Returnal: Ascension launches today, brings campaign co-op and endless challenge mode

blog.playstation.com:

When we talked about adding online co-op to Returnal at Housemarque, the biggest question we had was: how can we support co-op play in an experience that’s intentionally surreal, isolating, and finely-balanced to challenge a single player’s ability to survive?

It starts just with setting the mood: how do we get another player into Returnal? Well, through Chronosis of course.

Players with a PlayStation Plus subscription interact with a Chronosis and, suddenly, another ASTRA Scout enters their cycle, staring down and analyzing Selene as she emerges. It feels very surreal and uncomfortable — which makes it absolutely perfect for Returnal. 

Beyond that, we really built the multiplayer experience around the idea that players can get help to progress through the game. A hosting player invites another player to join their session to help them overcome their current challenge. The host keeps this progress, whereas the joining player increases their Scout Rank, Weapon Traits, and Databank. At first, we had Chronosis in multiple places in each of our biomes, but we ultimately realized it was unintentionally resulting in players just engaging in Co-Op before major boss battles. Now, Chronosis are at the beginning of each Biome, so players are encouraged to explore and see how the game plays and evolves with a partner and how divvying up resource scarcity is immediately a new dynamic.

Of course, we wanted to preserve the challenge, drama, and intensity that Returnal is known for so some of our new co-op mechanics went through a lot of iteration to ensure those crucial elements of the game were maintained.

Our most brutal example was our initial approach to handling a “downed” player; so long as one player is standing, a downed