A lot of people were surprised when Bethesda announced that the upcoming Wolfenstein: The New Order would not include any form of multiplayer. Some were pleasantly surprised and glad they could enjoy a singleplayer experience, and some were not-so-pleasantly surprised because, how can a first-person shooter be fun when there is no multiplayer? In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Bethesda’s Vice President of PR and marketing Pete Hines took some time to explain the decision:
We talked to Machine Games about the game they wanted to make and multiplayer wasn’t in their thought-process.
We’re not going to force it down their throats and say, “well, the last games did, so you have to do it.” These guys do cool stuff. If you look at The Chronicles of Riddick or you look at The Darkness, those games have a creative element to them that is similar to the things they’re doing in Wolfenstein and that’s what attracted us to them, and that’s what attracted us to their vision of Wolfenstein. And we said “okay, run with that.” We’re not going to say, “Oh, we’ll find somebody else to do the multiplayer.” Wolfenstein: New Order is as you describe it. End of discussion.
Personally, I couldn’t be happier. While I can’t deny that the co-op mode added a lot to Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War, and the competitive multiplayer of most Wolfenstein games has been reliably entertaining, multiplayer has started to pollute games in more recent years. It takes away resources that would otherwise have been used to improve the single-player and barely anybody will ever play it, so the servers become literal ghost towns a month down the line. Massive credits to Bethesda for taking this stance.
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