"Without dedicated servers, our solution would be if two guys want to go to different parts, we have to separate them so they will not be able to play together. The alternative solution would have been to automatically break groups of players up as they loaded into new areas in the game world, but People Can Fly was desperate to avoid that for Outriders. Plus, we just need to gather all the players and not separate them in different areas." Then they will see, okay, where are we? Our idea - maybe it doesn't work exactly as we wanted - but the idea was, okay, show all the players what's happening, that we are jumping on the opposite side.
![tomb raider 2 pc no cutscenes tomb raider 2 pc no cutscenes](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iyVHV7ct4gU/maxresdefault.jpg)
"Second, if I will just trigger that transition, then the two others will be teleported. I cannot just go there and trigger three different areas, because it will not work in a game without dedicated servers. The second one is travelling along the main path towards the enemies there. Let's imagine one of my friends is next to the city, to Rift Town. "I'm the person who's triggering the travel, so I want to jump to the other side and start a battle on the opposite side. Specifically on the jump cutscene I tweeted about, Nowakowski explained what's happening under the hood: We couldn't have done it so manually you can go through the doors, because we have a multiplayer game that opens different problems for us." "That was only because people in playtests said, 'oh, where am I? Why was I teleported?' So we needed to have these cutscenes. "A good example is opening the door," Kmita said. And so, the brief cutscenes showing your character physically moving to a new area were born. But some playtesters complained they were disoriented when they loaded into a new area. Instead, there was a simple fade-in and fade-out as all players were brought together. Initially, Outriders did not have these loading cutscenes. There are many other examples, each with their own solutions for keeping co-op players seamlessly playing together in the virtual world.īecause of feedback during playtests, People Can Fly said. Last gen we had Destiny, and the gen before that we had Borderlands. "It started quite pragmatic, because we needed a system that would help us teleport the players and stream some other content to start to load the other arena," Kmita told me.īut why have cutscenes showing your character transition, performing banal actions such as opening doors, climbing ledges and jumping across chasms? After all, it's not like Outriders is the first co-op game to offer different arenas for players to explore at the same time. The game isn't able to have all players running around entirely different arenas at the same time. And without dedicated servers, Outriders needs to bring all players together when one wants to enter a new area. Outriders can be played three-player co-op throughout the entire game. But there's another reason for this jarring transition: co-op. So, what's going on? I caught up with creative director Bartek Kmita, and lead designer Piotr Nowakowski from People Can Fly to find out.Īs you'd expect, there is loading of the new area going on here. Video games have had more elegant, less immersion-breaking loading transitions for years (who can forget the slow shimmy through a tight gap before entering a new area?).
![tomb raider 2 pc no cutscenes tomb raider 2 pc no cutscenes](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bBNaBCk9Fek/maxresdefault.jpg)
When the cutscene ends and I'm back in the action, I'm in this new area. Then, we get the cutscene for the jump across. In the clip I tweeted, you can see my character approach the gap in the bridge, then I press and hold square (I'm playing on PlayStation 5) to enter a new area. There are parts of the demo, which revolves around the quest hub of Rift Town, where you can find yourself caught in a loading cutscene vortex as you move through different areas.Ĭlearly, these cutscenes are hiding background loading. The issue is sometimes exacerbated by the prevalence of these cutscenes. And then when you materialise on the other side, the armour is magically back on. It doesn't help that in these cutscenes your character magically ditches the armour you've just been wearing to show their face and hair. This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies.