‘The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners’ Is Not a Multiplayer Game & Here’s Why

Survival games have managed to gain quite a popularity in the last few worlds. Gamers, in general, have become enchanted with the thought of scavenging through the ruins of lost civilizations and battling dehumanized enemies, mostly in the form of zombies. Virtual reality surely adds to the realism and experience of the survival game, and the developers of Skydance Interactive were aware of that when they decided to develop The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners. The first installment in the series received much praise, and the reviews were generally favorable. Most survival games are better when you are able to team up with your friends and plan a successful pillaging strategy, so we have to wonder, is The Walking Dead Saints & Sinner a multiplayer game? 

The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, release and reception 

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners was released back in 2020. The game was based on the comic book series The Walking Dead by Rober Kirkman. The game generated much interest in the community, especially in the VR community, which doesn’t often receive masterfully crafted games. 

The game is VR only, which means that it has quite a limited fan base. It’s also an incredibly immersive, carefully crafted experience with wonderful visuals. 

After the release, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Even now, three years after the game’s original release, its Steam ratings are very positive, with much of the community praising the exploration, movement physics, and all the ways through which you can eliminate a zombie. 

The game prides itself on tailoring a unique experience for every player. The game’s open-world exploration concept and unique crafting approach ensure that each player will have a unique experience. It’s never boring in New Orleans, and part of the fun is in your own approach toward the game. The VR element makes it only more immersive and detailed. 

The only thing that the game lacked on release was multiplayer, and it was the most mentioned feature that players have been asking for. Since its release, developers have been bombarded by players with requests for multiplayer mode. Even local co-op would do. But to no avail, The Developer Skydance Interactive remained firm that no multiplayer would be implemented in the game in any form. And there’s a good reason why. 

Skydance Interactive is a small studio that prides itself on creating an immersive VR-only experience. Before taking on the Walking Dead project, they worked on Archangel: Hellfire action simulation VR-only game where multiplayer was the primary focus. It would be easy to copy the same mechanics in the Walking Dead game, right? 

Not exactly. 

In an interview with Upload, Chris Busse a Skydance Interactive studio, burst every bubble regarding the Saints & Sinner multiplayer with a single sentence. 

“Is [multiplayer] for sure not going to happen in Saints & Sinners? No,” says Busse. “But I wouldn’t want people excited and expectant because it’s not immediately about to happen…we want to capture that, but technologically it’s not trivial, so it’s a balancing act.”

As you can see, the technological limitations are to blame. The engine and the way player tracking is coded simply wouldn’t work with multiplayer on a larger scale. Besides, it would totally destroy the immersion of the game. And yes, they did work on the PVP VR-only game that we’ve previously mentioned, but Archangel had a totally different approach to gameplay. The game was linear and a much more straightforward experience than Saints & Sinners. 

So, in short, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is never getting a multiplayer mode. In fact, the studio is no longer working on the game actively, nor are they planning to implement any other features to the game, and the reason why? The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 2 is coming out! 

Is Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 2 a multiplayer game?

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2 is not a multiplayer game. The game was released on Meta Quest 2 and PICO 4, but PlayStation VR and PlayStation VR2 players had to wait until March 2023 to play the game. 

The game was once again listed as a single-player VR-only experience with no planned multiplayer mode in sight. This made a good portion of the player base frustrated due to the lack of quality co-op immersive games. 

Once again, hardware limitations are to blame, but who knows, maybe in the future, things will change. I’m certain that plenty of other players would join the hype if they knew a great survival multiplayer experience was underway. For now, players looking forward to jumping into zombie-inspired action can only do it alone. Playing with friends will have to wait, at least for now.

Summary 

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 2 are not multiplayer games, and likely, they never will be. It’s difficult to code a game by using relatively new technology with multiplayer in mind, especially if you have to change the general idea of how the story of the game is supposed to be delivered. While no multiplayer is planned, maybe the devs will change their minds in the future and listen to the plight of their loyal fanbase. But it sounds highly unlikely, at least for the first two installments. 

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