Hypothetical - Multiplayer Horror

[rtjhbfvsrry]

Anyway, another game that I like to look at for inspiration whenever it comes to the problem of immersive multiplayer is Journey. That game is immersive as hell, even though you play with other people and I believe that, since they managed to evoke emotions like joy, desperation, sadness, relief and sometimes even love, they could have also evoked fear if they had chosen to.

What they did, was systematically remove everything that could disturb immersion:
- There's no chat or voicechat available, only form of communication are your characters body language and ingame sounds.
- You cannot choose who you play with, the game connects you to random players, so there's no talking or joking with someone who's in the same room.
- You never see the name of your partner(s) until the very end.

What I wonder is if this doesn't really turn it into a single player experience. At least it will feel like one. It doesn't really allow for "I want to play this game with my friend(s)", which may not be the best solution.

Not saying it's a bad idea, it seems like a pretty good solution to the immersion problem offering co-op in a predominantly single player experience, but when I play multiplayer I generally only play with people I know - I think a game set up to be multiplayer from the start might not do well by offering random matchups only.