KZ3 campaign co-op? "Who knows?" - GG

Will gamers be able to play Killzone 3's campaign cooperatively? "Who knows?", producer Steven Ter Heide has teased.

Ter Heide refused to deny the inclusion of campaign co-op in the hotly anticipated PlayStation 3 exclusive during a just-finished developer session at Eurogamer Expo 2010.

"In terms of co-op modes, we cannot talk about that. But who knows?" Ter Heide offered.

Right now confirmed features include campaign ("we're aiming for a campaign that's longer than the one we had in Killzone 2") and competitive multiplayer ("we've got matchmaking so you can drop into games with people of your own skill set," and "we've also implemented a party system so you can go with your friends from game to game and stay together").

Ter Heide did confirm, however, that developer Guerrilla Games has no plans to include a cooperative mode similar to Halo's Firefight or Gears of War's Horde.

"I find them [Horde and Firefight] very cool and interesting," Ter Heide revealed. "It's not something we've considered for Killzone just yet. We're very happy with the multiplayer offering we have. There's a lot of variety in there. You can play with bots. All the different modes, from Guerrilla Warfare to our Warzone mode, with dynamic mission switching Operations Mode, which is a new game mode.

"But we haven't considered something like Horde or Firefight mode, no."

During his developer session Ter Heide played Killzone 3 live with the Move controller, showing off camera and targeting reticule movement and the automatic lock on function that triggers when players zoom in.

Heide admitted, however, that core players will favour the DualShock over Move.

"Obviously Move control is implemented for multiplayer as well. Right now we're going through a lot of playtesting to find out whether we can have the Move players in the same game with DualShock players.

"We know our hardcore QA guys have grown up with DualShock and they're well versed in that, and they run circles around the Move players. But because we have auto-lock, we need to find out if we can rebalance that and see how that works."

Guerrilla will use information gathered from an open beta – news of which is due "pretty soon" - to decide if it will separate Move players from DualShock players.

"At some point it's going to turn into snowboarders versus skiers, whether you're a Move player or a DualShock player. But there's a little bit of something for everybody."

The Duth developer is also figuring out how to retain Killzone's trademark weighty feel when the game's played with Move.

"Move, in terms of how it moves on the screen, makes everything feel a lot lighter," he said. "We're still working to find out if we can make some adjustments to the animations to make sure the weighty feel of the weapons is still there.

"We still want to have that same feeling of weight, where if you're walking through the world you feel that you're carrying a weapon. With the Move it's a little bit tricky to get that done, because you want to be able to move it around. That's something right now we're play testing to see if we can get that balance right. It won't feel the same as with the DualShock.

"The book hasn't been written yet. Everybody gets DualShock press X to jump. If X isn't jump then the game's broken or something. On the Move we still have to invent a lot of those rules. I'm pretty sure than in a year's time certain rules will have established themselves and the Move controls will feel natural."

We've just finished interviewing Ter Heide and will have it up on the site soon. Game's out in February 2011.