According to lead co-op programmer Lars Magnus Lang, “We’re in constant fear we made it too hard. It’s hardcore in the aspect of if you try to play it as a shooter straight on it will be really hard. You need to take a different approach from other shooters where you try to really cooperate and heal and revive each other, almost like an MMO experience.”
The game doesn’t even have an “Easy” difficulty setting. Rather, the game is divided up into “stars”: one star is normal, 2 is hard, and three is for “insane”. “One star, we don’t want to call it easy because it’s not easy, so instead we said, let’s start at normal. There’s no easy difficulty,” Lang warned. “Three stars is really tough. We can complete three stars in the office when QA play. But in two days there will be players that are better than I am at this game. That’s for them, the ones who want that really tough experience.”
Syndicate takes its inspiration from other games and genres. For instance, Starbreeze borrowed such tropes as ”breach applications and the healing and reviving.” Lang added, “It’s a mixture of those elements with the shooting experience. You can still play it as a full on shooter. You can do the tank priest concept. But the best thing is when everyone grasps the concept of healing and reviving and everyone is doing it.”
According to Lang, the single-player campaign will more or less be the tutorial for co-op play, which is where a good chunk of the game’s lifespan will be. ”We have a progression system in there - if you want to unlock everything you will have to play 80 to 100 missions and complete them successfully. That will probably take at least 50 hours - maybe more. It depends on how good you are.”
Syndicate will be released on the 21st February in North America and the 24th February in Europe for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
