News circulating the internet this afternoon is that the follow up to Rocksteady’s wonderful Batman game of 2009 will remain a solitary experience. Thanks to an interview given to IGN by Sefton Hill of Rocksteady we can now close the lid on those rumours of Robin making a playable cooperative appearance.
Mr Hill says, in no uncertain terms, that the studio felt that they could make a better game if they weren’t diverting focus towards multiplayer modes.
Our thought process behind this was fairly simple: when we investigated adding multiplayer we asked, “If we use all of the energy that is required to create multiplayer and instead focus this on the single player, would that deliver a better overall game?”
With the game now coming to the final stages, I can honestly say it would not have been possible to deliver Arkham City the way we wanted to if we’d have added multiplayer.
In the same interview he also talks about Catwoman’s general role (hint: it’s very similar to every Catwoman appearance in every Batman story ever) and a little bit about a character who might not be so familiar to casual Batman fans: Hugo Strange.
We are very pleased to hear that Rocksteady are determined to make the best single player experience possible and don’t feel pressured to add multiplayer simply because it would be the fashionable choice. It’s good to know that plenty of thought has gone in to ensuring that the follow up to one of 2009’s best games will be just as good.
Source: IGN
Lord_Gremlin
Good decision. Look at Dead space 2 – sure it has MP, but now latest chapters of campaign are shit… Monsters spawning in front of you… Rough, unpolished.
MaD dOctoR 79
I’m more inclined to think they are “being lazy” rather than “making a stand” against multiplayer, I’m guessing they didn’t really have any ideas how to implement a multiplayer mode into the game, plus most multiplayer modes are usually made by a different team anyway, so I don’t really see the point in not including it, as it would bring (if it was good) a longer life to the game, add a lot more value for money, and get this…might have been fun.
it’s a shame really…AC:B has a killer single player, and a bloody good multiplayerm, as does Uncharted 2, still, hope it’s as good as the first.
MaD dOctoR 79
…adding to this, it’s probably more to do with production costs and deadlines…
Forrest_01
Ah, but to play devil’s advocate slightly here – Some multiplayer elements are implemented well in some games & do actually ‘fit’, but i actually hated the mp element of brotherhood & it actually put me off buying the game. Shame as i loved AC2.
Sometimes you just want a decent singleplayer experience to plough through at your own pace, rather than have your gaming time dictated to you by whether an online community will still be alive tomorrow if i choose not to play a multiplayer game today.
MaD dOctoR 79
I don’t really see why the multiplayer element of AC:B stopped you buying the game, that sounds ridiculous, nobody is forcing you to play the multiplayer portion, I know lots of people who couldn’t be bothered if a game has multiplayer or not, it just a bonus for those of us who appreciate it.
and you are hardly having your gaming time dictated to you, it’s you that decides what you are going to play, but if you buy the game 2 years after it was released (any game) you shouldn’t really expect there to be millions of people in the online community (unless the multiplayer is good of course) but that is no reason not to have Multiplayer in a single player game such as this one.
skibadee
best news today.
hazelam
these aren’t the kind of games that lend themselves naturally to multiplayer mode, rather than sheohorn one in so they can sell some maps later on i think’s it’s better they concentrate on single player, they can still sell more content later even in a single player game.
leave the multiplayer for games where it fits like sports games and fps’s
MaD dOctoR 79
yeah because Batman never had allies or villains…of course it lends itself to multiplayer, it just needs to be worked out what would work well and wouldn’t.
I’d say that Co-Op would be a perfect option (should they ever include Robin, Batgirl or Batwoman, hell they could include any DC character as it doesn’t really need to follow the single player story)