Benoît Sokal’s award-winning adventure game series Syberia continues next year with Syberia 3, with PlayStation 3 and PC versions encouraging players to pool resources between them.
The Syberia series kicked off in 2002 and then continued with a sequel in 2004, both following the adventures of American lawyer Kate Walker on her surreal adventures across Europe and beyond. A point and yono all app click adventure, it would seem an odd choice to release a sequel on the ultra-powerful PlayStation 3, but developer Microïds has a plan to link together PlayStation 3 and PC gamers in an entirely new way.
Syberia 3, the new episode in the adventures of Kate Walker, actually allows those playing on PC and those playing on PS3 to collaborate online, thanks to a simultaneous data exchange and sharing mode on the two platforms. Syberia 3 will therefore see teams of players being formed so as to optimize their chances of reaching the end of the adventure by pooling the abilities of each of the participants. Only PS3 players who have collaborated with PC players, and vice versa, will be able to accompany Kate to the end of the adventure.
They are calling this sort of collaborative gaming a first, especially for the point and click adventure genre. Microïds’ plan is to eventually have this sort of collaborative experience built into all of their titles, allowing gamers everywhere to share in the adventure without worrying about what platform they are playing on.
As for the story in Syberia 3, Kate Walker is still hunting down mammoths.
After having traveled throughout Europe in Syberia and Syberia 2, Kate Walker starts out on the mammoths’ trail in a world on the border between reality and imagination, where strange white birds indicate the presence of extinct mammals…
Don’t worry, fuzzy elephants. She’s bound to find the rest of you eventually. It’s what she does.
MICROÏDS launches SYBERIA 3 on PS3 [Official Company Website]
Update: And yes, this is indeed an April Fool’s joke. Just not a particular interesting one.