Highly unusual for the veteran studio responsible for the Soulslike genre, The Duskbloods implements a PVPVE gameplay loop, but not in the way most people would suspect. In a recent interview, director Hidetaka Miyazaki sat down with Nintendo to discuss the game, and shed some light on his unique vision.
Reading between the lines, The Duskbloods seems to be borrowing a lot of mechanics from Extraction games. However, this genre is primarily focused on shooters, yet the game will be a Soulslike. Already a big departure from the norm, there is one other fascinating twist that separates this upcoming FromSoftware title from the Extraction and Battle Royale market.
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Victory in The Duskbloods Can Be About Helping or Harming Other Players
As is typical for Extraction games, players entering a match are expected to be hostile to one another as they fight to complete objectives and extract. Usually, this will involve some amount of PVP. This is also true to some extent for The Duskbloods, as it seems that the game will reward players for being the last one standing. However, this will not always be the case.
The game uses Victory Points to determine who wins any given match. Most of the time, VPs will be gained through direct combat with other players, but it is not always the only way to win. The Duskbloods has a system of randomized victory conditions, and sometimes they might change in very interesting ways. There may be an especially powerful boss enemy lurking somewhere on the map, and players will have to work with one another to take it down.
What makes this so unique is that players are not competing with each other to take it down – they are assisting one another. By completing this objective, all the players, not just the last, can reap all the rewards from a successful win.
This naturally flies in the face of the typical Extraction loop. Hunt: Showdown is one of the most unique Extraction Shooters, and is quite interesting in how often it can let players complete their objectives while avoiding PVP, but even that game is unlikely to encourage enemy players to cooperate. This is essentially what The Duskbloods is doing, bringing together would-be hostile players and incentivizing them to work toward a common goal.
The Duskbloods Has Many Ways to Obtain Victory Points
For players who are less fond of PVP, it isn’t the only avenue to winning other than praying for a team victory condition. Matches will have various objectives, curiously described as “opportunistic,” which could mean a number of things. As there are a lot of people who usually prefer PVE in FromSoftware games, this means there is something for everyone in this twist on the extraction mechanic.
However, the presence of PVP within each match may be a complete turn-off to some Souls fans. Many players have expressed their frustration at the inclusion of PVP in FromSoftware’s games, often because it has ruined their single-player experience, or because of Dark Souls‘ infamously shaky netcode. As it is an online game first, there is some hope that The Duskbloods may be different in these regards, but that remains to be seen.
The Duskbloods presents a very different take on a time-honored style of gameplay that allows for a bit of jolly cooperation, and with Elden Ring Nightreign releasing in May, FromSoftware will soon have two multiplayer games that encourage team play. If the formula is successful, it may not be long before other studios incorporate cooperative elements into otherwise PVP environments.
