Increasingly in the modern day, we see publishers and developers move away from making traditional single player games to games that are multiplayer focused, and multiplayer only, much to the chagrin of many who are fans of single player games. This has led to cries that the traditional single player experience may be on its deathbed.
However, there are some publishers and developers who still push out major single player games- companies such as Sony, Nintendo, Atlus, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and of course, Bethesda. Bethesda has been pushing out high quality single player games, with no abusive monetization, all generation, something that they do need to be lauded for.
And the upcoming Wolfenstein 2, which launches this Friday, is the latest product of that. In fact, that’s why it doesn’t have any multiplayer- because developers MachineGames didn’t want to dilute the game’s focus on its singleplayer or story.
“The only way we can create these super immersive narrative experiences is if we can solely focus on the single-player,” Tordsson Björk said of MachineGames said to PC Gamer. “Having a multiplayer component in this work process would just dilute it all. That’s the danger if you try to do two things at once.”
According to him, Wolfenstein games are more action adventure titles than shooters in the sense the modern market understands them anyway- so they are not bound by the expectations that a title in the shooter genre needs multiplayer.
“We feel there’s so much more to them than just shooting,” he said. “It’s a fictional setting, of course, and it’s a crazy story, but we tried to stay honest and tell it as honestly as we can. That’s our goal,” he said. “There are so many things you aren’t seeing. We’re definitely pushing the limits, but at the same time continuing what makes Wolfenstein really special: the drama, the human relationships, with dark humor and violence. It’s pushing them all, on all fronts.”
I, for one, am glad that they stuck to their guns (heh) and put out a high caliber traditional single player shooter. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus launches this Friday for PS4, Xbox one, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version coming in 2018.
