Shank Backstory told in Co-op Campaign

So it quietly leaked here and there, but today we officially announced that we included a local co-op campaign to Shank! It was actually a pretty long process for us to make co-op work — we didn’t want to just force a lame multiplayer into the storyline for the feature bullet point.

In around October, the way the decision came was something like this:

1. We think co-op would rock, and everyone is asking for it

2. We don’t want to force it into the mainstory line, as we really designed the camera, the levels, the story, and the bosses to be played by a single person

3. In order for us to do co-op properly, we should really design levels and bosses specifically to be played that way

4. Let’s surprise the fans and create a special co-op campaign! That won’t be hard to do at all! (It was really god damn hard)

So we took the opportunity to tell the backstory, as much of the story was inferred during the singleplayer. Marianne had written all this material on the backgrounds of the characters, and it was a natural fit to not only add gameplay, but to use that opportunity to flesh out the world for the fans.