The PlayStation 4's Play At Home initiative is meant to encourage people to stay at home with free games, including developer thatgamecompany's beautiful Journey. The unique, emotional game earned praise for its art-worthy visuals and award-nominated soundtrack, but one of its most notable features is its seamless, wordless multiplayer. Without text or voice chat, though, it can be hard to tell if Journey's other player companions are real people or A.I. fakes.
Along with Journey, the Play At Home program includes Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection in an effort to keep players busy and entertained while practicing COVID-19 social distancing. Both games are free to download and keep for all PS4 owners - regardless of their PlayStation Plus subscription status - if secured before May 5. The Uncharted games are single-player, which has its own appeal during social distancing and self-quarantines, but part of what makes video games appealing in the current pandemic is their ability to connect people separated by physical space.
Journey's multiplayer does just that, but it does so in a way few other games have. Multiplayer is seamlessly integrated, with players simply happening upon each other in the game world, and players have only simple chirps to signal to one other. Journey has no chat system of any kind, and it doesn't even have an emote system to allow for more complicated silent communication, leaving some players wondering if they're actually playing alongside real human beings.
Is Journey's Other Player A Real Person Or An A.I. Companion?
PlayStation's online ecosystem is part of what makes Journey's multiplayer functionality so vague. Normally, multiplayer gameplay requires a PlayStation Plus subscription, but Journey players run into other player characters even if they're not paying PS Plus members. While this may appear to indicate these other characters are just A.I. facsimiles, it seems Journey's co-op just doesn't require a PS Plus subscription. According to the game's store page, its online features "require an account," but there's no mention of PS Plus, so this seems to refer simply to a basic PlayStation Network account. Descriptions for games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, on the other hand, include phrases like "requires PlayStation®Plus membership to access online multiplayer," while Journey does not.
Of course, it's entirely possible that A.I. companions could be substituting for real ones when players' online connections drop, as some Journey-playing forum users have conspiracy-theorized. But there's an easy way to prove this false: At the end of a Journey playthrough, the game tells players the usernames of the others they met along the way. These are real accounts that users can message and send friend requests to, and it's highly unlikely thatgamecompany created fake accounts just to sell an illusion. In fact, it seems that if players lose connection or otherwise don't have internet access while playing, they'll simply go through the game alone, further proving the legitimacy of this must-play PS4 game's multiplayer.
Journey first released for PlayStation 3 on March 13, 2012, and has since been ported to PlayStation 4, PC, and iOS.