After keeping players in the dark for more than half a year now, Trials Fusion‘s multiplayer plans have finally been announced. It’s great news for those who like the game’s four player local multiplayer, as a similar mode will be available as a free update early next year for all platforms, and available on PC as a beta later this year.
Not content to simply add online support to the game’s existing multiplayer, the new Trials online multiplayer will allow up to eight gamers to play on newly designed eight lane tracks. Even better, you’ll no longer need to concern yourself with remembering which color bike you are, or which lane you’re riding in. Things could get a little confusing with eight players racing on the same screen, which is why each player will see themselves in the foreground, while all opponents will be seen in the background lanes. It’s a smart solution that will make the action much easier to follow.
But for all the ambition of the new multiplayer, it could also prove to be frustratingly limiting for a game largely centered around the concept of user content creation. According to what I could gather from the game itself, there are currently over 27,000 user-made tracks available on the PS4 edition of Trials Fusion, around 350 of which are super cross four lane multiplayer tracks, and apparently a grand total of zero of those tracks will work in online multiplayer. That means no standard tracks, no skill games, no stunt events, and no player created content of any type other than the new eight lane maps. Actually, that’s assuming that players are able to create their own levels for the new mode, since that hasn’t really been announced yet.
The previous game in the series–Trials Evolution–got around most of these issues by including “ghosts” of opponents, as several players attempted to finish a standard Trials level at the same time. Trials Fusion launched without any sort of online multiplayer, although a new multiplayer mode has been promised since before the game was released.
Fans holding out hope for a traditional Trials multiplayer mode–one that works with all game modes and allows players to create levels together–shouldn’t give up just yet. As a developer on the official forum has said, they’re not ruling it out, but it’s also “not the priority.”
The developers have also admitted that they’re holding back on some exciting details that will be announced at a later date. Will those details be enough to make players forgive the lack of standard level compatibility? I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.