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Developer Diary: Andreas Gschwari
Posted by Andreas Gschwari at 03:16PM on Tuesday, January, 17, 2012
“Co-op Design”
Myself and the team love Co-Op games, anything from Halo to Left 4 Dead so the idea of doing Co-Op mode for Syndicate was always at the top of our wish list.
Looking at the multiplayer modes that get released with a lot of games, some of them feel a bit like an afterthought or tacked on just to tick a box for reviewers. We wanted to create something that was true to the franchise and could stand alone as an awesome gaming experience rather than just an addition to the single player.Of course the original game gave us inspiration here. 4 players blazing around the maps could mean only one thing – A 4 player Co-Op campaign. We toyed with the idea of doing other modes but in the end we really just wanted to concentrate on doing one thing really well. All co-op missions are either directly based or heavily inspired by maps from the original game – that means their layout and functionality is kept as close to the original as possible. We didn’t just want to repurpose the single player maps for the Co-Op; we wanted this to be a standalone experience.
A big feature of the original was upgrading your agent so it was very important to continue that theme. Players are able to upgrade their weapons, their chip configuration, and their breach applications through collecting research tokens. Players will earn research tokens through completing missions and chip ripping the tougher enemies.
Weapons were a very big deal in the original game and people who played it can usually quote their favorite. It was important to us to retain this familiarity while bringing them up to date in a first person shooter. The original made you feel like you had some serious firepower at your disposal and it was clear to us that players would still want to play with big guns, such as the minigun, rocket launcher, thermite gun to name a few. Powerful weapons such as these are always tricky to balance but I think we managed to work them into the game without breaking the difficulty curve!
Difficulty for us was a strong consideration. We definitely wanted a “hard” game, particularly because large parts of our Co-Op mechanics revolve around healing and rebooting. So providing the player with these tools we felt we could make the game a bit tougher – and we did. There is no “Easy” option. There is “normal”, “hard” and “expert” and it shows.
We also paid attention to creating proper difficulty settings. We did not just boost health and AI damage; we actually changed scripting and introduced new AI and events.We’re very excited about how the Co-Op campaign is shaping up and can’t wait for people to get their hands on it soon. For a taste of the action be sure to download the Co-op Demo coming soon on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Andreas.
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