Transistor is an upcoming action-RPG from the good folks over at Supergiant Games. Though it may not be on your radar, you might want to take notice, especially you Dark Souls fans.
In an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Supergiant Games’ Creative Director Greg Kasavin confirmed that the upcoming title will feature some sort of multiplayer, though it will teeter from the multiplayer “norm” we’ve grown accustomed to, and that it’ll be similar in scope to the path Dark Souls took in its multiplayer component.
"The combat maybe could work in multiplayer, but I don’t see this game having deathmatch arenas or whatever. I think I can say that pretty safely,” said Kasavin.
Instead, Kasavin proposed that the game will take a Dark Souls route and feature fleeting images of other players as they walk throughout the world, which would, in essence, bring about a multiplayer that doesn’t hinder the narrative their team is working hard to nail.
“Something we’re more interested in is a sense of feeling connected to other people who are playing in a subtle way,” he says. “You can still have your personal experience around the story, but you always know you belong in a larger [world]. For example, players can sometimes see traces of other players’ paths moving around.
We also want the narrative and atmosphere to be important in Transistor, so having two characters running around at the same time would come at a heavy cost. It may open up some interesting gameplay opportunities, but at the expense of other areas. It’s not in the cards for us right now.”
However, this idea isn’t final and could certainly change in the production stage of this project.
“There’s a lot that we’re still exploring there. Whatever we end up doing, we’ll probably want to be pretty subtle. It’s not going to be like you select multiplayer from the main menu. It’ll be something a little more under-the-hood that hopefully adds an interesting dimension to the world.”
As it sits right now, Transistor isn’t near “gold” status in that we don’t even know what platforms it’ll be releasing on, nor a release window or price. Nevertheless, Dark Souls paved the way for an excellent multiplayer feature that could catapult Transistor into “on radar” status.
Source: [Rock Paper Shotgun]