New Third-Person Shooter from Platinum Games Will Not Have Multiplayer

Wha?! Platinum Games, the developer of Bayonetta, is currently working on a third-person shooter called Vanquish. It features a main character in some kind of futuristic full-body armor. And it's...a shooter. But, this shooter will not feature a multiplayer component. Normally, I'd be kind of excited about this, because it can mean that this game is guaranteed to bring a good story and single-player experience to the table, as opposed to recent shooters where the multiplayer is really more important than the single-player. And yet, I feel like that won't be the case with Vanquish.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Platinum Games. I loved Bayonetta. But, thinking about what I've seen, I don't feel like there's much to set this apart from other futuristic-shooters. Platinum even says this themselves in reference to the game's lack of multiplayer. "It kind of boils down to whether you have the multiplayer but you don't have that much impact, and end up being like everyone else. Or even below par," designer Shinji Mikami told Eurogamer. So, not wanting to compete with other games' multiplayer modes and end up providing a generic or lesser experience, that's a great reasoning. The issue is that I haven't seen anything that sets this apart in its single-player, either.

Still, there is much more to see and learn, I suppose. I've just become very skeptical of shooters lately, with the market getting more and more saturated. We'll just have to wait and see how Vanquish shapes up as release approaches.