Last year’s WWE 2K20 was quite the mess. While the series has always been known for its technical issues (there’s many hilarious YouTubes and Twitters dedicated just to WWE 2K glitches, and they are wonderful), 2K20 was something entirely different. It was so bad, developer Visual Concepts is taking this year off the series to refine the next entry. And it seems they are looking to the past to do that.
In a Reddit Q&A, series lead Patrick Gilmore talked about the next simulation-based title. He promised an evolution in the gameplay system, possibly the biggest one in years, and said the team was even looking back to the WWE license titles of the past, to more arcade based titles like Smackdown and No Mercy.
“Core gameplay is one of the major investments we’re making in the next instalment—one of six pillars we are focused on disproportionately in development,” he wrote.
“We are looking at much-loved previous games like No Mercy or Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain, along with top franchise instalments, and more modern wrestling and fighting games to build an all-new philosophical foundation for the game.”
Whether it’ll amount to anything or not is anyone’s guess. Hopefully, the year off will help at least create more stable product, if nothing else, for next year. In the meantime, this year we’ll get the more stylized WWE 2K Battlegrounds, which you can read more about through here. We’ll keep you updated as more information comes out about the next WWE 2K title.