynamic.

Keeping the edge

Bien sûr, we wanted to preserve the challenge, drama, and intensity that Returnal is known for so some of our new co-op mechanics went through a lot of iteration to ensure those crucial elements of the game were maintained.

Our most brutal example was our initial approach to handling a “downed” player; so long as one player is standing, un joueur abattu peut être réanimé et ramené dans la mêlée. Réanimer un joueur abattu exigeait initialement que le joueur vivant sacrifie une partie de sa santé pour faire revivre son coéquipier.

Il s'avère que: c'était méchant. Cinq minutes dans un nouveau cycle, les deux joueurs seraient au strict minimum et coincés dans un cercle vicieux de tueries en un coup.

En testant un jour, on s'est rendu compte que, really, la réanimation d'un joueur abattu avait déjà nécessité une ressource très précieuse: temps. Faire revivre votre coéquipier en plein combat, surtout contre un Elite ou un Boss où chaque milliseconde compte, est tout ce qu'il faut vraiment pour maintenir la difficulté tout en s'assurant que les deux joueurs peuvent rester actifs dans le jeu en même temps.

Un autre élément du jeu que nous avons modifié pour l'expérience coopérative sont les sections Maison et Navire qui sont expérimentées du point de vue de Selene à la première personne.. Nous avons fini par supprimer ces sections lors de la lecture en multijoueur afin de pouvoir maintenir la vitesse et l'intensité des sessions multijoueurs élevées tout au long de l'expérience..

Finalement, Returnal a également été rééquilibré spécifiquement pour le jeu coopératif afin qu'Atropos reste la planète périlleuse débordant de monstres mortels que nous connaissons et aimons tous – juste maintenant avec de la place pour un ami.

Les joies du réseautage

L'intégration de la logique multijoueur dans Returnal n'était pas l'effort le plus simple et est, en grande partie, a significant technical engineering challenge and as we prepared for ship we certainly encountered more than a few “issues” along the way. Such as a Titanops that became quite attached to its prey and the occasional “Other” Scout that’s been through one too many cycles.

Beyond just the technical complications, we also talked and worked through a host of Design and UI/UX considerations to integrate another player into a host’s world as smoothly as possible. One of the first accessibility issues we ran into was simply being able to see the other player in a scene filled with fast-moving enemies and bullets everywhere. We didn’t want to go too over-the-top with this solution, so we integrated a subtle ASTRA-Green outline shader whenever your teammate moved beyond a certain distance. We also created a slick suit variation to complement the visual differentiation between Selene and the “Other” Scout.

We also iterated on our core HUD for co-op by providing additional information for tracking where your teammate is, how far they’re getting from you, et, most significantly, the “Scout Rank” mechanic to reward players who join other games to assist their fellow ASTRA Scouts. This rank is prominently displayed for both players in a session and provides additional Ether for the visiting player on every rank-up.

Conclusion

Thanks to everyone involved 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 getting back into the game and call in some additional support to get past potential tough spots in the game; being able to fight through some of Returnal’s boss sequences with a partner has already been exhilarating during our internal playtests.

Which is to say: “Bring it, Nemesis. We’ll get you now.”

Returnal soundtrack vinyl

We’re also thrilled to announce that the acclaimed score to Returnal by Bobby Krlic will finally be releasing on vinyl with custom art, available to pre-order now from ici.