Remedy Entertainment is now bigger than ever, with four teams working on five different projects. While most of them will be single-player experiences like 2019’s excellent shooter Control, they are also making a new free-to-play multiplayer game: Vanguard.
Little is known other than the name (as displayed on the developers’ website) how it will be “a new kind of Remedy experience”, but a new interview with Remedy CEO Tero Virtala by Gamesindustry.biz sheds some light on what Vanguard attempts to be.
The gist of it is to bring Remedy’s core strengths like world-building, memorable characters, good story and decent action, into the co-op multiplayer space.
“In co-op games, the challenge was often the content treadmill,” says Virtala. “In order to create long-lasting experiences, the developer cannot rely solely on handcrafting and making every single level and mission unique because that’s not typically a path that’s sustainable.
“We saw that there are unsolved questions about how a long-lasting, service-based co-op game could be made. If we can solve those problems, if we can bring the way we tell stories via the world and exploration, those could be elements we can utilise better in co-op than PVP.”
Virtala points out how it’s easier for people to come back for more in PVP-focused games. “The other players are the content,” he says. “They’re always making the experience new, session after session.”
Making hand-crafted content for co-op play in multiplayer live service games is unsustainable, Virtala said, and it seems Remedy might have figured something out to tackle this issue that they are brave enough to venture into making their own live-service multiplayer game.
That said, for fans of Remedy, don’t worry. The three other teams are all working on single-player experiences. The team behind Control is making something new. There’s another team making the story campaign for Smilegate Entertainment’s multiplayer shooter Crossfire X.
And lastly, another team working on two games funded by Epic Games- one is a smaller title than the other AAA release, but both connected under the same universe.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz