Developers dive into 3-player co-op and Combat 2.0, live today – PlayStation.Blog
Hi everyone, Thierry here speaking for Sabotage. Our friends at PlayStation have extended the invitation to share more about everything that’s happened since launch Sea of starsand that led our team to work full-time for over a year on a major free update called Dawn of Equinox.
So let’s dive into the rundown of what’s included, specifically the general updates, combat 2.0, and couch co-op.
Update
Along with a ton of fixes and micro-adjustments, we’ve added a pre-rendered cinematic cutscene and finally improved the first hour of the game by adding session combat animations. Children’s versions of our heroes. This allowed us to eliminate the flashback structure by doing live action in the intro, something we sadly had to abandon during production.
We’ve also added difficulty presets, a bunch of new Relics to customize the experience, and even a comprehensive Speedrun Mode designed with the help of our community. There’s some new music, character portraits, and animations—the list goes on and on.
Combat 2.0
The update brings two important changes to the combat system: Fixed Combo Points and Mystery Locks. Of course, along with an all-round balanced pass.
Sticky Combo Points: The main idea here is that Combo Points now remain after battle, making combo moves more usable overall, whether as a stronger opening in regular combat or providing more options for dealing damage of different types when dealing damage with locks.
This mainly addresses the feeling of not having enough moves in the game. The vision was always to give each character a small set of equipment (MOBA style) where each move is useful for each situation, rather than a large list where players classify themselves as only using some of their favorites. It’s all well intentioned, but while the game boasts a total of over 40 unique moves and custom animations, the scarcity of Combo Points means players rarely engage with most of them. , which reduces the combat range to feel like there are only three skills per character.
Mystery Lock: This is another one that should have always been there. In short, Arcane Locks offers a new round of gameplay that revolves around revealing how to break the magic of enemies whenever they are first encountered. Instead of showing the required damage types for each lock, they are hidden, requiring players to try different attacks to see what will break each lock. Note that this is on an enemy type, magical basis, meaning the reveal of the Mystery Key will be saved in real time.
The main impact on the experience here is that there will be more enemy spells flying overall, providing a slight increase in difficulty by relying on the appearance of more gnarly enemy moves instead of just relying on a complex balance between damage dealt and damage received. This change also adds a “Reveal” function to certain character skills and combos, adding layers of strategy based on whether it’s time to map a new enemy’s magic or deliver a killing blow. love. Combined with Sticky Combo Points and difficulty presets, Mystery Keys gives us the full version of the combat system for Sea of Stars.
Couch co-op (or online using Share Play)
We know this game will be challenging with hundreds of cutscenes, interactive objects, camera work, puzzles, menus, NPC interactions, and countless other things that will simply be broken in rows thousands of ways if more than one player has full control over the game world.
But the co-op dream was still very much alive in the team, so we went for it, manually rolling out one instance at a time until we had a full three-player mode. You can even use the PS5’s Share Play feature to play online co-op with a friend (requires PlayStation Plus, Here’s how to use it).
In combat: Battle begins when any player touches an enemy or projectile. In this mode, it doesn’t matter who controls which character in the overworld; Players take turns randomly choosing the next action from the character they choose.
Whenever an action occurs, all players can participate to perform Team Blocks and Team Hits for additional bonus effects. For example, whenever all three players time a block correctly, the damage is always 0.
Out in the World: We aim for maximum freedom outside of combat. All three players can run, swim, climb, shop, change equipment, talk to NPCs, trigger cutscenes, initiate combat, etc. Anything the solo player can do, we want to provide for everyone. Now there’s even 1v1 Wheels.
Along with a friendly bubble to bring any stray players back into the adventure, a premium mechanic provides a fun way to interact with each other while getting a short speed boost. Oh, we’ve also provided the necessary fishing animations for all the characters.
Look ahead
With the Dawn of Equinox update in the rearview mirror, the team is now focusing on the upcoming free Throes of the Watchmaker DLC, expected to be released in Spring 2025.
We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at what’s been going on at Sabotage over the past year. Thank you all again for the tremendous support. Whether you’re playing for the first time or going for another run, we hope you enjoy Sea of Stars to the fullest.
The Sea of Stars: Dawn of Equinox content update is now available on PS4 and PS5. Safe travels!
