The director of Marvel's Blade says there's "some potential" for immersive sims to move towards increased multiplayer possibilities.
Responding to resurfaced comments from immersive sim legend Warren Spector (via Game Developer), Deathloop and Blade director Dinga Bakaba suggested that multiplayer is a "viable hybridation" for games like Dishonored or Deus Ex. Speaking in 2017, Spector had suggested that multiplayer was the "next logical step" for the genre, but Bakaba thinks it's not quite that simple.
The key, he explains, is ensuring that multiplayer systems can fit the narrative of the world you're developing them for. The obvious example he offers there is Deathloop, which featured an optional, asymmetrical multiplayer system. Bakaba also directed Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which attached some immersive, multiplayer systems to MachineGames' FPS series.
Creating those systems in a way that fits within the world is "hard enough" when you're only accounting for one human player, Bakaba says further down his thread. When you look to an immersive sim, where "our approach was to make the full spectrum of player behaviours believable," that becomes even harder.
It isn't my nindo, but after experimenting with MP in "DEATHLOOP" I feel there is indeed some potential there. I wouldn't call it an evolutionary step, more like a viable hybridation. The key being making MP systems diegetic enough to create a believable shared narrative/world. https://t.co/vLmtmHd2m1April 17, 2024
For Bakaba, it seems that locking multiple players into a meaningful story is the greatest challenge to bringing multiplayer to immersive sims - "to distinguish from [survival games]," he says "special effort would be necessary to make players experience story beats as well as choice and consequence together."
"Basically I'd be happy with a good multiplayer immersive sim if it aims at creating a shared experience of what we love in this philosophy, including a story." There are plenty of multiplayer sandbox games - which allow players to mess around with in-game tools - out there, he argues, but the lack of story is what stops them from becoming an immersive sim. Interestingly, Bakaba points to Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios as a particularly effective example of how these narrative elements can stitch together across a multiplayer game. That game was lauded for its immersive approach to RPG design at launch, and while I don't think it's a full-fledged imsim, its D&D roots certainly can't have hurt its immersive multiplayer roots.
Blade is Bakaba's next project, and he's already said that the plan is to "stay silent" about it for a while. That means there's no release date in sight, but we do at least know that it's a third-person "immersive sim hybrid" that's definitely single-player.
Our list of the best superhero games might soon be due for an update.
