If you were one of those disappointed that Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause 3 wouldn’t have a multiplayer mode, especially after the excellent fan-made mod for Just Cause 2, then take heart. According to game director Roland Lesterlin in conversation with GameSpot, the idea had been discussed quite a bit but the decision was made to focus on the main player.
“We did talk about it a lot. The modding community even created a multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2 that was super fun, really cool. The same way that Just Cause 2 was known as a beautiful sandbox in a giant open world, and it surprised many people that consoles could even do that, we wanted to have that same experience… with updated physics and player mechanics, and concentrate first and foremost in the main player.”
That being side, Avalanche isn’t saying no to multiplayer for the future. Right now, it’s currently interested in the social aspect of players pulling off awesome feats and showing it to their friends.
“What we found was that a lot of players loved sharing videos of what they did. So we wanted to work on the asynchronous side of things. The challenges, ghost mode within leaderboards, being able to challenge your friends to beat feats you did in the world. Having these great PS4 Share feature and the Xbox upload feature, and Steam now has a spectator mode too. Having all these things in there feels perfect for a Just Cause game. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t think about what to do with multiplayer in the future, but for this first time around we wanted to pour all our love and energy into a great single-player sandbox to start with.”
Just Cause 3 is out on December 1st for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.