“I think that we learned a lot during the Open Beta,” director Tony Huynh tells me when I ask why the game went offline in 2023. “The goal here is to deliver the vision we originally had… I think a big part was relooking at all of our learnings to try and get the product the players deserve. We were a small team, we didn’t have a great content pipeline. So now we’ve really focused down on th𝔉at in the last yea𝐆r and made sure we can deliver things reliably and consistently.”

For anyone like me who was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:♑obsessed with MultiVersus when it launched and equally 168澳洲幸运5ℱ开奖网:heartbroken when it was taken 🉐away a year later Huynh’s explanation and promise of things going differently this time is something thಞat we’ve been waiting a long time to hear. It’s fair to say that some of the fanbase’s trust was lost between then and now, but it’s clear that the time away was necessary to brin🍌g MultiVersus up to a level that it wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.

Huynh explains that Player First Games used the year-long break to tackle a number of issues that the original launch had. The first, and perhaps most important for an online𝄹-centric fighter, is the netcode, which Huynh says was the biggest challenge that the team faced. However, he claims it’s now “world-class”, and something he’s particularly proud of.

How MultiVersus Used Its Time Away

The team also jumped up from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal 5 in the break, which required improvements for every asset in the game. Combine that with the new additions to combat like 🉐parrying and dash attacks, and the year away starts to make a lot more sense. Considering MultiVersus is a live-service game that will continue to be updated with new charactไers, stages, and modes in the future, Player First Games’ work is only just beginning.

“Myself and the team are really excited about all of the things we have in store for players. There’s a lot of work left to do but we’re trying to build the gam🧔e that players deserve. I think the foundation is really there now.”

The response to the relaunch has mostly been positive - at least now ꦿthat we’re past the Twitter teases and have seen more of what Season 1 is going to introduce, there are still some concerns about how long MultiVersus can keep up with the live-service model that took it down in the first place. After all, the first open beta go at Season 1 had big new content updates every other week while Season 2 only added one new character and maꦗp before needing to take a hiatus.

“I think that we’re going to give time to breathe,” Huynh tells me. “It’s going to be reliable, that’s the bottom line. It isn’t j♏ust characters, we have a lot of maps planned as well as a lot of new cosmetics. There’s a wide variety of different cosmetics this time around, including low-cost options and higher-cost options. There’s just something for everyone this time around.”

Of course, while a lot of the time away has been spent on polishing the core foundation🍸s of MultiVersus, it’s also been used to improve the most important part of any platform fighter - the roster. The addition of Joker didn’t come as much of a surprise, but Season 1’s other two newcomers, , show a lot more creativity and tease the potential depth of MultiVersus’ bench.

Jason And Banana Guard Join The Battle

Huynh explains to me that one of the reasons these two unexpected characters were added to MultiVersus was to show how the game🧸 “pushes the envelope” for its roster and that anyone from Warner Bros. has a chance of getting in. Jason was a fan-favourite at Player First Games, with several members of the team’s favourite movie being Jason X, but he also offered an exciting challenge to show how the horror genre can be represented in MultiVersus.

And then there’s Banana Guard, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:who has caused quite a ♔stir within a community that was begging for Adventure Time characters like Marceline, Ice King, Princess Bubblegum, andꦑ many other series staples. No one was expecting the Candy Kingdom’s dimwitted guards to make it into the game, but that seems to have been the whole point.

“Banana Guard is a passion project for sure”, Huynh explains. “That’s what’s exciting, anything is possible on the team, that’s what makes it fun to get up in the morning and start working, when ideas can come from anywhere. A few members of the team just went off and said ‘check this out, let’s do this’. From my perspective, though, I love Banana Guard, I love what Banana Guard represents - that anyt💯hing’s possible and that we’re still capable of surprising and making really fun characters.”

For my own sanity, I also asꦆked about the possibility of Daffy Duck getting on the roster. There are “no promises” for now, but Huynh is going to see what he can do.

Weird Characters Are MultiVersus' Bread And Butter

But e✤ven before Banana Guard, MultiVersus had some less-expected picks from the biggest franchises, like Velma joining the game before Scooby himself, or LeBron James being there for Space Jam over a dozen Looney Tunes characters. With Velma, Huynh tells me about it came about thanks in part to offering a unique moveset that fits her character.

“It’s one of those things where, because I’m a fan of Velma, I was just like ‘maybe we can get Velma in, she’s just trying to find clues and solve the mystery, so she fights with words&rs𝓰quo;,” he says. “I pitched that to the IP holder and they were like ‘yeah, let’s do it’. And so, that’s how Velma got in, because sparks and ideasꦺ from the team meant that we could look for a cool angle. We don’t want to just add characters for no reason, we want to add characters that are going to do something to the roster.”

The One Who Knocks Has A Chance Of Joining MultiVersus

If it’s surprising characters that Huynh wants to give MultiVersus players, then there’s one incredibly strange choice that the community has been begging for for some time - Breaking Bad’s Walter White. Originally starting off as a meme to show off how weird some of the roster picks in the game were, Heisenber𝓰g has slowly become heavily request🎀ed for real, despite him not being owned by Warner Bros.

It doesn’t help that several members of Player First Game💎s have responded to the requests over♏ the past few years and admꩵitted that it’s an addition they’d be interested in. So, does Th🉐e One Who Knocks actually have any chance of making it into MultiVersus?

“So, Walter White… it’s easier for us to get stuff from Warner”, Huynh says. “B🍨ecause Warner is our publisher for MultiVersus. So third-party is a little more difficult, there are legal reasons and it takes time to develop relationships with character owners and IP holders… That’s to say it’s complicated, but I will personally 𝔉be pushing as hard as I can to make that happen.”