Shadowrun will have party based Live play
by Richard Mitchell 
{ Dec 6th 2006 at 1:30PM }
Shadowrun, Microsoft's Live Anywhere launch title, is coming along nicely, according to Lead Designer, John Howard. Howard is interviewed in the latest episode of Major Nelson's blogcast and speaks at length about his job and the development of Shadowrun. A few choice bits of information are revealed, chief among them is that Shadowrun will feature a party based online system similar to Halo 2. What this means is that friends will be able to form a party online and face other players as a team. Many of you will remember that Gears of War has been criticized for lacking such a system. With Shadowrun now including a party system, Epic's excuse for excluding the feature -- essentially, "Microsoft made us do it" -- is getting flimsier all the time. Howard also speaks to the age old debate of mouse vs. controller, stating that the issue doesn't even come up during Shadowrun play tests. He goes on to say that the controls were designed for the 360 first, which may explain how well they work. In fact, he says that many testers actually prefer the gamepad to a keyboard and mouse combo. Head over to Major Nelson to hear the whole interview. And, don't forget to sign up for the Shadowrun beta if you're interested.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brandon Tyler @ Dec 6th 2006 1:48PM
I listed to the blog and the guy in the interview says they are working on it. There are no guarantees. It is not in the first beta but they want to get it in the second beta.
LunarDuality @ Dec 6th 2006 2:45PM
Of course the "MS made us do it" may not be that flimsy if it's actually a question of patents. Maybe MS has a patent on that form of matchmaking? And don't wanna share? Seems dumb considering Epic is basically a 2nd Party dev in this case...but nonetheless. Something to consider.
In general though...MS should make every dev *include* a party system...it's just more fun.
Tre @ Dec 7th 2006 4:22AM
Epic's excuse is that the party system isn't allowed in ranked games. However, in this same interview, Josh Howard states that Shadowrun will no visible ranking. Not even leaderboards. Score 1 for Epic.
However, Saints Row implemented a party system with ranked games and a quick glimpse of last weeks Bungie.net update (12/1/06) shows a stat page of a matchmaking game from Halo 3, in which the players all have levels indicating some kind of ranking system.