Feedback on the split-screen (local co-op)

[Jezze]

Last night a friend and me played Darksiders Genesis for about 5 hours in split-screen. And the only reason we last so long was our love to the franchise.

Here are the thinks that bothered us the most:

1. Shared health potions
Why do we have to share this important resource? On the other we found so many health potions in chests, but couldn't collect them.

2. No silhouettes when behind obstacles/enemies
a) in split-screen the silhouettes are only shown when you are mounted on your horse
b) in single-player the silhouettes are always shown as expected

3. Death marker
When you die the death marker is shown on your position, but it's floating strangely around when the other player comes closer.

4. The split-screen itself
a) quest messages are not fully displayed, they are cut-off on the right side of each screen-half
b) sometimes the character is outside of the screen, highly annoying in jumping passages (e.g. hanging on a column and looking in the direction of a hook)
c) sometimes cut-scenes are shown in split-screen (e.g. in level 5, when collecting the two parts of the seal)

A suggestion how to improve the split-screen:
I know that this is difficult to implement and therefore probably not done, but the split-screen should actually work like in Caveblazers. (couldn't find a better example)
e.g. https://steamcommunity.com/games/452060/announcements/detail/1461843313970891370
- the halves of the screen merge when both player are close enough
- the angle of the gap indicates the direction to the other player
- the width of the gap indicates the distance to the other player
- to get even more distance before the screen splits, the view could zoom out (like when you are mounted on your horse).

Another smaller suggestion:
Give us the option to play on one single screen in local co-op. Yes, you won't be able to leave the screen without the other player. But in many situations this would be better that a split screen with only half the view.

[AndresMakesGames]

Thanks for the comments, Jezze!

All of these are valid points, many of which we brought up during development! We couldn’t or decided not to do them for one reason or another. I personally would have absolutely loved to have had a dynamic split screen that does all you’ve described. Unfortunately it was too complicated to program that into Unreal, which has a locked viewport rendering system out of the box. We simply didn’t have the time or people to do it.

2 will be fixed in a patch; 3/4 also sound like a bugs and I’ll make sure we have them tracked in our bug list.

Thank you for giving us your feedback, and for playing!

Andres

[Sawtaytoes]

I'm glad you addressed these. Looking to buy this game myself and am in the "is the co-op even good?" part of my decision-making :).